Chris shows no sign of being especially alarmed or intrigued by this display. She keeps talking.

A circle of stylized crenellations constructs itself around the bishop, and builds upward and outward into the recognizable shape of fort #11, simplified and re-proportioned to fit around Blai's bishop. Tiny blurry smudges in the shape of pawns man the parapets and march in and out on patrols.

The shadow of the king flickers and fails; an illusory dawn rises over the fort, and the black bishop is blank, devoid of his patron. The spectral pawnlets scurry uncertainly through the fort.

When his new patron arrives, it's not as shadow but as light, a golden ray shining down and illuminating the bishop's blankness with the silhouette of a queen. A golden sword-in-sun engraves itself there, replacing the absent pentagram; and as the narrow ray expands to encompass the scene, the bishop's black shell blooms newly white.

"Spell's over," says Eliza, as Chris stops talking and the lingering image of the fort and the bishop fades slowly from the air.

"Do I need to explain that or does the spell come with additional divinatory information for the caster."

Chris makes some remark or other.

"Very little if any additional information beyond what we saw. She's saying a bishop with sword imagery is a novel combination, and I agree, though it makes sense given your holy symbol. From context and presentation it seems like that was... a retelling of some past events? Pawn into bishop into fort commander into differently liveried bishop?"

"Yes."

"It sounds as though there may be more to that story, but if you'd rather not get into it, it also sounds like whatever more there is isn't urgently relevant to the present day?"

"I don't really have a good excuse for not having explained it earlier but I would not describe it as urgent."

"Then shall we continue into Chris's protective spells for now, and come back to that topic later?"

"All right."

She gets up and helps Chris rearrange the chess pieces, chatting with Chris as she does and translating some of it for Blai. "Rook as fort is a very helpful metaphor for protective spells, we'll be leaning heavily on that one, but that sword-aspected bishop situation isn't bad either. It's not very usual to have that much emphasis on the pawn part of a pawn promotion—it got its own entire symbol, pawn as mace—so I think you're right that pawn is a very solid presence in your chess metaphor lineup. She's interested in experimenting later with how your created chess pieces work for spellcasting, but they're flimsy enough that it wouldn't make sense to use them for protective spells, so that'll have to be for another time."

A new square-within-square takes shape around him. Now the piece directly in front of him is a white bishop, and the white rooks stand to either side. White knights in front of and behind him complete that middle square; then in the outer square, two red rooks stand in front of and behind him, a red king to his left, a red queen to his right. Last of all, Eliza hands him a smooth river pebble, of a size to be easily held in one hand.

"That's the focus for the protective spells. You should hold onto it while Chris casts them; it'll be more of the same general kind of thing, illusory visions while she talks to the rock, but differently focused. It's still not dangerous to interrupt the spell, but it's a little more annoying this time, because interrupting in the middle of a heavy-duty spell like this can disrupt the workroom for a few hours so we'd have to wait around a bit before we could try recasting. Questions?"

"Is there any specific prescribed fashion in which I should hold it? - also does she want a Guidance?"

She asks.

She answers.

"Yes on the Guidance. The best place to hold it is comfortably in both hands in front of you, approximately centered left to right, but small variations in positioning don't matter very much as long as it's in your hand and inside the circle defined by the distance of your bishop from the centerpoint you're sitting on."

The bishop is far enough forward that Blai would have to be pretty deliberate about it to get the rock across that line, though depending on how well he can read the floor to trace that circle with his eyes, he might like to keep the rock in his lap just to be safe.

Blai has life-and-death-stakes practice telling whether things are inside or outside of notional circles! But the lap is a low-maintenance way to maintain a rock. He cups it in his hands and rests them on his crossed legs.

Eliza takes her seat behind him and gives the go-ahead to Chris again.

And again she speaks at length to an inanimate object, and again the visual effects begin to arise.

Much faster than last time, the walls of fort #11 spring into being around him, approximately tracing the outer square of the chess pieces on the floor. Translucent figures stand on the stylized parapets, facing outward, one at each compass point, each wearing a long chain shirt and tabard, each with Eliza's silhouette and Eliza's medium-length brown hair: the white-clad knight-Eliza in front of him holds a tower shield braced in front of her, while the red-clad queen and king to either side have respectively a longsword and a golden crown.

Blai's actual holy symbol on his actual chest glows with a sunny light that shines a queen's silhouette down onto the bishop in front of him, and just like it did before, the light expands to encompass the whole scene. The walls of the fortress, illuminated by that light, take on an aspect of unnatural solidity. The tone and rhythm of Chris's voice becomes more emphatic, more focused, reinforcing that solidity further. Everything else in the room seems to fade and recede, until there's just Blai, the rock in his hands, the bishop in front of him, and those impossibly strong stone walls guarded by a quartet of Elizas.

Chris brings her speech to a graceful close. The room fades back in, and the Elizas fade out, and the walls linger for a few long seconds before fading in turn.

"Spell's over," Eliza confirms. "That one took really well, it looks like."

Blai's eyes widen slightly in alarm when his actual holy symbol on his actual chest joins in the action but he holds his rock and remains still.

"What is the significance of you appearing in the illusion?"

"The pieces whose places you saw me take are the ones whose places I was holding in the spell, accompanied by my relevant metaphors: knight as shield for the purposes of a protective spell is fairly straightforward, king as crown and queen as sword is a combination that works well for me and references my combined role as on the one hand de facto leader of this whole me-being-the-Slayer operation and on the other hand the sole martial adventurer of same. Usually Chris gets to put up some walls with her rook aspect, but your rook-as-fort seems to have taken the lead on that one and put her in more of a support role."

"I didn't anticipate that part but it makes sense. It looked like #11."

"Yeah, that tracks." She gets up. "One more spell. That one was mainly aimed at magical protection, but if you're going to be patrolling with me we'll want physical protection as well, even though that's harder."

The arrangement of chess pieces doesn't change much; Eliza just lays out eight white pawns in a circle around the outer square and then heads for her seat again. "Questions?"

"Is there anything else I need to do besides sit here with the rock?"

"No, from your perspective this spell is the same procedure as the last one."

She sits down and signals Chris.