Azerick’s world turned grey then stark white. Color slowly began filtering in, and he could define shapes around him. For a few seconds, he could see through the walls and floors above him gazed upon the light and tops of trees of the outside world. Azerick was exhausted and took several minutes to steady the muscles now trembling like an old man afflicted with palsy. Finding his balance once more, Azerick reached into the silver liquid of the Source pool. The pool radiated with power, but not like the burning heat of a fire. It was warmth, love, strength, and the sweetest promises ever whispered into one’s ear. He had to use his intense focus and will to keep himself from allowing it to pull him into its comforting embrace and consuming him. Azerick pushed back and used his mind and power to shape the living Source into the tool he needed. He withdrew his hand from the pool and admired the shining metal lying in his open palm. To anyone else, it appeared to be nothing more than an impossibly brilliant door handle, and that was what it was, except it was far from ordinary.
Slipping the handle into his pocket, Azerick made for the stairs leading up. For a few frightful minutes as he stood in the doorway of the foyer, he thought the spell had failed, but Azerick quickly realized he was somewhere else. The air was completely free of the smells of humanity. No tangy odors of forge fires or sweet smells of food cooking in the kitchens tinged the air. No voices or the sounds of mock battles played across the grounds. It was silent, and the air was practically sterile. Azerick’s tower stood as the only building for as far as he could see and suspected it was the only one in this world.
The sorcerer stepped from his tower and gazed across the open field and up at the mountains looming behind him. It was identical to the place he just departed, except no man had ever stepped here before. Every tree that had ever grown and not fallen to age and the elements still stood tall, safe from the axes and saws used to create the training grounds, farms, and pastures. It was beyond peaceful, it was tranquil. Silence lay over this world like a blanket shielding it from the horror his world was about to face. Azerick was almost able to fully relax for the first time in years until the silence of the place went from serene to disturbing. It was not just quiet; it was devoid of sound and life. Then someone threw a mountain on him.
Azerick erected a ward just as the sky vanished and something colossal came crashing down. His ward flared violently as it fought against the crushing weight of the world-eclipsing form trying to grind him to dust. Azerick poured power into his shield and was launched forward like a cherry pit being squeezed between an enormous thumb and forefinger. He rolled and tumbled inside his magic sphere for over a hundred yards until the trees brought him to an abrupt halt.
He leapt to his feet and stared in disbelief at the creature that had nearly crushed him like an insect. The dragon, if that was what it truly was, was both awesome and terrifying. Its serpentine body was a river of rippling, multihued scales with eight legs and four wings. How something that size could fly was beyond him. It was easily five hundred feet long, and Azerick figured he was probably underestimating it as his mind refused to fully acknowledge its greatness.
“You trespass in my world, sorcerer. You plant your unnatural home and defile the purity of this place, and for that, you shall die.”
The dragon’s voice struck Azerick like a wave and nearly knocked him back off his feet. Before he could respond, fire engulfed the world. Azerick raised another ward and was barely able to shield himself from the hellish flames. The trees around him exploded under the intensity and were instantly reduced to ash. The ground turned black and cracked as every particle of water evaporated.
Azerick struck back with a massive fist of invisible force, snapping the flame-spewing jaws closed and rocking the dragon’s head back.
“Stop!” Azerick shouted. “There is no need for us to fight. I do not wish you any harm.”
“You, harm me?” The dragon’s laughter shook pinecones from the trees not destroyed by his fiery breath. “I am Ancalon, Father of Dragons. I am as old as this world. You are a child who has picked up his father’s sword and now thinks he is a great warrior. You have no idea of the meaning of power. I smell the blood of one of my children upon you, so I will show you real power.”
Azerick thought back and understood Ancalon must mean the dragon who had stolen the Codex Arcana from him. He regretted killing the impressive beast, but it had been unwilling to accept a peaceful resolution.
“I had no desire to harm him, but he gave me no choice. Do not make the same mistake.”
Ancalon gave another rumbling chuckle. “Insect.”
The Father of Dragons slammed a mighty paw against the ground, causing it to heave and buckle. A huge section of earth and rock rose out of the soil like a geyser and blasted Azerick hundreds of feet into the air. The sorcerer ripped open a gate near the apex of his rapid ascent and transported himself back to the ground behind the great wyrm.
Azerick gathered in the Source as fast as he could. Ancalon sensed the power building behind him and spun to face the intruder. He was swift for such a colossal creature, but Azerick was faster. The sorcerer released a powerful blast of arcane energy directly into the dragon’s face, knocking the gargantuan creature back a hundred yards. Ancalon’s clawed feet dug furrows in the ground deep enough to bury a wagon as he scrabbled for purchase.
The dragon responded with a roar of fury that hit Azerick with as much force as a strong wizard’s spell. Azerick responded by raising a boulder from the ground the size of a cottage and launching it with the speed of a loosed arrow. The boulder struck Ancalon between his enormous eyes and shattered into a spray of gravel. The beast shook his head, raised a mass of earth the size of a large house, and dropped it on the infuriating sorcerer.
