The Sorcerer's Destiny (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Deskins, Brock

  Several of the flying ships, including the huge flagship, turned their weapons against the other Scion vessels and any dragons flying near them. Fireballs and lightning bolts flashed across the sky. Although far fewer in number, the four vessels crewed almost exclusively by Daebian’s people ravaged the other ships with their surprise opening salvo. Miranda could only shake her head, unable to comprehend who or what her son was.

  ***

  Azerick, Raijaun, and Tarth emerged from the portal near the edge of a fight between four angry gods and the Father of Dragons. Ancalon writhed in agony as the Scions used their power to punish him for aiding their enemies. Acres of tall grass, trees, and shrubs lay crushed and mulched from his tormented struggles.

  “Release us, worm, before we decide your use no longer outweighs the trouble you have caused.”

  Ancalon’s answer was a roar of defiance and pain that shook the already trembling ground. Azerick, Raijaun, and Tarth struck at the fallen gods with all their power. Kaz and Doaz raised a hand and the shimmering, multihued rays struck an invisible barrier without effect.

  “More vermin has arrived. We shall deal with you later. You and your children will be punished for your transgressions,” Xar promised.

  The eyes of four vengeful gods turned toward the interlopers, and it felt like the weight of the universe was weighing down on them. It was an indescribable feeling that filled them all with enough fear to induce a cold sweat. The gods flicked a seemingly casual wrist at the three arrivals as if brushing crumbs from their dining table. Azerick and Raijaun pulled deeply from the Source pool and erected a silver barrier around the three of them.

  The disdainful assault struck the shield with incredible power and drove the glimmering orb through the woods, carrying the three passengers with it like beans in a jar. The force of their repulsion shattered trees and plowed a furrow in the ground several feet deep and half a mile long. When their silver cocoon finally came to rest, they stood facing the Scions once again. They did not fly or step through a gate; they were simply there because they willed it to be so. Such was the power of gods.

  “You no longer amuse us, and your continued interference ends now,” Xar said without inflection or emotion.

  The three powerful wielders of magic sensed the near instant gathering of power on a scale none thought possible. It was a hundred-fold stronger than the swatting they had just received, and Azerick knew there was nothing he could conjure to stop it. Even with the full power of the Source pool at his command, the Scions could crush any ward he erected as easily as an egg shell.

  Azerick felt the titanic concussion hit him for a brief instant before numbing darkness fell over his world. He existed in state of perfect oblivion, floating in a black void without sight, sound, smell, or feel. His body or soul, whatever his existence was at this point, flew upward. The sound of raging water filled his ears, and his body was tightly wrapped in a swaddling blanket of pain. Azerick opened his eyes and found the three of them lying on a grassy plateau. Sitting up, he saw a smoking crater probably two hundred yards wide half a mile away.

  “The fallen ones are right,” a deep, powerful voice spoke. “Your fight is over. This is a battle suited only for gods.”

  Azerick turned his head and winced in pain. Four figures stood nearby appearing not the least bit unusual to the casual eye, with the exception of the tall, muscularly-lean figure wearing nothing but his blue-green skin. Despite their mortal appearance, no one could miss the aura of immortal power radiating from them and mistake them for anything but gods.

  Solarian stood resplendent in his golden armor and wielded a sword forged from the very essence of the sun. Ellanee wore chain-like mail woven from thin vines sprouting flowers and thorns. Sharrellan had no trouble striking a seductive pose even in the face potential destruction in suit of form-hugging black leather crafted from the skin of demons who displeased her.

  “Solarian is right, my Hand,” the dark goddess said. “You have performed wonderfully, but this is now our fight.”

  “We must go. The Scions are aware of us, and you do not want to be caught in the middle of our battle,” Ellanee said.

  The gods took a single, mundane step forward and faced their most hated and feared enemy. The Scions turned their depthless gazes from the smoldering crater to their usurpers.

  “So the children seek to kill their parents once again.”

  “We are older, wiser, and stronger than before,” Solarian replied. “This time, you will never return to harm the mortals of our world.”

