Page 15 of The Sundered Realms

That meant he’d have to trust she hadn’t lied to him—oh. That was why he’d been so focused at the castle, because he’d been studying her for tells. Maybe this was the test. For all she knew he had casters lying in wait ready to assist him.

His icy gaze didn’t waver. “Anything else? We don’t have much time, and I have a lot to memorize.”

Just like that. Somehow she didn’t have to work for the opportunity to help at all, even if not fully, and that was only out of consideration for her—

Liris shook her head once, clearing it, forcing down all the feelings she didn’t have time for.

Helping at all was already so much more than had been possible for her entire life.

She closed her eyes; breathed. Opened them: focused.

“I’m ready.”

When they started in on foot, the guard driving the cart stayed behind.

Liris didn’t.

“If anything has changed, you won’t be able to figure it out without me,” she said. “If you fail, I won’t be able to get far enough away to matter anyway.”

Lord Vhannor studied her for a moment, his cool gaze assessing, and Liris held his gaze, unflinching.

He didn’t know Thyrasel, but it hadn’t taken long for him to perfectly imitate her pronunciation and commit the words to memory in order. Not in the order she’d initially expected: Thyrasel was only part of the spell, and he’d understood how all the patterns in the spell fit together.

Now, so did she.

He had her beat for experience with spellcraft, but she wouldn’t lose when it came to learning speed.

At last Lord Vhannor nodded sharply, whipping out paper and pen. Liris could barely glimpse the diagram in the faint light, just that all he did was close the outmost circle with a stroke: completing the pre-written spell and in so doing activating it.

A sphere of soft light formed around him, emanating outward so they could see their path.

“Stay close,” he commanded, and they ran again.

The world... flattened, somehow. Liris didn’t know what magic felt like, but she could feel its absence in the muted sound, still wind, and bone-deep cold. Yet focusing on the sensations made her aware they were false, her brain struggling to interpret an intangible force.

She couldn’t sense anything from the spells Lord Vhannor briskly cast, just heard the soft sound of his pen flying across paper. But the muddy earth didn’t slow them down, no animals impeded their progress, and branches twisted out of their way. They reached the portal as fast as it was possible to.

It was still too late.

In a glance, Liris took everything in:

The swamp. What had seemed to her so full of life and freedom before now collapsed in on itself, gnarly wood no longer reaching outward but curled in and hanging limply, the omnipresent green drained of vigor and gray as ash.

The spell. Clearly visible just outside the portal, a diagram of lines floating in the air, black instead of the normal spell-silver, somehow radiating darkness, arranged exactly as Lord Vhannor had copied it, all the same notations and letters and equations.

The demon.

Liris took another second to process the demon.

In her defense, she’d only seen artwork—drawings, embroidery on tapestries, impressions shaped in glass. Disturbing, but she’d never before felt the visceral wrongness. Once again, sensations she could tell weren’t real: bile rising in her throat, a wave of dizziness as her stomach twisted, like her whole body meant to reject its existence.

She knew now why demons were associated with black flames, but this one looked more like an enormous shadow, looming over them, at least a dozen times the size of a human. Not human-shaped, though—it had too many tendril-limbs for that, flickering with whatever made up the void as one reached toward them—

Coming right for them.

Liris dove on instinct, rolling back to her feet through the desiccated mud.

The shadows descended toward her again, this time expanding around like a shroud to wrap her up, and all Liris could see was darkness.

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