The Sorcerer's Return (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  Klaraxis’ furious keening cut off abruptly when Daebian sheathed the blade and took his hand off the black jewel that now housed the demon’s soul. A new source of anguish filled his ears as Miranda shrieked and ran to Azerick’s side.

  “What have you done?” she wailed as she cradled her husband’s head in her lap.

  “It appears I have stabbed him, Mother. Do you really need me to explain the obvious, or are you just being needlessly rhetorical?”

  “Why, why would you do this?”

  Daebian shrugged. “It seemed the thing to do at the time. I hate such emotional scenes, so I shall leave you to your grief.”

  “Daebian, wait. Where will you go?”

  “I do not know for certain. I always wanted to be a pirate,” he mused.

  Miranda looked at her son as if seeing him for the first time. “I do not know where we failed you, Daebian, but I pray you come back to us some day.”

  Daebian smiled down at his mother. “The day I return, it will be at the head of an army the likes of which you cannot imagine to conquer this pathetic kingdom.” He then turned and walked away.

  EPILOGUE

  Miranda walked into the room where Azerick lay upon his bed unmoving. Next to him, Brother Thomas maintained his vigil, praying and using his divine magic to soothe and heal his wounded soul.

  “Has there been any change?” Miranda asked

  Brother Thomas shook his head. “None I can tell. His soul was badly injured by whatever wound Daebian inflicted upon him.”

  “It has been a week. How much longer will it take for him to mend? How long can he live without sustenance?”

  “I am sorry. I do not know the answer to either of those questions, Miranda. Remember, this is not Azerick’s body, but an imitation wrought by the demon’s innate ability. He could languish like this for months or even years. I just do not know.”

  It was another somber breakfast as the school’s leaders sat around the dining table. Everyone felt the stress and fear of Azerick’s condition, desperately wondering when or if he would awaken. Their battle was now divided on two fronts; the physical exhaustion of their rigorous training and combating the overwhelming despondency crushing the spirits of everyone at the school. Azerick was the hope for their survival and without him, they had none.

  “Has there been any change in his condition?” Allister asked Miranda.

  Miranda took a sip of her juice cut liberally with wine to try and steady her voice when she spoke. “No. Thomas says he is certain Azerick is inside the body somewhere, but his spirit has suffered some kind of significant trauma. Even though the wound itself was largely superficial and Daebian missed striking any vital organs or arteries, he suffered some sort of traumatic assault to his soul. There is little else he can do.”

  “I think we need to discuss the future of the school and our preparations,” Rusty said. “What do we do now with Azerick…convalescent?”

  “We do the same thing we have been doing,” Ellyssa insisted. “We keep training and devising new ways to kill our enemy.”

  “I think with Azerick’s prognosis uncertain, we should revisit the way we conduct our training. I have some ideas—,” Rusty started to say.

  “And unless they are to increase our efforts, you will do well to keep them to yourself,” Ellyssa snapped.

  “I have a right to express my opinion!”

  “What you call opinions I call whining.”

  “I saw my family brutally murdered by the Scions! I am not talking about lessening our defenses or preparations, but without Azerick, we need to adjust how we are going to fight this war!”

  “We are not going to fight it without Azerick,” Ellyssa insisted.

  Allister cleared his throat and raised his hands, beseeching calm. “We are all upset at what has happened. Azerick will recover. The gods will not allow anything less, so let us not turn our fears and frustrations onto each other. Rusty is right, we need to prepare for any eventuality. How does our training progress?”

  Ellyssa took a deep breath and replied, “We have fielded almost a hundred of the constructs and assigned operators to each of them. All of them have come from the weakest of our defensive mages. We have gone through several scaled-down exercises and found that their ability to slow the ravager advance greatly outweighs the loss of their employing defensive wards and spells. The swords have been able to defend against a dragon without the ravagers destroying our frontlines. They work.”

  “That is good news. How many of these things do we think we can field without pulling too many mages from the ranks?”

  “Using Azerick’s gates to reach Brelland and the towns near the capitol, we have recruited one hundred forty-seven people with enough magical aptitude to control a construct,” Maira reported. “Seventeen of them have the propensity for higher-level wizardry if we had the time to train them properly.”

  “That is heartening,” Allister said. “How is Raijaun doing? Has anyone seen him lately?”

  “He rarely comes out of the basement,” Aggie answered. “I think he is determined to maintain the barrier in Azerick’s absence.”

  “Understandable, but let us not allow him to become too withdrawn or obsessed. Aggie, were you able to contact The Academy in regards to them fielding these constructs as well?”

  “I did. Headmaster Florent reluctantly agreed to entertain the concept. I think she would do almost anything short of making a pact with the abyss to prevent another tragedy like the one they suffered. We put two score of the constructs on a ship yesterday bound for Southport.”

  “Good. Without The Academy, we would have had a tough time fielding enough of the things. As much as I hated Azerick’s decision to allow the ravagers to attack them, I doubt they would have considered the idea to…,”

  An acolyte burst into the room and shouted, “Azerick is waking up!”

  There was but a moment of hurried glances around the table before everyone leapt to their feet and ran for the infirmary. Brother Thomas intercepted the small mob before just inside the building.

  “I cannot have all of you charging through my infirmary like a cattle stampede! Four of you can come in, but no more. I leave it to you to decide who.”

