Arthur traced his quill across the page, trying desperately to copy Octavian’s handwriting. The sample was full of dramatic flourishes and perfectly straight lines, each letter like a little work of art. Reading it almost felt wasteful, like eating a really decadent cake.

He just wanted to look at each letter, one by one, and admire their beauty.

“Terrible,” said Saturn, snatching away the paper and shredding it to pieces.

“I'm not even done yet,” said Arthur.

But the vampire wrapped her fingers around the paper, not quite in a fist, but half open, like a spider coiled around its prey.

Then the paper burst into bright green flames.

“Doesn’t that seem rather excessive?” asked Arthur.

“I’m not an unreasonable vampire,” she said, as ash trickled from her open palm, like sand leaking from a cracked hourglass. “I would have given you a break if you simply broke down and begged for it, or passed out, or showed signs of losing your mind.” She flashed a rare smile - more of a smirk than a genuine grin. “Anything, really.”

“That so?”

“Of course, all you had to do was to try and kill me.” She made an incision along his arm and drained enough blood to refill the ink vial. “That’s how I usually know I’ve taken things too far.”

Arthur considered this for a moment, as Saturn closed the wound on his arm - but not completely. She had taken to leaving faint traces of her torture, to help him learn better, or perhaps because she simply did not like him.

No, he thought.

It was definitely because she did not like him.

“So, should I start groveling?” he asked, lowering his head to the ground in dramatic fashion.

“No, it’s too late for that,” she said, passing him a fresh piece of paper. “Besides, it wouldn’t work. You have too much dignity to grovel properly. That, and you’re too sarcastic. Groveling would only make me want to hurt you more.”

“Dignity?” said Arthur, raising an eyebrow. “Is that a compliment I hear?”

“Please,” she scoffed. “To me, dignity in a human is the same as cancer or a sense of adventure - it only means that you’ll die sooner.”

Arthur shrugged, then, glancing over the vampire’s shoulder, asked:

“What’s in the bag?”

“Which bag?”

“Which bag do you think? The one you’re always carrying around with you.”

“Oh, that bag.”

He was referring to a sapphire pouch with star patterns stitched across its surface, emblazoned with small, sparkling diamonds. If bags could speak, this one would probably throw a tantrum if anything not gilded in gold or made of ivory were placed inside it.

Saturn took the bag everywhere, and Arthur became increasingly curious about its contents. Knowing Saturn, if the bag were not so decedent, he would have assumed she was carrying around a severed hand or some other morbid trophy. Maybe she was. But the vague shape he could make out had too many sharp edges to be a hand. A weapon perhaps?

“Why do you care what’s inside?” asked Saturn. “And what makes you think it’s your business?”

“Well, given the rate I’m learning things, we may be together for a long time,” he said, adding “by human standards, that is.”

“With you, by any standards,” she said.

“Yes, point taken, I’m not going to live very long. But, as things stand, you know an awful lot about me, while I know nothing about you…”

“All you need to know is…”

“Yes, I know, that you’ll do atrocious things to me,” he said, interrupting her interruption, proud he had found a way to use the word “atrocious,” one of the many he had learned while reading Octavian’s books. “But what if, not knowing you very well, I ask you something that offends you - as it seems most things do - I could easily have my eye snatched out for saying the wrong thing.”

“You mean like right now?”

“Exactly.”

Saturn looked at Arthur intently. He appeared far healthier than when he arrived, even with the extra scars and cuts. He wore far finer clothes than the rags they had found him in, and had managed to pack on some extra pounds. Saturn glanced at his face, and saw his cheeks were redder, his hair finely combed and styled.

But his eyes - darting away to avoid Saturn’s - had taken on a new quality.

They held fear.

Saturn flexed her fingers, almost as a test, and noticed how Arthur coiled his inwards, ever so slightly. It was a subtle movement, faint enough to not be noticed by a human. But Saturn was a vampire. She shifted in her seat, and Arthur turned paler. She cleared her throat, and Arthur started to shake. These responses were barely perceptible, but Saturn saw them all too clearly.

For all of his bravado, captivity was taking its toll on the young man.

“Here, I’ll show you,” she said, pulling a large box from her bag. But as she flipped it over, Arthur noticed that it was not only a box, but that there were alternating black and white squares on the top, small legs on the bottom. Saturn placed the board down between them, pulling out a small compartment on the side.

It was filled with chess pieces.

“You play?” asked Arthur.

“No,” she said, scoffing. “I just carry around a chess set because it makes me look sophisticated.” She noticed Arthur eyeing the pieces greedily, and handed him the black bishop. ”What about you?”

“I do,” he said, running his fingers over the piece. “But the pieces I played with were far cruder, I carved them myself, out of some logs. But I wasn’t any good with a knife. My bishops wound up looking like misshapen penises.” He chucked, glancing down at the bishop. It was smooth and intricately crafted, with robes and a holy book and an angry face. “So, how long have you been playing?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Saturn, pulling out a king. “I picked it up a few hundred years ago. But finding opponents in the castle was, as you might imagine, difficult. Thor was terrible. He became more furious with each loss. Eventually he flipped over the chess set and shouted” - Saturn made her voice as low and gruff as she could - “‘I’ll show you woman, I can beat you at this silly game! Just wait and see!’”

