Infinity Blade 02 - Redemption

daeril who had been nailed to the wall with a spear through its chest.
    Siris stepped through the door and into a room of silvery metal and wires. Raidriar sat here, with no helm, muttering to himself and tapping his finger against a mirror.
    Hell take me . . . Siris thought. The Soulless wore hair that hadn’t seen a comb in far too long. Its clothing was soiled, and beside it sat a plate of what appeared to be fingers. It raised one of these to its lips, gnawing on the flesh and tapping at the screen.
    “He’s going to end it,” the Soulless muttered. “Boom. Gone.”
    The Infinity Blade lay in a heap of swords beside the doorway. Discarded as if it were junk. Did that mean the Blade was a fake? Siris slipped it from the pile, causing several swords to clank.
    The Soulless twisted in its seat, his eyes wide, hands clawlike and rigid. Siris raised the Blade, falling into a battle stance.
    The Soulless snorted. “Come to kill me? Ha! Joke’s on you. Just a copy. How stupid you look!”
    “You do know, then,” Siris said.
    “Yes, yes. Just a copy. Everything is a copy.”
    Siris frowned. “You’re a Soulless.”
    “Everything is Soulless!” The clone ran fingers through its hair. “Whole world. We thought we were playing chess with him, you see. We’ve all gotten very good at the game. We know all the rules. Problem is, he’s not playing chess. He’s playing solitaire!”
    The Soulless’s mind, it appeared, had not lasted the ten years that Raidriar had said it would.
    “Solitaire!” The Soulless put another severed finger into its mouth and chewed at the flesh. “Don’t you see? Different game entirely! Different pieces? We’re the pieces! We aren’t playing against him.”
    “It is hard,” Siris said, lowering the Infinity Blade, “to realize you are not what you thought. I understand.”
    “Wait.” The Soulless stopped laughing, then focused on him more directly. “Ausar?”
    Siris nodded.
    “I should probably kill you,” the Soulless said. Instead, it turned away from him back to his mirror, spitting out a fingerbone with the flesh chewed free. “It’s hard to decide. What is my allegiance? Do I resent my prime, the real Raidriar? Or do I wish him to survive, so at least one of us can. Of course, he’s a copy too . . .”
    “A copy?”
    “Not of anyone specific,” it said. “But this whole world is a copy, you see, just like me . . .”
    “Why did you kill the daerils?” Siris asked, looking at the fallen fingerbone.
    “Killed everyone. I couldn’t let them see my face, and my helm was getting stuffy. The fingers are disgusting, I realize, but I need to eat something. Stops those damn corpses from scratching the ground, too. Yes, I’m quite mad. Combined effects of an unstable Q.I.P. and an existential crisis, I suspect. Dagger?”
    “What—”
    The Soulless spun and lunged for Siris in a fluid motion, carrying a dagger, lips wide and bloodied from its gruesome meal.
    Siris took a step forward and rammed the Infinity Blade into the copy’s chest. The poor creature’s knife skidded ineffectually across Siris’s armor. It might have once had Raidriar’s skill—the dead daerils indicated that was likely the case—but by this point, the copy had fallen too far to fight with any real skill.
    The Infinity Blade flashed briefly. Not as it would for even a lesser Deathless, and the corpse slipped off the Blade.
    Siris shook his head, stepping up to the mirror that the Soulless had been inspecting. He read in silence for a moment.
    Then he gasped.
    ISA RESTED her fingers on the machine.
    This cursed machine . . . it was the source of everything wrong in the world. It was the source of them .
    She almost went back to her drinking. She’d only had one mug so far, not enough to really even notice. Perhaps if she were more drunk, this decision would make more sense.
    Don’t be stupid, she told herself, walking around the device.
    She should destroy this machine. Stop Siris from being able to change any of her soldiers into abominations like he was.
    But she didn’t. She stopped beside the control mirror instead and stared at it for a long, long time.
    She wanted to fight them. She knew, deep down, there was only one way to do that. She’d rescued Siris because of that single fact—that without Deathless of their own, they had no chance.
    It’s going to come to this, she thought. I can either make the decision myself, or I can be pushed into it.
    That, in the end, was