Infinity Blade 01- Awakening

ago. When you could not be killed permanently, you found other ways to prove yourself superior. Duels were about finesse, skill, and class, not who could construct the most powerful device to aid them.
    His Devoted entered in a cluster, then fell to their knees. The God King passed them, his footsteps crunching on the bamboo rug. “Activate the deadminds in the temple of Lantimor,” he said, waving a gauntleted hand.
    “Great master?” asked one of the Devoted, looking up. “Has something gone wrong?”
    “Of course not,” the God King said.
    The Devoted said nothing; they knew the God King was not supposed to have been reincarnated here for some time yet. They also knew not to demand answers of him.
    Some Deathless would execute their servants for even this small amount of questioning, but the God King was no fool. Mortals were a resource, one he had used to great advantage when many of his peers dismissed them out of hand. In fact, he was fond of many of them, including Eves, High Devoted of this particular temple.
    Surround yourself with people too afraid to speak, and you left yourself to only your own ideas. That could be disastrous. It was important to have men who would question you and see flaws in your plans, so long as you could control them. It was all about control.
    The rain continued outside; the God King wished he could control that. He was trying to find ways, for it galled him that he could not do something so seemingly simple.
    The eye of the room’s primary deadmind displayed a window into his palace on Lantimor, the place where that . . . child had defeated him. It displayed an empty throne room, and information came up in lists beside it.
    A week had passed since his death. A tiny smidgen of time, barely worth noticing—except it meant that the child had had time to escape with the Godkiller. No matter. Raidriar had good ways to keep track of him.
    A particular bit of information scrolled past, and it gave the God King pause. Dead, he read. All three of my captives. But those were soul cells. They couldn’t be completely gone unless . . .
    The sword was working. That should have been impossible, in the hands of one such as he’d faced. The proof was before him, however, and he felt a thrill at it. How, then, had Raidriar himself survived? He confronted this question, the one most worrisome to him, as it displayed a profound lack of control. That fight had not gone the way it should have.
    Of course. It was strong enough to kill lesser Deathless, but not yet at full power. He should have realized this. Perhaps only one more death of the right bloodline, and . . .
    Ah, he thought, seeing another bit of information. That could be an issue.
    “Find me a recording of the moment where I let him defeat me,” he said out loud. The servants worked, and the deadmind mirror displayed an image of him fighting the child in the throne room.
    Too many questions. He hated questions. They would surrender their secrets to him; he had come too far to let this plan spiral away from him now. In a way, all that had happened was good, as he now had the proof he needed.
    And so, he decided he had not been defeated. This was what the plan had required, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.
    Those moves . . . he thought idly, pondering the recording. So familiar. Who trained him . . . ?
    And then it all locked into place.
    He’d been played. Masterfully. Worker of Secrets, he thought. My, but you are a subtle one.
    “Gather the Seringal,” he said, sending his Devoted to fetch the most skilled of his knights. “And set up surveillance on that child.”
    The Devoted burst into motion. The God King sat back, contemplating. He waited for six hours, practically motionless, a few thoughts playing across his mind. He could faintly recall when six hours would have felt like a great deal of time to sit and think, but now it passed as quickly to him as a single breath.
    His servants located the child, crossing the rocky expanses of his homeland. The God King laced his fingers, inspecting the child’s path.
    So. This ‘Siris’ was returning to the palace, was he? Why? The God King leaned forward and watched with interest.
    Siris stepped up onto the edge of a rocky precipice overlooking the God King’s castle. It squatted in the cliffs, like a nugget of dark iron trapped in the surrounding rocks.
    He’d decided that he needed to start here, primarily because he wanted to lay down a new trail