>>5591601Oh fuck, more OC. Thank you!>>5591578Your opponent in the semifinals is an older gentleman, with a long gray beard and sharp eyes. He gets the first move and plays a tricky defensive opening. An utterly different breed than your previous opponents- he has the experience of untold thousands of games played over a lifetime. He does not make mistakes.
But not making mistakes is quite different than playing perfectly.
You have a very large crowd around you now. You play fast- meeting his wizened cunning with youthful speed. You process his position faster than he even can make his moves. He evidently feels the pressure you are smothering him with. On the thirtieth move of the game, he cracks and retreats where he should have attacked. You pounce on this opening with alacrity, and his previously formidable defensive structure becoming a tomb for his back rank. He resigns only a couple of moves later and complements your brilliance. You notice the daughters of Lycomedes in the crowd now, Achilles beside them.
The other finalist is a child. You would laugh, but he must have beaten five nobles of Skyros to get across the board from you. He deserves some respect for that alone. He eyes you with an intelligence that clearly far outpaces his years.
His play earns your respect even faster. He saw what you did to the old man and must have decided to try and press you the same way, using his own aggression against you. It is exceedingly clever- he takes risks and even manages to punish you once or twice for a hasty take. The two of you are playing at incredible speed, the crowd likely barely even managing to figure out the basic purpose of a move before the next comes.
Still, he does not realize that you see the whole of the game while he sees only a few moves ahead and behind. Child that he is, he misses the gradual overload of material you put on the 7th file. It is a strange file to attack from. By the time he realizes he has been had, the game is already over for all intents and purposes. He resigns with a sniffle, obviously unused to defeat. You shake hands, and he leaves to hide in the skirts of his mother.
You stand and look at the crowd, eyeing them impetuously.
"Is there no one else? None who will stand for the honor of your island?" You stare at Achilles specifically.
>Achilles autofails this will check"She" steps forward from the crowd.
"I will beat you, shameless boaster. Let us place a wager on the game- your armor if I win, something of equivalent value should I lose"
>An unexpected development. Write in your response! 