PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE



SIRIS SNAPPED open his eyes and rolled. He had only a few moments before–

Hands grabbed his hair, yanking his head upward. A knee against his back forced him down to the cold stone.

Vision blurry, Siris twisted, trying to claw at the hands holding him. He had to–

The hands smashed Siris’s face down into the stone ground.

All went black.


CONSCIOUSNESS returned to Siris like an eagle spreading its wings. His mind flooded with sensation. The cold ground. His face resting in a pool of nearly dried blood, sticky against his skin. The stale scent of the prison.

He took a deep breath and threw himself to his feet, turning to swing. He opened his eyes to a blurry world of shadows and filtered light.

Those shadows caught him, tripped him, then slammed him back against the ground.

Siris growled. His primal instincts knew where his enemy would be, and he kicked upward into a soft stomach. Connecting felt so satisfying.

The shadows cursed. Siris pulled his foot back and rolled to his feet.

A weight slammed him backward against the wall. Siris writhed, but hands grabbed his head and jerked it to the side.

Snap.

All went black.


SIRIS WAITED for his body to restore itself.

First, his soul tried to flee, to escape to a rebirthing chamber. That was far better than returning to a body that had been defeated – a fallen body was a compromised body. Innate Deathless programming tried to send his soul, his Q.I.P., to safety.

Siris registered this as a vague sensation, tangible only in the most fleeting of ways. Like the memory of a taste. A sense of uncontrolled soaring, a panicked flight.

Then a wall, like invisible glass. His soul was rebuffed as it had been each time before. It could not break out of the prison, and was instead forced back. Back into the imperfect body, the trapped body.

That body belonged to an immortal. It would restore itself, given time.

Eventually, consciousness swelled in his mind, and he regained control. He tried to feign death. His thinking was fuzzy, his eyes not fully restored, he needed to–

“You think I don’t notice you, Ausar?” a voice said from nearby. Siris felt warm breath on his neck. “You think I can’t hear you stir as you struggle back to life?”

Siris snapped his eyes open and reached for the figure above him, his ancient enemy. He could see only a blur.

“I put your eyes out each time I kill you,” the God King growled, grabbing Siris’s head and smashing it down against the floor.

Pain.

“Your body heals essential organs first,” the God King continued. “Your eyes come late in the process.”

Siris screamed, flailing.

The God King smashed his head against the floor again.

All went black.

DEVIATION THE FIRST



RAIN BLEW against the window of Uriel’s cubicle.

A window. He had worked hard for a window. Mary had pushed him to reach for that achievement. When you worked every day with numbers and abstractions, she said, it was good to be able to look out and see the world as it was – not as simply figures on a page, to be added and assessed.

There are numbers out there too, though, Uriel thought, looking out the window. Natural laws commanded the rain. Unseen statistics and figures determined where each drop would fall, how hard each would hit, the precise route each would take sliding down the glass. It was well beyond the abilities of mankind to calculate those figures, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

“So,” Adram said nearby, “I told her that she’d better turn down the oven, because it was about to get a lot hotter inside!”

The regular team of coffee-mug-holding, suspender-and-tie-wearing marketing fellows laughed at Adram’s joke. At least Uriel assumed it was a joke. He didn’t understand why it was funny. Too many jokes didn’t make sense when you broke them apart, not logically. The numbers didn’t add up to laughter. Not for him.

He turned back to his smartdesk, lifting his stylus and making a few notations on a screen already full of numbers and ledgers.

Nearby, Adram leaned with one arm on the wall of the cubicle nearest him. He continued to chat as people passed. Some joined his group while others moved off. But Adram kept talking. Always talking. The man never seemed to get anything productive done.

Normally, Uriel could ignore him, but today it was tougher. The numbers . . . the numbers were so worrisome. Uriel needed quiet, not this constant blathering. Who had thought it a good idea to put an actuary next to the marketing department?

Uriel raised his hand to his forehead, kneading it as he tapped his smartdesk screen, bringing up percentages. If this happens . . . He brought up another list of percentages. Not if. When. It will happen.