  “You are infants, and you lack your precious Guardians. Take comfort that we shall show you mercy and destroy you utterly instead of inflicting upon you the tortures of a banished existence.

  ***

  Raijaun was just beginning to stir when the gods began trading blows. The ground quaked and expended power electrified the air. Great swathes of forest were flattened, and lesser hills crushed flat just in the first exchange.

  Azerick grabbed Tarth’s still unconscious form and shouted to his son. “Raijaun, get up! We need to get out of here!”

  The sorcerer tore open a gate and leapt through with Raijaun staggering after him. Their first hop took them nearly five miles from the clashing titans, but still the ground shook and the air carried the concussive waves of cataclysmic explosions. Azerick immediately opened a second portal and dashed through with the elf slung over one shoulder. He laid the wizard on the ground high above the valley where gods sought to destroy one another. Raijaun sat on a boulder as he regained his constitution. Azerick looked over Tarth and saw blood running in tiny rivulets from his ears and nose.

  “Tarth, can you hear me? Tarth?”

  The elf moaned, began to stir, and his eyelids fluttered open. “Are we dead? I did not expect the afterlife to be quite so noisy.”

  “We are alive, and the gods have arrived to take over the war.”

  “Oh, goodie. Help me sit up.”

  Azerick helped Tarth to a sitting position and propped his back against a boulder. Far below their mountain perch, the battle raged on, wiping forests bare, setting the shattered timbers aflame, and scouring the earth down to the bedrock and beyond.

  “Father, are we not going to help them?” Raijaun asked. “Isn’t that why Lissandra created me?”

  “I had thought so, and perhaps one day you will find the kind of power the original Guardians wielded, but even as powerful as we are, we are but children compared to them. They would, and almost did, crush us like insects. I think our job was to set the battlefield and draw the Scions out where the gods could engage them.”

  “Will they be strong enough to defeat them?”

  “We must pray that they are. The Scions are only four now. Hopefully, that will be enough to shift the balance.”

  Using scrying magic to get a closer view, they watched the calamitous struggle rage on from a distance, ready to leap through another gate should it begin spilling over toward them. A fiery meteor streaked from the sky and struck with enough force to shake the mountain upon which the three spectators stood. A colossal earth elemental crawled from the ground, towering a hundred feet tall, spit magma and tried to stomp the Scions flat. An intense ray shot down from the bright sun and seared a perfect hole in the ground a hundred feet wide and half a mile deep.

  The scions shattered the elemental with a thought, snapped the top off a mountain like the tip of an icicle, and nearly succeeded in crushing Sharrellan beneath its awesome mass. The dark goddess vanished into the shadows, reappeared more than a mile away, and sent streamers of caustic, shadowy black tentacles to choke the immortal life from the fallen gods.

  Serron picked up an entire river and wielded it like a mile-long whip, lashing out at the Scions with the power of millions of gallons of water moving faster than even Azerick and Raijaun’s superior eyes could track. The Scions deflected the striking mass of water like a master fencer parrying a flurry of sword thrusts. To the watcher’s eyes, the battle appeared to be
evenly matched until horror struck.

  The Scions seemed to grab hold of Serron’s aqueous whip with a giant, invisible hand. The river looped and an undulating wave raced back toward the god of the seas. The massive streamer of water wrapped and constricted around Serron like a serpent and froze solid. The Scions pulled every particle of heat from the water until it was so cold Azerick and the others could feel a drop in the ambient temperature from where they stood. The faceless ones then shattered the god-encasing glacier with a sledgehammer of arcane power. Massive blocks of ice flew through the air and skittered across the land, crushing trees and cutting huge scars into the ground. When the scene cleared, Serron was nowhere to be seen.

  Azerick witnessed the death of a god, and his faith in their victory died with him. “We have to do something.”

  “As you said, we are but children compared to the gods,” Raijaun said.

