Instead of thousand possibilities - part 5 - From the ravine and across the wasteland
This is the fifth part of the chess story A Place of a Thousand Possibilities. If you haven’t yet read parts one , two , three and four, now’s the perfect time to catch up.
I’m not sure I should reveal what’s coming up in this chapter—so I’ll just share this one thing: the Elephant Man will once again come to Ray’s aid.
INSTEAD OF THOUSAND POSSIBILITIES - PART 5 - FROM THE RAVINE AND ACROSS THE WASTELAND
Ray started thinking about how to get up out of the ravine, because now the path was insanely steep. He realized the Elephant Man might still be somewhere down below — the guide through this world, at least along the river they crossed together. He was like a chess coach, teaching someone who only knows that this amazing game exists. Showing him a world full of thrill but also danger — one wrong move and the game’s over.
The Elephant Man had crossed the river with Ray, showing him both the dangers and excitement of life in this world. Ray knew the Elephant Man mostly guided him across the river, but it occurred to him that maybe he understood the whole ravine. Looking down, Ray saw the Elephant Man climbing into a boat. He shouted to him.
The Elephant Man heard him, and also what he said next — how to get up.
“Sometimes you’ll see chess pieces — chancellors — upside down, resting on their bases,” he said. “They’re here to clean the water. They hang in the air, base up, like bats hanging by their feet, sucking in a water current from high above, like a watery tornado cleaning the river. Then they swoop down and release the filtered water back into the river. They’re filtering right now. Run down here — when they finish, they’ll release the water. You grab onto them and fly up. But we still gotta get on the boat, so hurry!”
Ray looked around quickly and saw them. The chancellors were up high, water behind them rising like a narrow tornado at least a hundred meters tall. He could hardly believe it. Above the fog, down in the valley, it looked magical — like clouds at sunset seen from a plane. They looked like cotton candy, with a gorgeous sun behind them reminding him that this world was much bigger than he thought.
Ray quickly looked away and headed down. It was still climbable from where he was, even walkable if you were careful. Going down was harder, but he managed it. When he reached the bottom, the Elephant Man was already on the boat and Ray got on as fast as he could.
They drifted close to shore, where no duck chess piece had yet been spotted, waiting for at least one of the chancellors to finish cleaning. They were still filtering water, and the water level was slowly dropping. Soon it felt like the boat touched the riverbed. The surface kept falling, like a confident chess player with four seconds on the clock who knows they can’t be checkmated on this move.
The water was disappearing, and the duck chess piece became visible, whole with its base. The shore stood high on a steep slope, like a path leading out of the ravine. Ray realized just how deep the river really was.
Then he noticed something else — a chancellor piece was flying back. It swooped down, and on the Elephant Man’s signal, Ray jumped off the boat and ran along the riverbed, slowly filling with water, toward where the chancellor was releasing the filtered water.
Before Ray could reach it, another chancellor flew by and crashed into him. Ray fell to the ground as the water level rose. All five chancellors had arrived and were releasing water at an unbelievable speed. It was like they weren’t enough — they had multiplied their pace a hundredfold.
But Ray managed to get to one chancellor. He stood up and jumped several times — high and far. Then the water rose again, and a Berlin chess piece slammed into him. Ray jumped in pain and let go of the chancellor, falling into the water. It was up to his waist, and the Berlin piece floated nearby, circling him like a vulture eyeing its prey.
Ray didn’t understand why only one Berlin was after him, but maybe it knew he wouldn’t hurt it on purpose. He quickly got up and jumped — only to fall back down into water that was now up to his waist.
When he grabbed the chancellor again, the Berlin hit him once more, Ray gasped in pain, and fell again. When he hit the bottom, he landed right on the Berlin piece, crushing it beneath him. It shattered like glass, its wooden shards slowly bleeding into the river water.
Ray realized the water level was insanely high now and time was running out. As he swam upward, the goal seemed to drift farther away — like an opponent delaying checkmate by rearranging pieces. He was losing hope, but then he noticed the water level had stopped rising. He had only seconds left to grab the chancellor.
Suddenly an incredible strength took over him. He reached the surface and caught the chancellor — like a fish snatching bait on a hook before it hits the water. Ray was on his way up, but fear gripped him. He realized how high he was and how fragile the chancellors’ grip was.
When he finally reached the top, with the chancellor piece above the ravine, he let go. Better this way, even if he could have gotten a little closer to the king without much effort.
He looked back and thought to himself how unreal the path he traveled was. But when he looked ahead and saw that vast, endless desert, it hit him — the journey still ahead was going to be even longer.
Along the wasteland path, Ray hadn’t seen a thing for a long time. Just stones, sand — that was it, plain and simple. The sky was lightly overcast, with clouds colored much like the bluish-yellow sunset he remembered from when he first stepped into this world. Ray had been walking through the wasteland for quite a while now, feeding occasionally on tiny chess pawn pieces no bigger than ants.
But soon, something caught his eye — a small local power station, one of those scattered out here in the desert. Ray wouldn’t have gone inside, if it weren’t for a sudden sandstorm that whipped up and tore chunks of stone through the air.
Because of the sandstorm, Ray stepped inside a small local power station and stared at an older version of a chess queen piece, parts of which glowed blue. The rest was white, but only partially — it looked like a translucent white substance through which the blue light faintly shone. The chess piece was alive. It was trembling, but held tightly in a giant metal shackle, with wires attached to its head. The wires were connected using what we call a "crocodile clip," holding it so firmly that blood was dripping from where it was fastened.
The piece shook more and more, and Ray couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t stand watching it tremble, suffer. So he climbed back out of the little power station. When he stepped outside, the storm was gone. Maybe it had ended a while ago, maybe Ray had been inside for a long time. Or maybe the storm really had only lasted a moment. Either way — it was gone. And Ray kept walking.
It didn’t take long before something approached him — a thing that looked like a mobile home being pulled by camel chess pieces. On one of the camels rode a general chess piece — not the older kind that looked like a slingshot, but the newer one that looked more like a pawn. The general grabbed Ray, threw him inside, and the trailer closed behind him. Then the general jumped back onto the camel, and the trailer started moving agaiin.
Continued story here
© Choanozoa (a pseudonym and the author’s trademark), all rights reserved.
A FEW WORDS FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear readers,
As you’ve probably noticed, this isn’t the final part of the story. As I mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, unlike in Dragon Wasteland, this story doesn’t yet include the additional sections with chess-related insights or the more detailed A Few Words from the Author. These will either appear at the end of the final chapter or be published separately on the blog afterward.
If you enjoy my stories, feel free to join my Discord server—there you'll get access to exclusive tales I haven’t shared anywhere else, plus a bunch of other perks, many of which I talk about in this video.
In any case, thank you for taking the time to read this part. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to let me know in the comments.
Thank you!