Each calculation spelled out disaster.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t what people wanted to hear from him. They got angry when he told the truth – as if it were his fault. As if he could make the numbers do anything.

He wished so much that he could.

Perhaps I can sugarcoat this, he thought. I could present the more optimistic side. Like they’re always telling me to.

He glanced at the picture on the top of his desk. Jori, wearing a baseball cap. No. No, Uriel would not sugarcoat what could happen if this technology were released. He would have to tell the truth. For his son’s sake.

That would make him unpopular, but why did they order a risk-assessment analysis if they didn’t want to hear the findings? Executives were so odd. All except for Mr. Galath, chairman of the board. He always seemed to listen. He was one of the only people who made Uriel think this company had anything of a future.

Adram’s chatter finally died down. Uriel glanced over. It looked like people had passed on to do actual work for once, leaving Adram alone. The tall, overly smiling man glanced at Uriel.

Please, no.

Adram sauntered over to Uriel’s cubicle. “Ho there, Spunky!” The man placed a hand on Uriel’s shoulder. “You’ll have good news for us at the meeting, right?”

“I will have facts, Adram,” Uriel said, prying the man’s fingers from his shoulder. “Nothing more or less.”

“Sure, sure.” Adram took a sip of coffee, then gestured toward the desktop and its display of neat ledgers. “You can really make sense of all that?”

“This is my domain,” Uriel said. “I can make the numbers speak – assuming I care for them, encourage them. Control them.”

“You make it sound like you’re a king, Uriel.” Adram laughed. “King of the ledgers.” He leaned down. “You’ll make them speak good things about Project Omega, right?”

“The numbers do not lie. I will say what they tell me.”

“They don’t lie. Cute. Look, Uriel. If you are so good with numbers, why do you always see the opposite of what everyone else knows?”

“Everyone else is wrong.” Wasn’t that obvious?

Adram sighed. “You realize that this is why nobody likes you, Uriel.”

“That statement is patently false. My wife and son both like me.”

“I wasn’t trying to pick an argument,” Adram said. “I was trying to help you out. As a bud.”

“A . . . bud.”

“Sure.”

“You.”

Adram sighed again, standing up straight. “Project Omega is going to happen, and it’s going to make us all very rich. You count those beans, Uriel. Count them well. And take a piece of advice – for once? Make them say that Project Omega is ready to go live.”

Adram patted Uriel’s shoulder, as if with affection, then he ambled away, raising a hand toward Jane and calling out something flirtatious.

CHAPTER TWO



I WOULDN’T be here if I hadn’t grown weak, a part of Siris thought.

The Dark Thoughts were stronger now. Siris recognized them as part of himself, and had admitted – to his shame – what he had been. A warlord. A despot. A murderer.

He didn’t remember that person. Whatever had been done to him . . . it had wiped away those memories, permanently. He felt blessed for that, was thankful for it.

The process, however, was incomplete. Those terrible memories had been taken, but that left him with something more primal. Instincts. The brutality of a creature who had lived as a tyrant for eons.

I could have dominated, ruled. I had the Blade. I could have left the Worker alone, could have slain Raidriar. Now . . . now all that is left to me is vengeance.

Siris threw himself to his feet, eyes squeezed shut. For a moment, he let the Dark Thoughts – the shadow of his ancient self – control him.

He caught the God King’s arm as it reached for him. Eyes still shut, Siris spun around, twisting the arm in its socket and popping the joint at the shoulder. Raidriar screamed. Siris felt the man writhing, cursing, spinning into another attack. Siris stepped away, but a shade too slow. The God King’s leg sweep sent him tumbling.

He kicked as he fell, striking where he knew – somehow – the God King would be standing. Siris’s foot connected with something hard – the God King’s knee.

A snap, accompanied by another scream.

Siris moved. No thought. No planning. He scrambled forward, eyes still firmly shut. He couldn’t trust them. Trying to rely on them only got him killed. Over and over.

