Infinity Blade 01- Awakening

know,” Siris said softly. He looked over the sword Isa had found him. It was of good make. He’d need armor; perhaps, as Isa suggested, he could recover some from the fallen Aegis he had killed in the gardens below. If the God King had left the bodies, the armor would be gruesome to recover, but not as gruesome as going into combat without it. If he did that, he’d likely end up . . .
    Dead. Hell take me, he thought. That doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? The realization was surreal. Was this how the Deathless felt? If he couldn’t die . . . so many things no longer had a cost.
    The Dark Thoughts within seemed pleased.
    “TEL,” he said.
    The golem whimpered.
    “You will speak to me,” Siris said. “Who was I, before?”
    “I am commanded not to speak of that,” TEL said. “ Commanded .”
    “But I am the one who commanded you. I now rescind that command.”
    “Not possible, not possible,” TEL said. “You said I cannot. I will not.”
    Siris sighed. Fine. I can work on that one later. “Who was the one who claimed to be my ancestor, the one I killed in the chamber beneath the God King’s palace? Did slaying him truly awaken the Infinity Blade?”
    “It did, master.”
    “But he wasn’t really my ancestor,” Siris said, frowning. “He couldn’t have been. If this is all true . . . I have no ancestors. At least, not any that would still be alive.”
    “I . . .”
    “Speak,” Siris commanded, finding that a voice of authority came to him easily, but unexpectedly.
    “He was your son, master,” TEL said, cringing. “Sometimes, you did not fight the God King. Sometimes, some generations, I could not change enough memories to make you the Sacrifice. Other times, you refused to come. That man . . . he was a child of yours, during a generation when you married, grew old, and had children. That one was chosen as the Sacrifice in your stead. He joined the God King instead of fighting him.”
    Siris blinked in surprise. Hell take me . . . I was married? Had children? How many times? He didn’t remember any of it, not specifics, but he suddenly felt empty.
    “Dying and being reborn in one of these vats, rather than as a child,” he said. “It returns my memories?”
    “Brings the terrible memories!” TEL said. “Oh, it shouldn’t have happened like this. They must be wiped away, master. If we wipe away your memories each time, have you born as a child, it will keep them away. But now . . .”
    “It will grow worse?” he said grimly.
    “Much worse,” TEL said softly. “Each rebirth will make it worse. You will become him again, master. HIM .”
    So there was a cost. A terrible one. If the Dark Thoughts, the shadow upon his mind, were who he had been, and if dying would return him to that . . . Well, that seemed worse than dying and not reawakening.
    “I’ll be certain not to die again, then,” he said. He hesitated. “But if I do, TEL, you are to bring me here. To be reborn, with my memories.”
    “Master,” TEL whispered. “Better to become a child again. Much, much better.”
    It was tempting. He could banish all of this. Would that not be freedom? But if that was the case . . .
    “Why the Sacrifice, TEL?” he asked.
    “There wasn’t one, at first, master,” TEL said. “You’ve always hated Raidriar, and I think you responded to his search for someone to use in activating the Infinity Blade. You went to fight him in one of your generations, and he took note of you, thought you were a child of one of the other Deathless.
    “He created the Sacrifice, the entire tradition. And you . . . you often wanted to go fight him, and when I didn’t make you the Sacrifice, you’d declare yourself to be the one who had to fight him. It seemed best to just start making you, and others around you, think you were the son of the former Sacrifice. People had started to remark on the similarity in your features, you see . . .”
    So most of those champions who had fought the God King, they had been Siris. Each time, him again, in a different life. He could just vaguely remember. Coming to the God King’s palace, falling while fighting him. Time and time again. He shivered at those fragments of memories.
    The God King didn’t know, Siris thought. He had located what he thought was the bloodline of a Deathless. He must have discovered the truth only recently.
    So many lives. So many failures.
    But I could run, Siris thought, standing in that quiet