A GAME OF CHESS
(The Cellar Door)
"I have yet to solve it," the bent man in the library says. Misa blinks, wondering where the books and the disheveled man have come from. She looks to her companions for advice, but both are strangely silent.
(And it is the king's forgotten words that are racing through her mind, the things he has never told her but that she knows must be true. But these aren't the words of her own fairy tales, her censored, fabricated tales of light and dark. They are his.)
"You mean the Labyrinth?" asks Misa, dumbfounded, wondering where the beginning has gone and why it is the words that bring her attention back. She feels the dried blood against her skin, no longer running, and yet here she is, still walking towards him: the king with one thousand smiles and a hundred faces to match them with—master of guise and illusion. Yes, she believes in the Goblin King. She believes in his inhumanity, she believes in his ruthlessness and his guile.
"Of course, what else is there to this world?" The man's dark eyes are like the owl's; the gray of the iris pierces through her thin façade of normalcy. He can see the bloodstains upon her dress. She feels once more the twinge of something she has forgotten, something left behind, and yet she is the Tin Man—she runs just as well without compassion.
"And that's why you'll never solve it, L. You're a fool." The woman with the raven's hair smiles bitterly at the hunched man, her face streaked with dirt and blood from the world of words and ink they have traversed through. "The Labyrinth is not made merely of stonework; it is our breath, it is our life, it is our death. The Labyrinth and the Goblin King are the same and not the same; they are guises for one another, and in this place even time is subject to whim. There is no definition, there is no logic, there are no physics within our world—and that is something you will never understand."
"Hmmm, I suppose that's why I'm sitting here and you're standing there." The crooked man gives a smile. "It can't be solved."
"Why not?" Misa asks before the woman can interrupt. She watches as the man begins to assess her; she notices how his eyes linger on the hole in her bleeding chest. Let him look. The whole world knows. She will get it back. The handicap is only temporary.
"Oh, you may find the center. You may work your way to his palace, stand on the steps with your weepy little eyes— he may let you waltz through his kingdom, he may even give you what you want, but you won't win. No one ever wins. Light Yagami isn't kind to those foolish enough to solve his Labyrinth." He sticks his thumb between his teeth and Misa is struck by how childish he looks, curled in upon himself, his clothes covered in the dust of books no one has bothered to read.
"It is only a fool who seeks victory," the woman whispers. The shadow behind her laughs in delight.
"Then what are you looking for, Misora-san?" he asks bitterly, his words biting and cold like the earth beneath Misa's feet.
"Compromise."
Always there is Light Yagami waiting in the distance, a crystal in his outstretched hand, Sandman, king of the both the pearly and black gates, his gaze the amber of the dragon's sleeping eyes. She can see him, her heart pounding in a box, waiting for the steps that will bring her to his door. No one ever wins.
"I'll win," Misa states with assurance. Without her heart to quiver, she feels quite confident. The path to his castle is clear. She has nothing left to lose; she will win because there is nothing more that he can take from her.
They turn to stare at him, all three with their dark eyes locked upon her face—one in mirth, one in skepticism, and one in calculation. They all doubt, but none of them can see.
"I'll beat him at his own game," she says with growing confidence. She doesn't have the heart to lie to them, and the path is so terribly clear.
"You're an idiot," the hunched man states, turning back to his books with a wave of his hand.
"No, I'm not," she responds to the crooked man, seeing him for the defeated intellectual that he is. "I can't lose. He has no power over me."
"He holds your heart in the palm of his hand. That's power enough."
"And he gave her certain powers."
The hallway is filled with mirrors and she finds herself walking by her many reflections, each covered in dirt and blood. She looks both forward and back for the door that will deliver her from this place, and yet she cannot find it. She is spread out over infinity, thousands of Misa Amane's blinking and searching in time, a reflection of a reflection.
"You must be looking for the door." The voice is smooth and amused—she almost doesn't recognize its owner. The eyes are still amber and the face is still smooth and sharp, but the hair is a shorter, more reasonable length, the clothing is forgettable and ordinary, and his eyes have grown much softer in the dim lighting of the room.
"Yes," she answers, wondering what to call this new apparition—because she can see the Goblin King in him, and yet he's not quite the same. He's too soft: his hands are smooth and his face is flushed with mortal vigor. He is not the same.
"There are two doors, you know," he says with a distant smile moving closer towards her. "One of them leads out and the other, well…" He trails off and gestures towards the mirrors. "I'm sure you can guess."
"No, I can't," she says grimly, her face a bitter mask of despair as she looks into those soft human eyes. Such a kind tone he has, and yet there is still that immortal apathy beneath.
He shrugs. "If you don't know, there's really no point in telling you, is there?"
"So only one door leads out," Misa repeats watching his eyes for a hint of a lie, a hint of the malice she has seen there. Strangely, she sees none.
"That's right."
"And the other doesn't."
He doesn't answer and instead turns away from her.
