Page 52 of The Sundered Realms

“Let’s look at it this way,” Vhannor said tightly. “I think this incident proves both that we need to tailor your curriculum from the start, because you’re capable of too much too quickly, and also why you’re going to need to keep taking some basic classes anyway. It won’t always be obvious to me or anyone else what you don’t know.”

Liris nodded slowly.

“So let me back up and explain that codified, regulated advanced spellcasting education in our current era has two primary purposes: teaching people not to open demon portals—because, as you’ve just learned, it is remarkably easy for a curious person to stumble on the principle, and it was indeed accomplished in the first place by accident after the Sundering.”

When he didn’t immediately continue, Liris asked, “And the second?”

His gaze was serious, and Liris suppressed a shiver, curling her toes into the sand.

“The second is to teach casters the consequences of harnessing ley magic. Because it was also too easy for casters to accidentally sunder the realms with it.”

Birds Liris had never heard before called from above.

She didn’t even look up.

“I have so many questions,” Liris said.

Vhannor cracked a faint smile, lying back on the sand with his hands under his head. “Of course you do. The first is about ley magic?”

His shirt rode up at the motion, exposing defined abs below, and Liris forced herself to bring her gaze back to his face. “We can start with that one, sure.”

“Various languages have different terms, but essentially there are invisible lines, concentrations of magic, connecting the world.”

It was ridiculous that he still sounded perfectly poised with sand in his hair.

“Now, or before the Sundering?” Liris asked. “And isn’t magic ambient?”

“Both, and yes, and those two questions are related.” Vhannor coolly lifted an eyebrow. “May I presume that another of your questions has to do with the Sundering itself?”

“Yes,” Liris said. “I wasn’t aware we knew what had caused the Sundering, and I have read a lot of history books—though if it was related to magic—“

“The information available to you might have been circumscribed to prevent you from experimenting with spellcraft,” Vhannor muttered. “I should have guessed that might be the case. So let me summarize:

“Before the Sundering, the world was at war. Casters at the time theorized that all magic in the world was in fact dispersed from nodes, intersections of ley lines. They were incorrect: we now know different amounts of ambient magic in different places isn’t connected to the proximity of ley lines.”

“How do we know that?” Liris interrupted.

“Because realms with few Gates don’t necessarily have less magic. And that’s relevant because the world shattered along ley lines. Any realm a single ley line passed through has one Gate. A realm where a node was located has multiple Gates. Any place too far from those was lost—there was still ambient magic there, but no anchor the magic recognized to connect to.”

Liris gazed out across the sea again as far as she could see—where the end of the realm must be.

She’d never touched the end of a realm before. She wondered what it felt like, the barrier that held in the sea. The sky was the same as Serenthuar, the same as it had been before the Sundering, magic keeping their weather and views of the stars the same, as if the world were still in one piece.

Just, not the same dimension anymore.

“The thing you have to understand about magic is that it isn’t limited to three dimensions, which is presumably why the world was able to shatter into multiple dimensions. Ley lines have always been difficult to locate—more so than nodes—because they’re not straight. The pattern isn’t organized in any recognizable way to humans for that reason.” He paused. “Please don’t take that as a challenge.”

“Too late,” Liris said, and Vhannor snorted. “But since you mentioned the war, I’m guessing where you’re going with this is casters attacked a node?”

“Yeah. Casters from an alliance of countries thought that if a node in an enemy country was untethered, the source of their magic would vanish. By harnessing ley power, they succeeded at this attack once, and there was an incredible backlash—there are accounts of everything from natural disasters to reality itself warping. All the spellwork within miles of the node was erased, along with civilization. One of the largest cities in the world literally crumbled. The specific reasons for this aren’t fully understood, and it’s not as though we can test. Once was enough that many of the attack’s original proponents believed that it should never be used again.”

“Not all, though,” Liris murmured.

“No,” Vhannor agreed grimly. “But where they would have fallen on that point became moot, because in retaliation, an alliance of their enemies launched a coordinated counterattack. The same idea, but scaled up: multiple nodes, all untethered simultaneously.

“The magic that held the world together couldn’t.

“After the first attack, the ley lines rearranged to stabilize, but after the second, that process was too confused, because there was too much to do at once. The world fell apart, and the magic held it all back together... differently. Ever since then, because people can find out what harnessing ley magic can do, and we cannot count on even people who know the consequences to not choose destruction, ley magic is forbidden to casters.”

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