His hands found an arm. The God King reached a clawlike hand to Siris’s face, ripping at the skin.

Siris ignored the pain, methodically grabbing his enemy by the head and pounding his skull against the floor.

Smash.

Smash.

Smash.

Like a primeval man breaking open a fruit with a tough rind.

Time passed. Siris eventually became aware of himself in the prison, kneeling over the God King’s bloodied corpse. Raidriar, the God King, did not breathe. Siris’s own breathing went in and out with ragged gasps.

His eyes finally worked, but he didn’t see much. An open cell of rough-hewn rock – the soul prison in which the Worker of Secrets had been held.

Much of the floor was coated with dried blood. His, and that of the God King.

This is what I can do, he thought. When I let my Dark Self free.

He forced down those instincts. It was a struggle, one nearly as difficult as killing the God King had been. Eventually, Siris reached forward and pressed his thumbs into the God King’s eyes, bursting them, though the creature’s skull had been cracked wide open by his attacks.

The skull would heal – but the eyes would come last.

“Thanks for the tip,” Siris said, stumbling to his feet.

DEVIATION THE SECOND



THE TIME for the meeting with the executives, including Mr. Galath, approached. Uriel could do nothing more to prepare, so he diverted himself by summoning some different ledgers. A pet project of his.

Like all ledgers, these did not lie. They showed him that Mr. Galath, the chairman, had been withdrawing resources from the company. Subtly, slowly. Uriel had access to all of the accounts, though he wasn’t technically an accountant. He needed these numbers to create his risk assessment charts.

Mr. Galath was up to something. He was the source of pretty much everything that the company had created, from the satellite technology to the new data compression methods. Galath was a genius – but genius in and of itself was unremarkable. What made Galath special was his ability to run a company at the same time. He was smart, but also wily.

It had only been six months since Galath had revealed the technology that had been christened Project Omega. Teleportation. Real teleportation. Six months of frenzied work to test products, to obtain patents, to prepare for a world reveal.

And yet, during all that, Galath had been subtly moving resources to another, hidden project. One nobody else seemed to know about. But Uriel had found it in the numbers, for the numbers did not lie.

How he wished he could make people act like the numbers did. Rational, consistent.

This is something big, Uriel thought, sorting through the ledgers. Important.

But what? That was Uriel’s pet project. Trying to figure out what it was, to guess what Galath was attempting to accomplish. What would his next wonder be?

As Uriel worked, his screen’s automatic reminder feature pulled up the news of the day. Mary was behind that, as part of her desire for him to pay more attention to the outside world.

He wasn’t certain why she bothered. The news had nothing interesting for him. More killing in the Middle East. The war in South America. Radiation poisoning from the bombs in India.

Wasn’t progress supposed to have brought an end to all of this? What of the wonders of technology? We look down on the ancient days for their brutality, but when people murdered each other then it was by the dozen. Not by the million.

Modern men were the real barbarians.

He closed the news feed and turned back to his spreadsheets. Curious – according to Galath’s schedules, the chairman had been vanishing for long periods lately.

That’s odd . . . Uriel thought, noticing something else. Meetings before each disappearance, usually with someone from the company. Not always executives.

Each time an individual met with Galath in one of these instances, they immediately took a leave from work. So far, none had returned, yet all were still drawing salaries.

He’s gathering them, Uriel thought. The best of the company, judging by the numbers. He’s placing them on the new project. Uriel pulled up some more files, noticing that each person chosen got a promotion around the same time.

He found himself increasingly excited. This was really, really big. The corner of his table screen started flashing. A phone call. He tapped on the square, sending the conversation directly to his implanted earphone.

“Hello?” he asked, distracted.

“Uriel?” Mary’s voice.

He smiled immediately. Her voice . . . it always took some of the tension away. He looked up from his screen. “Hey.”

“I was just wondering,” Mary said. “Is there something special I could get for dinner tonight? Something you’d like?”

He looked down at the hive of numbers. “I . . . I might be working late again.”

