The Sorcerer's Abyss (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  Despite the seemingly haphazard way Drak’kar slung the viscous blood on the wall, it was a painstaking activity and the immeasurable minutes rolled into hours. The death of another succubus marked each passing segment of time with the accuracy of a well-made clock. Drak’kar eventually stepped back to admire his work and declared it suitable.

  He looked at the last remaining succubus. “It would appear I have no need of your blood.”

  The demon felt a small measure of relief intersperse with the stark terror she had undergone for the past several hours.

  “However,” Drak’kar continued, “You may yet still be of use.” He turned to the minions holding the succubus. “Take her and these corpses and make them an example of how I tolerate betrayal.”

  Drak’kar was already too engrossed in the next stage of his work to hear the terror-driven pleadings as the succubus was led out of the tunnel to meet her fate. The demon lord returned his focus onto the gruesome sigils painted on every surface around him. The creation of the runes was the easy part. Now he would have to use all his skill to breach the wards without alerting Klaraxis before he was ready.

  Even with the sigil he created, the task of penetrating the citadel’s wards was a monumental challenge. Klaraxis was more adept at magic than he was, and it took all his focus and power to just to make the attempt. Demons brought shades to Drak’kar for him to consume as the strain quickly left him famished and in need of sustenance.

  Only the iron discipline Drak’kar employed in his fighting skills allowed him to make progress and maintain the focus he needed. He sensed his resolve was slowly but steadily defeating the fortress’s defenses as he chipped away at its intangible existence.

  Drak’kar finally felt the wards surrender their vigilance and stepped back to collect himself. He commanded another shade be brought, which he immediately consumed and felt its life force replenish him.

  “It is done,” Drak’kar proclaimed. “Have the beldgar complete the excavation and ensure the soldiers are prepared to infiltrate the fortress.”

  “Your will be done, Great Master,” the succubus answered.

  Minutes later, Drak’kar’s minions informed him only a thin shell of stone stood between them and the wailing pits. The demon lord commanded his forces to gather behind him as he approached the final, feeble barrier standing between him and his nemesis. Drak’kar used his magic to smash through the rock and stepped into the wailing pits. Shades, whose sole existence was to feed their soul energy into the black stones of the citadel, moaned as the invading demons tore into them.

  Azerick looked up from his book as a chill ran through him. “Something is wrong.”

  Klaraxis sent his limited presence into the stone of his fortress. Our enemy has infiltrated my fortress! They come from the wailing pits and will soon reach the upper levels.

  With a deep, shuddering breath, Azerick adopted Klaraxis’ powerful form and set out to do battle.

  Drak’kar sent his minions to wreak havoc inside the halls of the citadel. He sought a very specific target and ignored the defending demons, allowing his small army to deal with the defenders unless they got in his way. He could sense Klaraxis’ presence still within the citadel’s ebony confines. It was only a matter of time before he tracked his archrival down and destroyed him.

  The demon lord gleefully tore apart any demon foolish enough to attack him or unlucky enough to simply come within his purview. Drak’kar let the corpse of an unfortunate balrog slip from his grasp as he felt Klaraxis’ presence grow nearer. The continued distraction of these insects quickly began to wear on Drak’kar’s patience. He cast his eyes and senses about in an effort to locate his nemesis.

  The wall next to him exploded as Klaraxis scanned the dim hallway, sending him, along with several tons of cut and shattered stone, crashing through the opposite wall. Drak’kar leapt to his feet and hurled a thousand pound block of stone back through the gaping hole in both walls. Azerick ripped a hole through the dimensions, stepped through, and landed a solid kick into Drak’kar’s back, sending the hulking demon on a trajectory almost identical to his thrown stone block.

  Azerick charged through the crumbling apertures after Drak’kar and searched the room for his foe. Drak’kar dropped from the shadows of the high ceiling and landing heavily onto Azerick’s back. Azerick tried to throw the demon off as the weight made his knees buckle, but he felt himself lifted in the air before he could plant his feet.

  Drak’kar lifted Azerick from the ground with his two upper arms and mercilessly pounded his body with a series of blows from his lower ones. The blows landed so fast it was like a solid, agonizing pulse. The demon prince held Azerick at arm’s length, raised a powerful leg, and kicked him in the chest, enlarging the hole in the wall as his body plowed through the stone.

  “Yes, fight me, weakling!” Drak’kar roared gleefully as he stepped through the wall after Azerick.

  Azerick did not even bother to stand before retaliating. Sending his arcane power through the stones of the citadel, he conjured a pillar of stone beneath Drak’kar and slammed him into the ceiling. Another pillar of stone crushed the demon lord back into the floor, shattering the rock into rubble and casting out a spider web of cracks beneath him.