  “Yes, but even children can set a trap to catch a bear. I have been studying the Scions, the way they fight and wield their magic. They act as a single being, like a collective mind. That is why the death of the one Daebian slew affected them so much. A blow to one is a blow to the collective. I think that is why Daebian was able to keep secrets and use the soulblade against them. The Scions mentality is structured on logic and order above all else. It is why they feel the need to enslave all intelligent life so they can control it. It is why they despise freedom and free will. Daebian is a being of chaos. Sharrellan once told me that not even the sisters of fate were able to see Daebian within the strands. We cannot face them as a collective, so we need to devise a way to separate one from the whole. Only then will we have a chance to fight it.”

  “How can we isolate one from the group? Even if we managed, do you think our power is enough to defeat it?”

  Azerick sounded far more hopeful than he felt. “We have to try.”

  “No, we do not have the strength to slay the god even then.” Azerick and Raijaun’s eyes went to Tarth. “But I think I may know a way to defeat it.”

  “What do you mean, Tarth?” Azerick asked the elf.

  A distant, haunted look filled his eyes. “I know something about true chaos. This pseudo-world seems to mirror our own, yes?” Azerick nodded. “We must try to send one of them to my home on this world where my connection is strongest.”

  “Tarth, you cannot face one of them alone,” Raijaun said.

  “Face it, yes, but none of us can fight it even together. I have a better chance of removing it from the battle alone than if we try brute force together.”

  “Are you sure, Tarth?” Azerick asked softly.

  Tarth smiled. “I have not been sure of anything for hundreds of years.”

  Azerick laid a gentle hand on the elf’s shoulder. He had grown fond of Tarth, had been inside his mind and understood his tortured existence like few could.

  “Ancalon!” Azerick called out.

  The huge serpent slithered out of a hole in the air not far from where they stood. The Father of Dragons had shrunk his form down to a more manageable and less noticeable size of a petite hundred feet in length.

  “The war goes badly for us.”

  “It does, but I have a plan I hope will change that, but I need your help again. Are you well?”

  “I am deeply abused, but that is a shadow of the tortures I will face if the Scions are victorious. What do you require of me?”

  “We have to separate one of the Scions from the group. Do you know the place of the elven nation in this world, and can you open a rift strong enough to force one of them there?”

  “The task is far easier than forcing the four of them to this world was, but it is still beyond my ability to do it alone.”

  “What if we all strike at the Scions at the same moment with all our power? Will that be enough to weaken their resistance?”

  “It is possible, but far from certain. Only the death of the one shook them enough to allow me to pull them here. But, as I said, this is by far a simpler task. Perhaps it will be sufficient to shift one, but it will be impossible for me to hold it. The creature is a god and will able to return to the fray with little more than a thought.”

  “It is the only chance we have,” Azerick said determinedly. The sorcerer focused his thoughts inward and called out. Sharrellan.

  I am a bit busy, my Hand. We have lost Serron, and I fear our time draws near.

  I have a plan. We must strike at one of the Scions at the same time. I hope to separate one from the whole and disrupt their collective mind.

  Sharrellan’s deep laughter filled Azerick’s mind. I knew I chose my Hand well. Call upon us and we will answer.

  “Our gods understand what we are trying to do. Ancalon, please send us where we need to go. I will call out when the moment comes.”

  “I will hear you and act,” the great dragon promised.

  Ancalon slashed two small rifts in the air and directed Tarth to one and Azerick and Raijaun to the other. Father and son stepped onto the plain where the battle still raged just a few miles away. They had to erect powerful wards to protect themselves from the arcane destruction being unleashed even this far from the fighting. Azerick sent Sharrellan his need for a few seconds of respite, opened a gate between exchanges, and leapt through with Raijaun.

  “Now!” Azerick shouted with all his might in both mind and voice.

  Azerick and Raijaun lashed out with everything they had the moment they arrived. Energy from the Source pool streamed into them faster than they could unleash it. They opened themselves up to its power and held nothing back. The three gods struck simultaneously with equal effort, focusing their awesome might into a single, concentrated point instead of their previously expansive, devastating blows. Ancalon opened a rift behind the Scion nearest Azerick and Raijaun similar to the one he had used to send Azerick to the magically dead jungle world only smaller and more concentrated.

