Consider

I don't play chess regularly; I kind of gave up after middle school. I think I play well for someone who never formally studied it, but here is the thing: The game was not invented yesterday. For centuries, millions and millions of people played billions of games; some were recorded for others to analyze and learn from. Countless computers were trained to do the task. That means, to play this game competitively, one has to pretty much memorize hundreds of games. People have already figured out what opening moves are guaranteed loss, and it is difficult to see 17 moves ahead unless you memorized the opening already.

And that is demotivating. I really don't want to sit down and study this game. I want to improvise. Sadly with improvisation, you can only go so far. I have a lot of respect for who already did, but no. That is certainly not for me.

I should admit, it looks funny from outside. Just two people are looking at some wooden or plastic grid with some fancily shaped stones on top of it. People willingly hallucinate. Or daydream. In many other context this behaviour is considered weird. For some reason, we collectively agreed that chess and books are the two things you can blankly stare at for extended periods of time. If I stared at a billboard for that amount of time, someone would come over and ask if I need help or if I had any drugs recently. Totally unfair and discriminatory against billboard connoisseurs such as myself, but alas!

Anyways. The game is respectable, but I find the concept utterly amusing. I want to mix things up a little bit, so enjoy this short story!

THE GRID

King Gerald XIII looked around. The flatland was strangely calm today. The general hustle of troops walking around seemed to have left its place to an eerie silence. The morning breeze was moving the tallgrass slowly; he felt like he was looking at a sea of grass. This was a thought he had from time to time. He has lived in this perfectly square island since he was born, but he could not dare to summit the waves. All he could do was to walk around the plains and imagine he was sailing away.

With the thoughts playing a game of Jenga in his plastic brain, the sudden appearance of Queen Geraldine XIII startled him. The Jenga pieces fell and he swore to himself. He did not want to appear angry though, so he quickly shifted to a happy face and greeted the queen.

"Good evening to you too," she replied. She seemed to be in deep thoughts as well. Just as king wanted to ask if everything is alright, she continued: "I kicked out the maintenance guy. Terrible lawnmoving work once again."

"Of course!" he thought to himself. Now that she mentioned, he realized the grid pattern in the grass. That guy had the bizarre habit of doing so. They had asked him why he does it and told him not to do it ever again, but he never elaborated on his motivation. "Good riddance," he replied. "I was meaning to do so, but I was too curious to let him go."

"At least it looks nice, but it's barely practical," she added. "The pawns are struggling to go ahead; the grass is slowing them down." This was true too. There were small clashes with bandits now and then, and he has seen the pawns struggling to make way for themselves. Although, they have already started to get creative. They were peeking through the gaps in the corners and ambush other pawns as they enter the grassy cells of the grid. This was an idea brought up by one of the bishops in their travel to France. He observed battle tactics there and he applied one of the ideas to the battlegrounds of the homeland. The French called it en passant.

Suddenly, in the distance, they heard two familiar voices. The knights were approaching to where the king was located, shouting "They are coming!" The king swore again. These bandits were getting out of hand. He looked vaguely east. There were two giant clocks to read the time and his guess was that the enemy would show themselves within minutes. He gestured at the knights to form a battle position. Both knights nodded and started moving towards the opposite corners of the kingdom to spread the news. The king observed their movement. Since the grass became a permanent part of their daily lives, he realized the horses chose to jump over grass patches rather than running through them. This was godly levels of jumping skills and stamina for them. He wondered what breed the horses were.

Meanwhile, this rodeo was all too familiar for the knights. They have already gotten used to hopping around the grass to move. Once they reached the castle towers, some scouts started running up the stairs to get a better view of the enemy. As one of the scouts started ringing the tower bells, the king knew this was no ordinary bandit. These bells meant an entire army was approaching. King Gerald XIII sent the pawn ahead of him as the herald. Maybe he could negotiate before both sides suffer any losses.

It was a difficult wait. It did not seem like the pawn was coming back. He wondered if he was killed or he got lost in the grass. Wasting no time, he ordered the knights to scout the center of the island.

