I’m the King but it’s Chess.

I do like caves… our little torch did it’s best to highlight this massive natural cavern, stalactites and stalagmites were clipped and smoothed. Modern cavers would be furious. But the tour stepped down a carpeted staircase before a knight or lord of some sort at the front stopped the small crowd.

“And instead of a passage to the sun, we have a passage to the depths!” I tried to focus on the rook’s voice.

“The depths are dark!” Some particularly observant knight commented.

“Right you are, so for light!” The rook waved his arms wildly over his head. As if waving at someone. The few torches we had here were snuffed. One knight aggressively took a tourist’s lantern and snuffed it.

I had a cute girl at my arm, but if I had a light would I be obligated to attack the knight if he tried to steal my lantern?

I would find it fun, but would everyone else?

A light flickered, very far up.

We were in a vaulted cavern, how far up was that? Fifty feet up? One hundred? Nature puts the work of men to shame.

“We have a unique temple here.” The rook began. “Seek you light or dark have no fear”

He waved in a calmer manner in dim light. “For we stand between them both. Never before at once to either have you been so near!”

In near pitch dark, a servant brought him an odd suit

It must have been a signal for above us a roar of flame erupted from the little light. The cavern was daylight bright in an instant.

Some flammable gas I assumed, must have been supplied by some primitive plumbing from the great natural buttress of this cavern, which must have been natural. No wizard would have set its scale. Stone? Metal would fall within the century… but stone would last a long long time.

But unnatural at the rooks feet, a mirrored tube descended to the earth. And red orange yellow light danced within it. A temple mirror cylinder of light. I needed a name for such a thing, it must have a name.

Spectators gawked, locals chuckled at the reactions of foreigners.

“I fear Our Lion is not yet duly impressed father!” Hilda called from my arm.

A loud voice, strong lungs.

I resisted the urge to squeeze them like the bellows.

“Oh?” The rook began. “Perhaps the Lion would like to stand by the mirror and see sacred light.”

Hilda looked at me in the dying light. The flame above was receding as fast as it had came.

Nobody would see, but all would suspect if I grabbed her and made her scream right here.

Hah…

Harumf,

Gross lion.

“Shall we?”

She asked.

“Of course” As a proper date we marched as one approached the rook in the darkness and with confidence I stopped a few feet from the pit. I don’t fear heights. I fear my own impulsive desire to leap. Fear of the void.

The dim light of that distant pilot light that flickered as some insane workman or wizard tended it played at the mirrors at my feet. The pilot light gleamed across the bottom of the church ‘void pillar’ as I would call it.

Mirrors on the bottom?

Literal void below me, Dense darkness above me, distant life and energy above us. This kingdom impressed me, the old world didn’t play with their knowledge, all became crude and material, wonder was deleted and replaced with cookie clicker, marginal value.

This world… My world… appreciated beauty and experience.

Or was this just how kings were entertained? This was functionally no different than a magician with a LED light.

“We dig the well of light deeper every day, and every day deeper it grows to keep light itself at bay. To the depths themselves we bring light, and vanquish night.”

The rook continued and I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was being unwittingly wed to his daughter by some strange tradition.

I looked at him and he was putting on some strange garb.

Damn it! nabbed by cultists.

Do I take his daughter and attack him here and make like a swords and sandals hero…?

The giant flamethrower above belched a pillar of flame again. The radiating heat tickled.

But the blast was so far up I felt no pressure.

A dim smell of natural gas and sulfur.

Heh... haha!

We were on a bomb and the general had set up pyrotechnics. Glorious.

But in the new light I saw something a bit more horrifying.

The general had equipped a primitive diving bell. And between it and the queen’s telescopes I finally concluded. This was no dark age.

Or perhaps it was. For rationality and materialism already possessed my foolish subjects.

“We won’t abuse the flame too far.” He said. Voice amplified by his yet unsealed diving apparatus

“But we ran into water digging, and to continue we had to make do. No more shall water deep be niggling. My suit of armor against nature herself, shall take mankind to places sparse and few... so long my lord is willing.”

Lord? Was that the invocation of that above Kings?

Water in the void pillar? I suppose this one was special because it was being build down, instead of up.

He put on the helmet, and signaled to a few squires to begin pumping.

A squire rushed to me, the youth and Hilda spoke nearly at the same time.

“I’m sorry” the squire and Hilda both apologized at the same time.

Hilda ignored him.

“This is the end of the tour… My father designed the suit himself, he says must be used by those who dig deep, they would carry a lantern, but the water puts it out. Instead they use the torch.” She pointed up in the dark room.

“He and a few sappers keep digging deeper, he tells me that he will someday be buried down there in the mud.”

I really had no words for this.

“Mother made father wear a chain, so at least he can be pulled back up. You should have heard them fight.”

“She knows more than I do” the squire confirmed.

Hilda ignored him.

“Is this temple good enough?” Hilda asked me. “ I think we needn’t follow the standards true given our circumstances.

The flame was dying and I could see the rook descending into clear cave water that filled the mirrored tube.

Mirrors under the clear clean water did not make it easy to see where he began and ended.

I blinked a few times.

The cave was dark again.

Ok but why here? To impress the king?

Locals were explaining much the same to the other important figures on this tour.

Was the rook just mentally ill? Did he just like digging?

A squire prepared a few digging implements, picks and shovels at the edge of the cylindrical tube that accompanied every temple.

“Wait is he coming back up?”

“Not for a few hours, I think that’s the end of the tour” replied Hilda.

