Reizenbrahm didn’t take much time at all to set up the game of sjach. It was a specially-made traveller’s version commissioned to a master craftsman with a reputed Coordination of eighteen. It was a little overkill, Reizenbrahm believed, as the only difference between the traveller’s version and the mundane one was the hole in each square and the fact that the game pieces had protrusions that let them fit snugly inside.

That said, no amount of bad road and sharp turns could throw the pieces out. They were all weighed down with lead cores and bottoms encased in steel to prevent poisoning. Even the board itself had lead and steel bottoms. It was a gross extravagance to many, but Reizenbrahm had seen the City of the Sky. Nothing could compare to their decadence.

The woman in front of him, Reza, did not take long to learn all the rules. That likely put her at an intelligence of three, which was fairly high for a commoner. Needless to say, Reizenbrahm had his doubts. Her manner was too reserved, too… easy to deal with. Even with high Charm, the commoner women of the Golden Cities relied too much on feminine wiles and a boisterous sense of humor. They were great to converse with on boring nights, but they never tended to leave well enough alone, always adding to the antics until his social endurance ran out completely.

Reza, meanwhile, was the picture of Aellian nobility: demure, gentle, caring and a great listener. She likely knew her way around his people and tried her best to accommodate him. She was entertaining enough to have made picking her up more than worth it, even if he was initially doing it out of the kindness of his own heart.

They played a trial match first so she could get a feel for the moving pieces. The objective was to either capture the other player’s queen or manifest her own overlord by moving her king to the opposite side of the board. The death of a king crippled the queen’s movements so she could only retreat backwards on the board for however long it took to coronate a new king, which involved promoting a pawn by having it kill the opponent’s bishop and retreat back to their side of the board until the piece touched the edge. This could, obviously, only be done once before the opponent would be gifted additional assassins, ostensibly to punish the heathens that dared to attack the messengers of God.

Simple things, really.

She went through a couple of classic blunders, letting her dancers be captured prematurely, opening a lane for her queen to be assassinated by the piece-hopping assassin.

Then they played a real game.

Sjach, on its surface, told a story of a war between nations, but Reizenbrahm never related with that. Wars were asymmetrical, incapable of being captured in the narrow confines of a two-player board-game where each player had perfect information. Anyone who waged war this way was liable to be defeated in an instant. To him, it was a game of traps between two trap masters trying to kill each other in the forest, or simpler put, a hunt.

It could also have been a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that he was no longer able to fight, his legs ruined as they were. Nevertheless, they were fantasies that he loved to indulge in from time to time, and it was the only way he could activate his Battle Mania skill outside of combat, and the peculiar application to the class skill gave the game a life of its own, trapping him inside a phantasm of his own making, one that mirrored the game.

It would be too charitable to call her a fellow hunter, novice as she was. No, in this case, she was prey. Reizenbrahm imagined he was taking one of his wolfbears on a hunt, and Reza was the rabbit. The forest was dark, but Reizenbrahm knew it — more accurately, the game — like the back of his hand. He knew all the favored hiding spots and the basic strategies employed by novices.

He sent his wolfbear after the rabbit to scout for him while he steadily trapped the forest floor.

Then, he spotted her, running away. He gave chase, turning sharply around a tree, inadvertently stepping on his own trap. The wolfbear, too, lay dead, the gambit he had built up torn down.

And then the rabbit opened the dead wolfbear's mouth and crawled into it. Somehow, the wolfbear revived, his shredded gambit once more viable, and it just… swallowed. That was it.

Reality reasserted itself as he considered his loss, for there was no way that counted as a victory.

“Your victory, Lord Reizenbrahm,” she smiled warmly. “I hope I didn’t do too badly.”

“N-no certainly not!” He reassured her, half his mind still stuck on the game. Had she… how had she done that? The trap was completely dismantled, but somehow she still managed to destroy herself on it. “You almost had me,” he admitted. “You should not have reversed the way you did. You practically gave me the victory.”

“Beginner’s luck, surely.”

Slowly, he expressed a grin. That was likely it, yes.

How could the phantasm make any sense if the other player didn’t know what they were doing? That had to be it.

Once again, the hunt was on. The rabbit evaded him every time, casually sidestepping his carefully laid plans until it just decided to stab itself onto a sharp stick attached to a tree with its speed, a trap that only meant to pressure her, not kill her.

Reza had lost in a way that he hadn’t even noticed until the very opportunity appeared one move away. Had his instinct not warned him, he would have immediately continued his own strategy.

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It was… eerie. Was she humoring him? No, that couldn’t be. If so, then she was truly a peerless master of sjach. Reizenbrahm had played against the greatest, and even they only defeated him in reasonable ways. These were people with a combined Intelligence and Wisdom of thirty and decades of experience as well as relevant Skills to aid them further.

Another round. Fleet-footed, the rabbit darted about more confidently, evading every trap Reizenbrahm set. Each and every time, he grew more and more hopeless until, in an attempt to just put light pressure on her so she would dance to his tune and be defeated in a sound way, he shot out an arrow that should have never even come close to striking her. But it did. Another hollow victory.

He played again. Just when he thought he had her, the rabbit just barely visible from behind a large tree, he turned around it and saw that rabbit attached to a many-legged, spindly monster. The horrid beast opened its mouth, not the mouth of the rabbit, but the rabbit’s neck, revealing rows and rows of needle-sharp teeth. The hunter became the hunted.