She wonders where these doors might be located, and turning around, she sees them. They are plain and unadorned, standing tall and upright, one beside the other. She walks up towards them, dread far away in the heart she has lost. She stares up at them, sensing the peril behind each.
"Which should I pick?" she asks, turning towards the not-Goblin King. He looks at her with wide, innocent eyes and points to the door on the left.
"That one, of course." He says it as if to say, Isn't it obvious, you stupid girl?
She watches him, her lips pursed into a frown. She doesn't trust him. She trusted him once and he stole her heart—she'd be a fool to believe in him again. Yet, there are two doors and only one of them opens.
"He's lying, you know."
She turns to see another man standing beside her. This one is sharper than the other, his eyes painted scarlet and his face jagged with immortality. His aura reeks of magic and in his gloved hands, power is woven.
He continues, regardless of her stares: "They're only doors after all."
"What do you mean?" she asks the second man, ignoring the glares of protest from the first.
"They're only the ideas of doors. They aren't the place or the destination—they are merely the process. They don't define what exists beyond their threshold, just like they don't define what exists here. To them we are irrelevant, our desires to escape from one prison into another are irrelevant. They exist merely to exist regardless of us." He shrugs like the first.
"Which should I pick, then?" she asks, not sure of what he has said, staring at the doorways in apprehension.
"Either or neither."
"I have to pick one."
"Do you?"
"Yes. Otherwise I'd never get out."
"That's not such a bad option, is it. After all, you'd never run out of company." He motions to the blood-stained girls in the mirror; each regards the stranger warily.
"They're only reflections."
"And those," he gestures once more to the looming doorways, "are only doors."
She grows frustrated of riddles. It is always riddles in this Goblin Kingdom, always labyrinths and word games, dreams and wishes, things that are real and things that are not. Nothing is definite, nothing is solid. She only wants her heart, she only wants a door, she only wants a way out.
"The left one?" she asks the human. He looks up, surprised that she is referring to him; he smiles in the realization that he has won her trust.
"Yes, that's the one."
"Trust your instincts, trust the mask, trust the illusion and the lies. After all, isn't it better to believe in that fickle hope than to believe in nothing at all?" cries out the darker, inhuman Goblin-King. The shadows of his magic wrap around his fingers as he calls out after her with laughter echoing in his voice.
"Trust me," the human whispers as he clutches her blood-soaked hands and drags forward, turning the handle for her and saying in a whisper, "open the door."
She looks back towards the other one, who is still watching her with those familiar scarlet eyes. He motions for her to continue with a mocking smile; she turns to see the other's gentle, lying smile.
"Goodbye, then," she says, not asking for a name, not needing one. Goblin King is good enough for the pair of them, even as she steps into the darkness that awaits past the illusion. Liars, the pair of them, she thinks as she falls past the illusion, travelling through nothingness and through everything.
They are gone. Only one man stands in their place. The Goblin King looks down upon her with a lifting of his eyebrows and a cocked head. He looks down upon her with a crooked smile and shouts after her, "Until we meet again, heart-less child!"
"Don't you like your toys?"
"It's only a dream, you know," the Goblin King whispers to her as they dance. She blinks, seeing for the first time her new surroundings. The mirrors are everywhere and she sees the blonde girl in the arms of the Goblin King waltzing across the crystal dance floor. Crystal raindrops hang from the chandeliers; all around the candles light their path and the masks are everywhere.
"What?" she asks the Goblin King as they turn. Once again she is trapped within those scarlet eyes, the mix of amber beneath. His face is thin and jaded, as pale as moonlight and fishbone—she can't tear her eyes away as he leads her in a circular motion.
"A dream, a fantasy, an illusion, a mask, an un-reality…" He trails off and smiles, a small chuckle coming to his lips. "Only a dream…"
"What is?" she asks again, attempting to tear her eyes away, to look at those other faceless dancers and to see the girl in the mirror, the desperate frightened girl in the mirror with a hole where her heart should be.
"The unanswered riddle only exists in the asking." He is still smiling down at her, that wolfish smile that belongs to him alone. She seethes in his arms; the clock ticks away in the background.
"Where are we?" she asks. He spins her again, coming closer to the candles' flames that edge the room. He is grinning, the scarlet eyes are laughing—she can see his behind his bone white features. She looks about her and sees the masks lining the rooms, people dressed in masks and ball gowns, only his face and only hers.
"You should know. After all, it's your dream," his mocking voice replies in the distance. The clock's toll begin to sound and she sees the terror in her own heartless reflection.
"Are you always so vague?" she asks with a heartless smile across her lips. The cruelty comes far easier than the yearning for him, that heartache she has almost forgotten.
"You ask vague questions," he replies easily as they glide once more across the dance floor. His black clothing is gone and now he is all in white, a ray of light in the crystal mirrors. "Be more precise, my dear, and you may find your heart in the center of the madness…"
Misa then looks down at his hands, the moon stained with the blood of the earth, her blood dripping down his fingers… She looks up into his eyes once again, hearing the laughter echo across the room like the funeral bells of her own world.