“Oh, you needn’t say it so hesitantly, Uri. I know your work is important. Do you know when you’ll be home?”

“Ten?”

“How about I order in something from that Thai place you like so much? It will be waiting in the fridge when you get home.”

“That would be nice,” Uriel said, smiling. “You’re too good to me, Mary.” He hesitated. “But what about Jori? He hasn’t seen his dad in three days.”

“I’ll let him stay up,” Mary said. “He won’t be home until later, anyway. Hockey practice is tonight.”

There was a game this weekend, a championship. It was blocked out on his schedule, marked in red, immovable even if Mr. Galath demanded it. Uriel often worked late – too often – but he’d never missed a game.

“Mary,” Uriel said, leaning down. “I think something is coming. Something amazing.”

“Uri? I haven’t heard you sound this optimistic in a while. Aren’t you worried? About . . .”

She didn’t say it. He wasn’t supposed to talk about work with family, but she was one of the only people who ever actually listened to him.

“I am worried,” Uriel said. “But I think this project is a cover for something greater. I don’t think Mr. Galath intends to release the . . . other thing. He’s watching to see what we’ll say about it. I just . . . I can’t explain. But it’s in the numbers. He’s pulling people aside, one at a time. Telling them about the new project. Preparing them.”

“That’s wonderful! Do you think he’ll choose you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” People, even Mr. Galath, didn’t make as much sense as numbers did.

“We should get you a new suit, just in case.”

“You know I hate shopping.”

She laughed. “All you have to do is try it on. That won’t be so bad, will it?”

“No, I guess it won’t. First dinner, now this. You’re wonderful.”

“I guess I just want to do something special for you, Uri. You’ve been working so hard lately. See you at ten.”

He hung up with a tap on the screen. Rain still washed against the window outside, but despite the dreary weather, he was glad for the window. Mary had been right about that, as she was about so many other things.

He found himself writing down his thoughts, as he sometimes did. A kind of journal, but one filled with his dreams of what could be. What would the world be like if people made sense? What would the world be like if they were not able to kill each other so easily? Could he make the ideas work? He wrote it all down.

“Hey,” Jarred said, walking by. “Aren’t you supposed to be coming to this?”

“Hmm?” Uriel asked.

“The meeting? Mr. Galath? Project Omega?”

Uriel sat up straight, checking the time on his screen. He cursed, sliding his spreadsheets off the virtual table and into the chip in his wristwatch. Some made fun of him for it. So archaic. He liked it better than carrying around an embedded datacore.

“Seriously, Uriel,” Jarred said, shaking his head. “You’re in your own little world, aren’t you?”

Uriel hastened to grab his suit jacket and throw it on while jogging after Jarred.

CHAPTER THREE



EVEN AS he was slaughtered, Raidriar planned.

Each moment of awareness helped him put together a plot, a method of escape.

Control. He would be in control.

So, even as he died, even as he flailed and struggled, he continued to plan.

It involved holding himself back and waiting for an opportunity. That opportunity was not now.

But it would come.


SIRIS KILLED. And he was killed.

Again and again, they made those same rounds. Sometimes he defeated the God King, and would keep him crippled and broken for weeks on end. But then he’d lose track of the passage of time. He wouldn’t notice that it had been far too long since he’d smashed the God King’s face against the ground.

Sometimes . . . he almost welcomed it. A change. Another voice, just for a few moments. He walked that line, letting Raidriar come just to the brink of recovery.

Because of that, sometimes he lost. When he did, he would swim that void, letting the Dark Self grow stronger and stronger until it broke him free again.

It was difficult to track the changing of days in this prison, particularly while wearing a body that did not age and did not need to eat. He felt hunger, yes – it was perpetual, a horrid scratching inside, as if something were trying to eat its way out. But he did not need food. He was immortal – truly immortal.

He won. He lost. They played this game over and over. Dozens of reversals. Hundreds of deaths and beyond.

Siris gave a brief notice to when he died his thousandth time in the prison. He had already killed Raidriar twelve hundred times at that point. Keeping track of those numbers . . . they were the only things for him to keep track of.