Arthur laughed. Her impersonation was surprisingly adorable. But he went quiet again when he noticed her glowering.

“So he left the castle,” she continued. “And he went around killing actual bishops and knights, or so I was told. Then one day he returned and dropped a bloody crown at my feet, screamed ‘checkmate,’ at my face, then ran away, laughing maniacally.”

“Ah,” said Arthur, not sure what to make of that story.

“I had higher hopes for Caesar,” she said. “He seemed really excited to play, he said it was a fascinating part of human culture. He certainly has the brain for it. So he started reading as many books on it as he could, memorizing the games of all the great masters.”

“But?”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“But he was too busy reading to play. By the time he lost interest in chess, some years later, he had yet to even pick up a pawn.”

Saturn twirled the king between her fingers. “Eventually I invited humans to play me, offering them whatever their heart desired if they won. Thor and many others were against it, as you could imagine. But Octavian gave me permission.” She let out a quiet laugh, tilting her head back, so Arthur could not see her face.

“I lost a lot at first,” she continued. “Most of the humans who beat me asked for gold. I gave away so much of it that it became worthless in the nearby villages, and they had to start using shoes as currency instead. Rumor has it, the town cobbler got so rich that he bought himself a castle, paying with shoes, of course.” She put the king on the board, with a resounding clack. “Some of the requests were more ridiculous, like ‘I want wings,’ or ‘I want two heads’ or ‘I want to be a vampire,’ or, my personal favorite, ‘I want one head again. Please get rid of the left one,’ ‘No, don’t listen to him, he’s crazy, get rid of the right one.’” She smiled again, but for real this time.

Still, there was a certain sadness in it. Arthur was not sure how he could tell. He just could.

“The castle was quite loud in those days,” she said, knocking the king over. “But then I started winning more and more, until no one could beat me. Fewer and fewer humans started showing up.”

Arthur put the bishop on the board. “Why didn’t you play with Octavian?” he asked. As soon as he said it, he realized this was exactly the kind of question he feared asking - the lose an eyeball kind of question. Saturn’s eyes narrowed, her fingers wriggling dangerously. But then she simply scooped the chess pieces back into the box and put it back in the sapphire bag, all in one smooth movement. Arthur barely registered that she had moved to the door, her hand already on the handle.

“I actually have a match scheduled for tonight,” she said, as she started to open the door. “The first in many months, in fact. So it would be rude to be late.” She glared down at Arthur, who stared back, the space between his fingers still in the shape of a chess piece. “Finish copying the manuscript while I’m gone,” she said, closing the door behind her. “If it’s not completed perfectly, I'll administer a proper punishment.” With that she shut the door behind her, leaving deep, finger shaped indents in the handle.

At first Arthur found himself scribbling furiously, worried Saturn would return at any moment. But then it occurred to him that, no matter how swiftly she won, he should at least have half an hour. Even if her opponent lost in a dozen moves, the more horribly they lost, the more they would be forced to agonize over their moves. He had time. And what he had managed to produce in a hurry looked like the deranged scribblings of a madman. Which was ironic, thought Arthur, given that he was likely the sanest person in the castle, while those beautiful, decorative letters came from a mind that must have been, at least on some level, quite insane.

But Arthur had miscalculated after all. Before he could even empty the vial of blood, or be forced to write in the margins of the page, Saturn returned. She did so without saying a word, but there was an unmistakable intensity about her. Arthur tried to explain himself - “I just need a little more time,” he said, actually groveling this time. “I’m close to getting it.”

But Saturn simply kicked the paper aside and placed the chess board between them, sitting across from him. It was now - now that she was only a foot away, leaning in intently, that he noticed a bit of blood on her sleeve, blood that had not been there before.

Arthur swallowed hard.

“What happened to your match?” he asked. “Did they not arrive? Or are they running late?”

But Saturn was still ignoring him, placing the pieces on the board, the black pieces in front of her and the white in front of Arthur. Now he could make out specks of blood on the white pieces, including the king, some blood still dripping from its crown.

So her opponent has been on time after all.

Arthur had many questions, but he knew that asking them would do him little good. At best they’d be ignored, at worst they’d aggravate the vampire before him. He waited patiently as Saturn placed all of the pieces in their proper squares, before leaning back and staring at her opponent.

“What does your heart desire?” she asked, finally speaking.

“What?” stuttered Arthur, not expecting such a goofy line.

“What do you want if you win?” she said. “My policy still stands, even for you. If you win, you get a wish. So go on, tell me, what do you want if you win?”

“What happens if I lose?” he asked. Given her experience, several hundred years of it, and her current winning streak, this seemed to be the far more important question.

“Better than what you get if you don’t play me,” she said, tapping a sharp finger against the center of the board.

“Right, understood,” he said, crossing his arms together. He really had no idea what to ask for. He considered the obvious - asking to leave the castle, but he doubted that she would allow it, and even if she did, he was sure there would be some technicality. He had learned that Vampires were big on semantics - sure they may let him leave, but what would keep them from grabbing him seconds later?

