Infinity Blade 01- Awakening

though people still tried. He’d deliberately kept the people of this island from knowing the true nature of the Deathless. So long as they thought they could kill him, they’d focus their rebellion on assassins and warriors sent to challenge him.
    No, an assassination attempt wasn’t what disquieted him. What worried him, as the lift began to lower, was the chance that the bolt hadn’t been meant for him. That it had been meant for the target it had struck.
    If that were the case, someone had known to kill Ausar before the God King could strike with the Infinity Blade. And that meant someone understood far more than they should.
    Siris awoke with a deep gasp. It was the uncontrolled gasp of one who had been without breath for too long. The gasp of the dead returning to life.
    He sat up with a jerk, something liquid and gel-like sliding from his naked torso. He was sitting a metal tub in a dark room, which was lit only by a few flickering red lights.
    He breathed in and out, viscous goo dripping from his chin. He raised a trembling hand to feel his cheek. “Damnation,” he whispered. “I’m one of them.”
    “I sat there for hours, that first night,” a voice whispered.
    He turned to the side. Isa sat in the corner, on the floor, her knees up and her dark coat spread on the metallic floor around her.
    “I watched you,” she said, staring straight ahead. Not at him. Not at anything, really. “I watched your chest go up and down. I sat there, counting to myself. Terrified.  You were one of them. I knew it. I’d seen you use one of their rings. I’d heard you claim to have killed the God King with his own sword. You fought like one of them, like a . . . a creature from another time. Too perfect to be completely human. A warrior cannot learn such skill in one lifetime. You fought like a god.”
    He blinked, then wiped goo from his face. Hell take me . . . it can’t be true . . .
    “And yet,” Isa whispered, “you’d been kind to me. I knew I should strike you down, take the sword. You were lying to me, I thought. Pretending honesty, pretending kindness, spouting all of that nonsense about a Sacrifice. You were making sport of me. Why else would one of the Deathless act as if he were a mortal?”
    “I didn’t know,” Siris whispered. “I . . .”
    “I was frozen,” she said, growing quieter. “Watching you lie there. What was I to do? Should I act upon the lies I knew you held close, or on the honesty I saw in your eyes? It was not an easy choice. In the depth of the night, my fears won.” She looked up and met his eyes across the small chamber. “I didn’t think it a betrayal, since you had obviously lied to me. Obviously . . .”
    Siris coughed, trying to get some of the gunk out of his mouth. “I’ve lied to myself too, apparently.” He closed his eyes, raising his hands to his head, groaning.
    This can not be possible.
    “Do you really not remember anything?” she asked. “You’ve probably lived thousands of years.”
    “All I know is my own life,” he said. “Growing up in Drem’s Maw, being told I was the Sacrifice. Seeking the God King.” He took a deep breath, in and out. “I’m just a person. Hell take me, a regular person .”
    “You don’t fight like one.”
    He tried to banish the thoughts that came next. Memories from his childhood. Veterans who had left the God King’s service and come to train the Sacrifice. They had whispered that Siris was too good. That he learned too quickly. By childhood, he’d been able to fight as well as any of them. By his teenage years, he’d have been named a duelmaster in any major city.
    By his twentieth year, he had been good enough to defeat the God King.
    . . . too perfect to be completely human anymore . . . you fought like a god . . .
    “I’ve seen something in your eyes, occasionally,” she said. “A depth to them, a . . . change to you. Sudden flashes of arrogance.”
    “The Infinity Blade,” he protested, opening his eyes. “It was corrupting me.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “Why would a weapon built to free mankind, to defeat the Deathless, corrupt the one using it?”
    “I . . .”
    She mocks me. Kill her.
    An awareness blossomed in him. Those thoughts weren’t external. They were a part of him. A real part of him.
    “That’s who I was . . .” he whispered. “That’s what I used to be. One of them. Oh . . . Verity . . .” He could almost remember it. He banished