Free The Sorcerer's Vengeance: Book 4 of the Sorcerer's Path by Brock Deskins Page B

in peace. You will take your men wherever you please but you will not trouble Valaria and her people any longer,” Azerick commanded.
    “I will do as you say. Now get me out of here,” General Baneford insisted.
    “First you must remove the armor—all of it,” Azerick told the general.
    The general’s eyes went wide at the order, but with a huff and a curse he tore at the priceless artifact and shed it like an old skin. He was soon standing on top of the jumbled mass of armor in his sweat-stained padded doublet, glaring up at the audacious young man that had him at his mercy. Azerick lowered the end of his staff into the hole and struggled to pull the larger man up and out.
    Once the general was clear, Azerick raised his staff then pointed it down at the bottom of the pit. The armor clanged loudly in the as it fell another twenty feet when the ground below it suddenly disappeared. Azerick repeated the spell and the armor fell another twenty feet. Twice more Azerick caused the pit to deepen until the armor was nearly a hundred feet below the surface. His efforts were quickly tiring him but he was not finished yet.
    As General Baneford looked on in a sort of fascination, a dozen runes flared brightly on the sorcerer’s staff. Runes of stone and fire blazed so brightly that it made the light from the wall of flames appear no more than a candle next to a forest fire. As the general’s eyes blinked away the glowing dwarven runes swimming in his overwhelmed vision, he saw an orange glow radiating up from the bottom of the deep pit. And as he watched he saw that it was growing nearer.
    It reminded the general of a piece of steel heated white hot, ready to be forged by a blacksmith. As the glow reached the surface, General Baneford finally recognized it for what it was. Magma, the molten rock he had heard sailors and scholars describe that shot from mountains and fissures on some far away islands near the southern tip of Lazuul. Azerick was bathed in sweat and it was not from the heat of the lava that was slowly bubbling up to the surface like some glowing, boiling brew from a witch’s cauldron.
    Once the nearly white-hot magma reached the surface, Azerick stopped its rise and allowed it to simmer. He did not know if the molten stone would destroy the armor, but anyone that sought to retrieve it was going to have a very difficult time digging it out. When he could sustain the magma no more, he released the flow of power he was pouring into the stone from both his staff and himself. As the molten rock began solidifying, Azerick cast a few spells of his own below the surface of the rock. The wards would make the stone all around highly resistant to mundane pickaxes and hammers as well as magical detection and destruction.
    “Tell your men to put away their weapons and I will lower the flames,” Azerick told the general, leaning heavily upon his staff.
    General Baneford strode as close as he could to the wall of flames and shouted to his men on the other side.
    “Captains, can you hear me?”
    “Aye, sir, we hear you. Have you slain the wizard?” one of his officers shouted back.
    General Baneford thought a moment before answering. “We have reached an accord. Sheath your weapons. There will be no further battles here today.”
    The moment Azerick dropped the flames Baneford’s men began threading their way through the stone spikes and converged upon their commander.
    “Sir, what happened?” they all asked, eyes wide at the unarmored general.
    “I was defeated, men. I was defeated fairly by a craftier foe and my own hubris. Remember the lesson this night, gentlemen. No matter how powerful you think you are, no matter how unassailable you believe your position may be; a clever man can defeat you. And if you let your pride rule your actions, you have just given him the key to do it.”
    General Baneford stepped past his men and approached Azerick who walked over to Maude, touched the stone bars that trapped her, and