Deathsong Chronicles - Sonata 7

Xepher ran on and on, the brain room seemingly miles away. All the time, he had his sword out, ready to oppose all opposition.

Yet none challenged him. The only organisms he met were dead corpses. Dead from the wall-mounted miniguns, dead from bio-weapons, and dead from blade marks, likely Orologio's own work.

He reached the outside of the Brain room, took a deep breath, and strode in.

And gasped as he beheld the enormous, cavernous chamber. It stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see, dark as night, the only illumination being the crimson hues arising from the pathways hanging in space.

He carefully tread through the mysterious paths, heading for the circular platform in the center. He was concentrating on not losing his footing, and thus was surprised by a hologram of Eculemess. "With each second, the AERIA gains speed as it hurtles to Rursus." she vanished.

Xepher continued on. He considered jumping and flying over to the center, but thought better of it. A hologram of Orologio appeared next, and said:" When the ship which bears the mass of a continent crashes into Rursus, what a glorious sight it will be." he too, vanished.

He reached the center, and stepped on the platform. A massive vertical tunnel appeared and the platform shot up like a bullet.
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The platform suddenly jolted to a stop, and he flew upwards. Curiously,he did not fall back to the ground. Instead, he hung in space, or so it seemed.

Orologio and Eculemess appeared in front of him. He dropped down onto something, and before his eyes a hologram of a chessboard appeared, larger than life. So large, in fact, that he just took up the space of one black box.

"Pawns and knights,rooks and bishops...a little game of chess once in a while isn't so bad now, hmm, Xepher?" taunted Orologio. A couple of the chesspieces he mentioned each appeared on the other side of the board as warriors.

The pawns charged at him with no heed for safety, and perished swiftly. The knights flanked Xepher and attacked from both sides on horseback, and he just leapt aside as they lunged, thus allowing them to impale each other.

The rooks used lasers to shoot Xepher, while the bishops had spikes that tried to impale him as they moved diagonally across the board. Xepher leapt and dodged, firing off magic bolts to destroy them one by one.

Finally, the last one was destroyed. "As I thought. The game just isn't interesting enough without both the queen and the king..." said Eculemess as they descended to the chessboard. They drew their swords, with the shapes of clock-hands.

"En garde, Xepher." said Orologio. With that, they charged him.