  Drak’kar stood up, chuckling. “That hurt, gloriously. I might grant you a quick death after all.”

  “If you liked that, then you’ll really enjoy this,” Azerick replied.

  The entire section of wall at the end of the passageway raced down the hall with the speed of an arrow. Wind, created by the displacement of the air filling the hall struck the sorcerer in face as Drak’kar vanished from sight, carried away by the speeding section of stone. The room trembled when the wall and its demonic cargo abruptly reached the end of the corridor with a deafening crash.

  Azerick stepped into the corridor and held his breath against the obscuring, choking dust as it slowly settled to the floor. Even his demonic eyes struggled to pierce the grey haze veiling the passage. Azerick had only a fraction of second’s warning when he spotted the slightly darker shape of a hurled block of stone before it struck him in the chest, knocking him back over a dozen feet.

  He barely returned to a crouch before a crimson beam of arcane power sent him reeling further down the hallway. Drak’kar burst out of the diminishing dust cloud immediately after the strike and landed a solid punch to Azerick’s head at a dead sprint. Azerick was airborne once again until the distant wall arrested his brief flight.

  Drak’kar launched himself at Azerick before he could fully recover, landing both feet into his chest and sending the sorcerer the rest of the way through the already damaged wall. The Fourth Circle demon was in a fighting frenzy now and wasted no time on mocking words or glib retorts.

  Drak’kar waded through the rubble, grabbed up Azerick by his arm and leg near the hip and shoulder, and began mercilessly bashing him into the floor until the stone yielded and crumbled beneath him. The sudden lack of resistance caused Drak’kar to fumble his grip and Azerick fell through the void to land heavily onto the floor of the chamber below.

  Azerick did not pause to give his enemy another chance to brutalize him. He fought past the pain and did his best to shake off the effect of his stunned senses as he rolled to his feet and made a stumbling run for the room’s exit. He barely made it out of the room when the ceiling caved in on top of him, the huge stone blocks pummeling him onto the floor.

  Drak’kar leapt through the newest hole in Klaraxis’ citadel and pulled Azerick from the rubble by the throat. The demon lord smashed him against the wall several times before flinging him back into the room. He reached into the chamber with invisible hands of magic, grasped the edges of the hole in the ceiling, and tore down another large section of the floor above.

  Azerick reeled under the pummeling of falling stone as it threatened to bury him. Seeing his foe stunned, Drak’kar paused to allow himself a gloating chortle as he felt his ultimate victory near at hand.

  You
must give me control! Klaraxis screamed inside Azerick’s head.

  Azerick fought to clear the cobwebs from his mind. “No! I will not give into you! I will not become your slave!”

  Then you doom us both! Will you give into death? Are you so willing to admit defeat and accept an end to everything? If you do not give me control, you are surrendering to Drak’kar and giving up everything you are or will ever be.

  Azerick wanted to deny the demon, wanted to convince himself it was just another ploy of Klaraxis to assert his dominance over this body, but the demon was right. Azerick had no problem accepting death. What he could not accept was giving up and letting it take him without knowing he did everything he could to deny it. To simply give up was anathema to him and a far worse fate than death could bring. Even if Klaraxis took control, Azerick knew the demon could not banish his existence, just as Azerick could not banish the demon. As long as he existed, he could fight. If he could fight, he could one day win again.

  “All right, demon. I give you this body, but know I will fight you for it every minute for the remainder of our shared existence.”

  Azerick released his mental grip on their body and Klaraxis practically hurled him into the recesses of his mind as he leapt to the fore with a scream of primal fury and exultation. Klaraxis’ clawed fingers dug into the black stone and drank in the power stored there over the centuries by the shades in the wailing pits. Klaraxis stood upon his powerful ebony legs and the blocks of stone rose with him.

  “Oh good, there is still some fight left in you, pathetic little human parasite.” Drak’kar smiled.

  Klaraxis grinned evilly. “Not human, not anymore and never again.”

  Drak’kar took a step back as he realized his victory was no longer near at hand. Klaraxis was the most powerful demon in the abyss by a significant margin. Only the human’s weakness convinced him to challenge his rival. However, not all was lost. Klaraxis had taken a beating, and he was nowhere near his full strength despite his return. Even as Drak’kar took a brutal beating from the stones Klaraxis sent hurling at him, he felt they were equal at the least, and Drak’kar was in far better shape.

  The Fourth Circle demon lord climbed to his feet and willed bone-like swords to grow from each of his forearms. He tensed his muscles, ready to hurl himself at Klaraxis and engage him in a decisive melee. Before Drak’kar could close the distance, a black figure detached itself from the shadows and plunged a shadowy blade into Klaraxis’ lower back.

  Klaraxis released a roar as an indescribable pain lanced through his back. The ethereal blade cut not with the pain of steel but with the agony of rage, remorse, betrayal, and hatred. It was a thing of emotion and it cut deeper than any steel could.

