The Sorcerer's Ascension (50 page)

“Wow, she sounds great. So how did she lose her eyesight?”

“What do you mean? I didn’t say she was blind,” Rusty asked in confusion.

“Well she must be blind if she’s going out with you.”

Rusty threw his scorched pillow at Azerick. “She thinks I’m quite charming, thank you!”

“I’m sure you two will be quite happy together so long as you don’t set her pretty long blond hair on fire,” Azerick said as threw Rusty’s burnt pillow back at him.

“The pillow was an accident and the only person’s hair I set on fire I did on purpose, and he deserved it and you know it,” Rusty fired back.

“What about that time in applied magic class when you thought that a flaming crown would look good and you pronounced yourself the fire king?”

“Setting my own hair on fire doesn’t count, occupational hazard,” Rusty countered, crossing his arms and sticking out his lower lip.

“What about in alchemy class when Magus Morgarum…”

“Alright, alright you made your point. I am not going to set her hair on fire and I have learned a new quenching spell that will put out any fires I may accidentally set.”

“Now that may well be the most brilliant thing you have done yet.”

Rusty and Azerick continued to catch up, Azerick telling him about his sparring, Rusty telling him about his walks and stolen kisses with Colleen.

The next day it was back to class as usual. Travis and his friends were all huddled around a desk carrying on what must have been a very amusing conversation. When they caught Azerick’s eye they laughed even harder and whispered amongst themselves before Travis stood up and turned towards Azerick.

“Hey Azerick, I was wrong to call you a peasant before,” he said.

Azerick was less surprised by his pronouncement than he was worried about what horrible thing he might follow that statement up with, knowing that it was unlikely that someone as spoiled and cruel as he was had some kind of major personality change over the holiday.

“It seems that I gave you far too much credit and insulted peasants everywhere by giving you claim to such a high status,” he continued, turning and looking at the other students in the classroom now that he had everyone's attention. “It seems that our good friend Azerick is not so much a peasant as the son of a whore!”

Azerick jumped up from his seat, face burning a brilliant shade of red.

“Shut your mouth, Travis, or I swear I’ll kill you!” Azerick shouted, barely suppressing his seething rage.

“Yes, that is quite enough young man!” Magus Florent demanded, but Travis continued.

“I was at my father’s shipping house when I overheard him and one of his ship captains talking about a whore that lived above an inn in the common quarter with her son,
Azerick
. Apparently she wasn’t that good though, her last customer cut her up like a piece of beef ready for the stew pot!”

The world seemed to narrow in Azerick’s eyes and the only think he could see was Travis’s laughing face. A curtain of white-hot fury blotted everything out as he extended his arm out and let loose a scream of unbridled fury. Suddenly the world went dark and he knew nothing more other than a distant, dull sensation of falling and the floor rushing up to meet him.

For Rusty and everyone else in the room it was a different story. Most of the teenage students were appalled at the filth spewing from Travis's mouth and their eyes turned towards Azerick in pity. Azerick’s scream of rage filled their ears a fraction of a second before an intense light, a horrendously loud crack, and the smell of ozone filled the room.

Azerick dropped to the ground unconscious, blood leaking from his nose and ears. Travis was down and not moving, his friends crawled around the floor moaning pitifully. The lightning blackened the wall behind the tormenting boys and blasted off a large section of the plaster and stucco. Students started screaming once they come overcame their momentary shock.

“Someone run to Magus Morgarum and have him bring healing potions, the best he has, quickly now!" Magus Florent commanded.

Several students ran to the alchemist’s classroom to summon help. Magus Florent bent over, checked Azerick first, and found that he was still breathing. She then checked on Travis. He was breathing but it was shallow. His shirt was in tatters and had a horrible burn through his shirt to his skin. His chest sported a large black burn across it where the electric bolt had grazed him. Had it hit him square it likely would have burned clean through him and ended his young life then and there.

Magus Morgarum ran in on the heels of the students who had summoned him and took in the damaged room and the students lying on the floor. He prized open Travis jaws and poured a purple liquid down his throat from a slim metal vial. He then went and administered a dose of the healing draught to Azerick before checking on the conscious but moaning students caught just outside the path of the powerful bolt.

Azerick awoke in a strange bed. He looked around and saw several other beds but no one else occupied them. He looked over and saw Magus Allister sitting in a chair next to his bed.

“I see you are awake, good. How do you feel?” the old wizard asked kindly.

“Terrible, my head hurts and I’m really thirsty and hungry.”

“Not surprising on both accounts. You are thirsty because you have been unconscious for two days and your head hurts because you channeled far more power than you have been taught to handle.”

“What do you mean? What did I do?”

“What do you remember?”

