Butterfly Reign

24. It's So Easy To Say That Word

"At the moment I am a man in dire need of an enemy," the stranger nods at the board before him, "but normally people tend to call me George. Do you play chess, Ranboo?"

Ranboo looks at the man up and down, at the impassive expression on his face, at the dark lenses of his glasses, at the way his hand twists a black pawn, weaving it in-between his fingers. Something in his head just clicks.

"George?" he echoes. "As in Duke George of Kinoko Kingdom?"

The best chess player in the world, as Tubbo had called him, not without a tone of admiration and envy, and a wild card by version of Quackity. Duke George follows Prince Dream whenever he goes, trouble and misfortune shadowing their path. Nobody can tell whether they're friends, or if Dream is holding something over George's head that forces the man to stay at his side. I advise that you stay away from him at all costs, Quackity had said about the man that Ranboo is currently trapped in a conversation with.

George puts the pawn down and hums, as if he could read the thoughts sparking behind his eyes.

"What do you know of Kinoko Kingdom, Ranboo?"

"Only that it's the most peaceful country on the continent, and that chess is at a premium there," Ranboo says, arms brought closer to himself defensively. "Tubbo told me that six-year-old children from Kinoko Kingdom compare in skill with adults everywhere else... which means that I don't stand a chance against you."

"It's true that Kinoko haven't participated in a single war for hundreds of years, or doesn't have much of a military force to speak of, but people tend to underestimate the power born from knowledge," George lifts a bishop to his eyes, inspecting it from bottom to the top as if looking for the tiniest of flaws. For some reason, Ranboo feels like he's the target of this scrutinizing gaze. "The Kingdom houses the biggest archive in the world - the Great Library. We're keepers of history, watchers of the present. It comes with its own honors, political immunity and unlimited passage through every other country on the continent... More people should be wary of the day when Kinoko decides that simply watching history isn't enough," the bishop reflects in George's glasses, a ghostly replica of the real piece, "that it wants to make it."

"You're wrong about one thing, though. No matter how skilled is the player on the other end, you can never tell whether you'll win or lose until the checkmate comes." He points Ranboo at a chair. "Sit down."

Reluctantly, Ranboo releases his grip on the door handle and shuffles to the opposite side of the board. George meanwhile takes to rearranging the wooden figures into their starting positions. His movements are fast and practiced, corrections made with a push of knuckle until all thirty-two pieces are placed perfectly in the middle of their respective squares. When Ranboo played chess with Tubbo, his friend would fist two pawns - one white, the other black - and offer him to choose one. George, however, takes the blacks without a single word. A shiver runs down Ranboo's spine; he picks up a white pawn and moves it two steps forward.

For a while it's just the tap of wood placed on wood that ripples the silence. Ranboo's heart no longer hammers like he'd raced with Tubbo across the whole palace; it's different type of fear that acids his stomach now, thick and torturously slow. He isn't a remarkable player in sound health, but it's almost impossible to concentrate when one sloppy movement could make his ribcage feel like it's being ripped open.

While Ranboo bites his lips and wrings his fingers every three seconds, George rests his chin on his tangled hands, his eyes fixed firmly on the chessboard. Not a muscle twitches on his face, neither when Ranboo foolishly puts a rook into his pawn's path nor when a black knight is traded for a white bishop.

It's when almost every piece on the board had moved at least once, and sweat litters Ranboo's forehead that George speaks up for the first time.

"Your injury must be hurting a lot," he says.