Chapter 5


    The coiled medusa raised an eyebrow and slowly turned the board, positioning the ck pieces in front of her before gently moving the first pawn two spaces and leaning in to rest her chin on her hands. “The other two chose ck.”


    He grinned back at her, not meeting her gaze, and mirroring her own move in order to make way for his queen in the next. “Will you kill me if I lose?”


    “Perhaps… Perhaps not.”


    “Then do you mind answering me a couple questions while we y?”“It depends on what they are, little man…”


    He furrowed his brows and crossed his arms thoughtfully. Little? He was by no means little. Was she being demeaning on purpose? He pushed the question aside for a more important one, though, and truly hoped she’d answer it. “Where am I?”


    He moved another pawn forward to take one of her own, and a series of uneventful positionings was exchanged.


    She let out a long, dark chuckle as a rook moved into position to protect a forward knight. She gestured for him to move next and then leaned back a little to observe him better. “How would I know? I’ve been down here for centuries just waiting forpany…banished here by a lich who got the better of me.”


    “So you’re not part of Elysium, then?”


    She teasingly raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”


    Then she ced two fingers on her queen and went in to take Riven’s pawn. As soon as she took the piece off the board, Riven’s right pinkie toe broke off in a gruesome and miniature explosion of blood and bone.


    He screamed, copsing out of his chair and onto the floor in a state of shock and horror as the serpentine woman began cackling in amusement. He clutched and stared down at his mutted foot, then back up to the creature ahead of him. “What the hell is this?!”


    She didn’t respond but justughed even louder, and as he reached out to grasp the knife, she abruptly hissed and reared up to her full height.


    </a>He paused, still sneering up at the monster, but slowly withdrew his hand. She in turn lowered herself down into a coiled position again, her prominent breasts on full disy underneath a sly smile.


    “Wise choice,” the medusa eventually said with a nod while he grimaced and clutched at his foot. “I am bound by rules here; if you were to have stricken me, I could have killed you on the spot. Considering how weak you are…it would have been less than a hassle.”


    She gestured to the board, mockingly, and gave him an overly polite smile. “Now, shall we continue? Just try not to lose anymore pieces—you may lose some fingers and toes along the way if you do.”


    “When I took your pawn, nothing happened to you,” Riven muttered in anger, sitting back down in the chair with a plop and grimacing. “How is that fair?”


    Her smile turned into one of maliciousness. “Who said anything about being fair?”


    He snorted, taking one of her bishops and then doing a quick exchange of two more pawns back-to-back as the pieces on the board grew fewer in number. Each time Riven took a piece, he merely set it to the side. But every time she took one of his pieces, a toe or finger would pop off in a miniature, bloody fireworks disy to both the agony of Riven and the gleeful cackles of the medusa.


    He could only hope that this trial had some real way of getting him out of here. It was pretty obvious to him that he stood little chance against her in a fight, so he’d have to bear with it and do his best to try and get out of this using his wit like the trial was designed to do.


    He grunted, screamed, and asionally dropped to the ground whenever he felt another digit explode. First he lost two more toes on his right foot, then three fingers on his left hand. His right pinkie finger and his left big toe next. He sat in a pool of his own blood, actively bleeding out as he became light-headed and unable to think as fast as he had previously—but he managed through sheer willpower to keep his wits about him and mentally pushed through the pain. Both yers used their queens to push their advantages, neither of them willing to sacrifice their own queen in order to take the other’s, the two prominent pieces dancing across the board. She was good, but he was better, and it was beginning to irk her. Her y style was too aggressive, and it cost her more than one time. Her smile began to fade, and slowly a frown appeared on her lips as she took more and more time to distinguish between the right and wrong moves avable to her.


    It was during one of these pauses that his eyes again focused on the words along the rim of the te beside the bloody chessboard. He mentally strained to focus on the written symbols, doing everything he could to keep himself upright and silent while his limbs screamed in torment.


    <span ss="italic">Reflect upon your opponent and see the truth amid the lies… This was what the te said along the rim of the mirror. What did that mean, exactly? Was this a clue of some sort? If he was stuck in here with a creature obviously meant to test his wits somehow, could he really expect that all this trial wanted from him was to y a game of chess and win?


    </a>That didn’t seem right, given the way it’d gone so far. Even if it was incredibly painful to undergo. In fact, it seemed very, very wrong. It was too simple, out of ce, and didn’t seem to fit the narrative of thebyrinth. He’d scanned the entire room many times over now, but was that even necessary? He could very well just be wasting time here while the other participants in this trial got ahead—leaving him behind to die if he didn’t make it to the top one hundred spots.


    Again, he was brought out of his thoughts by her melodic voice and sweet smile. “Well? Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?”


    “Huh?”


    “You asked me about being part of Elysium.”


