The Demon stood motionless, eyes fixed looking downward. I could tell he was having trouble working out what had just happened, as was the intended effect. After a while I realised I hadn’t been breathing, so I inhaled deeply.

“Are YOU prepared to concede?”

My cocky remark was met by a snort and then deathly silence; all I could hear was my rapidly increasing heartbeat. Something we both had failed to notice at first is that a lonesome rook had been sitting untouched in the bottom corner of my side of the board throughout the entire game. My mind buzzed and whirred thinking about how I could use him to finally take down the enemy king. But for now my pawn provided a small distraction.

I had pushed the piece deliberately slowly to the second square diagonally above my Queen, shielding her from the threat of the bishop. Taking my pawn would result in death-by-queen for his bishop and also put him in check, and he couldn’t move his knight as this would leave him in check.

I let out a chuckle. He frowned.