Dragon Wasteland
This is a story of incredible heroism and a living Dragon Bishop chess piece from the Paradigm chess30 variant.
DRAGON WASTELAND
Dan Croley awoke to the sound of howling wind and the sting of sand. Tiny grains were everywhere—in his ears, his nose, his eyes, and even places he didn’t dare to mention. It felt as if he had turned into sandstone himself—except he wasn’t rock, just a man buried alive in a desert storm.
The wind raged on, hurling the sand relentlessly, until Dan disappeared beneath billions of grains. Eventually, the storm calmed. The wind died down, and Dan clawed his way out of the dune like someone digging out of an avalanche. He looked around. Nothing but desert. Sand stretched endlessly in every direction.
Behind him, half-buried beneath the dunes, were the broken remains of what used to be his house.
He stared at them, trying to piece together what had happened. He remembered going to sleep—and waking up in midair. His house had been flying. Not lifted by balloons like in a cartoon, but carried into the sky by a dragon.
But not just any dragon.
There was something strange about this creature—it looked like a chess piece. Not from a standard set, but from a variant Dan knew well: Paradigm Chess30. This wasn't just a bishop. It was a Dragon Bishop.
Dan knew all about it—he was obsessed with alternate chess variants, had even designed one of his own once, though it had never caught on.
He also remembered something else. When he first woke up inside the swaying house, he had looked out the open window. Clouds were far below. The sight nearly made him faint. But he didn’t. He managed to hold on, though nausea churned in his stomach.
The Dragon Bishop eventually released the house. It plummeted at a terrifying speed, tearing itself apart on the way down. It hadn’t been high enough to be crushed by pressure, but it was still too high to survive intact.
Dan had been lucky. He was holding on to a table when the house fell. As everything tumbled through the air, the table spun and flipped. It landed legs-first, which immediately snapped on impact, and the top cracked. But Dan survived. He wasn’t even knocked out.
It was around midnight.
Dan normally slept nine hours a night—from nine in the evening to six in the morning—so his exhaustion made sense. The desert was still calm then. No wind, no storm. So he laid down in the sand and went back to sleep.
Dan woke up in the middle of a sandstorm. It was burying him alive.
When he finally dug himself out again, he couldn’t remember what had happened. In fact, he hadn’t been able to remember anything even while the storm raged. All around him was nothing but desert—a lifeless, endless wasteland.
Or so he thought.
Then he saw a shadow—large, gliding silently above. He looked up and spotted the Dragon Bishop flying just beneath the only cloud in the sky. It descended and landed not far from where Dan stood.
He squinted into the distance and noticed people. He began running toward them.
As he got closer, he realized they were in chains. Their bodies moved stiffly, lifelessly, like zombies. Drool dripped from their mouths. One of them fell to his knees before Dan and moaned in a voice that sounded like air leaking from a tire:
“Heeelp... meeeee...”
Dan stared at the man in shock and disbelief. Suddenly, a whip lashed out, striking the man, who groaned and stood back up, stumbling away.
Dan turned to see who had wielded the whip—it was another chess piece. A bishop. A standard one this time, not the Dragon. It stood upright and human-like, with the shape and form of a living servant.
It looked like the Dragon Bishop was their king. And this bishop... just one of many loyal enforcers.
More chained people passed by Dan, each casting him pleading, desperate looks. One after another, they dropped to their knees in front of him, begging for help—only to be struck down by the bishops’ whips.
Dan clenched his fists. Something stirred inside him.
“Don’t worry,” he thought, “I’ll help you.”
He knew what it would cost. He would have to destroy the Dragon Bishop. Not just to save these people—but to avenge what had been done to him. To his home. To his peace.
Dan began walking toward the dragon.
The air was filled with groans and cracks of the whip. The bishop-enforcers stalked among the slaves, punishing every whispered plea. Still, Dan pushed forward.
Eventually, he stood before the Dragon Bishop itself. The towering figure loomed in silence. It wasn’t moving. At first, it looked like a massive statue covered in dark, leathery skin.
Maybe it was asleep.
Dan crept closer. Step by step.
Then—another prisoner collapsed in front of him, crying out for help. A bishop cracked its whip with terrifying force. The prisoner’s scream echoed through the air and—
The Dragon Bishop stirred.
Its wings shifted, sweeping the sand around it. The creature shuddered like a stone gargoyle waking from a thousand-year slumber.
Then, it moved.
As the Dragon Bishop fully awakened, it let out a ghastly, rasping sound—like someone choking through a phone speaker.
It raised its head, opened its mouth, and unleashed an inferno.
Flames roared skyward like a pillar of fire, reaching all the way to the clouds. For a moment, the sky itself seemed to burn. Fire rained down from above—but somehow, it missed Dan.
The dragon’s glowing yellow eyes locked onto him. And then—they turned red.
It exhaled hard, steam hissing from its nostrils. Dan noticed something on the ground—a whip, likely dropped by one of the bishops. He lunged for it, but before he could grab it, the dragon breathed again. The whip ignited instantly and turned to ash.
Then the beast spread its wings and took flight—slowly, almost effortlessly.
It grabbed Dan between its clawed base and pedestal-like legs and lifted him into the air. Dan flailed, then reached for a nearby bishop. He caught hold and gripped so tightly that the bishop was lifted with him.
The bishop lashed at Dan with its whip, but Dan caught it mid-swing and yanked it free. These bishops had arms—human-like and horrifying. Dan kicked the creature, watching as it plummeted toward the earth.