This became his world. His life.

Kill. Be killed.

With each death, the Dark Self grew stronger. Instincts he did not want, but which he seized and used anyway. A primal force that lived inside of him, like a monster bound in fragile, fraying ropes.

A nightmare.


YES . . . RAIDRIAR thought as he awoke from death. Hold something back.

He threw himself to his feet as awareness returned. He struggled, he fought, but he did not give everything.

A nugget of strength, buried within. He would need that. For now, he played the game. He fought back. This time he actually won, blinking his eyes as they restored themselves, looking down at the corpse of the man he’d battered against the wall until his neck broke.

Raidriar took a deep breath and settled down to think, plan, and plot.


SIRIS WAKENED from death and waited for the blow to fall.

He had recovered too slowly this time. Disoriented, he prepared to fight back, to reach up with hands gnarled and twisted. He had begun breaking Raidriar’s hands each time, and so his foe had begun doing the same thing.

No blow fell.

Go! the Dark Self said.

Siris roared to his feet, ready to punch with the backs of his wrists, fingers flopping uselessly. If he could get his arms around . . .

Around . . .

He searched about, blind, swinging this way and that. Where was his enemy? What game was this? Would Raidriar give him hope, then crush him? Raidriar was a fool! Any advantage would be seized, would be used. And–

“I never thought,” a weary voice said, “I would ever grow tired of killing you, Ausar.”

Siris’s eyes finally started picking out light. He backed away from the shadow near the voice and put his back to the wall of the prison.

Shadows became fuzzy images, which slowly became distinct. Raidriar sat on the floor, wearing only a loincloth and a ripped shirt stained with blood. He looked young – too young to be this ancient thing.

No armor, of course. Siris had stripped that from his enemy early on, and had broken it as best he could, pounding it flat with rocks. That was the Dark Self’s influence. Take away the enemy’s weapon. Disarm him. Expose his vulnerabilities before going for the kill.

Raidriar had done the same for Siris, of course. Often, one or the other would use bits of that armor as a weapon to murder his foe as he awoke. Most of the time, they just used their hands.

Raidriar leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes, sighing. “Turns out I was wrong,” he said, his voice echoing in this cavernous chamber, lit dimly by the glow of ancient machinery hidden in the floor and ceiling. “I can grow tired of killing you. It took merely sixteen hundred and fifty-two murders. Apparently, even the most pleasing of tasks can grow mundane by repetition.”

Siris rounded the chamber, keeping his distance. He picked out a chunk of metal, one of their shields, battered and broken, cracked down the middle. He tossed it aside.

“Nothing to say?” Raidriar asked.

“Fifty-one,” Siris said. His voice sounded ragged to his ears.

“What?”

“Sixteen hundred and fifty-one,” Siris said. “That’s how many times you’ve bested me. Not fifty-two, as you said earlier.”

“And of the two of us, you’d trust your own memory above mine?” Raidriar sounded amused. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

Siris grunted. He found his sword, but Raidriar had beaten it against the Worker’s throne over and over, rendering the weapon a mangled mess, broken halfway down. Siris sensed anger in those marks on the rock throne. They were mirrored by marks along the back, where Siris himself had pounded with his shield in a frenzied tempest, frustrated, powerless.

The Dark Self was powerful, but it was also wild, temperamental.

Siris picked up the broken sword.

“How long,” Raidriar asked, “do you suppose he was playing us?”

“I don’t know,” Siris said. “I doubt he originally wanted me to trap him in here.”

“Are you certain?”

Siris hesitated. “No.” He didn’t know anything, not any longer.

“Perhaps you are right, though,” the God King said idly. “What kind of creature could put himself in such a helpless state? Powerless, no control – uncertain if he’d ever be freed? It reviles the senses and the mind alike.”

Warily, Siris walked over near the God King. He passed a portion of the wall that was scraped and bloodied. At one point, the God King had apparently tried to claw his way through the rock – for all the good it did.

