Page 16 of The Sundered Realms

She fell back a step into a fighting stance on reflex.

Then the demon screeched, an echoing, high-pitched scream that shuddered through her bones. Less than a second later, a glowing knife flew through the shadow and pierced a tree behind her shoulder.

As the demon reared back, Lord Vhannor’s cool voice snapped out, “Don’t touch it with your limbs—only magic hurts them. Use the knife.”

Wielding magic was the only way to fight demons. The act of putting pen to paper called forth ineffable power.

She knew that. She'd just never before had the chance to wield magic herself.

Liris braced one leg on the tree to pull the knife out, and the tree crumpled.

“Can you trap it?” Liris asked.

“Yes, but not yet,” Lord Vhannor said grimly.

“Why—oh, void it.”

The demon was blocking the spell—if Lord Vhannor isolated the demon, he wouldn’t be able to access the spell.

Liris met his eyes, visible in the haze only because of the glowing paper before him. “Can we herd it away?”

He glanced at her sidelong, just for an instant. “I could cover you,” he said, “but you’d need to lead it away. Are you up for it?”

Liris’ stomach dropped. “I’m bait?”

Another look, this one harder. “Don’t even think of getting close enough to touch it,” he snapped. “Just get to the other side however you can.”

The haze darkened; shadows loomed above them.

Lord Vhannor’s pen stroked, and a blast of silver lightning cracked out of his paper at the demon, whose scream this time had the undertone of a roar.

Liris didn’t wait for a better opportunity, or for her better judgment to kick in. She ran.

This was another test, but she did ignore his caution about getting too close: when the shadows condensed, drawing back like they were going to launch toward Lord Vhannor, Liris leapt up underneath and swiped with the knife.

The shadows looked so unlike anything of the physical world she wasn’t prepared for the resistance. The knife slid through the shadows, but there was a viscous weight to them.

Darkness billowed out of the demon like clouds of smoke rather than fiery flickers of shadow, and Liris hastily yanked the knife down as she dropped, landing on a roll. Unlike back at the castle, this time there was nothing to stop her from high-tailing it away from the blow the demon leveled at the ground where she’d just been. Mud spattered her from behind.

Definitely weight to them.

The demon screamed again, and the oppressive emptiness drifted away from her back. She whirled to see sparks of silver spell-lightning fading off its other side—Lord Vhannor coolly, unwaveringly keeping the demon off her after all. The demon shifted around, up out of her reach, and its attention refocused.

No, void it, they needed it focused on her.

Liris cast around: trees. Weak, but not covered in thorns, so she wouldn’t need them to hold for long.

She ran for the nearest tall trunk of wood, momentum carrying her up even as its foundations cracked beneath her. As the whole tree tilted into collapse, she threw herself off it toward the demon.

In a flash she knew she’d gotten too high, she was going to crash into it, too close—

Lord Vhannor let loose another blast of magic to shift the demon and as it blew away Liris caught its shadow-flesh with the knife and dragged a long, deep line all the way down as the demon roared.

Now she had its attention.

Liris ran, dodged, as fast and as far as she could. Her peripheral vision darkened as literal shadows closed around her like ink blots covering a page.

She wasn’t going to make it any further.

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