It shattered on impact, breaking into chunks like stone struck by a hammer. Blood pooled beneath its remains.
Dan barely had time to catch his breath.
The Dragon Bishop's tail coiled around him—tight, muscular, relentless. It wrapped around his body like an anaconda seizing its prey, and began to squeeze.
Dan could feel the pressure rising. His ribs creaked. Breathing grew harder with every passing second. His skin turned greenish. Then purple. His limbs went cold.
There was no escape. No way out. Or so it seemed.
Then he remembered—the bishop’s whip. It was still in his hand. And his arm, lifted above his head, was free from the dragon’s grip.
With all the strength he had left, Dan swung the whip downward—straight at the dragon’s tail.
The beast shrieked. The tail loosened, just slightly—but enough.
The Dragon Bishop lashed out with one of its massive wings, knocking Dan back toward the pedestal where its legs were anchored. It reared up for a finishing strike, ready to swat him down like a fly.
Dan dodged just in time.
He scrambled up the creature’s body, running toward its head with the whip clutched tightly in his hand. When he reached the dragon’s long, scaled neck, he threw the whip around it and pulled.
Hard.
The Dragon Bishop thrashed, struggling to breathe. The fire it had meant to unleash now burned inside its own throat. Its leathery skin began to melt—slowly at first, then faster—like a plastic bottle left too long in a microwave.
Black and red blood dripped from the creature’s neck.
The first to notice it were the bishops. Then the prisoners.
In that moment, their thoughts aligned:
Freedom.
The dragon’s eyes dimmed. Its wings twitched. And with one final, guttural breath—it released an enormous torrent of fire into the sky.
Then silence.
The Dragon Bishop collapsed, crashing to the ground with a sound like thunder.
Dan fell with it, tumbling through the air, hoping—praying—that he’d land on the dragon’s soft belly.
The dragon hit the earth with a deafening thud.
Dan was still falling.
The chains that once bound the people had vanished. The prisoners stood taller now—free. The bishops had thrown down their whips.
Dan was nearly there—he reached out, aiming for the dragon’s belly—
—but missed.
He struck the dragon’s pedestal. Head first.
The impact was brutal—like a watermelon hitting concrete from six feet up.
The people ran to him, gathering around his broken body. Tears filled their eyes. To them, he wasn’t just a stranger.
He was their savior.
One man gently lifted Dan’s body and suggested a funeral. Another proposed building a monument in his honor.
And as for the dragon? They agreed it should be banished—cast into an icy crater so cold no flame could ever reach it again.
It took days, and the combined strength of many—but they pulled the massive corpse across the sands, all the way to the edge of the Frozen Realm. They pushed it into the abyss, and within a year, it was sealed in ice so deep and so cold that not even time itself would thaw it.
The people left the wasteland behind and returned to the city.
There, they told the tale of Dan Croley—the man who faced a dragon, freed the forgotten, and paid the ultimate price.
And in the city’s heart, a monument now stands.
Carved into stone are the words:
“Dan Croley, who by his own
hand, brought down the Dragon”.
NOTES TO THE STORY
To Chess
Paradigm chess30 is a chess variant that is played on a standard chessboard. In this variant a Dragon Bishop piece is added. In addition, the starting positions of the pieces are randomly generated with the exception of the King, Rooks and Pawns. One of the reasons the game was created was to minimize draws.
The Dragon Bishop chess piece as it appears on chess.com is here:
The movements of the Dragon Bishop chess piece are here:
A Few Words from the Author
Dear reader,
If you've made it to the end of the story, you might also be curious about the story behind the story. The idea first came to me when I saw a chess piece called the Dragon Bishop. To me, it looked more like a dragon than a bishop—and I started wondering: what if it could fly? That simple question sparked another: what would a battle between a human and a Dragon Bishop look like?
And then it hit me—what if the piece came to life?
That’s when I started writing. The very first thing that popped into my head was the name of the main character. I don’t know why, but “Dan” came first. Then “Crowley.” But as I started writing, I accidentally typed “Croley” instead—and decided to keep it. It felt unique and gave the character a little something special.
I began the story with a dream of a desert, and from there, I needed a way to get to the desert. I thought of the movie Up, and instead of balloons carrying a house, I imagined the Dragon Bishop flying away with it. From there, the plot began to unfold. I introduced enslaved people to give the story emotional weight, and I didn’t want the Dragon Bishop to be the only living chess piece—so I added bishops who kept the slaves in line with whips.
Then came Dan Croley’s motivation: freeing the enslaved people. That became his reason to fight. I wrote the scene where he confronts the Dragon Bishop, and though the battle ended on a somewhat dark note, I wanted to give readers hope—so Dan frees the slaves and even the chess bishops in the end, earning recognition as a hero.
At that point, the story needed an English version—but my English wasn’t strong enough to do it justice. So yes, I turned to AI for help. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for that. I made sure to double-check everything to keep the spirit of the original. To my surprise, the translation stayed true to my vision.
Once the story was ready, I shared it on chess.com—but something was missing: illustrations. I added those, and finally, I thought it would be a good idea to include a mention of Paradigm Chess 30, the chess variant that features the Dragon Bishop piece. And since I personally like to know the background behind the stories I read, I added this part titled A Few Words from the Author.
If you have any questions about the plot or anything else related to the story, don’t hesitate to message me on chess.com or leave a comment.
Thank you for reading—and I hope you enjoyed the journey.
