A GAME OF CHESS
(Mixed, Their Blood)
The trees bleed into the earth, their inky shadows welling beneath the girl's feet, their red-stained blossoms floating down casually before her. Beyond the walls and the illusions of the Labyrinth, there is yet another illusion. The mask behind the mask, the Labyrinth twists and turns, changing its nature before it can be glimpsed by human eyes.
The sky has turned a pale shade of white. Stretching across the heavens, it looms above her, watching with invisible eyes, and listens with unseen ears. The shadow behind her dances ahead, across the inked drawing. His yellow eyes watch her as he perches on the dripping branches; the ink stains the soles of his boots.
The Labyrinth is melting away in small droplets—the ink, the blood, the sky all flowing into the earth beneath her mortal feet. Her heart's silent pounding sends the blood into the earth, to join Kira's ever-changing vision. Black, white, and red flow together, the blood of the Labyrinth—the essence of the magic she had once craved so dearly.
"Kira drew it himself, you know." The raven snickers, watching for her reaction as her fingers brush against the dark. Kira, again—the Goblin King appears to be everywhere within these walls. Omniscient and omnipotent, he watches his kingdom well, even as she makes her way through the unseen passages.
Kira…
She nods at the words, aware of their reality—for who else but the red-eyed god could have envisioned such a place.
The god of death continues in spite of her agreement. "Back when he needed paper and a pen. He's too powerful for such trinkets now, of course. Now, he doesn't need anything at all, 'cause the Labyrinth's already drawn it for him by the time he thinks it up." The grin, the knowing, seeing, mocking grin stares down at them all. There are words unspoken here; she feels them floating through the air, through the dark liquid rushing beneath her feet.
But she does not have time for queries about the man, the king, the god. She has merely come for the heart she lost, not for questions of past and present. So she turns and trudges through the flowing world, oblivious to the shadows of doves, to the emptiness of the sky. Time has eroded the Labyrinth's hopes and dreams; morality is a young man's conquest and the Goblin King no longer has time for pity.
She is merely a child on an errand, and has no time to see the hand of God.
"Even down looks up."
She is the shadow, the memory of what once had been humanity. Watching from the shadows, out of mind and sight, she is not the Goblin King—but she has his eyes. Though hers are streaked with silver, she has inherited his sight, his wisdom, and his bitterness. She trails after the blonde child, after the trail of blood that flows from her chest. She follows close behind as the girl drags herself deeper into the heart of the Labyrinth.
The girl speaks with empty words, human expressions that mean nothing to the crumbling walls. The Labyrinth is dying. Its enchantments are losing strength and purpose; it is lost to the whims of its inhuman ruler. But then, it has been dying for centuries. Humanity isn't found so easily inside the stone walls anymore; the faith is wavering, and now the girl is the only one left.
And it is her blood which stains the pavement, giving life to the crumbling wall, reviving the Labyrinth, calming the tempest that had been building in the doubt of its king's mind. For they are all connected, the king and his stone walls—they are one, and as they bleed together, his past is absorbed until he becomes little more than another illusion.
The shadow is heir to the throne. She never forgot the king's promise, however empty it might appear. But now the girl is here, and her mortality is a beacon for all the world to see, and the shadow does not know if that promise will withstand the light. So she follows—in fear, in hope—for the king surely deserves to die. And yet, his kingdom deserves the right to live.
And for that, she follows the insolent intruder who fails to see past the first layer of the Labyrinth, who fails to see the magic working behind the fading walls. The Shinigami taunts her, laughing at her misdirection as she wanders farther and farther from the palace, farther from the incessant beating of her own cruel heart. And what will the king do with this child once she falls into his clutches? Her blood saves the Labyrinth; she is the life force of the kingdom. The shadow knows he will never let her go.
He plays his cards well. Kira knows the game of politics. Everything rests on the troubled path of single pawn—and yet, she is dying. As her essence leaves, the cold heart of the Labyrinth comes to replace it. She is losing herself so quickly to the walls to the magic. Humans are too weak without a heart to guide them.
She needs a guide; she needs direction to point her through the Labyrinth, the unsolvable kingdom to find the palace of the dark king. The shadow can provide that. The shadow knows the way. She has lived within the magic all her life; she is the magic slipping through walls and empty doorways.
With that thought, she flies before the child with the golden hair and the blue eyes, holding out her hand and waiting for the girl to clutch at it, to be pulled through the kingdom of death and shadows. Never the wiser to the world that had been beyond her comprehension… Humans are so terribly blind.
"I wonder if anyone knows how to get through this labyrinth..."
There had once been a child who had been crowned the king of magic. A black notebook had fallen into his mortal hands—changeling that he was, he saw the inner workings of the Labyrinth. He saw the dark mind that resided in the twisting corners and beaten pathways. Wandering through the streets, he saw the world laid out beneath his feet.
Humans were brought in, challenged, bringing life and essence to a world ruled by mortal whims. They called upon him, the child who ruled over life and death, watching his golden eyes as they pleaded for him to take their unwanted children.