  The Scions faltered under the intense, focused attack for a brief moment, but that moment was enough. The Scion called Doaz was violently pulled through the rift and vanished only to instantly appear in a beautiful stand of trees the elves called the Grove of Heroes. Before Doaz could take in the copse, a powerful magical strike lanced into him strong enough to make him take a step back.

  Doaz faced his attacker and nearly laughed at the pathetic elf who sought to challenge him. Tarth flew back and was pinned against the trunk of a large tree with a thought.

  “Pathetic elf, did you think you could defeat me?” The Scion studied Tarth for an instant. “The blood of a Guardian runs through your veins. I know its taste, although it is greatly diluted. You spring from the line of the last true Guardian. We were denied justice for her transgressions, so you will bear her sentence.”

  Tarth felt the Scion sliding into his thoughts and tried to push it away.

  “Fool, your blood is too thin to resist me.”

  “Resist you? On the contrary, I invite you to share my madness.”

  Doaz felt the thin barrier between his consciousness and the elf’s shatter beneath his mind’s feet like thin ice covering a pond. The Scion plunged deep inside the lake of madness and flailed for the surface. Doaz found himself drowning in every chaotic thought, emotion, and event in Tarth’s long life. Unable to cope with the swirling insanity, the Scion experienced the full effect of Tarth’s decade-long torture in the hands of the most brutal demon lord ever to inhabit the abyss. The current of chaos poured in through the blood link with his grandmother, and the faceless one spun out of control in the turbulent memories of all the pain and anguish inflicted upon the races during the Great Revolution. It was more than the false god could bear, and he sank screaming in madness into the darkest depths of Tarth’s mind.

  ***

  Doaz’s terror and madness lashed at the minds of the three Scions in a powerful psychic feedback. The world shuddered under their combined psionic shriek. Azerick and Raijaun staggered beneath the combined physical and mental assault. The gods struck swiftly and in uni
son. Their renewed attack rocked the Scions with a brutal assault. Again and again the true gods attacked, driving the Scions back and inflicting true pain and injury for the first time since their battle began.

  Xar and his fellows took the brutal beating and did their best to shield themselves from the assault while they collected their strength and adjusted to the unexpected change. The loss of Doaz to some sort of insanity was a terrible blow, but it was far from critical, and they were nowhere near defeated. The usurpers had the momentum now, but that would change very quickly. It was still the three elder gods against three children. The balance of power had not shifted that dramatically and would soon favor the elder gods again. But first, it was time to remove the one chaotic variable they had mistakenly ignored until now.

  The Scions’ power resurged, and the gods’ assault stopped dead against their wards as they directed their attention to Azerick and Raijaun. “Your meddling has proven more problematic than we had anticipated. We had wanted you and the pathetic mortals to witness the death of your gods, but your interference ends now.”

  The Scions shifted so fast they existed in two places at one time for the smallest fraction of a second. Azerick knew there was nothing he could conjure to block the faceless gods’ killing blow, so he tried to rip open a portal to whisk him and Raijaun away. It was an equally futile gesture. Even as Azerick began drawing in the Source to create his gate, the Scions stood before him, radiating power like the heat of the sun.

  Ellanee interposed herself between the Scions and the mortals’ champions. The world around them vanished in a massive explosion of power. When the dust cleared, Azerick, Raijaun, and Ellanee stood on an island surrounded by calamitous destruction. The Scions’ glared balefully at the nature goddess for thwarting their will. An invisible hand punched through Ellanee’s ward, wrapped around her, and sought to crush her like a dry leaf. Xar poised a blade of pure psychic energy over the goddess’ heart and stabbed.

  Everything happened in the space between breaths. High overhead, a solitary crow cawed, and Azerick glimpsed a flash of motion. Daebian leapt from the Scion’s shadow and plunged his sword deep into Xar’s back. The fallen gods released a horrific scream as Klaraxis sank his ethereal claws into the Scion’s soul.