Infinity Blade 02 - Redemption

desk screen. “This really is a waste of time.”
    Raidriar stabbed him through the chest with the Infinity Blade.
    “Are you quite done?” the Worker asked, the Weapon still poking through his chest. “I have a lot I need to be doing.”
    No flash of light. No disjunction of the Q.I.P.
    “It’s a fake after all?” Raidriar whispered.
    “Hardly,” the Worker said. “Do you really think I would build a weapon that could destroy me?” He pinched the Blade between two fingers, then grunted and pulled himself off it. There was no blood.
    Raidriar raised the Weapon for another swing.
    “What are you going to do?” the Worker asked, settling down into the chair at his workstation. “Chop off my head? When you parted with Ausar, didn’t you say something about that? That you’d display my severed head for all to regard? You realize I’d grow my head back faster than you could hack it off.”
    Raidriar hesitated.
    “Right now, you’re wondering if I have bugged you, to listen in on things you’ve been saying.” The Worker paused. “No. And now you’re wondering if Ausar contacted me after you left—you wonder if he was a spy all along. Neither is true, Jori. The truth is simply that I know you, and can pick out exactly what you’ll say. I know everything.”
    “Lies.”
    “So stubborn. Tell me, how is your backup kingdom?”
    He can’t possibly know . . .
    “You know, the one you have stashed away in South Alithenia somewhere. I haven’t bothered to look, but I’d guess . . . where, Eropima? A small kingdom, dedicated only to you—though they’d call you by a different name. None of your Devoted know of it, of course. You only travel there by being reborn, so nobody can trace you. You keep it just in case, a place to rebuild. And you’ve never spoken of it to a soul, nor have you written down knowledge of it.”
    Raidriar stumbled backward.
    “Shall I keep going?” the Worker asked. “Before you came here, you sent your Devoted in three different directions. One to recover the Infinity Blade—which I assume you have set up to be teleported away in case you should fall. Another you sent on a fool’s errand to disguise your trail and confuse your enemies. The third you sent to assassinate the other clone of you that I created as backup to rule your kingdom.”
    Shock. Surprise. He was a god! He should not be so predictable. So readable. How . . .
    The Worker leaned forward. “I know everything, Jori. When you were but a child, I had already lived ten thousand lives.” He smiled. “Go ahead, ask me a question. Anything you wish.”
    A question. “How . . .” Raidriar gulped. Then it came to him. “If you are all-powerful, then how did you let yourself get trapped in a prison for a thousand years?”
    The Worker tapped a finger on the screen of his desk. Then he leaped to his feet, an Infinity Blade appearing in his fist in a flash of light. He struck at Raidriar, who barely got his weapon up in time to defend.
    “It was Ausar, wasn’t it?” Raidriar demanded, backing away.
    “He is an . . . anomaly,” the Worker growled.
    Ausar.
    The data they’d recovered . . . it showed that the Worker had projected that Ausar would create a Deathless army, but he had not. The Worker did not know about their hideout, otherwise he would have bombed that too. Ausar had chosen to put the resurrection chamber there, instead of elsewhere.
    “You may have lived thousands of lives,” Raidriar said, dancing backward, “but you don’t know everything . You merely know almost everything. You didn’t expect his betrayal.”
    “I didn’t expect the timing of it,” the Worker said, advancing.
    “He frightens you. You cannot anticipate him like you do others. Instead of imprisoning him, you made a child of him, wiping his memories. Or did he do that to himself? Either way, he transformed during those years—transformed into something far more dangerous than what he had been. Someone different from anything you’d seen before.”
    The Worker attacked.
    Raidriar fought.
    But he was outmatched.
    The Worker was good, so good , with the sword. Before him, Raidriar finally saw himself as he was—a babe. He danced around his enemy, moving backward across the dais, trying to fight. He was one of the most skilled swordsmen who had ever lived, but the Worker . . . the Worker had no trouble.
    Raidriar fought anyway. He fought with everything he had, and in the end, none of it mattered—for the Worker had