Once there was a boy who went to a carnival with his friends. An old man at a booth wearing a wizard's hat let them ride a rollercoaster they weren't tall enough to be allowed on. At the top of one of the loops, the boy fell out of the seat and landed on a flying ship that caught him, carrying him to the clouds. When he looked up, he saw that the captain looked just like the wizard at the booth.
They flew through the clouds, in between blue stars and infants riding in their cribs. As one of the stars got closer, a shiny landscape emerged. They flew down on a land made of candy, with mountains made of chocolate, trees that looked like candy canes, gummy bear bushes and gingerbread houses.
The beings who lived there were chess pieces fighting in a war. When they went to battle, they could only move in their respective directions; the pawn one or two steps forward, the bishop diagonally, the knight in L-shapes, etc. But they wished to move freely, which they expressed when they met the wizard and the boy.
Together they explored the candy land, seeking a way to grant them their wish. They came upon a glass-blown landscape, in which marvelous colors dazzled the eyes. Deep in the heart of this land of gleaming figures that were contorted in all sorts of artistic shapes, they found a white city with buildings that looked like all the chess pieces. At the center stood the King's Tower, which they decided to enter.
Oddly enough, the city was empty, so the boy and the wizard climbed the tower as swiftly as they could. Inside the highest terrace was a baroque library with a parquet floor. It was filled with sculptures of deep thinkers, the globes of other worlds, and all the important beings one could find in the books.
On a pedestal stood the largest book of them all, a holy book the city's scribes had written. The wizard read that the chess pieces had once lived here but were ordered by human overlords to wage battle in the lands of candy and glass, only for their petty entertainment. There was a spell in the book, revealing that only the blood of a human child could bring the chess pieces home to freedom.
And so, the boy crossed his heart, offering it to the wizard's deathly wand. But the wizard decided he wouldn't strike the boy down, that his innocence and selflessness had shown how good humans could be if given the chance. Despite most of them being corrupted by vice, some just needed a little mental work to reach maturity. The chess pieces would have to suffer indefinitely in order to mold the minds of their morally challenged overlords. And that is how the game of chess came to be played by humans.
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