Azerick tore open another gate and leapt through just before the million ton rock smashed into the ground and caused a small, localized earthquake. The cloud of dust kicked up from the assault made it nearly impossible for Azerick to see, but Ancalon was so large he did not have to. His amalgamated ray of arcane and demonic magic pierced the dust cloud and struck the dragon low in his side between his two sets of wings.
Ancalon roared in pain and fury. No mortal creature had ever caused it harm before. This sensation was new and unacceptable. The dragon sent his magic into the sky and enormous thunderheads rolled in to answer his call. The wind began blowing furiously as lightning arced across the black clouds. Ancalon grabbed those bolts with his magic and hurled them at the human creature.
Azerick felt one and then a multitude powerful bolts of lightning strike his ward. Arcs of tremendously powerful electricity struck his shield and the ground around him by the hundreds. His hair stood on end, and tiny motes of electrical energy crackled across his flesh and clothing even inside his protective bubble. He sent magic deep into the ground and forced a lake to rise beneath them. Ancalon’s own lightning electrified the water and sent its power coursing through the great dragon’s body. Azerick jabbed the Arcanum point of his staff into the ground and added his power to the assault.
The dragon screeched once more, beat his powerful wings, and flew into the dark sky. Azerick chased him with flaming orbs and brilliant beams of arcane energy, scorching scales and eliciting more bellows of outrage. Ancalon streaked skyward until even his gigantic form was nearly lost from view. The dragon quickly grew bigger in Azerick’s vision as he plummeted from the clouds. He was sure Ancalon meant to crush him with his bulk and rend him apart with the talons of all eight feet stretched toward him. The Father of Dragons suddenly altered his course and raced almost horizontally across the sky. Azerick could hear the leathery flaps of his wings snapping under the titanic forces battering against them.
“I tire of this game. You are not welcome here, and I cast you out of my world!”
Ancalon’s talons tore a gash in the sky itself. Azerick realized what he had done just a split-second before the rift tore him from the ground and sucked him into its interdimensional maw. The sorcerer twisted in midair,
pointed his staff toward the tower, and called upon the silver substance of the Source pool. Pure Source material poured out of the windows and doors and expanded into the shimmering, silver bubble. Azerick was unsure if his hasty shield would prevent the dragon from destroying his tower and the well, but he had no time to try anything else. It was an instinctual measure of desperation.
The rift swallowed Azerick whole and his stomach lurched as he spun and tumbled through dimensions. Down through the gullet between worlds he fell, stars and suns streaking by like fireflies. Millions of miles, meaningless in this place between places, flashed by in seconds, minutes, possibly hours. Time had as little meaning here as distance. A white scar appeared in the distance, a rent in space opening to his destination.
Azerick was spewed out of the non-space and into a world of life and color. Wind rushed past Azerick’s body as he plummeted toward a sea of green just a couple hundred feet below. Hastily shifting into his demonic form, he snapped open his great, bat-like wings to arrest his fall. The jungle canopy seemed to explode as hundreds of thousands of birds or some kind of flying animals took to the sky with a hellish shriek. Knowing he had no time to completely stop his plunge, Azerick directed his descent toward a strip of water barely visible between the expansive spread of foliage.
The sorcerer struck the water with a great splash, and he once again found himself being tossed about, tumbling through the rushing torrent of water as the river rapidly swept him downstream. His wings less than useless, Azerick once more adopted his human body and struggled to keep his head above water. The speed of the river made Azerick feel as though he were trapped on the back of a runaway horse desperately trying to throw him. He kicked and paddled furiously both to reach the shore and to avoid the occasional boulder peeking out of the water. The former was a complete failure and the latter achieved only marginal success.
Azerick grunted and cursed in pain whenever he failed to avoid one of the immobile obstacles. His body was bashed, bruised, and abused for mile after punishing mile. He did not know if his demonic body was capable of drowning, but if it was, it could not be much longer in coming. Only his fight with the demon lord Drak’kar could match the punishing brutality of the river.
Azerick detected a change in the tone and tempo of the torrent’s rage, and he knew the river was about to unleash an entirely new hellish experience upon him. He thrust his head above the water and saw open sky a few dozen yards ahead. The sorcerer kicked and pulled furiously at the water, but it refused to loosen its grip on him. The river flung the human flotsam over the cliff and bore him downward under the force of the powerful cascade.
Azerick struck the water below with great force, but the resulting splash was lost amidst the awesome amount of water crashing down in an unending deluge. He prayed the plunge was a prelude to some sort of respite, but if his gods could hear him in this world, they chose to ignore his pleas. He had just enough time to take in another lungful of air before he was swept away once more. Another brutal mile raced by, then another and another. His world had become little more than flashes of green and the spray of whitewater as the river, sped along by gravity, tried to flush him like a toxin from its system.
Undercurrents continually pulled him down and bounced his body along the riverbed before lifting him upward once again, usually just in time to bash him against another rock cutting through the raging water. Azerick felt himself lifted into the air once again only to come back down hard a second later. Several times the river dropped away beneath him only to land on smooth stone just a few inches below the surface. It was akin to being forcefully thrown down a giant flight of stairs.
