The chess board is a place of black and white. Checkered from one square to the next. A place of sharp minds and witty places of where the next pawn lands. Where sacrifices are made and battle plans are drawn from one black square to the next. The pawns stand at the front line, all in a pretty shiny row of sacrificial soldiers standing vigil for their queen and king. Puppets with their strings controlled by unknown hands.

Sometimes, she thinks in the darkest hour of night, the she was only ever just that. A pawn. With her pretty little scars and her pretty little bruises and the pretty little smile on her face as she takes hit after hit after hit only for it all to start again when the suns rises in the sky and she has to open her tired eyes.

She dresses in her white garb and dons her white sword and silver dagger and stands at the attention of her king. Reporting her run in with the black pawns and rooks and knights with their contrast armor. The kings sings of their triumph over the dark, he praises the bishops and the rooks, he pats the heads on each of the pawns with his flowery words and backwards worded insults when they don’t drag a black pawn back screaming.

He spreads his hands wide, as if to bring them all into a hug, the twinkle in his eyes brighter and brighter when each cheer of his name falls from their mouths. He is grand and wise and powerful on his pillar of pure white. Crystalline in his perfect posture and practiced perfection. She remembers the last time she saw their king high and mighty and being brighter than any at his side.

She remembers now as she drags herself far from the checkered board to harbor away as the plans to over take the castle fill her mind. Their is blood leaking from her side, down her head and over her eyes, staining her from white to red.

She revels in it. The change from pureness to the killer she always was when she cut them down with a stroke of her sword with a smile on her face and a laugh on her tongue.

She loved when she buried the dagger deep in her kings chest. But she hated how he smiled, how with his last breath he begged her to kill him instead of being captured. Now as the last of the whites, she has to choose where she runs and where she stands. She washes herself in the river, drags and runs and jumps from the trees to put off the knights she knows is tracking her.

Deep in the night as she stares at the stars above her head and with rabbit in her stomach she plots. She awakes with the sun in her eyes and footsteps beneath her, the barking of dogs far in the distance and a jumble of Pawns at the base of the tree. She sees the Black King riding with his Entourage of rooks and bishops and tall standing knights.

Adrenaline races through her when she sees them, and knows it’s too late to run. She draws her dagger from her thigh, brings it to her throat and…pauses. The kings voice travels through the land with a gravel.

He sounds nothing like the practiced perfect facade and his blood covered hands.

“Come out. There is no where to run.”

Die or be captured? Die or be captured?

Die

Or

Capture.

She does not know. Her king had chosen death. This king had won his battle, she wonders if she will die if she crawls from the tree. Wonder if she will be executed like the Black’s that were captured by White’s. He speaks again.

“Come….White Queen. You have no where left. Your castle has been seized, your king was killed by one of his own, you are surrounded.”

Capture.

Her dagger flies through a pawn and a rook. Embedding it’s self in the horse the king sits apon. In the chaos, she jumps from the tree and cuts any Black the crosses her path. She is captured, just as she breaches the outward enemy lines. A voice in her ear and a sword at her throat.

“Did you kill him?”

She laughs and laughs and laughs.

“Yes.”

The grin on his face is bloodthirsty.

“Be the Black Queen.”

She returns it.

“Yes.”