(The silver crown rests lightly upon his brow; his auburn hair has grown longer beneath it, for the Labyrinth is in need of tender care. His mind ages beneath the strain of his kingdom.)
Rationalism soon took the faith in the old ways, and the Goblin King became a legend, fading into obscurity with other half-woven tales. He was at first remembered on occasion with Icarus, with Odysseus, with Hades, and Narcissus; but soon, he fell into deeper shadows, abandoned in dusty, untouched corners where not even the bored scholars bothered to venture. He waited inside his rusting palace, staring at the thirteen hour clock, waiting for the new challenger. They trickled through the doorways, less and less—and then, only to look about them with their scientific ideals and mindsets.
(Always focused on the physics, on the reality that didn't exist within the Labyrinth, focused on the how and the why—they lost their way through the questions of logic and existence.)
He sits there now, cold and bitter, afraid of the time that hangs over him. Eternity has dangled him on puppet strings, and even now, he knows that soon those strings will turn into his noose. The child has become a man and the man a god. He watches as the girl wanders through his hallways, searching for the path, the direction.
The ends justify the means: he has always believed that. He still believes in that single ideal when all others have failed him. The girl is one human, her heart nothing more than a fallible organ—his kingdom, his world, his existence need it far more than she does. She finds it unfair, but then, she cannot see the pattern the fates have woven; she cannot see the value of her blood.
(He had once called the Labyrinth a parasite, a thing that leeches the will and the life from people—but then, it is no more than an extension of humanity itself, always hungering for what it cannot have, can never truly hold.)
He is not their fairy tale, he is not their solution. He belongs to a world unseen by human eyes—incomprehensible, unprecedented. For the world revolves around humanity, yet they cannot see even that as they wander through his kingdom's unsullied pages. The history, the architecture, the design is theirs, stolen from travelers past, fading into dust with the memories long forgotten.
He does not think of the girl. He sees the pawn, not the child. She summoned him through desperation, and in desperation, he acted. The chessboard is set, and the pieces are in play—all depends on the choices of his twisted kingdom.
He has no sympathy for a child who has the nerve to fool with death.
"I ask for so little."
The blood drips from her chest; there is a grimace of pain as she stops her quest for an instant to face the stranger. Even now, her heart cries out to her, caged in the King's dark hand, aching to return to her. There should have been no distractions, no stopping, and yet she pauses for the woman in front of her.
Another shadow of the Labyrinth, another blackbird hopping in front her path. This one is silent and pensive, the silver eyes calculating. Her clothes are roughly spun, covering one shoulder but not the other; gloves hide her pale hands from view so that she appears for all the world like another willow tree made of ink.
Her words come swiftly through the silence, echoing through the blood and ink. "So it is you who is to be our salvation. Such a pity you will not survive long enough to reach the castle." There is no mocking smile, but Misa might have preferred that to the softly spoken insults.
Misa does not answer quite yet, preferring the silence to the rebuttal, the silence being the only power she has left in a world of illusions and cheap magic tricks.
"You still have time left. The Labyrinth wants you to live, the Goblin King wants you to live—you have many allies in your mad quest. But time fades quickly. Even now, his clock is approaching the thirteenth hour, the time which does not exist." She motions towards the dripping trees and the flowing shadows, then towards Misa's sunken chest. The shadow doubts the pallor in the girl's cheeks, the blood trickling down her torso, the blank-eyed expression on her face.
"Then why stop me?" Somewhere behind, the demon is cackling. Another joke, another ironic twist of the fates unseen by human eyes. The woman in black turns away from the blonde girl, walks steadily in the opposite direction.
"Without a guide, you will fail, Amane Misa." The words float back, the honesty far more bitter than she expected.
"What makes you say that?" The confidence, the dark hands, the accusing eyes—they are his and not his. This woman is his shadow wandering through stone walls like a phantom; she is his silver eyed ghost.
"You're human. Humans can not see behind the mask; they can't see the thoughts, the blood, the essence of the Labyrinth. You see only its shadow, a glimpse of its true form and nothing more. You wander through this place like a child, kicking, screaming, and bleeding your way through its twists and turns. You search for the heart of this place—how can you find that if you cannot even see its face?"
Raven-haired phantom, she stands before the blue-eyed human, magic swirling about her. The shadows the light—all belong to the woman with the sharp features and the sharper eyes. There is no blood on her hands, only a pair of midnight gloves; her feet are bare, scarred by the Labyrinth running beneath them. She is one with the stones and the sky, a child of earth and air and the meeting between them.
A raven and a shadow—fitting companions on her journey through despair. The heroine always meets a few acquaintances along the way. She followed the trail of bread crumbs and it lead her to the witch's fire, but the devil is willing to strike a bargain—and who is Amane Misa to refuse?
And so she follows silently, her heart speaking for her, the bitterness and anger tumbling through her body. She has almost forgotten the sensation of love. Happiness is a dream to be sought, and so she follows the trail of black feathers. Nevermore, says the raven, human, says the shadow—each one leads her one step closer to the light that waits patiently in palace halls.
Behind her, the trail of blood grows smaller, almost gone. Where before it had been a flood, now only a droplet can be found.