  Alex, Ellyssa, Allister, and Miranda rushed to Azerick’s side. Three acolytes struggled to pin him down as he thrashed on the narrow bed. Sweat beaded his brow and soaked the sheets that now lay wadded on the floor.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Miranda asked fretfully.

  “His soul is fighting to reconnect with his body,” Thomas answered. “It appears to be a traumatic thing.”

  “Can’t you do anything?”

  Thomas shook his head. “With his strength, it is taking all our power just to keep him under control. Anyone trying to guide his soul home could get torn to shreds, physically and spiritually.”

  Azerick screamed and the bed jumped several inches off the floor despite all the weight and force pressing down on it. With a primal shout loud enough to cause pain, Azerick bolted upright and threw off two of the three Chosen trying to hold him down. He dropped back onto the bed breathing heavily and stared at the ceiling.

  Miranda tentatively reached out to him with a shaking hand. “Azerick, are you all right?”

  “Miranda, he’s gone!” Azerick shouted hoarsely.

  “I know, Azerick. Daebian left. I do not know where he is.”

  Azerick thrashed his head from side to side. “No, not Daebian.”

  “Who then, who is gone?”

  “The demon! Klaraxis is gone!” Azerick shouted and manically laughed into his hands.

  ***

  Daebian sat in the rope netting strung along the prow of the ship and idly made the gold coin dance across his knuckles. He had taken the coin from his father after he stabbed him. He made it balance between two knuckles and studied the stamped image of the tower with its three lightning bolts. It was his father’s personal seal, an image to identify who he was and what he did. To Dae
bian, it was a token of his father’s life, a debt he would one day collect.

  “Sails, two points off the port bow!” the lookout shouted down from the crow’s nest.

  “Finally, things are getting interesting.”

  Daebian rolled out of the net, scanned the horizon for what he hoped were pirates, and stroked the black jewel set in the hilt of the soul blade.

  A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  I hope you enjoyed this tale and will try my other works. Feel free to look me up on Facebook! You can also check me out on my blog at http://brockdeskins.blogspot.com. I post release dates, answer questions, and occasionally release some new covers for my books!

  PLEASE REVIEW MY BOOKS (Especially if you liked it). Customer reviews are the primary means of enticing others to purchase them. I am dependent upon the sales of my books to earn a living that will allow me to continue writing stories that I hope bring you some measure of entertainment. Thank you for your support.

  The Sorcerer’s saga is an open-ended fantasy series.

  The Sorcerer’s Ascension: Torn from a life of comfort and luxury, his family destroyed by political intrigues and aspirations, a young boy must quickly grow into a man before the deadly streets of Southport devour him. Follow Azerick through a page-turning adventure that pits him against thieves, thugs, murderers, and men of power that will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

  Azerick must fight just to survive, but for him survival is not enough. A hunger to avenge the wrongs committed against him burns deep within. But that is not all that lies within the young man. There is a power waiting to be unleashed that may be the key to achieving the justice and security he seeks--if it does not destroy him first.

  The Sorcerer’s Torment: Azerick flees The Academy but quickly falls prey to powerful beings that use his skills and power for their own amusement. What these creatures do not understand is the power of the young sorcerer's will and the lengths he will go to for vengeance. Despite becoming a prisoner, Azerick finds his first true love, but can he keep it?

  The Sorcerer’s Legacy: Azerick has found himself a home and tries to settle down. He takes on an apprentice and tries to put all the death and desire for vengeance behind him. But when the Rook finds him, Azerick is once again pulled back into Ulric's schemes. Knowing that all he has worked toward and everyone close to him is in danger as long as these schemes are ongoing; Azerick decides to put an end to it, once and for all.

  The Sorcerer’s Vengeance: After narrowly avoiding being killed in his own bed by the land’s most feared assassin, Azerick leaves his school behind to find out who sent him and to put an end to the threat once and for all. Azerick’s search will take him to the very pits of the abyss and back to unleash hellish fury upon those that threaten him.

  The Sorcerer’s Scourge: With the siege broken and Ulric dead, Azerick can finally relax, study his magic, and run his school in peace. Unfortunately, Jarvin’s reign is far from uncontested and the true usurper decides to make his move. Jarvin escapes with help from an unlikely source—a vampire named Landrin who still clings tenaciously to his own humanity. While Azerick and a large force from North Haven race to save the King in exile, evil forces are preparing to unleash a nightmare upon the kingdom that may well destroy them all.

  Shrouds of Darkness is a modern day vampire tale. Leo Malone has been a vampire for the better part of the twentieth century. Once a prominent Sherriff (vampire cop), he now earns his living as a private eye and occasional bodyguard for anyone that requires some serious protection. Leo is hired by the daughter of a mob accountant who has gone missing.

  The fact that her father is also a werewolf has Leo following a trail of grisly murders that will lead him through a web of intrigue and conspiracy involving his fellow vampires and the local werewolves that make New York their home, all the while trying to keep one particularly determined cop off his back and himself out of jail. Leo is not some pretty-boy vampire that all the girls ogle over, but a hard-eyed, remorseless killing machine who does not take crap from anyone. IF YOU READ THIS, PLEASE REVIEW IT. I cannot endorse this book enough. It was an absolute joy to write and I still giggle when I read it. I challenge you not to laugh at many of Leo’s constant snide remarks and smart-assed comments.

  Again, I just want to thank everyone who has purchased my books. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that I have been able to provide something enjoyable to so many people.