    He humored her, pretending to consider his next move while trying to figure out what was really going on as his trembling hand shifted uncertainly over the chessboard—dribbling red liquid onto the game set. Frankly, he didn’t know how he was even upright anymore, as he literally sat in arge puddle of his own body fluids. “Elysium…or perhaps the administrator these messages keep talking about. What are they?”


    That…that got her attention—and he noticed the ways her eyes narrowed at the mention of the administrator.


    “Oh…I have no idea what you’re talking about.”


    “Sure you don’t.”


    He was about to make his next move when the words finally registered. <span ss="italic">Reflect upon your opponent and see the truth amid the lies…


    The stone figures, the te’s words…and the obvious power this medusa held over him. It definitely wasn’t looking good. She’d conjured a chair out of thin air and had piles upon piles of bodies—both stone and withered beyond belief—littering her little nest.


    The knife was there, too…but he felt like it had been put there on purpose to try and goad people into making a stupid decision, if this was truly a test of wit. He had little chance of killing her head-on, especially if all these people around him had once been other trial takers. Certainly one or more had tried the violent path out.


    Then a random set of messages appeared in front of his vision.


    <span ss="bold">[In order to identify enemies and items, say or think the word <span ss="italic">Identify with intent while simultaneously targeting your desired object. As an example, the identification information of the medusa in front of you is now being disyed.]


    </a><span ss="bold">[Medusa, Trickster, Level ???]


    Oh. Well, that was interesting.


    He dismissed the holograms. Two more pieces were exchanged with pain that rocked his body, and he gambled by sacrificing his own queen to take hers.


    “How unexpected…” came the soft voice of the woman across from him as she eyed him like a hungry predator—still not once having met him eye to eye. She ced his queen off the board after having taken it and then moved her rook into position. “Check.”


    He smirked, then took her piece with a bishop. He saw a path to victory, and his heart rate began to pick up. The pieces danced across the board. Two movester, and as tension in the room began to rise, he announced “Checkmate.”


    There was a long silence, and then a slow p followed his victory. Much to his surprise, and he almost looked up to meet her eyes as sheughed.


    “Good show, young man. Good show…”


    He put on his best version of a forced smile, one quivering and pained hand missing all but his pointer finger and thumb with bloody stumps where the others had been. “So am I free to leave now?”


    There was another pause, and he felt the air in the room shift to a frigid cold.


    The click…click…click…of her ws against the table caused him to flinch with every tap. His arms edged forward a little bit, and he lowered his head more. “Am I free to go?”


    There was another muffledugh that quickly turned into a hiss, and that hiss turned into a low growl of annoyance. “No, my dear boy, you were never meant to go. You are mine. LOOK AT ME, BOY! LOOK AT ME!”


    She lunged at him and caused the table to nearly upend itself, the contents spraying into the air. The knife, te, tongues, and eyes went flying.


    Or…he thought she had lunged at him. In reality, she’d just mmed her wed fists into the table and her snake hair had red up—little eyes glowing red along each of the snakes as her ownrger, golden eyes burned brilliantly with power in the next second.


    He did the only thing he could think of, the only reasonable approach to this ridiculous situation, as he knew he couldn’t fight her one-on-one. The only thing that made sense given his knowledge of the ssics and the hint that was literally written into the te itself. Without moving from the spot he’d positioned himself in when starting the game, he snatched the flying te out of the air between two remaining fingers before it was able to get far. He’d been ready for it, anticipated such an action, and he’d bet his life on the one simple trick that he pulled now.


    As fast as he could, with his new blessing speeding his reaction time and reflexes, he brought the te down in front of his face with the mirrored center angled directly back at the medusa to show her a reflection of herself.


    </a>The ttering of the knife, pieces of the ss table, and the body parts hitting the floor sounded all around him as his chest heaved. Slowly, ever so slowly, he brought the te farther down and peered from atop the edge…only to choke out a sigh in relief as his eyes met an enraged—yet very stone—medusa. She’d been frozen by her own power, killing herself in the process of trying to turn him into a statue, and the bet had paid off.


    In an instant he felt a surge of energy as light gathered around his body, enveloping his flesh in a golden sheen that almost instantaneously repaired his losses. His toes and fingers all came back, and his wounds closed over as he remained sitting in a chair over a pool of coagted blood.


    He put his head down into his hands and slowly covered his face, shaking from the mental scar the torturous game had caused him. It felt a little surreal, and in some ways he counted himself one lucky idiot to pass this obstacle in such a way. It’d been a gamble, based on what he’d known about medusas from ancient lore and the clue on the te, but it’d paid off. That, and his chess skills had been up to par.


    Beyond the stage where he sat and farther along the wall on his left, another narrow passage opened up with the grating of stone and kicking up of dust. The dagger that’d ttered onto the floor vanished in a puff of smoke, and so did the mirror he’d used to backfire the medusa’s gaze. Getting up from where he sat and letting out a snort, he checked the surrounding area for anything valuable. After not finding anything, he stepped around the shattered ss and made his way through the room toward the exposed hallway.