Still, in a way he envied his enemy. Siris had been bound here by his soul, same as the Worker had been. Raidriar, however, had simply been dropped in – he was a casualty of location. The prison would keep him as surely as it kept anyone, but if he could get through those rocks, he could find freedom.

Not Siris. He would never be able to escape, not unless he found a way to make someone else take his place.

Convenient, he thought, stepping toward Raidriar, that I have another Deathless here to force into that role.

But how? He’d have to be outside to set up the swap.

“We have to escape,” Siris said to the man he once knew as the God King. “Together.”

“If there were a chance for escape, do you not think that the Worker would have taken it during all those centuries? No. There is no escape.”

“Then what? Continue to kill one another?”

“A little boring, wouldn’t you say?”

Siris reached Raidriar. He hesitated.

And the Dark Self took over.

Siris attacked without planning to. He fell upon the God King, butchering him even as the other man reached up to try to strangle Siris.

When he was done, Siris stood over the dead body, and let himself feel horror.

It’s starting to rule me, he realized.

Once, he worried that these thoughts would return him to being the man he had once been, the callous Deathless tyrant. This was worse, though. Far worse. He had all of that man’s rage, frustration, and skill – but none of that man’s control.

He sank down beside the corpse and sighed, resting his head back against the stone.

DEVIATION THE THIRD



“IN CONCLUSION, we have a decision to make regarding the product,” Jarred said, standing at the head of the small room. “By far the largest of our potential markets are companies that do a lot of shipping. They can use Omega to cut their costs incredibly. Because of this, I suggest delaying the home user product to focus on an expensive, high-end commercial product.”

Uriel sat in the select crowd watching the presentations. The seats were supposed to be comfortable, but he couldn’t use either of his armrests, as others had taken them. How did people know when to use an armrest and when not to? Was there some rule of sharing the space that nobody had thought to teach him?

The elbows of large executives crowded him on either side, making him feel scrunched in his seat. He glanced over his shoulder. Mr. Galath sat at the top back of the tiered room, in a row all to himself. He seemed . . . profound, with that short, greying beard and those deep, unfathomable eyes. Quite possibly the greatest inventor who had ever lived, and certainly the greatest mind of their time. He sat and watched, and did not say anything.

“Well, that’s really interesting,” Adram said from his seat. “Because I think the opposite.” The lanky man sprang to his feet, edging Jarred off the stage. He swiped Jarred’s presentation from the wallscreen.

“See, the problem with going for a few corporate clients,” Adram said, “is that it just doesn’t capture the imagination of the public. We have something new here, something incredible!”

He swiped something up onto the wallscreen, a splashy graphic with two metal bands at the center. “I call it InstaBe.”

“InstaBe?” one of the executives asked with a flat voice.

“Instant-being,” Adram exclaimed. “Personal teleportation.”

“It doesn’t work on living things,” another executive said. “Inorganic transmission only.”

“I’m sure Mr. Galath will figure out that little limitation eventually,” Adram said. The smile he gave was so transparent that Uriel rolled his eyes. “And even if he doesn’t, InstaBe will still be a smash hit. Look, most companies, they never have a real chance to grip the public. They release their products into a tempest of a marketplace, and have to scream just to get the smallest bit of attention.

“We won’t have that problem. Everyone is going to want an InstaBe. They’ll want five or six! Park your car and go for a hike? You can teleport it to your location when you’re done. Always losing your wallet? Stick a ring on it, teleport it to yourself when you need it.” He grinned even wider. “We’re gonna change the world, folks!”

“It’s not safe,” Uriel said.

Adram stilled, his smile cracking. He forced it back on immediately, not showing his annoyance.

“It’s perfectly safe,” one of the executives said. “Thousands of teleportations made, no mishaps.”

“The technology itself is safe,” Uriel said. “But it is not safe to give to people. They will kill with it.”

“Come on, Uriel,” Adram said. “Give us the bright side, remember?”