“Travis was saying things about my mother. I got really angry, furious, my vision got real narrow, and all I saw was red. Then I blacked out and woke up here.”

“Do you remember feeling anything else just before you passed out?”

“I remember touching something but not with my hands, more like my mind. It felt like I had fallen into an icy river or a stream.”

“That was the flow of magic, the Source. It is the very source of magic that all wizards draw from to power and channel their spells. You reached into the flow and channeled a great deal of energy. You released that energy in the form of a lightning bolt against Travis."

“Master Allister, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean too. I don’t know how I did that!”

“I think I do and if I am right, which I am certain I am, then I owe you a great apology, but we’ll talk about that later," Magus Allister promised.

“Is Travis all right? I did not mean to hurt him, at least not kill him. No, that is not true, I wanted to kill him but only because I lost control of my temper. I don’t want him dead now, you have to believe me,” Azerick begged, fearing they would cast him out of the Academy and possibly put in jail.

“I do, lad, don’t you worry. He is going to be fine. His family took him home for a few days to rest."

“What are they going to do to me now? Will I be kicked out of the Academy?”

“Travis' family is quite upset and has a significant amount of influence, but given the situation I think things will be alright. Several of the students, as well as Magus Florent, have come forward and given testimony that you were provoked most cruelly. There are factors in this that you do not understand yet, but I will explain it all later. Get some rest now and I’ll have someone bring you something to eat and drink.”

With that, the kind old wizard left him alone to his thoughts. A woman in white robes came in shortly with some bread, cheese, and watered down wine. He ate everything, drank two glasses of the thin wine, and fell back into an exhausted slumber.

Azerick suddenly found himself standing by a swift moving river, but instead of water, it looked like it was made entirely of light and energy.

You have finally awakened,
came a disembodied voice, from where, Azerick could not tell.

He spun around in a circle looking for the source of the voice.

“Where are you? Show yourself!” The student wizard demanded.

I am here same as you are.

“Where am I?” he asked.

You are where you are supposed to be, where you need to be.

“Who are you?”

Who are you?
the voice echoed.

“Is this some kind of game?” Azerick demanded.

If it was, do you think you would be winning or losing?

“What are you?” Azerick shouted, growing impatient and angry at the voice’s word play.

What are you?

“I’m an orphan, street rat, and a student of magic! Happy now?”

Are you happy? Which of those titles makes you happy? Titles are merely words, descriptors, not who or what you are, they do not define you.

“What am I then, since you seem to have all the answers?”

The only answers I have are within you. What you are is what you choose to be.

Azerick thought about everything the voice had said, ran the seemingly illogical conversation back through his mind.

“Are you me; are you my own voice, the voice of my mind?”

I am part of you, a part you are just now beginning to discover. Whether I become you, you become me, or you become something else is entirely up to you.

“You said I had awakened, what do you mean? I was in bed at the Academy so I must be asleep, not awake. Unless this is a hallucination,” Azerick argued.

No, you are awake. For the first time in your life, you are awake. For the first time, you are seeing clearly, seeing what is real. However, you must choose if you will stay awake or go back to sleep and live the life as the person you came here as.

“What will happen to me if I go back to sleep?”

You will be an orphan, street rat, and a student of magic— for a time at least.

Azerick realized that the voice was talking in metaphors; he needed only to figure out the meaning.

“What happens to me if I stay awake? Who am I then?”

Everything will happen; you will be what you are meant to be, what you need to be.

“How do I stay awake?”

Touch the Source, take the Source into yourself, and become part of the Source.

Azerick looked at the luminescent river and its swift-moving current flowing rapidly over the horizon. He listened to the rushing flow of energy for the first time and realized that it was calling to him like the voice of a long lost loved one. He heard his mother and father’s voice in the flow, calling him to it, inviting him to become part of it. It was calling him home. He walked slowly to its bank in an almost hypnotic state. He felt his feet slip into the edge of the flow. It was warm and comforting. He imagined this was what it felt like to be in a mother’s womb, safe, comfortable, and protected.

The river of energy now flowed just above his waist as he trailed his hands in its sparkling current. Suddenly there was no longer any ground under his feet. His head slipped under the roiling tide of energy as it swept him along its length. He fought for the surface and gasped for breath as his head broke through to the air above. He coughed out great mouthfuls of the prismatic substance before he was swept under again, pulled down deeper and deeper in its depths. He held his breath as long as he could and fought for the surface but the Source was not going to release its prize this time. It held him in its deep embrace until spots began to form and stars exploded in his vision. He knew it was going to kill him. It was a trick, he had tapped into power he was not supposed to touch and he was going to pay for that sacrilege with his life. His starving lungs forced his mouth open and he inhaled the Source, taking the source of all magic onto his lungs, filling him, and killing him.