It is a confused man in chainmail! His right hand goes for a mace at his belt and his left comes up ready to cast something!

The summoner is humanoid in the loosest sense – four limbs, a recognizable face, but extremities that trail off into formless white mist. An ethereal shroud reminiscent of a bird's wings hangs from its shoulders, doing very little to hide the odd geometry of its body.

If it's threatened by the mace, it doesn't show it. The white thing points first to its own throat and then at Blai's (somewhat ambiguously, given the lack of digits).

Has he been summoned by some kind of air elemental??? That is BACKWARDS. WHAT.

It doesn't seem to want to fight him right this second? He puts the mace away. "Hello."

Oh good, this one already speaks. The universal translation spell doesn't always work when one party has no native language.

"Greetings, summoned hero," it says in what sounds like ordinary Taldane. "You are… human, yes? The world outside should pose no danger to you, unless your environmental needs diverge from what humans can withstand."

"I am human, yes... what did you summon me for?"

"Zeitnot is besieged by demons, and I can no longer conduct its defense alone. When I wished for a hero I received you, which means that in some respect you must be an ideal candidate for this scenario."

Between them appears a translucent map of a city, bisected by a river. Some areas around the perimeter have been shaded black.

"These regions are at the highest risk of falling into enemy hands as of this morning. Someone has been counteracting my surveillance; I am confident that here and here are correct, but the rest of the intelligence is out of date. The front nearest us is this one, and it is there we must go first if we are to have any chance of succeeding."

"Any particular kinds of demons?" he asks, looking at the map. "Are you planning to summon anyone else? On what time frame do you need to counterattack? I didn't prepare spells this morning with demons in mind."

"I will summon no further heroes unless you turn out to be miserably unsuited for this campaign," it says blandly. "The duration of the wish decreases sharply with repeated attempts. No two demons are made alike, and the implied discrepancy between our beliefs on this subject matters less than you think. You are the summoned hero, and you will either win decisively or lose narrowly. We ought to begin quickly, though we may have another moment or two to discuss without breaking the bounds of plausibility."

Okay. Wow, what a cool summoning spell, he thinks normally you just have to guess what kind of summon you need and hope you're right, the spell doesn't handle it for you. He shrugs his backpack off and pulls the mace out. Casts Guidance on himself. "I know how to hit demons with this and if that'll do I can do it."

That's actually slightly concerning. Khazer remembers an era when violence was not categorically impossible, and even in those awesome benighted times, 'hit the foe with a handheld blunt object' was not high on the list of effective tactics. It appreciates the enthusiasm though.

"That will not do it. The Covenant forbids violence against protected species, an umbrella under which the demons now shelter. In exchange for this… blessing… we are commanded to resolve our conflicts on a different battlefield."

As it speaks, the map of the city ripples and distorts into a familiar eight-by-eight grid of alternating light and dark squares.

"If you are not familiar with the rules of chess, speak now and I shall return you from whence you came."

"You have demons that play chess? - I know how to play chess but there are variations, will the kind I consider standard be at play here?"

"Most games operate according to a standard ruleset which need not be specified before each match, and it is under those conditions that the demons have played thus far. I have personally played ninety-three chess matches in the past three days, acting as Zeitnot's absolute authority and champion. From this, the demons have inferred that my subjects are not very good at chess. I have been challenged to a game of bughouse chess^†, presumably on the grounds that I would not be able to find an adequate partner on short notice."

^†Verbatim: "circular chess"; but this game is rendered by translation as the name of a chess variant that Blai is familiar with.

"I know bughouse*." It's his favorite, but that's not really relevant.

*In Taldane it's called "redeployment chess".

"Then all the pieces are in place, and the games can begin." The illusory chessboard disappears, and Khazer turns to leave. "I am not planning to explain how or why I was able to locate a human chess player in a public restroom. If anyone asks, please tell them you are an Elkian evangelist and deflect further questioning by offering to demonstrate interesting midgame compositions."

"I think lying is against my religion."

"Is the permissibility of lying unclear to you personally or is your god intentionally vague on the topic?"

"The former. I have not had an opportunity yet to attend catechism classes, and my god mostly chooses paladins, who definitely aren't allowed to lie, but I'm a cleric."

Khazer will process the disjointed collection of facts about Blai's homeworld later. More important: the summoned hero is a type of cleric that cannot play social deception games.

"Then say nothing, or whatever vacuous reply your god permits under such circumstances."

