Infinity Blade: Redemption

at the children. “I never—”
    “‘Never got to play games as a child,’” Isa said. “I know.”
    “Not that I remember, anyway,” he said, climbing the steps to join her. “TEL!” he said, noticing the small creature for the first time.
    Isa cocked her eye as Siris ran up. He was more excited to see the golem than he had been to see her? It was hard not to feel a little offended by that.
    “Master, you’ve been reborn too many times,” TEL said. “Oh, this is bad.”
    “It is bad and good, TEL,” Siris said, sighing. He reached the top of the balcony, and turned to watch the children as they ran toward the dining hall.
    “Isa,” he said. “Tell me of Siris.”
    “What? Yourself?”
    He nodded.
    “Uh . . . you’re kind of strange? You are also Deathless, and rather tall. And . . .”
    “No,” he said. “Tell me of the man they think I am. Tell me what you told them, the ‘extrapolations,’ as you put them. Tell me the person I need to be.”
    She collected herself, gathering her thoughts. “You want stories of Siris, do you?” she began. “Stories of the Deathless who fought for ordinary men?”
    He looked to her quizzically.
    “It’s how I start,” she said. “You want to hear it as they did? The stories? Well, stories I have. Too many stories. Stories like rats in the wheat, fat and glutted upon my thoughts and memories. It’s time that you heard them.”

DEVIATION
THE SEVENTH
    URIEL CRADLED his son’s limp body. Rain pelted him. Tears from far above.
    Adram stood to the side, a trail of blood washing from the cut on his head and streaming down his face. He raised his hands beside his head, blabbering nonsense, eyes wide.
    “Jori . . . Jori . . .” Uriel whispered, shaking.
    “I didn’t see him!” Adram screamed. “The rain! I couldn’t see him!”
    The too-red car rested with one tire up on the curb, the other on the mangled remains of Jori’s bicycle.
    “This is your fault, Uriel!” Adram bellowed into the rain. “You . . . you should have stayed at work! You were supposed to stay late! You did this! You forced this!”
    “Yes. I did.” Uriel laid down the broken body. “Cause and effect.”
    “Yeah . . .” Adram said. “Cause . . . cause and effect . . .”
    “No emotions,” Uriel said, rising.
    Killing a man turned out to be more difficult than Uriel would have expected. Even as Uriel had Adram pinned up against the car, hands around his neck, the man fought back. Adram was wounded, dazed from the wreck, but he was still stronger than Uriel and managed to batter his way free.
    As he was running away, Adram slipped on the grass, just as Uriel noticed a large wrench in the passenger seat of the man’s car. Presumably for “tweaking the engine,” as Adram always said. Uriel picked it up, hefting it, feeling its weight. It would do for fixing other problems.
    As Adram scrambled to get to his feet, Uriel stepped behind him and slammed the weapon down. Heavy as the wrench felt, it still took a good five hits to break the man’s skull open.
    Fortunately, the rain washed the blood away. That kept things neater. Cleaner.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN
    RAIDRIAR FIDDLED with the machine parts of the abomination he’d slain. Behind him, the carcass slumped where it had fallen, mouth open, one tattered wing toward the air. Teeth had begun to fall out of the mouth with a sound like dropping pebbles. Lacking the machinery to sustain it, the thing was literally falling apart.
    Raidriar pulled out some wires. This was why he’d always preferred independent organic minions, crafted through Q.I.P. mutation. The best of them could even breed true. Independent, capable of thought. That was true creation. This sloppy piece, this was nothing more than a monument to mediocrity.
    Eves approached. The High Devoted bore a few new scratches on his face, but had otherwise survived the collapse of the tunnel. His nephew, however, was another matter.
    “Your funeral service was properly morose, I presume,” Raidriar said, twisting two wires together.
    “I commended his spirit to your care, great master,” Eves said softly. “Your wisdom was profound in letting him survive to see your return before taking him.”
    Raidriar grunted, twisting the ring from his pouch into the center of the wires. He eyed the Devoted.
    “It was for the best, Eves,” he said.
    “Great master?”
    “This way, the lad fell in battle,” Raidriar said. “Frankly, he was annoying,