Maybe he should ask for something simple, like a slice of cake. Would that make him appear more wise or worldly?

“Alright, I know, how about a window?” he said, uncrossing his arms. “One I can see out of.” The room was entirely encased in heavy stone, but he could occasionally hear the muffled sounds of nature leaking through the walls. Perhaps he would feel less trapped if he could at least see the outside world, hear the birds chirping and see the sun rise in the morning.

Hell, Arthur thought, just knowing when the morning came would be a gift.

“A window?” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Like the kind that lets in sunlight?”

“Well, the ones that don’t tend not to work. Or, so I’ve been told.” His expression turned serious. “Oh, but we would put up curtains, of course, thick ones to keep the sunlight out while you’re here. And if you’re worried I’d try to pull the curtains back and kill you, I’m sure you move too fast for that…

“No, you’re right, it’s fine,” she said, raising a hand. “You could ask for my death if you wished. Not that it would matter.” She reached out to shake hands. Arthur did , realizing that this was the longest he had ever touched her. It was only for a second, but it felt far longer, on account of the fact that her skin was like tightly packed snow, or the cool stained glass of a cathedral window.

Or perhaps it felt longer because it was.

He could not say for sure.

Not long after, the game began.

Saturn’s opening sequence was very by the books, without any imagination whatsoever. She clearly did not consider Arthur a serious enough threat to show her true nature. He also had the feeling - however improbable - that she was going easy on him.

Chess was actually quite popular where Arthur had come from, not just in his own village, but in the entire region. Tournaments would be held in leaking farmhouses and, on nice days, out in the middle of a field or the side of a hill.

He was starting to understand that everyone’s infatuation with chess might have started with this vampire, and her promise of free gold, all those hundreds of years ago.

“Your move,” said Saturn. Each of her moves had been evenly paced, and none took her more than a second to decide on. How many times, thought Arthur, how many hundreds if not thousands of times she had played through this very sequence?

“Back to you,” he said, moving his bishop.

For the first time since play started, the board was silent. Saturn’s fingers curled up in her lap, as she leaned in over the pieces. Arthur had decided not to mention he was the best in his village, and while it was not a mountain of gold, he had made a fair amount of money in tournaments. What else was a bored, listless young man to do than obsess over a board game?

“Your turn,” said Saturn.

Arthur had tried to hide his trap as well as possible, but now Saturn could see it clearly. He knew the opening she was using, and he knew how to beat it. But rather than go for the throat, he had snuck up on her. Over the next few turns, pieces started to leave the board quickly, one after another, until only a handful remained. A fast, bloody battle, before Saturn had a chance to adjust. That was the kind of game Arthur could win.

Saturn scowled.

“Don’t make that face,” said Arthur. “If you had played this seriously from the start, then you wouldn't be in this situation.”

“Your turn,” she said, taking his queen.

It was true, if she had played seriously from the start, she would have won. She had indeed taken it easy on the human. But even still, no player was absolutely unbeatable.

A common misconception is that vampires have greater memories than humans - that they could memorize thousands if not millions of chess games in their mind, and recall them at will. But like any mind, the mind of a vampire leaked like a siv.

Or rather, the mind of a vampire is very much like a room, no bigger than a human’s, only full of more stuff, to the point where there's nowhere left to sit. Every so often a vampire must sort through all of the clutter they have accumulated in their multiple lifetimes and throw some away, in order to make way for the new. But there's far too much to sort through, so one might throw away a large pile of garbage and accidentally discard a solid gold ring, or the memory of a loved one. You misplace a set of dishes, or the name of your first father. You lose an old book, or the image of your first home.

If anything, vampires had a harder time remembering, as memories are tied to emotion, and when everything loses its luster and newness - when a death is as common as a sunset, past lovers as numerous as flies buzzing around a corpse, one’s memory becomes muddled.

And so, Saturn found herself racing through her own mind, trying to find those moves she had misplaced so long ago, trying to recall games from hundreds of years ago.

Instead she found names without faces, faces without names, and so many sunsets.

“Checkmate,” said Arthur, as he moved his bishop within striking distance of her king.

“So it is,” she said, knocking over her king.

“Good game.”

But Saturn did not reply. She simply stared at the board, her fingers curling into fists, as Arthur quietly stood and moved to the other side of the room. He could tell how much she wanted to lose with dignity, but this was not mere human pride. No, this was ancient, vampiric pride, hundreds of years old, if not thousands, and with it came vampiric rage.

He watched as she smoldered, a sickly green fog emanating from her body, the tendrils reaching out at the air, as if searching for something to strangle. Then she let out a small laugh, before turning around to face him.

“I see that you’re standing in front of the door,” she said, “instead of the wall. Is it so you can make a quick escape? Or maybe it’s because you realize that the door is made of wood, and the wall is made of rocks. And you’d rather I punch you through the door instead of the wall.”

“Perhaps,” said Arthur. “But really, I’d rather you didn’t punch me at all.”