It drifts away through a door, moving through another illusion spell that shreds with its passing like fine gossamer. The room is suddenly perceptible in a variety of ways that it was not before, some obvious and some more subtle. (It is indeed a public restroom, albeit a clean and odorless one.)

Blai follows his summoner, mace back on his belt where it goes when he is not going to hit things with it.

Out through the lobby of an unidentifiable business and onto the street!

Zeitnot is a city of enormous buildings designed by a singularly untalented architect. The construction style of everything in sight reflects a unified creative vision, a dream of somewhere that pleasing composition and harmonious color schemes are suggestions to be disregarded. It's not especially offensive to look at, but for the amount of wealth that must be concentrated here it's a bit disappointing. The city is not only dismissive of aesthetics and budgetary constraints but of physics – some of the buildings have elements suspended over a hundred feet in the air, supported by nothing other than magic.

One particularly tall building in the distance has thick plumes of smoke billowing from its windows; another appears to be partway demolished.

There's a crowd of people waiting just up the road. A few are demihumans, bestial after a fashion, but the majority are some of the most sui generis creatures imaginable. No two are alike, though all of them have an undeniably predatory body plan. They're clearly waiting for something, some more patiently than others.

That's where they're going.

Blai wonders if elementals and celestial dogs and stuff getting summoned for the first time find it this surreal.

Culture shock is one hazard of interdimensional transit that the safe arrival protocols don't account for.

Their appearance is greeted with a round of booing from the strange creatures, drowning out whatever the demihumans might have to say. Blai's presence is evidently unexpected.

"YOU WERE GONE FOR FIVE MINUTES!" someone at the back of the crowd shouts, accompanied by loud profanities and other noises of agreement.

Nevertheless, the onlookers shuffle aside to let them through. A rectangular stone slab sits in the middle of the road, set up with two chessboards in the starting position. One side is occupied by a kitsune woman holding hands with a small child, neither of whom seem terribly happy. No one stands across from them.

It's their fault for letting Khazer leave without pressing the issue. Angels don't even need bathroom breaks.

"Are you stronger with white or with black?" it asks the hero.

"White."

"Then take her place."

Blai goes and sits there, presuming she'll get out of the way.

The woman announces something rapidly in a foreign language, then takes the child by the hand and all but runs away while the crowd jeers.

And Khazer takes the black side of the other board.

"We accept this championship. Who will play?"

After some cajoling and mild threats are exchanged, Blai's opponent turns out to be an amorphous mass of violet ooze. The fourth player looks distinctly more demonic: a hulking, bat-winged figure with curled horns and a strange gait and sparks dripping from its jaws. It daintily adjusts the position of a few of its pieces before kneeling on the other side of the slab.

...in case it is hazardous to pick up pieces an ooze has touched, Blai is going to play with his right glove on.

"Building 12 in exchange for 267."

 "Is 267 that one?" the demon asks, pointing to the flaming building in the distance.

"Yes."

 "12 and its public access point."

"Acceptable. The game is bughouse chess, the time controls… ten minutes, five second increments?"

 "I don't care."

Khazer glances over at Blai and the ooze, in case either of them care about the time control.

"- how is the time represented?" He doesn't see a sandglass but maybe somebody has one up their sleeve.

"Ten plus five."

The surface of the slab lights up with four large circles, one next to each player. The circumference is marked with hundreds of small notches, ten of them larger than the rest.

"The clocks will start once white makes the first move and increment each time you let go of the piece on your turn."

Wow fancy. He's white but should probably also move when the white-playing demon does.

"Let's all have fun and play together," the demon remarks, and plays d4. All four clocks start simultaneously.

Blai also advances d4.

He loves chess. It can fill up his head more completely than anything except being tortured, and it's way better than being tortured. At any moment his mind is casting left and right for stupid things to worry about. So far he has worried about getting mud on the floor of the bathroom to which he was summoned, the expiration of his Guidance (he can feel it pop against the challenge of the chess game, so that's at least no longer a concern), whether it is rude to stare at air elementals, whether it is rude to stare at demons, whether it is rude to put on only one glove and not the other, whether it's rude to put on any hand protection at all lest he imply (correctly) that he would rather not touch purple ooze goo, whether he is maybe technically Called here and not just summoned and will be really dead if the demons eat him (later revised to "eat him, for losing at chess"), if the translation magic is working correctly (on four separate occasions), whether he is breathing too loudly, whether the building on fire is going to spread, whether the archmages will notice if he is on summon for long enough to be very late to the convention and what they could possibly do about that if they were, whether it will turn out that he will make an illegal move by being used to Crusading Queen movesets instead of the Vudran kind or some even weirder disconnect (and whether demons will eat him for that), and whether it was a terrible faux pas in this universe to offer to hit the civilized chess-playing demons with his mace.

