But why? Raidriar thought as he searched this station’s records for what little information he could find about the rest of the empire. The other members of the Pantheon . . . wait, what was this? Insults and offenses. The Worker had systematically used Raidriar’s Soulless to alienate all his former allies.
The Worker had gone too far. His empire was crumbling. The policy of isolation mixed with over-insistent demands by the Soulless, and the result was chaos. Raidriar’s lands fracturing, despotic worms – lesser Deathless – seizing territory and grabbing what they could. Villages starving, bandits running wild, untamed daerils raiding government officials . . .
Why would the Worker do this? Why seize the empire, only to abandon it to chaos? The Pantheon could have been a great resource to him, but instead the Worker threw them aside. Isolating the different stations made it difficult for Raidriar to take control, but it also made running the empire practically impossible.
He throws away so much just to hinder me, Raidriar thought. I should be flattered.
He was not. The move did not make sense; the Worker couldn’t have known Raidriar would escape. What was happening here . . . it was insanity.
But the Worker was not insane. He was clever, subtle, and brilliant. Raidriar’s confusion meant that the Worker’s plots were beyond him. Raidriar was too far behind to even grasp what his enemy was doing.
That terrified him.
He checked on a few more items – including his secret kingdom to the south, where he was called by different names. Excellent. That seemed to be untouched. If all went very poorly, he could travel there and rebuild.
He would rather not. It would mean abandoning this empire, admitting defeat, and allowing the Worker to drive this realm into the ground.
Raidriar memorized what he felt he would need from the information, then set the machine to wipe itself. He took his Devoted from this holy hub, stepping out as the spiderlike keepers began to deactivate and drop from walls and wires. They clicked against the ground like falling coins.
He walked from the temple structure toward the sunlight, traveling down a long tunnel that would open onto the plains beyond. How could he reclaim his empire? He would need resources, allies. Unfortunately, going to the other Deathless would be dangerous. They would see him as weak. Beyond that, he wasn’t certain any of them would be all that useful against the Worker. The creature would have them all in hand, and would have prepared for Raidriar to try turning them.
Raidriar needed to do something more unexpected than that–
Thump.
He stopped, looking up out of the metallic tunnel. Something blocked the sunlit sky just outside, casting an enormous shadow. A four-legged monster with tattered wings – half machine, half rotting flesh. No artistry to it at all.
Raidriar sneered. At least he now knew why there had been no further resistance. The Worker had sent this beast. It meant that Raidriar’s escape had indeed been noted, and his edge – if he’d ever had one – was no more.
Bother.
The beast smashed a limb down, crushing the tunnel opening. Raidriar rolled free, weapons out. He heard a pathetic scream from behind. The two Devoted being crushed. Raidriar growled, launching himself forward, trying to get beneath the beast’s four stubby legs. Monsters like this had trouble if you could get underneath them . . .
A large mouth gaped on the bottom of the beast’s body, full of fangs and dripping drool. Now that was just plain wrong. The beast lurched downward, trying to shove him into the maw. Raidriar dodged away. The thing left chunks of decaying flesh on the ground where it scraped and smashed.
“At least,” Raidriar said, “send something of beauty to try to kill me!”
This was an insult – and knowing the Worker, a deliberate one. In addition, there were likely traps set up at other rebirthing chambers. If Raidriar died here, when he awoke . . .
He’d just have to avoid being killed. Raidriar growled as the thing snapped at him with its proper mouth – not the one on its underside, but the one at the end of its long neck. The creature looked like a dragon out of fanciful mythology – some of the Deathless were positively neurotic about creating such things. Only its skin was more leathery than scaled, and along with its long, clawed hands it had four trunklike legs. They’d probably used an elephant as a base, grafting on wings, clawed forearms, and a sinuous neck.
Honestly. Q.I.P. mutants and creations were supposed to make sense, supposed to look dangerous and deadly – not horrifying and monstrous. There was a difference.
As the abomination swiped a clawed hand at him, Raidriar twisted his sword deftly and sheared free a few of the clawed fingers. The machine part of the beast – a large section of its back that leaked ichor – glowed with lights, and the beast screeched in anger. Raidriar dodged another snapping hand.
The head is a distraction, he thought. It’s kept alive by machinery, not by a brain. A kind of undeath.
Raidriar sheathed one sword, then reached into his pouch and fished out the teleportation ring. Then, he raised his blade and dashed at the beast.
“I am not some peasant to be toyed with!” Raidriar shouted.
He dodged under the creature’s inevitable swing, then leaped, slamming his sword into the beast’s leathery side. He used that handhold to heave, pulling himself upward to scramble onto the monster’s back.
Here, he whipped out his other sword. The thing lurched.
“I am not an irritation!” Raidriar rammed his second blade into the monster’s back, using that for a handhold as the thing thrashed and lurched. It smelled awful.
“I am a God,” he shouted, rolling across the beast’s back and slapping the key of the teleportation ring against the machinery keeping the monster alive.
It thrashed again, throwing him free. He slammed to the ground nearby with a grunt, ribs cracking. He rolled over, then took the second half of the teleportation ring and hurled it while activating its summoning property.
The machinery vanished from the beast’s back in a flash of light, then it appeared nearby, teleported to the thrown ring. Only non-living matter could travel with the ring, after all.
The monster dropped with a thump, ichor spilling from the hole.
Raidriar groaned, rolling to his knees. That was the problem with these terrible hybrids. Not organic enough to be considered fully alive, but not machine enough to have proper shielding. He lurched to his feet and walked to the machinery that he had teleported, a lump of metal and wires about the size of a small table. He found the lens, through which he knew the Worker would be watching.
“These are my lands,” Raidriar hissed, leaning in. “And these are my people. Remember that, Worker. You do not take what is mine.”
He picked up a rock and smashed the lens with a swift motion.
CHAPTER
TEN
THIS, SIRIS thought, holding up the next sheet of paper, does not make sense.
Isa was right. The brutality in the God King’s lands was astonishing. Raidriar’s empire was declining rapidly. Barely any coordination between its pieces, local minor Deathless taking up dominion of their little fiefdoms and ignoring decrees from the fake God King, villages starving because shipping had broken down.