  The Rook plunged his shadow blade into the demon’s back as he clung to him like a wasp, twisting his black stinger into the sorcerer’s flesh. The assassin allowed the warmth of success wash through him as his blade finally found its target.

  Satisfaction filled the Rook as he redeemed himself for his greatest and only failure. Complacency born of overconfidence had allowed a lowly goblin to kill him. The humiliation added another layer to his failure so unbearable it followed him even into the afterlife. His mission accomplished, he failure redeemed, he could find peace even in this hellish place.

  Without warning, a strange silver beam shot through the hole in the ceiling. It appeared to continue upward through the highest reaches of the fortress and into the sky. A shimmering rainbow limned the silver ray that looked and felt far more substantial than simple light.

  The Rook and Drak’kar both screamed in rage and denial as their mutual enemy began floating upward. Drak’kar broke into a sprint, desperate to plunge his bone swords into Klaraxis before he could escape. The Rook refused to surrender his prey and dug the claws of his demonic hand into Klaraxis’s black flesh even as he felt himself lifted from the ground and torn apart.

  Drak’kar skidded to a stop and roared his outrage as he saw his prey escaping. The enraged demon spun on the figure emerging from the shadows.

  “You did this!” the demon lord seethed.

  “I provided a needed assist,” Sharellan clarified.

  “You said he was mine!”

  “I said you could challenge him and ascend his position if you were successful, and so you have. I also told you that this little coup of yours threatened to disrupt my plans. Now you have what you want, and I have what I want.”

  Drak’kar clenched and unclenched his fists—all four of them. “I wanted to destroy him.”

  “The fates are fickle and uncertain, my dear Drak’kar, you may yet get your chance.”

  Klaraxis looked down and saw the black-skinned demon clinging to him like a leech as both their bodies stretched far beyond physical reality. Both creatures’ torsos stretched beyond the fortress while their legs remained inside it. The pain was unimaginable as the liquid silver pulled them continually upward.

  The abyss finally relented its hold, and the two creatures’ lower bodies snapped upward to rejoin their uppers, easing some of the torment afflicting them. The beam expanded and Klaraxis and the Rook soared through a silver tube shimmering with a myriad of hues like oil on the surface of water, twisting, rising, plummeting through the dimensions separating the untold number of realms and realities.

  A sudden turn and twist sent the Rook flying from Klaraxis’ back and careening through the void. With the assassin and his dreadful blade gone, much of the pain still afflicting Klaraxis vanished with him. He found himself unable to focus as his mind fought to comprehend what was happening. It was a battle he was destined to lose. Klaraxis and Azerick both felt their consciousness finally surrender its grip and tear away from their body like a shirt being violently ripped from their back and casually tossed into the corner of the great void.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ellyssa awoke in a small cell with a solid steel door. A cot, waste bucket, and the sigils marking nearly every inch of every surface were the only things decorating the ten by ten foot room. She did not know how long she had been unconscious, but given the generally horrible way her body felt and the incredible emptiness of her stomach, she suspected the time was measured in days.

  At least she no longer wore her shackles. Ellyssa tried to reach the Source but could not sense even a trace of its existence. She looked at the runes deeply etched into the walls and deduced their purpose. Some were designed to fortify the physical structure of the walls and prevent scrying, but the majority prevented anyone in this cell from wielding magic.

  It was Bakhtaran all over again, and the thought terrified her. But she was no longer a little girl, and her experiences at the hands of her Chain Mistress, Misha, had made her stronger. Whatever they were going to do to her, Ellyssa swore they would not break her.

  Inquisitor Fennrick stepped through the doors of Duchess Paullina’s private study and bowed deeply at the waist. Senior Inquisitor Elias was already present and seated, sipping a glass of what appeared to be brandy.

  “What news, Fennrick?” the Duchess asked without preamble.

  “About what we expected, Your Grace,” the inquisitor replied. “No one is able to use the Codex beyond its mundane purpose.”

  Duchess Paullina curled her lip in annoyance. “That is very inconvenient. With the girl being the only known key to the book, we cannot execute her.” The Duchess paused for thought. “This could work to our benefit as well. The Academy is not pleased you left Southport without handing over the Codex.”

  Elias nodded. “I have been receiving messages daily from Headmaster Florent. She is becoming increasingly impatient with me.”

  “Yes. I just received a letter from Duchess Melina hinting at significant political fallout should harm come to this brat of a child. The last thing I need is for her to involve Jarvin. It was pure luck I did not swing with those other fools after Ulric and Caalendor’s successive failures.”

  “I am sure it was due as much to your brilliance as luck, Your Grace,” S
enior Inquisitor Elias said.