Infinity Blade: Redemption

hand . . .” He started to walk away.
    Then he hesitated, turning back in the night. “Our ship is at the hidden dock in the southern cove. Use it. See to your woman. I . . . I will see the Worker dead. I will chop off his head and set it up on a pole, for all to revile. This has been a long time coming, for me, Ausar. Farewell. Try not to let anyone kill you while we are apart. I prefer to think of that as my personal privilege.”
    He stalked out into the night.
    The Dark Self stirred, pleased.
    I don’t mind if the Worker kills you, Raidriar, Siris thought, gingerly lifting Isa’s body. I’ve had my fill of it. I just want you gone.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
    IT DID not take Raidriar long to heal. He inspected his new arm as he rode his horse to the Worker’s bunker, a monolithic stone tower in the middle of a wide expanse of desert.
    He was almost to the end. He stopped as he drew near, then unpacked something he’d tied to the back of the animal. Armor, his real armor, finished by Eves, who had met him on the way. The man had gathered several loyal Devoted out from under the Worker’s heel, and Raidriar had sent them on plots even Ausar didn’t know about.
    Raidriar put on his armor. He would not go into this particular battle poorly equipped.
    Curiously, he saw two daerils guarding the way in. Unusual for the Worker, who normally eschewed daerils in favor of Deathless guards. It seemed something just for Raidriar, a nod to the way he personally had always done things.
    That made him even more angry. The Worker knew he was coming, and had set these beings out here for him to fight, as Raidriar himself had always done with the Sacrifice who came to fight him. A subtle message that the Worker knew he’d be coming.
    Raidriar growled and stepped up to engage the first beast.
    SIRIS ROCKED in the cabin of the ship, wood groaning softly, waves crashing softly outside. Isa lay wrapped in a sheet on her bed, lashed in place. She was healing, slowly. He’d met back up with TEL and Terr, who now guarded his door.
    Siris raised a mirror before himself and engaged it. He was immediately rewarded with an image of the God King riding up to the Worker’s stronghold.
    The remote viewing device. Siris had slipped it onto the Infinity Blade’s handle. Now, he would watch for the perfect chance. For there was one thing that had been on the Soulless’s datapad that he’d deleted. One thing that Raidriar hadn’t seen and didn’t know.
    The Dark Self hummed softly. No, Siris hummed softly, in satisfaction.
    The perfect trap.
    RAIDRIAR KICKED a daeril off his sword. The dying creature tumbled down the stairs and slammed against the door at the bottom, throwing it open.
    Breathing hard inside his helmet, Raidriar followed it down. The deadmind in his armor chirped a quiet bird whistle in his ear, informing him of a minor injection to boost his stamina. Oddly, as he stepped over the corpse, he found himself struggling to remember the name of the bird that had once made that song. One of his favorites, from long ago . . .
    It was gone from his mind, lost to the thousands upon thousands of years it had been since his father had left him on that slab of metal. The bird species itself had been extinct for nearly as long, part of the price paid to bring about the era of the gods.
    Raidriar entered the chamber. A throne room, after Deathless ways—but then again, also different. Where the Worker sat at the end, lofty and imposing, was a throne for certain. His seat lay on a large dais high above the room, with a long set of steps leading up to it.
    But images hovered around him, screens projected into the air—a contrast to the throne. All those screens, powered by deadminds. Images tugged at the edges of Raidriar’s memory. Visions of another time, visions of his youth, when he had been called Jori. The person he had once been.
    Huge windows rimmed the upper edges of the room, showing the desert vista outside. The Worker worked in his hub of light, helm on the chair beside him, looking so . . . human, with the light of the screen reflecting in his eyes. He looked old. Not ancient, but certainly middle-aged, with creases in his skin, silver in his hair.
    Raidriar hated how human they all looked, once the masks were gone.
    “Worker!” he bellowed, crossing the floor of the chamber.
    The Worker didn’t look at him.
    “I have escaped your prison, Worker! I am here for you.”
    “You are such an interesting specimen,