"That's dumb," says Karna. "I think that's dumb. Why can the knight just jump over shit? What's so special about him, huh?"
"Just, uh. Just good at moving, I guess," says Colin, taking the black rook and placing it on his side of the table. It sits there, solid, beside the haphazard array of pawns and a single bishop.
Karna pouts a little. In front of her, on the table, there sit three white pawns, all stood perfectly in line. "'Good at moving.' Urgh. So am I. He's not special." She frowns, and moves a pawn two spaces forward. Colin winces involuntarily, and she glares at him. "What? What did I do?"
"So... I may have forgotten to mention this one. I, uh. I didn't really think it would come up for, uh. Longer than this. To be honest." He gives her a slightly wary look. "You... you ever heard of 'en passant'?"
"'In passing' in Fructeran," she says brusquely. "Now explain."
"Now- ok, I promise I'm not making this one up-" He moves a white pawn to just behind hers, which he smoothly plucks from the board and sets down amongst the cluster of other pieces in front of him.
There is a short silence.
"Are you kidding me," says Karna, voice flatter than the void of space, empty and silent and oh, so deep, and-
"To be fair, that- that's probably one of the stupidest rules I know. If that helps?" says Colin.
"Fine. Fine!" she says. "Sure."
"You know," says Colin delicately, "I could still-"
"No," snaps Karna. "You will not play without a queen." She glares at him with even more ferocity than usual, and lowers her voice to a dangerous drawl. "When I win. If I suspect even for a second that you went easy on me?" Her lip curls into a smirk. "Oh, that would be that last thing you ever did."
"Sure," says Colin. "I mean, sure. I just think it would make the game a bit more fun for you while you're learning. You know?"
Karna rolls her eye. "I want to lose."
"...What?" There is suddenly a deep, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"I want to lose," she says. "Because it doesn't matter." She grasps his forearms and stares into his eyes, as though willing him to understand. "I want so badly to know what it feels like for losing not to matter. I want to know the loss that is an annoyance, not an ache, not a scar, not a slit throat or a knife in the gut and bleeding out on the pavement."
The hands holding him start to weaken. Rot starts to creep up her neck.
Her pupils are dark voids filled with spinning blades.
"It was too much," she says. "I was so tired. You saw." Her gaze is level, and he remembers running away, and running away, and running away, and looking back. "I was holding on to the edge for so long."
Colin wants to say something. He doesn't know what to say.
"But you can't hold on forever."
He wakes up, and it is still dark, and he is alone.
He never knew her that well, but- she would have been good at chess, he thinks, if she had ever had a chance to learn. Not straight away, of course, but- in time.
No point in dwelling on it. He doesn't want to risk turning into Raphaniel, and- ok, that's another whole thing he's really not interested in delving into right now.
But- she held on for so long.
It seems like the least he can do, to make sure no one else ever has to stare into the void and cling to life so desperately that the muscle of their fingers rots down to bone.
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