“There is none,” Uriel said. “People will teleport bombs into secure locations. Criminals will be armed, no matter where they go. Those are just the minor applications. Militaries will be able to move supplies and equipment instantly. Imagine assault teams who can summon tanks and artillery at the snap of their fingers. This will embolden the governments who have it. They will strike. I have run the numbers, the statistics. What we have developed is a weapon. It will be treated like one.”

“Guesses,” Adram said.

“I don’t guess,” Uriel said. “I project. And I am rarely wrong.” He turned in his seat, looking up at Mr. Galath. “I have a son, sir. I don’t want him to live in a world that isn’t safe . . . Well, a world that is less safe than it is now. If we release this, the result will be war.”

Mr. Galath nodded slowly. He understood. He got it. Uriel relaxed.

This was what he was waiting for, Uriel thought. Someone who would speak out against the technology. It seems I am the only one bold enough.

“He is right,” Mr. Galath said. “We must sell it to governments first, as they will pay the most.” He looked at Adram. “Your name . . . Adram, is it?”

“Yes, sir!” Adram said, walking down off the stage and toward the audience.

“I would speak with you after the meeting. You show great initiative. I have a special project I may wish you to be part of.”

Uriel gaped. He found himself standing. “But . . . No. Sir, not him. Not–”

Adram slapped Uriel on the shoulder, drawing close. “Hey, Spunky. Thanks for the help. You’re a real . . . pal.”

The meeting broke up, leaving Uriel standing on the front row, stunned.

What had just happened?

CHAPTER FOUR



SIRIS LOUNGED on the stone chair, one leg up over the broken and ruined side, the bloody corpse of Raidriar at his feet.

The God King’s body held Siris’s broken sword, rammed through the back, hilt pointing upward. That wouldn’t stop Raidriar from returning to life, but it was a convenient place to hold the weapon.

“In a way,” Siris said to the empty room, putting his feet up on the back of the dead man, “this is perfect! I was raised to hunt you down and kill you, don’t you see? That was my purpose. To be the Sacrifice, to face you. Now I get to live it, over and over! It’s the only thing in the world!”

Siris laughed, cackling, unable to control himself. How long had it been? Years? He’d killed Raidriar well over two thousand times now. He didn’t remember how many, exactly. He’d have to ask, next time his footstool started moving.

What a state he was in! If he controlled the Dark Self, Raidriar won their contest, and Siris was driven deeper and deeper into madness by repeated death. So he let the Dark Self rule, and this happened! This primitive version of himself that moved by instinct. It was madness too!

He threw back his head and laughed again, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Light split the sky.

Siris laughed at it. A fine hallucination. He often dreamed of escaping, of the roof of this chamber splitting to reveal the top of the pillar, lowering down. The promise of freedom . . .

He looked closer. It was real.

Siris started, leaping to his feet, his laughter dying. That was no hallucination. The entrance to his prison was a large triangular pillar that lowered down from above. Light – real light – outlined the prismlike column of stone. Beautiful. Perfect.

He wiped his eyes, then stepped over Raidriar’s body, which was beginning to twitch. Siris pulled his mangled sword free of his enemy’s back and held it forward, his hand trembling. He could barely see for the light. Those shadows on the platform . . . figures?

The Dark Self responded instantly. The Worker had returned! Siris screamed and ran forward, sword raised–

“Siris?” Isa said, pulling back her hood as she stood on the pillar. “Is that really you?”

Siris stumbled to a stop.

“It is you,” she said in her lightly accented voice. She cursed in her own tongue, leaping off the platform and rushing to him. Behind, on the pillar, several bound figures fought against the ropes holding them.

“Siris . . .” Isa said. She hesitated, reaching toward him, then withdrawing her hand.

He looked down at himself. Clothing that was little more than rags, most of it bloodstained. A full beard and scraggly hair – he’d shorn it at one point, using the dull sword, but it was still a matted mess. He clung to that broken, half-bladed sword as if it were the Infinity Blade itself.

He looked up. Seeing Isa . . . reminded him.

I am a man, he thought, not a monster.