Now he is worrying about chess, and only that. A fast game is ideal; a double game is even better. His brain looks for something to worry about, and there are so many: the threatening knight, the captured pawn waiting to be dropped into check, the bishop's angle of attack, the center squares, all those same things on the other board, whether he can pass his summoner a knight any time soon, all those same things again a few turns later when the board state is new and the worries are all fresh and perfectly absorbing again. He can be full of chess and nothing but chess and he can make every move in the time allowed and he can pass the elemental a pawn in time to save that rook and none of it hurts.

The angel and the demon play fast and aggressive, pausing only to wait for opportune captures on the other board. They're as good at chess as anyone Blai's ever met, although neither of them talk very much even when it would likely be advantageous to give their partner a heads-up.

The ooze struggles to keep up. It's clearly familiar with how to play chess normally, but its textbook defensive opening strategy is undermined by Blai's ability to drop new pieces on the board at leisure. It leaves no fewer than three pawns hanging by move ten, and on move twenty-five it slides its queen to a square vulnerable to an absolute pin from a redeployed bishop, a mistake that will almost certainly lose them the game.

(It does leave a thin film of purple residue on the pieces, slippery on the wood but not sticky enough to adhere to his gloves.)

He is so glad he put a glove on. Bishop!

The only thing better than one queen is two queens. The instant the black queen is off the board a cloud of silvery mist jerks it out of Blai's hand and slams it down on h6 hard enough to rattle the board, complementing a nasty attack on the queenside castle white has built up for himself. It's not checkmate but it will be soon.

This position is completely untenable, so the demon is going to take the only remaining option and give up. Their game has close to nine minutes left on the clock, which means he can simply stop playing and hope the ooze manages to eke out a draw.

Blai can beat this ooze.

The moment the game ends, Khazer offers the demon a handshake – except it doesn't have hands and the demon's digits are configured backwards, so this amounts to briefly waving their arms in synchrony – and immediately takes off in flight towards the burning building.

There is some polite clapping from the remaining demihumans in the audience, but the rest of them have found better things to do with their time and left several minutes ago.

"Damn," the demon says succinctly, sitting back on its haunches.

The ooze extends a single thin tendril in Blai's general direction.

Is this customary?? He will shake it with the gloved hand. And then since he seems to still be summoned he will follow his summoner.

The ooze manages a passable handshake before it subsides into a noxious puddle and glides away. The remaining demihumans pack up the game equipment, culminating in two men hoisting the stone slab effortlessly onto their shoulders and shuffling down the street with it.

The other demon follows Blai. He stands twice the height of a normal man and has the stride to match, forcing him to take exaggerated slow steps to keep pace. Anyone else that might've shown interested in the human is dissuaded from joining.

"How did Khazer pay you?" he asks without preamble.

"That is certainly a question," says Blai blandly.

"You're new here," the demon continues, "and you weren't altruistically defending any of these rotting carcasses yesterday."

One of the men carrying the slab shouts something at the demon, an angry comment that goes ignored.

"Gold and trinkets for services rendered? Or did someone lose a bet, and now he's holding your leash?"

"I see you have made some guesses."

A gale blows in unannounced. Above the distant building, a solitary black cumulus cloud has begun to rain over a suspiciously narrow ground area, hard enough to smother fire and pull smoke out of the sky.

"What does an angel think is equivalent in value to a human?" the demon asks philosophically.

He leaves without answering his own question.

Is it an angel and not an air elemental? Wow, he really thought it looked like an air elemental but there are admittedly a zillion kinds of angels.

When Blai catches up he'll Create Water on the burning building if the rain's not hitting everything thoroughly enough.

Can you eject someone from a building against their will?

Generally no. Throwing someone out typically calls for throwing, and violence is no longer permitted on Disboard. However, moving someone against their will – assuming care is taken to avoid even unintentional harm in the process – isn't definitionally an illegal move. Tet did not excise involuntary experiences from the world, which means that a certain amount of what might be sweepingly termed 'violence' is actually still allowed: playful roughhousing between friends, parents toting around crying infants, compulsory bathing episodes, and other things of that nature. The Elder God of Games remade the world in accord with his own design, but that design had some nuance to it.

