Infinity Blade 02 - Redemption

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,