Page 20 of The Sundered Realms

She moved slowly, careful to position each pose of the dance correctly and adjusting if the Lord of Embhullor called out. She physically performed every written piece of the spell as though she were swimming in a swamp, but every word brought her closer to a summit, every action a weight lifted off her and out of her, like she was casting all her emotional burdens into the void.

All at once, catharsis surged through her, a rush of emotional release that left her exhilarated and cleansed in a single pure burst. Magic.

The black lines of the demon portal spell flared again, and then vanished, like they’d been sucked into their own void.

Lord Vhannor let out a relieved breath and abruptly sat down.

So, he could be emotionally affected. That was almost disconcerting, and it made her wonder how much his unyielding façade was a kind of trap—a projection he felt compelled to keep up because he knew how much people depended on it.

And how much it meant that he was forced to allow her to see him in this moment as a person, rather than implacable ice.

Liris stayed on her feet but tried breathing too.

Now she was shaking.

But she’d done it.

She had worked magic, and it hadn’t been a trap after all—or at least not the one she’d feared it could be. She’d passed a test and lived and she was... surrounded by a lot of demons in their own bubbles.

Each shadowy darkness thrashing around like if it could only do so hard enough it could escape and choke the life out of them, too.

Which of course it could.

But only the first one loomed large—the rest were smaller, and it felt too surreal to walk through the strangely silent lashing of shadows contained in their silvery spheres for her to work up any particular feelings about the matter now that she’d just spent them all.

Somehow Liris got her feet moving again back toward Lord Vhannor, though clumsily, like she wasn’t fully in touch with her body yet. Papers of cast spells littered the ground. “Do you have enough spells left to destroy all these?”

He snorted. “No. But the protections will hold them while I write more. The only ones that had time to creep out after the first were small, so it shouldn’t take much.”

She collapsed next to him. “Can I help? I can copy with accuracy.”

Lord Vhannor smirked a little, and Liris’ heart jumped.

What was that?

“I’m sure you can,” he said distantly, the ice back but the words nevertheless warming her from head to toe. “You did impossibly well, and I am profoundly grateful for all you’ve done today.”

“So—“

“But it was still your first spell, and a powerful one at that. You might be superhumanly talented, but you are still human. You’re going to sleep for a little while. Everyone does.”

“What? But I want to see—“

I want to see more magic, Liris didn’t quite get to say, and then she was asleep.

Liris slowly came to awareness, warm and lulled by the shifting gait beneath her.

The first thing she took stock of was her general location: still in the swamp, but it was almost unrecognizable. The place she’d considered from the first to be teeming with life was a shambles, crumbling, ashen, drained. Countless dead insects that couldn’t escape the void fast enough crunched underfoot.

Demon portals ate magic. She knew this, intellectually, but moving through this hazy corpse-world was surreal.

Liris at last connected that her specific location was on Lord Vhannor’s back, because he was carrying her out of the swamp.

Her heart did that thing again.

“I’m awake,” she said quickly. “You can put me down.”

“No.”

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