Disboard is inhabited by no small number of extraordinarily powerful beings, and were they only prohibited from violence in this manner they would be effectively prohibited from doing very little. The primary check against aggression in the Covenant is the rule against war. Most forms of coercion, detention, hostile magic, and assorted rules-lawyering are in Tet's eyes acts of war, which is part of the reason why Disboard is not a singleton dominated by whoever got their expansionist hierarchical mind control apparatus off the ground first in the wake of the Last War. At any rate, the playful roughhousing stops the moment it is no longer playful.

So, what is the best way to have it your way? Tet's intent is that you play a game – there's always more slack when you're playing a game – but if you don't have the patience for it…

… it's sufficient for Khazer to own the building. Its body floats near the edge of the rain, cloak billowing in the wind, all four limbs completely dispersed as it works. Individual demons float out the windows in its telekinetic grasp, all of them wriggling and shouting and ineffectually trying to force Khazer to stop by way of instigating violence. It lets them go once they're out, where the mobile ones disperse into the streets like frightened rodents.

Almost everyone who lives here is already gone apart from a reptilian werebeast still in the basement, blissfully napping in the heat and smoke of a burning building. It extracts that one too, since even werebeasts are not immune to having buildings collapse on top of them, and once she's out Khazer relaxes. A few more minutes of rain and it'll count this building as both safe and secured.

Once this catastrophe is dealt with it will have to find the summoned hero before moving on to— no it won't, the hero is conveniently already here.

"Create Water." Ten gallons where it looks most useful.

The rain has more or less extinguished the highest floors, but as a consequence of their continued existence the ground floor isn't out of trouble yet. There's still an inferno going on, and ten gallons of water puts an impressive dent in it.

Blai has to do this while a flock of monsters rushes past him in the other direction, of course, but despite the hostility in the atmosphere none of them seem interested in taking a swing at him. The last one out, a crocodilian humanoid the size of a draft horse that looks like it recently awoke from a nap, mumbles something to Blai in the same foreign language as it walks away.

The overt use of magic comes as a surprise to Khazer.

Humans do not have creating or summoning water as a racial ability. In fact, they have no racial abilities at all (unless you count the fawning adoration of the supreme deity, which it does not). Khazer isn't an expert on summoned hero typology, but it seems likely that the chanting and hand gestures are either the key to a type of alien magic that doesn't rely on elementals or a signal to an allied sorcerer to work magic through the hero. Hopefully it's the former, because alien magic is a spectacular ace in the hole if they can keep it hidden in reserve – and Khazer thinks they can, because the summoned hero did the chanting thing right after being summoned and it didn't immediately notice anything that time.

It drifts back down, toggling through a suite of magical perception filters more or less at random to see whether anyone else is going to notice the anomalous magical human. He doesn't appear to have spirit circuits at first glance, but what magic can obscure, magic can also unveil.

What's a spirit circuit? Blai's just carrying around a bunch of divine magic conveniently packaged for his use.

Divine intervention is one of the first things Khazer checks for, mainly because the hero mentioned being a cleric and gods sometimes favor their clerics with thematically appropriate gifts. Good thing too, because under that lens it's painfully obvious the summoned hero was an ordinary human before he was reforged into an alien sorcerer by a god – or maybe more than one god, Khazer doesn't recognize the handiwork of any particular entity but there's enough variety of flair to be a collaborative effort. Definitely the result of a mature process, though.

The chassis is a well-engineered graft, complete with a storage mechanism for individual blobs of exotic matter (instructions to be run through a decoder?) and not one but two direct paths linking his body to other dimensions (probably the power source). It's not the strongest transhuman upgrade in existence, but it's a spectacularly elegant one. The use to which it has been put is bizarrely unimpressive. The summoned hero used a miracle to create ten gallons of water. Divine intervention does not look like ten gallons of water! It looks like earth and sky exchanging places, clocks running backwards, creation and obliteration. It leaves indelible marks on the fabric of history. Why would a god trying to put out a structure fire create ten gallons of water? Does the hero even know?

Khazer floats down to the ground, reforming its body as it goes. The rain lightens up as the fire dies, and the cloud starts to disperse overhead.

"Tell me what you know about your god," it asks, once there's an opportunity.

"- Her name is Iomedae. She ascended to godhood hundreds of years ago, having been in mortal life a paladin of the also-ascended god Aroden. I actually have a copy of Her holy book on me if you would like me to read from it?"

"If there is a passage you believe is representative, please do."

