I’m the King but it’s Chess.

The eyes of both bandits were scared before but now they had, well I suppose quite literally, seen the gates of hell.

“We see now the devil himself! Accursed mockery of light at your arm. Pity us as we pity the crown!”

Very wise young men, perhaps again, I don’t really detect disrespect, only truth.

“Have pity we did not know what we do. Had we known we would have shot more true!”

The big one discarded his stick and held his hands up in the air. The skinny one covered his face with both hands and lay upon the ground defeated.

Was this the intended effect of my queen‘s act? The queen could beam terrible demoralization into the minds of peasants? I suppose that’s rather a requirement for the occupation.

And I trust this demon? Perhaps she was not acting.

I could never tell anyway.

That was a fun game I would miss. Watching/listening to acted media and trying to identify actors who were not acting.

“My queen, they forfeited their lives to me and they beg for death. I think I will save them your torments.”

“And waste such perfectly good slaves? Look at the size of this one he’s practically a beast of burden!” She aggressively poked the fat one’s belly with her staff.

“Surely my king, if you would not take them as slaves, you could allow me to have a little fun.”

Well, I wanted to know the truth, what did this queen think was fun?

“Very well O Dove of mine, what game have you planned?”

“Do you see that little cave right there? On the side of the mountain.” She said winking at me

“There is a golden statue, made in my own likeness within that cave.”

“I say, whichever of these two may take it may go free the other will die.”

So I was married to the Saw clown. I had never seen that movie.

I wasn’t really sure I believed my queen.

The two men upon the ground suddenly muttered amongst themselves clearly overhearing the queen as she spoke to me.

“Tis better one of us lives then none of us.”

“I don’t really believe there’s any gold.”

“To go free after this is gold enough even if the other should die”

The two fools were considering it! They didn’t realize what they had just said just before!

My queen was the devil hiding in the ray of sunlight.

“Oh my pathetic boys!” She interrupted. I still wasn’t clear on ages, but these guys were probably nearly a decade her senior. Presumably if they had luck with women they wouldn’t be out here as bandits. Power dynamics am I right?

I mean no disrespect but you have all outlived your welcome. A weapon in hand felt good, the solemn creak of wood whispered the silent hymns of heaven. A shame I couldn’t export the bedlam.

“Where are the two of you from?” She finished.

That was it, no reason to involve their homes…

I stepped forward and with one swing caught the fat man in the collarbone. The sword stuck, but I pulled it through his shoulder. I could do that, I was the Lion of White, you couldn’t.

He grunted in pain. A bead of blood caught in the sunlight.

Within the same motion, I brought the sword up, and it peaked above my head before I brought it down.

The kids these days can’t perform decapitations like they should…

And here I was hiding sin in the shadow of leaves.

The skinny man had not taken his hands from his face. This time it was a clean decapitation

My sword was heavy enough to dislodge his elbows and they did not block me from dulling my blade in the soft gravel of the mountain below the back of his neck.

I stepped forward.

“Really?” My queen asked with a disappointed and bored voice.

I swung the sword and this time it did slide cleanly through the neck of the fat man. He didn’t fight, in fact he practically held himself still.

A sad little smile spread of my queen’s face

“Oh, I wish I was not so ‘radiant’ or the beggar…”

She gestured at the skinny man’s still sobbing corpse.

“…Would not have interrupted the glorious combat you and this fine common specimen would have entered.”

She sighed.

“Oh my fickle Dove, do you always torment people like this?”

“Of course not my king! But these two bandits stopped the poor driver and fired that ugly bolt at you. They deserve the worst. And I believe the worst was slavery.”

I am superstitious for I believe in things I don’t understand.

“Oh, Brilliant Dove of mine do you not see the danger a kingdom adopts by keeping slaves? Tis a moral decay, all kingdoms that partake are scarred irreparably even if they correct the practice.”

Her eyebrows raised as if she was surprised.

“You will have to tell me where you learned such things.” Her addictive voice was quiet and clandestine. “You sound almost as if you are a wizard who studied of the forbidden tomes yourself.” She did not hide, no perhaps she exaggerated some intrigue she may have felt.

Simply esoteric pattern recognition and a library from another world. It might be falsehood but I believed it. The devil was already here, not merely on his way.

But the old man stumbled into our little wooded thicket.

A little cap he wore and removed and held to his chest in sorrow upon seeing two dead bodies

“Oh majesty! I am witness a horror in your presence I apologize as I hoped I never would have to! For under my care you have seen what love and youth should not!”

The queen and I were hardly concerned. I asked myself what this old man could have possibly seen in his life. Worse? Or was civilization gentle enough that he didn’t see dead bodies? But the queen did not skip a beat.

“I shall purify them in the the shade to bring them to the light.” She tapped her white marble walking staff three times on the rock

An intense flame engulfed both bodies, mesmerizing yet contained. The grass and leaves and wildlife surrounding did not catch fire despite the heat I felt scorching off of them. Was that the radiation of the sun that tingled?

I could not help but notice the shackles disappeared during the spectacle.

“Do not worry, your troubled heart my driver. Do the horse horses or wagon need tending?”

My queen‘s voice was tender and caring again.

The old man was quiet for a moment before replying. “Aside from the logs I think everything is fine the horses are impatient. And the wagon, appears in one piece. I am sorry this fine day is soured O sorrowful songbirds!”

I wiped the blood from my blade, I had wondered why a pocket of mine had a spare pair of gloves.

Sadly the specks of blood around my form would just linger for the remainder of the trip.

I guess I was fortunate I was as clean as I was.

The old man prayed for the two dead men who threatened him and we returned to the scheduled outing.

For a pair of sociopaths the deaths seemed to affect us. We had laughed and talked of many things before but now blood upon our hands we were somehow silent

We cuddled in the backseat of the carriage and awkwardly pointed at wildlife in trees we recognized as we traveled up and up and up the switchbacks on the side of the mountain.

Soon we reached a sort of middle aged trail-head, and the old man let us go.

I wondered how bandits reacted to him… He must not carry cash, he didn’t seem worried in the slightest.