Reizenbrahm stabbed ineffectually with a hunting spear, impaling it through its soft palate into its brain and ending the game once again, mere moments from certain defeat.

He snapped out of the phantasm and stared at the board as his heart hammered in his chest. Yes, her position was positively monstrous.

And his was viable through sheer luck. No. Not luck. He had been humored.

Was it the alcohol? Impossible; he had only had one bottle of wine. His Power wouldn’t let him get drunk from a bottle of hard liquor, much less what he had!

He tried to forget about the monstrous creature his mind had somehow conjured, but it was difficult. It was exactly what she was, his Battle Mania warned him. A monstrous beast hiding behind the facade of an innocent rabbit.

She smiled demurely at him. “Would you care for another game?”

It was a gut-feeling, but Reizenbrahm had never been wrong with them. Gently, to his perception at least, he leaned forward and pressed his index finger to her forehead, expression neutral. He activated the skill of his long-unused Judge class. He was always more of a Warrior at heart, but it tended to come in handy every once in a while. Especially now that he was very much a useless combatant.

“Did you know who I was before boarding?”

Time had resumed, and utter shock froze her completely.

Then he felt something surge in his body, a metaphysical weakness coursing through him, but he dispelled it easily with only a thought. Not a trace remained.

He stopped pressing her forehead and instead decided to hold her by her throat. “Answer the question or you will die instantly, Reza Razed-of-Mind.” There was no doubt that she was. He had never encountered it before, but what he felt was likely a failed curse.

She gulped. “No.”

True.

“Why did you learn the mad arts?”

“T-to survive,” she whispered. That, too, was true. “For my child.” Also true. So that was a child then, and not a conjured phantasm designed to provoke sympathy from him.

Reizenbrahm knew better than anyone, however, how unreliable the skills of a Judge could be against someone truly mad. Truth was universal in scale, and a mere skill could not detect such things. That would imply omniscience. He could detect lies, but such a skill could be evaded if one truly believed their lies. If one was truly insane.

In the end, he weighed whether he should take a chance of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or nip a disaster in its bud. He was old and crippled, and his heirs were a disappointment. His country wouldn’t listen to him and mortal enemies were at their gate, intent on their enslavement. They would not win if things continued as they were. If his reluctance to Judge her spelled disaster, then that would only speed up their inevitable downfall, not cause it.

“Are there more of you?” He asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’m alone.”

Instinct and indoctrination warred against the decision he was slowly coming to.

“What sort of madness do you practice?”

“...Healing,” she whispered. “I can heal you.”

His indecision shattered. “Do it now and I will not kill you.”

He wouldn’t let go of her throat just yet either. She closed her eyes and for several minutes, they remained closed. When they finally opened, she spoke levelly, all traces of fear in her voice gone. “I will raise my finger and a bone will protrude from its tip. This is meant as a test, to explore the limits of my ability.”

She wasn’t lying. Reizenbrahm beckoned her to continue with a swift incline of his head, and watched as a sharp claw-like protrusion slid out from the tip of her index finger with nary a wince, even as it drew blood.

“Your leg bones have healed incorrectly,” she observed. “The most complex damage is in your... the flesh that connects the bones.” His ligaments and joints. No healer in the world could fix such damage.

“Can you help me?” He asked. “If you can’t, I will simply drop you off right here. On my word.” He would drop off her body.

There was no reason to protect someone razed of mind. He could take in her child and give them a proper upbringing, as a simple enough favor, but that would be the extent of his kindness towards her.

Of course, it all hinged on how useful she could be to him, and whether she could keep it together long enough that he could maximize this use.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s fairly simple.”

That same energy coursed into his legs, and for a moment, he decided to allow it. “I’ve disabled the pain in your legs,” she explained. “Just so you don’t accidentally wring my neck.”

Manly pride warred with the simple truth that she was going to untwist his bones and mend his joints. If that wouldn’t be painful, he didn’t know what would.

He felt the changes immediately, though slowly. He made it slow, by limiting how much power she could exercise over his body. She was inexperienced in that way, naive enough to think that a simple curse could defeat someone as strong as him. They just generally didn’t if you were ten levels or higher.

Luckily, that wasn’t exactly knowledge that was broadcasted. His judicial education included well what madness practitioners could and could not do, at least in the lower levels, and he was certain that she couldn’t be higher than fifteen, but likely above ten. It made her a moderate threat, but Reizenbrahm was greater.

His legs began to shift like clay, but painlessly. Relief of both mind and body flooded him as she worked her madness. It had only taken a few minutes until she announced that his bones were straightened, and now she would begin with his joints.

That, too, ended deceptively quickly. Inside his cramped space, he let go of her throat and stood up, feeling no discomfort. He checked his status, and found no effect cutting off Power from his legs, aside from the standard effects of his advanced age.

His legs had been healed. He could fight again.

He said nothing for minutes more, basking in the feeling of physical ability. He owed Reza a deep debt.

Her child would never want for anything. It was, however, too late for her.

“Worry not for your child,” he said to her, and she clutched it closer to her chest. He took his cane and gripped it with the conviction of a judge passing down a sentence. “And... thank you.”