"It's probably not best for a really high level summary... uh, She's called the goddess of defeating evil, or sometimes the goddess of triage. She's Lawful Good. She mostly selects paladins though I'm a cleric instead. She has a theocracy called Lastwall which among other things guards the sealing place of the sorcerer-lich Tar-Baphon who she fought in the Shining Crusade that was much of the work of her life."

"I see. And when you met her, what was she like?"

"...She did not approach me in person. Clerics get spells from our gods at dawn every morning; that was the form our contact took, was her offering me spells."

"… have you spoken with anyone who has met Iomedae, to get their impression of her?"

"No, she was last mortal hundreds of years ago and most species on my planet do not live that long. I am familiar with the effects of Her Church on the world, though."

Why would the date of Iomedae's ascension matter? Unless—

"Does Iomedae not live in Lastwall?"

"She lives in Heaven. The last time a god tried to live on Golarion it was very bad and also killed the god."

Where 'Heaven' is a plane of existence and 'Golarion' is a planet, presumably one not located in Heaven… if the hero's homeworld is antithetical to gods then everything about Iomedae, from her abstruse communication method to her choice of miracles, is probably adaptive somehow. It does raise the question of why she's trying to operate a theocracy on Golarion while she can't go there to do anything personally – the goddess of triage being continually involved in the containment of a single lich raises some concern, even as far away as Disboard – but that's unlikely to be immediately relevant.

"My condolences," it says. "Gods dwell on Disboard, often in multiple places simultaneously. It would be unusual to join one's service without having known them for a long time. Do you know why the god died?"

"No, but it was disastrous when He did."

"Then there is one more thing I must know, summoned hero. Do any of the small miracles that Iomedae provides you help with playing chess?"

"One of them a very little bit. ...if I were going to be playing many chess games I have another that could help a few along but it is the sort of thing that only takes out guesswork, I wouldn't play at my peak, just avoid the worst."

"Do either of them help by impeding your opponent's ability to play, acquiring private information from your opponent's mind, moving information from the future into the past, or changing the behavior of the universe in a way that affects the rules of chess?"

"No, they only operate on me and the level of play I bring to bear."

"Your powers are well-suited to playing here," it says approvingly. "It is remarkably difficult to cheat at a sequential game of perfect information, but there are those who try. Always in vain, although we may well never hear of the successful ones. Anyone who considers self-enhancement against the spirit of the game will tell you aforehand; if they do not, continue to do your best."

Khazer points at the other visible building in bad shape, which from this angle is much larger than the first one but is at least not currently on fire. "Building 81 is next. Do you have any questions for me before we go to recover it?"

"How many games will there be?"

"I am certain that two more rounds of bughouse chess are currently pending, but the true number is more likely five or six. It will take more games than that to repel them completely, but not all of those games will call for doubles, and if no team is required I will handle the match alone… this assumes we lose no games, which is a plausible assumption but not guaranteed to happen. Someone is directing the invaders, and I have yet to determine who they are or whether they have a motive beyond annoying me. Are you in a hurry to leave, summoned hero?"

"Not at all. I just haven't been summoned before and am not familiar with it from this end."

"I wished to have you for three days, at which point you will reappear as close to the spot on your homeworld you left from as is safely possible. I plan to extend the duration if it seems appropriate. The summoning is not inherently tied to the number of games you play."

"Could I appear farther south than that spot?"

"How much farther? I can easily push you up to half a radian south; any more than that and I would need to hire a specialist for assistance."

"I don't know how much a radian is. A couple hundred miles."

"Unless you feel significantly lighter on Disboard than you did on Golarion – or unless Golarion has an unusual composition for a terrestrial planet, something distorting its mass or physical dimensions…" Khazer does not want to assume anything about the god-killing planet using statistical averages but it's hard to see why that would matter, "… one radian should be close to four thousand miles. I can do that."

"I... feel the same weight as usual... There is an evil god trapped in the middle of the planet but I don't know the details of Its confinement situation."

Is this why Golarion killed a god? Is the lich that so concerns the summoned hero's goddess a lieutenant of the trapped evil god? Or are these three unpleasant facts somehow completely unrelated? Khazer feels destined to remain ignorant.

"I cannot extend your summoning indefinitely, if you do not wish to return to the evil god's planet, but there are powers that can keep you on Disboard permanently if they are moved to do so. I will plead your case to Avant Heim or Kainath, if you want," it offers.

