Page 55 of The Sundered Realms

“I could. People do.” Shry paused. “You didn’t know that. I should’ve guessed. My bad.”

Oh good, just what Liris didn’t want to think about. “Can we spar again now?”

“Absolutely,” Shry said, promptly launching into another attack with her unreal speed. This time at least Liris was ready enough to literally see it.

“I thought demons just wanted to devour,” she said.

“That’s correct. But as I’m evidence of, they have secondary goals in service to the first.”

“A means to an end,” Liris murmured. Then tensed, worried she’d offended Shry, but the half-demon just nodded while launching a kick at an impossible angle.

Right: demons weren’t constrained by human physiology.

“They hate you because you can wield magic against them, when otherwise nothing a human can do makes them feel pain,” Shry said. “Demons can eat ambient magic because it’s not concentrated, but a node is too powerful for them to approach. To devour the world, they need to completely sunder it. So they take any opportunity to sow chaos here.”

Every part of the world that was lost during the Sundering had been eaten by demons. Liris remembered the shadowy darkness and imagined it enveloping a whole realm, snuffing it out.

But she also imagined something more troubling. “Can demons shapeshift?”

“Obviously,” Shry said, gesturing to encompass her body. “You uh. Do know where babies come from, right?”

Liris winced at having missed that, an opportunity Shry took to land a light punch.

Just because she couldn’t see an opponent didn’t mean they couldn’t hit her.

“But not for long at a time, unless they’re really powerful,” Shry added, “and in that case they can’t hide their devouring of magic. There’s a balance. Also they have difficulty mimicking humanity, but the longer demons are exposed to humans, the smarter they get. Some people believe that could ultimately change demons’ nature fundamentally.”

Liris frowned, not surprised Shry took that moment to execute a series of flips and come back at her from above—demonstrating another expectation Liris needed to break:

Demons, like magic, weren’t limited to three dimensions, let alone gravity. An attack could come from any direction.

“You disagree, I take it,” Liris said.

“Completely.”

Her expression wasn’t angry—just utterly serious.

Liris nodded. “Okay.”

Shry relaxed fractionally when Liris didn’t doubt her or argue with her as she’d clearly expected, but Liris still didn’t manage to land a hit. “You’ll meet people who want to work with demons.”

“That I know,” Liris said, dodging a flurry only partially successfully—but better than she had earlier. Shry was mostly using moves she’d already demonstrated in at least a basic way, iterating and speeding up as Liris improved. “Some people think demons are gods, since they’re provable supremely powerful beings. Some are a death cult that believe people need to be wiped out before the world can be reborn with a clean slate.”

Shry changed the pace, dancing around Liris so she had to try to be aware of everywhere at once. “There are more than that. Some people believe allowing demons in won’t actually destroy the world. They’re stupid, but not generally motivated. Then there are the people who believe the paths between the realms aren’t what’s holding them together, but what’s keeping them apart.”

Liris froze, and Shry swept both her feet out from under her. She landed on her back with a thud.

“They believe the realms can be recombined?” she wheezed.

Shry nodded. “Those are the most dangerous, because they’re the ones who can convince other reasonable people to join them.”

Once upon a time, he thought he was going to save the world, Vhannor had said.

“Jadrhun?” Liris asked.

“Vhann wants him to be too smart for that,” Shry said. “The thing he forgets is that sometimes smart people are the absolute stupidest. Don’t you be one of them.”

She reached down and offered a hand, and Liris took it without hesitation.

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