Page 89 of The Sundered Realms

“Of course I would, if you needed it, which you didn’t. Would you really not want me to?”

Liris scowled at the perfect lake, her agitation increasing in comparison to its serenity.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, hoisting herself back onto the dock.

The boat slipped out from under her, and she scrambled to hang onto the dock without letting her feet touch the sacred water. In an instant, Vhannor had abandoned his knitting and hauled her the rest of the way, and as soon as her feet hit the dock she darted away from him like his touch had burned her.

His expression slammed shut, and Liris winced. He had let her take the lead to do things how she wanted, only intervening when she actually needed assistance. Just like always.

She stomped back over and sat next to his feet, her legs hanging over the edge of the dock without skimming the water. After a moment, he sat next to her.

“I’m sorry,” Liris said. “I wanted to be able to prove I—we—had nothing to worry about after... last time. I keep trying to prepare for every contingency and follow every rule and it never works, but I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

“You’re worried about the ball.”

“Yes, I am worried about the ball! I’m your partner who can’t keep up with your spellcasting. I’m a Serenthuar candidate who ought to be able to get any information out of a foreign diplomat but has never been to a party. So far my attempts to use my skills have led to almost opening a demon portal by mistake, a realm backing out of the Coalition they and we wanted them to join—“

“You don’t know that—“

“Nearly setting us on fire, and getting three of the most dangerous people in the world into a fight over nothing!”

“Nothing? Okay, that’s enough. Liris, look at me.“ She glared up at him, and he glared right back. “First, let’s take a moment to note how many of those disasters you just listed did not, in fact, come to pass. To be clear, that would be all of them.

“Second of all, you’re taking a lot of blame on yourself and ignoring, for instance, my part in what happened in the temple. Thirdly, you’re eliding all the patterns you’ve spotted that enabled us to solve our missions. Have you considered that maybe what you should be focusing on is not being a partner, but what you uniquely bring?”

Liris tossed her pen into his lap. “Everything I’ve brought today has gone wrong.”

“Thank you, but I do not need an additional Easy-Flow tip.”

Liris blinked and then doubled over laughing. When she finally got a handle on herself, Vhannor tucked her hair behind her ears, and she went still.

“You know why I’ve been allowed to not have a partner, and why I can take you on field missions without your spellcasting training being complete,” Vhannor said. “It’s because I don’t need you to do all the things I can do. If being the best field caster in the world were enough to deal with whatever Jadrhun is up to, frankly, I wouldn’t have needed to recruit you.”

“Thyrasel.” She frowned. “Why haven’t you been asking me to teach that to you, then?”

“Because I’d be tempted to use it, and its complexity makes it so inherently powerful I could do a lot of damage by accident. Jadrhun has all the time he needs to set up a spell correctly; dispelling, this language in particular, has to happen fast. It isn’t safe to deploy without a thorough understanding I don’t have time to devote myself to right now.”

“Why?”

Vhannor sighed. “If you’re improvising spells in the field, you need to keep them very basic to make sure they work as intended, because you don’t have time to think through all the iterations. Part of what caught my attention about you right away is that you can keep focused even in an emergency, which is what you need to create a very clear, specific spell.”

“But Thyrasel is so inherently complicated that just a little goes a long way, without needing other layers or risking confusing the meaning.”

“Exactly. I can disregard the temptation to add more power to a quick spell, because that takes time, but if I could change an already active one with a few strokes—“

“Change a spell? That’s a thing?”

“Oh no, now I’ve gone and given you ideas,” Vhannor deadpanned. “Yes. Before you ask, we don’t convert demon spells because dispelling releases most of the spell’s power back into the world. Changing patterns uses up the magic, and in an active demon portal zone, we want to get as much magic back as possible. We don’t know how magic is generated, but we do know it’s the only thing holding the Sundered Realms together: without the Gates, people in almost every realm would starve. Most students never learn to change a spell at all. Changing a spell is like that emotional overload you felt dispelling your first demon portal, but every time. And if you don’t finish the changes, no one can save you.”

“You’ve changed the previous spell without activating a new one, so in essence now neither work and you’re trapped inside,” Liris said.

“Right.”

“If you were testing iterations of a spell though,“ Liris said, “wouldn’t it make sense to only change one element at a time?”

He frowned. “Yes, of course. You want to control variables. Why?”

“Is it normal for every demon portal on your missions to use literally none of the same languages? We haven’t even had a repeat in mathematical discipline since I’ve been with you.”

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