"- I have obligations there but that's very kind of you. The evil god trapped in the middle of the planet is not relevant to my daily life, I mention it only in case that affects how hard it is to put me slightly south."

"Not especially."

The ephemeral tether between the summoned hero and Golarion is far more resilient than the average magical construct. The only salient way it could go wrong is hostile divine intervention, but if the hero doesn't think it's a problem then Khazer won't fret over it.

"Building 81 is this way. We have another game to play," it says, leaving in the direction of the river.

Chess!!!

It's half a mile away – half a mile of waterlogged roads and vandalized shopfronts. The denizens of Zeitnot aren't hiding, exactly, but they are to a one barricaded indoors. They peer silently through the windows of their homes and businesses, the children with their noses pressed against the glass and the adults with inscrutable blank stares. It's hard to tell what anything is supposed to be when it's actually in use, since all of the signage remains untranslated and many of the context clues have been defaced.

Building 81 is submerged in a river, though as they get closer it becomes apparent that the river has flooded over its foundation. Closer still and a keen-eyed observer will notice that no one has bothered to erect levees, permanent or temporary, and the river did not have to flood very much before it swallowed the foundation. Another stone table similar to the last one sits in four feet of water, the river lapping just at the edges. Two disgruntled catfolk are either stranded on the table or have simply chosen to not get off and wade back to shore, along with what looks like the corpse of a young girl.

Was this match always set to take place in the river, or have they been waiting for so long that the waterline caught up to them? The river's not flooding that fast, is it?

"Can you swim?" it asks the hero.

"No."

It nods in understanding, and a moment later Blai finds himself capable of flight. It's accompanied by a phrenic action for moving through space without physical exertion, so natural in comparison to his other mental faculties that it's only noticeable on account of not having been there before.

Blai has not actually happened to be subject to a Fly spell before. A lot of things come up in twenty years at the Wound but not that one. It's probably like this.

He flies across the river.

Khazer and an unidentified human flying towards them is apparently the signal for the catfolk to jump in the river and swim away. Neither of them look particularly happy while doing so – the water slicks their fur down thoroughly, giving them the bedraggled and sorry appearance that most housepets develop upon being bathed against their will – but neither seems to have true thalassophobia.

"This spell uses your innate magic," Khazer says, after they've reached the table. "It will last indefinitely, but you only have enough 「lilims」 to sustain one buff at a time. Inform anyone offering you additional magic of this fact, lest they intentionally ignore any dangerous details."

A 'lilim' is a unit of magic, quantized more finely than a spell circle, but Blai's relative unfamiliarity with magical theory means that additional nuance is lost in translation. It feels like Khazer is describing flight in terms of a non-integer number of cantrips.

"Does it cancel if I land, or anything?"

"No. This version of the spell does not fail gracefully, but it will inform you when your pace exceeds your ability to sustain it. It would take some recklessness on your part to fall out of the sky."

Blai nods and settles on the little island.

The corpse of the little girl lies naked and face-down in the water, her legs bobbing in the water along with the swells. The current isn't fast enough to pull her away. The chessboards on the slab are present but void of pieces, though now that Blai knows where they are he can see the embossed outline of where the time control clocks are, or will be. Someone throws an object through one of Building 81's highest windows, which falls for more than ten seconds before it hits the water with a muted splash. For a while, that's the only interesting thing to happen.

The calm of sitting by the river and doing nothing in particular is broken by the arrival of a distinctly aquatic demon. An enormous and horrifically bloated human-ish upper body fused to a serpentine tail wider than a man is tall bursts from beneath the surface, accompanied by the stench of rotting fish. The first thing that comes to mind is neither 'merman' nor 'sea monster' but 'ill-advised wizard experiment which hopefully does not breed true'.

"I've got the pieces," he announces, in a voice that sounds like a Chelish man trying to speak through a mouthful of water. "Finding them was— Khazer?"

"That is my name, and we shall champion this match. Will you play white or black?"

"… white," the demon says reluctantly. It drops a leather bag filled with pieces on the board and starts to set them up.

Khazer looks at Blai.

"Is - finding pieces - often a constraint? Is there a fourth player coming?"

"These ones are hardly cheap," the demon says, in a tone just shy of complaint. "Resistance to magic is complicated enough on its own."

"Blocking interference from disinterested third parties is an imposing but vital standard," Khazer elaborates. Then, to the demon: "Do you have a partner?"

"Yeah, she'll play black."

Blai sits down opposite the place that will hold forthcoming probably-also-a-demon.