Was that true any longer?

He dropped the sword with a clang, then stumbled past her onto the platform. There, he collapsed and curled up beside the bound figures.

“Siris?” She stepped up and knelt beside him. “I’m sorry. It took so long to find a way to unlock this prison . . .” She reached down, doing something on the floor.

A flash of blue light.

“It is now attuned to one of these two I brought,” Isa said. She kicked one of them down onto the floor of the prison, then the other. “Two, just in case. We captured them both together, anyway. You are free, Siris. I–”

She cut off.

Scraping came from behind.

Siris opened his eyes. Raidriar had risen, and was staggering toward the platform as well.


FREEDOM.

The prison was unlocked. Raidriar had to get onto that pillar. If he did, he could go free. His soul was not bound to this place. He simply needed to reach that column.

It was time.

The first thing he did was lock away the frayed parts of his soul. One grew accustomed to this, after thousands upon thousands of years of life. The complex refit that transformed a person from mortal to Deathless protected the mind, to an extent, from the weathering of the ages. However, being killed time and time again over the course of many months . . . that affected the psyche.

Raidriar could not allow such a thing. He had to remain in control. Later, he would take the memory of his murders and cleanse them, healing the more dangerous mental wounds. For now, he quarantined them and focused his attention on his surroundings.

He stumbled as he stepped through the horrid prison – a prison for a god, a person that should not be – passing two tied-up figures on the ground. Poor fools.

A weapon. He needed a weapon.

Ausar stumbled to his knees on the platform. Freedom. A woman grabbed him by the shoulder – Raidriar recognized her, the woman Ausar called Isa. She steadied Ausar while trying to pull out a crossbow to level at Raidriar. She also had a long knife at her belt.

That would do.

Raidriar used the reserve, the portion held back. During their confinement, he could see that Ausar had fought with everything he had. How like him, always overextending. Forever passionate, but frequently out of control.

It was what set them apart. This made Raidriar a king, while making his former friend simply a glorified warlord.

Raidriar sprinted forward, feet steadying. The girl was obviously expecting weakness in him such as Ausar displayed. What tenderness she showed for the fallen man. Raidriar noted it with a portion of his mind as he slammed into her, knocking the crossbow aside before she could shoot.

The bolt loosed, hitting the ground and bouncing off stone into the darkness. The woman grunted, reaching for Raidriar, but he twisted away while grabbing the hilt of her belt knife. He whipped it free, dancing to the side on the pillar, the knife out.

Freedom. He could taste it.

Yes, there was tenderness in the way she held Ausar’s arm. Had he taken a lover in this new form, with his mind still like that of a child? The old Ausar would scream to know of it.

“I could have let the crossbow bolt hit as I reached the pillar,” Raidriar noted, “but it is not for one such as you to kill a god.”

“Raidriar,” Ausar said, reaching out, lifting his head. “I . . . I am ready to talk . . . as you wished to do those weeks ago, when we stopped our fight.”

Raidriar inspected the knife. A fine weapon, forged from folded steel. It would do. “I think not,” he said.

Then he slit his own throat.


SIRIS WATCHED the God King’s body slump lifeless against the pillar. This time, it would not heal, would not recover. In this position, his soul could escape through the hole in the ceiling.

“What,” Isa said, “was that?”

“Freedom,” Siris mumbled. “How long has it been?”

“Almost two years,” Isa said, recovering her knife and shivering visibly. She kicked the God King’s body, making sure it was dead, then stepped up beside Siris again.

So short? Hell take me . . . I could have sworn we were in there for a millennium.

The Dark Self growled within him.

“Come on,” Isa said, kneeling and triggering the platform. It rose slowly into the air, stone grinding stone. “A lot has happened since you were imprisoned.”

As the stone pillar reached the roof, Siris watched the two figures below slowly consumed by darkness. One of them escaped her bindings and ripped the sack from her head.

Siris was left with the image of her scrambling for his broken, pitiful excuse for a sword, clutching it as the other figure ripped free of his bonds . . .

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