His final drop ended in a splash and notably calm water. For the first time in what felt like an eternity that probably spanned only twenty or thirty minutes, Azerick was not rushing downstream and being bashed into rocks. He kicked his feet until his head broke the surface and found himself in something of a large pool below a multi-step waterfall. There was still a substantial current, and it was quickly pushing him toward another nightmarish stretch of water. Azerick paddled desperately for the shore and dragged himself onto the muddy bank.
Lacking the strength to pull his head out of the muck, Azerick simply laid there, fighting to catch his breath and taking inventory of his numerous wounds. Realizing there were more areas of his body in pain than not, he quickly gave up the endeavor and simply luxuriated in being stationary. He slowly began moving parts of his body to work out the rapid onset of kinks and to reassure himself that he could.
He slowly got to feet and surveyed his surroundings. High mountains loomed over a dense jungle. The river cut the only clear path he could see, but the thick foliage grew right to the banks and stretched out over the water in most places making it impossible to follow it either up or downstream. A steamy, heavy mist blanketed the treetops in wispy vapors, filling in the few breaks in the otherwise impenetrable canopy.
As his exhaustion wore off, it gave his rage the energy to surface. Ancalon had delayed him and could even now be destroying his tower and the Source pool. His people needed him and the pool to defend against the Scions, and the dragon has proven to be a detriment to them both. Azerick reached out to the Source in order to scour away a swath of this damnable jungle and bleed away some of his rising anger only to find he couldn’t. Where the vast river of arcane power once flowed, there was nothing but a barren landscape.
Real fear did the job of vanquishing his anger as he realized he was trapped in this world with no magic in which to flee it. Azerick quickly took control of his mounting anxiety and refused to let panic inhibit his ability to think his way out of this predicament. If what he understood of the Source was accurate, it was nearly impossible for this world to be completely bereft of magic. The Source flowed throughout the universe, shaping worlds and creating life. Even if this world was ancient and the Source had somehow dried up, there must still be a remnant of it somewhere. Azerick sent out his focus once again, this time searching for small pools or rivulets of power instead of the enormous sea present in his world.
As he expected, it was there in the trees and the ground all around him like the mists floating high overhead. It was as weak and insubstantial as the fog as well, but a person can trap enough mist to provide water to drink, and so he could he trap enough of this power to open a rift back to his world. He could gather and hold the arcane energy in some runes, but it would take time to build them up to the level he needed to enact such a spell. If only his studies in rune carving had come to him as naturally as his sorcery had.
He nearly laughed aloud when his staff thrummed gently in his hand as if to remind that he had a concentrated source of power at the ready. He would still need the runes for a spell of that complexity, but at least it was now possible to do without waiting weeks or months for them to trap enough energy to be useful. Azerick scanned the sky through the slash in the jungle created by the river and saw the scar left by the rift hovering near the top of a barren mountain poking above the green canopy like a giant, grey wart. The scar represented a weakness in the barrier between worlds, and it was his best chance at reopening a passage back home.
“All right, what else do you have?” Azerick shouted in challenge to the jungle.
A creature that would look perfectly at home in the abyss stepped out of the dense foliage as if in answer. It stood more than a head taller than Azerick did but sported far more mass than even his demonic form. It’s skin was dark green mottled with black, boney plates all over its body and spikes round its head. It was bipedal with arms slightly longer than its legs. A pair of eyes rested close together above a pronounced set of jaws overflowing with long, sharp teeth too large to be concealed by its nearly nonexistent lips.
“Remind me to never ask this horrible place that question again.”
CHAPTER 10
Headmaster Florent strode the streets of Southport wearing a simple set of robes with the hood pulled up in place of her official robes of office. It w
as best if few people as possible knew of her comings and goings this day. There were questions abound that were best not asked, and if even a hint of their answers were discovered, it would mean instant execution. She deeply disliked these cloak and dagger schemes, but the safety of the realm was at stake, and the King himself ordered her actions.
She approached one of the gates made magical with the help of Azerick’s son and beckoned to the Academy Officer on duty. The man walked cautiously toward her then made to clasp his hands in front of his chest in salute when he saw her face beneath the hood. A sharp hiss from the Headmaster stopped him before he could make the deferential motion.
“Headmaster, what brings you to the gate?” Magus Welch’s confusion was evident on his face and in his tone.
“Absolutely nothing, because I was never here,” Headmaster Florent responded crisply.
The magus gave a short nod. “I understand.”
“You cannot possibly understand what never happened. I was never here, and I never asked your people to open the gate to Brightridge. If anyone asks why you activated the gate, you will tell them it was to test your crew.”
“I understand…I think.”
“Don’t think just open the gate.”
“Yes, Headmaster.”
“Who?”
“Nobody, I was just going to run my people through a quick drill.”
“Good work.”
Magus Welch hastened back to the gate and began barking orders. A bell started ringing, its cadence signaling a live drill. Guardsmen stopped traffic and ushered travelers away from the gate. Two more wizards appeared and began channeling power into the pillars framing Southport’s northeastern trade gate. The runes carved into the stones lit up, and a shimmering screen stretched across the divide. Although she could not possibly see it, Maureen knew a nearly identical scene played out in Brightridge.
The Sorcerer's Destiny (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 16