"My heart…" she repeats in horror; the word winds itself about her mind with the blood that drips so delicately from his pale fingers. "Why… Why did you want it at all?" she asks the Goblin King. The world of the dancers is slipping away as she looks into his dark eyes.
"Did I want it at all?" his soft voice replies and she sees herself suddenly, a child in her room surrounded by her toys and dolls, looking up at the dark presence with sharp red eyes and blood upon his gloved hand.
"You must have wanted it…" she says, remembering the way it beat in his hand and the cold smile upon his face as he looked down upon it.
He does not answer now—he simply smiles. And yet, somehow in the dream world his smile lacks the edge it has in reality. He is softer, now covered in a haze. He is surrounded by the glow of his white clothing and the crystal that reflects its light upon him; his eyes are sharper but without the malice, and in the room of masked dancers, he simply is.
"You must have wanted it…" she repeats to herself as the dancing slows. They simply stare at each other. The sandman looks down upon her with dark red eyes, and in his hands he holds the glass shards of her broken dreams and realities.
He steps back with arms outstretched, back into the throng of dancers, back into the chaos of the dream with a small, pitying smile upon his face.
"Wait!" she calls out to him as his pale face begins to recede among the masks until she can no longer tell them apart, the masks from his face…
The clock is tolling in the background and the dream begins to shatter as he steps through the mirror with one final laugh at her expense. She reaches out for him again, pain across her worn features.
In the darkness of the dream after the dream, she swears she can hear his voice calling back to her as well…
"Look what I'm offering you—your dreams."
"I don't understand it," the man with the hunched back says to the others as Misa stumbles along the broken path. He looks at her in disgust, his raven's eyes narrowed as he shakes his head down at her. Black and white, white and black—this world only has the color red…
"We should have lost by now. Time is travelling much too slowly. He must have something to do with this…" He rambles onwards, his eyes narrowing once again and turning towards the woman with the long hair. "Why, why would he help her?"
"You think I understand the Sandman?" she responds sharply, grabbing hold of Misa's arms and hoisting her along the path.
"Yes, I think you do," the man says coldly as they trudge closer and closer to the castle in the distance. It is getting easier, Misa thinks with each step, it's getting easier to live without it. She can't see straight and there is an ache in her chest but she is still walking. She can do this, she can beat him.
"You're an idiot, then," is all the woman says in response to the crooked man. Her eyes darken and she continues to drag Misa forward one step at a time. The crystal palace looms in the distance and the thirteen hour clock ticks away in the back of her mind…
"Once upon a time."
"You're late."
The Goblin King is not facing her when she reaches the center. They stand in the middle of another hall of mirrors; the sheets of glass float about through nothingness, and a great clock grows ever closer to the thirteenth hour.
"I've won."
"Perhaps," he replies vaguely and turns so that she can see his dark crimson eyes. There is no smile on his face and he looks at her oddly. His face is drawn and the shadows upon his features seem darker than in the dream.
"I've come for the heart you've stolen from me, Goblin King." She holds out her hand towards him, her shaking features reaching out so that she might receive her prize. He merely looks at it, that ancient expression in his eyes.
"Stolen. You forget that we had a bargain. Besides, are you sure you want it back?"
"Of course. I came for it, didn't I?"
"You take far too much for granted; you forget to ask the price." He smiles, now, and steps towards her; he is holding a curious box between his dark-gloved hands, and he walks until he is in front of her.
"What's the price?"
His smile grows; he shows her the heart. "Take it," he says.
"The price," she repeats her eyes growing wide as he pushes the heart towards her, towards her shaking, desperate fingers.
He says nothing, still smiling, still wearing that wolfish grin.
"You never told me the price!"
The room echoes with her screaming, but all she can see is her fragile, desperate heart beating before her eyes, reaching out for her with each pump.
"You can have it back. I never wanted it anyway."
She takes the cold, bleeding heart from his pale fingertips.
"There's such a fooled heart…"
Once upon a time…
She saw the universe stretching before her, every passage, every time, every fork, every choice, every dream, every wish…
In a far off kingdom…
And Little Red Riding Hood said to the wolf…
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…"
There lived a fair maiden…
Her eyes are burning and the world is exploding inside her head, she can see them, she can see every stone, every thought, every step, every drop of blood…
Cinderella forgot her glass slipper at the palace one night… Now it has been broken.
And what Jack wanted more than anything in the world was…
She sees the future, she sees the past, she sees the present, she sees the paths not taken, she sees all probabilities, she sees herself, she sees him, she sees time, she sees death…
And one night the prince found a beautiful maiden sleeping in a glass coffin…
She sees the madness and the chaos before her, close enough to touch, whirling madly about her fingertips…
The witch falls from the cliff face, her face contorted in terror as she realizes that she is about to die and that it has all been for nothing…
She sees her heart.