The island was not too large. King Gerald XIII's kingdom was located at the southern quarter of it, with only two pieces of structures to be found. On two corners of the kingdom, there were scouting towers. These were helpful in the case that ships arrive from any direction for a quick attack from behind. Admittedly, he has never seen a ship. He questioned why he prioritized these towers over a house, farm or anything. A house would be beneficial for everyone, as the entire kingdom slept in the open air. As for farms, they considered fishing, yet everyone seemed to be afraid of the dunes surrounding the grassland. No one took the fishing profession.

An uncomfortable screech cut through the air, which startled the king once again. He saw that one of the knights and their horses were behind the approaching army, unmoving. How did they get there so fast, he asked to himself, but there was no time for questions. He decided to mobilize the entire army. It looked like things were going o get messy from here. Just as he thought about that, a bishop ran between the grass patches and shouted at him. "Your Majesty, we have the intelligence that they are coming for you!"

This was Bob the Bishop, a well respected general of the army. Initially he was recruited as, well, a bishop. It did not take them long to realize the island had no churches or any religious buildings for that matter, then he was assigned the role of a war general. He was an elderly man, he often did not bother with the exorbitant amount of greenery in some regions of the island. He just walked around them. To the outsider eye, it looked almost as if he always walked diagonally.

He had a younger brother. Or he was rumored to. Bobert the Other Bishop was deemed a psycopath by the common village folk due to his obsession of hiding. He barely left the comfort of the tallgrass. Occasionally he was seen jumping from one patch to another, but no more. People did not see him often, and thought he was a bit too crazy to stay around.

In the meantime, the clashes in the center of the board continued. He wanted to go check the situation himself, however, he was the eldest on the island. He could barely take a step before his wife arrived at the opposite corner of the kingdom. That was fair though; she spent the evenings running and exercising. So much that she was regarded as the fastest soldier in the island when need be.

Suddenly, he gasped at how careless he has been. Behind the frontlines, behind everyone, there were enemy soldiers gethering at the beach, all unmoving. He has seen pawns, knights and even a bishop. He quickly turned at the opposite side and has seen Bobert the Other Bishop laying on the beach. The death count must have been growing out of control. He quickly turned at the queen. "I will join the frontlines."

"Gerald, are you sure?" asked the queen. She knew she would not be able to change the king's mind. So without waiting for a reply, she added: "After my lead!" Then she quickly jumped in front of the king.

The warzone was surprisingly clean. He was curious about the sudden disappearance of corpses. He watched one of the pawns stab an enemy tower with his dagger. The tower was a big, twenty meter rock structure. It could not stand the pawn's attack and started to collapse with the loudest sound he has ever heard. Before it could turn into a pile of pebbles, it disappeared. Only minutes later the king found that the tower also was moved to the beach, where all troops seemed to be completely still.

He stepped carefully and slowly. There was a pandemic and he was enforcing social distance requirements. That meant no two troops stood within a 3 meter radius. This allowed some orderliness but at the same time, it was overly inconvenient.

With the chaos of the battle, he did not realize the increasingly strong earthquake beneath his feet. He realized the confused and surprised looks of other soldiers. The sounds of swords seemed to slow down. (There were not much anyways. The entire sword combat consisted of stabbing. Weirdly no one thought one could block these attacks and survive the blow.) He looked around to understand what caused such a disturbance in the ground. When he did, he could not believe what he saw. The remaining enemy tower, with its twenty meter high walls and solid stone structure, tonnes of rocks upon rocks, somehow slid on the ground with full speed, seemingly without collapsing or showing any signs of damage. Before he could run, he realized it was too late. He watched the tower come closer and closer, and he accepted his fate.

And then he woke up. He looked around. The flatland was strangely calm today. The general hustle of troops walking around seemed to have left its place to an eerie silence. The morning breeze was moving the tallgrass slowly; he felt like he was looking at a sea of grass. This was a thought he had from time to time. He has lived in this perfectly square island since he was born, but he could not dare to summit the waves. All he could do was to walk around the plains and imagine he was sailing away.