“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 battered the Weapon from Raidriar’s hand. It flew away, scraping against the floor.
The Worker slammed his shoulder against Raidriar, who fell back against the workstation behind him. The Worker grabbed his helm and pulled it free, tossing it away. Then, the creature leveled the Infinity Blade at Raidriar, the point touching his nose.
“I,” the Worker said, “am true divinity. I am the father of nations, peoples, and gods. Everything that exists on this planet exists by my forbearance. I am the thing you merely pretend to be. And you can never defeat me.”
Raidriar believed him. Looking into the depths of this creature’s eyes, he understood. Everything he had done or tried, the man he had once known as Galath could anticipate.
“Now,” the Worker said, lowering his Blade. “Now you understand, and now you take your place. You are mine, and you always have been. We are going to cleanse this planet and start anew. I need a few to serve beneath me. You will take this opportunity, and you will savor it, Raidriar. Tell me of my mercy. Beg me to let you live.”
The words bubbled to his lips, but he did not speak them. So many people would die . . .
What were they to him? Worms? Insects? He should take this chance, as he always had. The chance to live, to struggle on another day. Perhaps get his vengeance.
The world is a broken, ruined place . . . Whispers from another time. Another world. Make it better. Make it better . . .
Be a king, son.
He looked up and met the Worker’s eyes. “I cannot defeat you,” Raidriar whispered. “I don’t have to. For I know who can.”
He twisted, grabbing something on the desk. The datapod, filled with the Worker’s plans and mysteries. Then, as the Worker roared, he turned and threw himself off the dais with the throne, tumbling past the steps.
He cradled the datapod, grunting as his body crashed to the ground, bones breaking. The Worker shouted, scrambling around the desk, running for the steps.
He should have jumped.
Raidriar disengaged his armor’s disruption field.
THE MIRROR on the table in Siris’s cabin winked on.
Siris looked up, straightening from his slumped posture. Raidriar lay chest-down on the shiny, metallic floor of the Worker’s base. His helm had been removed, and he was bleeding from the corner of one lip.
“Ausar,” Raidriar said,
fiddling with something in his gauntlets. “I’m going to send you something. I have my own teleportation ring. You need to find it.”
He held something before him. A datapod he struggled to attach the ring to.
“I cannot explain,” Raidriar said. “I haven’t the time. All is soon to be lost. Everything. You have to stop him. You can stop him.”
Siris picked up the mirror. Behind Raidriar, he could make out someone barreling down a set of steps. The Worker, carrying an Infinity Blade.
The datapod flashed in Raidriar’s hands.
The Worker bellowed in rage.
“I trust you can find it,” Raidriar whispered. “Think, and you will know where it is. Get there before him—it has information you will need to beat him. Once you have it, you will need to find him—he will go into hiding after this, as is his way.
“Know that he can be wrong, Ausar. Even about me. He thought I’d betray my people, leave them to die. But he was wrong, so wrong. I will do my duty.” Raidriar smiled. “For I am a king.”
THE WORKER ran up, howling.
Raidriar turned on him and smiled.
The Worker rammed his Infinity Blade down into Raidriar’s chest, yelling obscenities.
Raidriar’s last emotion was pleasure. He could surprise the creature after all.
A king.
He looked upward, smiling toward the light, as the Blade sent him into the infinite.
EPILOGUE
“HELL TAKE me,” Siris whispered, rocking in the ship.
On his mirror, Raidriar died the final death, killed in a flash of light.
Gone.
Impossible, Siris thought. Not that Raidriar had died. But that he . . . the creature that Siris had been born to fight, the oppressor and tyrant . . .
That man had sacrificed himself.
Oh, hell, Siris thought, slumping backward. I tried to betray him, and he sacrificed himself. I was the villain. And Raidriar . . . Raidriar just became a hero.