I had new respect for the rook of the east. The cave called to him for it was his.

But seriously…

What?

A mentally ill man. I was keenly aware of the metal lip surrounding the temple tube.

The chain sliding against it.

Some part of the suit would make it back no matter what.

He had made a pressure vessel with 1100 AD tech?

Man made horrors. He knew them not.

Suppose that is who you want fighting your wars for you.

I needed to get my people to an ocean. The queen would like sharks and my rook would… well…

He would probably discover nitrogen sickness. If he hadn’t already.

Hilda turned to the crowd.

“I advise we give father and his crew space, the room will begin to smell nauseous if the torch keeps up!”

Were they just going to throw picks down the tube to the diver?

I had more of the castle to explore.

“Hilda did we miss any good parts of the castle?”

“Your chambers!” She smiled.

I don’t like being put on the spot like this. A Pawn Hilda shall hopefully remain.

There were a few pleasures under the mountain. But food and drink or one of them..

“Why don’t you show me the larder first Lady Two.” I asked Hilda.

Maybe I could try to add some distance between us if I used our last names

It is my pleasure to serve she blanked me a couple times

If I wasn’t a king, I would be flattered.

And if I wasn’t married my hands might already be on this woman.

Hilda offered her arm to me.

Something about the motion seemed unnatural to me.

Is the reason woman took to novel men in their area because the men had no friends and could be socially mislead?

Maybe that’s why my isekai wasn’t all fun and games.

Unlike most isekai protagonists I wasn’t hated by women… at least for the first few weeks they knew me.

I don’t know why people grew to hate me, but I knew they did for men were much the same.

Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

But I was always a stranger, and though I did have some friends, I always felt lonely even among them.

I simply liked different things.

I tolerated work because professional interaction felt more natural.

But driving home again felt sad because I knew being a professional was just selling yourself to strangers.

I didn’t enjoy MMO’s or RPG’s or pretending I was someone else.

I didn’t particularly enjoy making numbers go up.

I liked StarCraft and battle for wesnoth.

I couldn’t watch sports I had to play them.

I didn’t want to eat food someone else cooked I wanted to cook it myself.

So divinity in all its wisdom decided to make fun of my control freak nature by making me king.

When I was replaced by a chatbot I concluded that my loneliness stemmed from a personal inability to utilize language normally.

Basically I was a parasite beetle living among ants. And the ants had finally found a way to make sure I didn’t steal from them. Even if I only sought to aid them.

Language to me was logic, language to everyone else was music.

Dare not speak of music theory to the normie.

I was on a double yellow line. Beached for the Lilliputian army to suffocate and divide.

Suicide kings on the 495…

Maybe this was my real life and the other one was just a trial. Some strange hell where a king’s consciousness was brought low and humiliated.

Suddenly I wasn’t so worried about offending my queen…

I took Hilda’s arm.

But if I ended up here, does that mean the old lion ended up in the other world?

What happened to him?

“I’m so glad the lion visited” Hilda tugged at my arm. “It’s good to meet a man who appreciates a fortress!”

Did she even know what she was saying? Was she just repeating the words of her father?

How old was she anyway?

“O lion why do you disappear in thought so frequently, is kingship really so stressful?”

“I have an active imagination, it runs away with me so often.”

“What are you imagining?”

Instinctively I want to tell the truth and be open.

But when nobody you meet stays around for more than a few weeks. When relationships are confined strictly to blood and decades of comradeship…. When most comrades grow apart, and even blood as well…

Truth, language fabricated, it loses meaning…

So if I wanted to tell Hilda the truth, how could I?

“I was just wondering how the castle communicates!” Suppose that was slightly true. I wasn’t lying.

“Well which is it, larder? Or messenger posts?”

“Larder.”

I felt like an old man in a nursing home. Lucky enough to get the only sweet girl to work there. ”

Shame that it took being a king to reach life’s customer service rep.

If any young men or women are out there and lonely. I highly recommend becoming king or queen. The only issue is that this probably requires killing your local kings and queens. An art I would never and have never practiced.

Good old larder, I enjoyed the sterile smell of cheese, my stomach growled as our boots echoed down the dim hallways that gave an air of privacy even as the odd worker or guard walked past.

“Hungry Lion at my arm, mighty creature fierce and noble! Is his taming really worth every sheep upon my farm?” Hilda smirked and put a hand at my chest.

I can’t keep up with all this… Hilda is early twenties or something… I was so old in the past life…

“I’m so glad you aren't over sixty!” said Hilda. I was worried I would be showing your old tiger around this realm of marble! Noble he was but age afflicted him a grievous harm! You are by far the more romantic man to have upon my arm!”

I guess I wasn’t quite that old in the past life… Was that really the standard that daughters of nobility kept?

In the grand scheme of things I had only gotten ten years of youth back… I’m not complaining… but I’ve never been old or wise…so when I say…

“It is my greatest pleasure to meet princesses in their homes. Only a year ago I knew not the ease at which I vanquish all your foes.” To swooning, then to enjoy more of the same. “They warned the crown is heavy, but with you in my arms I fear they sought only to deny our innocent levity.”

It’s just noise to me. Things spoken by a demon of unknown origin with my body. For a demon speaks without speaking. Words cast forth in pursuit of goals lose all meaning.

That was a cute anime elf, loved that girl! The woman leaning into the void under my arm gives me anxiety.

“What is that tube your father uses to fill the bell he wears?”

“Copper.”

Metal?

Madness… how were they sealing it?