Chapter 20

Etorsiye, Isendhor, Thous, Otaryl, Periannolu, Dianor, Hinsheoress, Tellianghu, Yani, Sonang, Tinardu, Theiraos, Ormbtai. So many places I've traveled now that were once closed to me. So much I've learned; so much I've done.

It's never enough.

Liris and Vhannor entered the wood alone.

She couldn't help remembering their first time, back in the swamps of Etorsiye, running together into a forest where the magic had been eaten. This was like that, in the abstract.

Not in the particulars.

The trees were just as dead, but they were thinner, brittle, spindly dark arms twisting inward. The dawning light silhouetted them, and with the dry air gave the impression that they rose out of a fiery landscape.

Demons didn't fight with fire, of course. But casters might.

That was the main difference. That was what Liris was, now.

She flew.

She flew alongside Vhannor at a speed no unmagicked human could match.

She flew toward a challenge she had actively trained for, having crafted spells in more realms than most people ever saw, fought demons and casters and unbound their portals when no one else could.

When they arrived at the portal and took to their feet once more, with solid ground beneath her, Liris nevertheless found herself unprepared.

On the Ormbtai side, the Gate to Serenthuar was marked by a circle of reinforced, cold obsidian glass mosaic that Serenthuar had fashioned for them. There was a clearing surrounding it for staging transport.

Today, that clearing was full, but not of goods.

An enormous silk tapestry—no, multiple tapestries attached together, gods how long had the elders been committed to this?—spread across the cleared ground, absolutely covered with painted-on spells in Serenthuar's particular ink for calligraphic art.

This was how Jadrhun had prepared. He could take all the time he needed to craft his spells in peace, bring it through the Gate, and set his plan into motion at once. He'd had to prepare to bring it through to this side of the Gate, because he needed access to the ley lines to direct them. Once Serenthuar was cut off, it wouldn't have access.

Liris couldn't see all the spell details from where she stood, but it was clear there were multiple spells. Like he'd put spells all around in a circle, and then another layer of spells further in, and she couldn't tell yet if they were connected or how. Part of her thrilled at the challenge of that, even as she tried not to think that she'd better be able to work out how.

She would.

As long as the demons didn't get her first.

Because of course that was the outermost layer of Jadrhun's spell system: multiple demon portals, easy to activate individually. The first would have presented a problem for Ormbtai's guards, giving him enough time to activate a second, and as each grew the magic would die faster and bigger demons could pour through.

And now it was just Jadrhun on the tapestry, and Liris and Vhannor facing him, with a wall of demons in between.

None of them moved yet, eerily still in a way she'd never seen in her previous encounters. It was like they were waiting.

Liris wondered if that was for Jadrhun's purposes or their own.

"Vhann, Liris," Jadrhun said. "Welcome. I think you'll find the greeting party I've prepared for you sufficient, but if not, I'm happy to invite more guests."

"Do we really have to do this, Jadrhun?" Vhannor asked. "Do you really think it's worth risking sundering all the realms to try to save one?"

"‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'? Easy enough to assure yourself of that when you don't have to listen to the few, isn't it? Who speaks for them?"

"It's not your goal that's the problem, it's your methods," Vhannor said.

"And if you and everyone else have their way, there would never be a method sound enough to make saving people worth trying. Whatever rules you'll break for others like you, you will always have another objection to this, and you will never, ever actually help."

Liris had heard Jadrhun impassioned before, but his voice now was that of old frustration, a weary recitation of facts.

It wasn't that he wasn't angry. It was that he'd been angry about this for so long, and he'd had no reason to believe anything other than what he was saying.

Liris said, "I would help."

Jadrhun's certainty flickered; hardened. "You had chances. You didn't take them."

What could she say, that she hadn't understood? Damning in its own right.

And for all Vhannor's certainty in the dungeons, in the moment, he had no good response to Jadrhun's accusations either. Because deep down, this man who would take the world on his shoulders, he believed Jadrhun was his responsibility, and if Jadrhun didn't know he could come to Vhannor then Vhannor would believe that was on him, too.

So it was Liris who made the call. "Right, then. We're doing this."

Jadrhun turned jaded eyes on her. "I admit, I thought it would be Vhannor eager to die for the cause, not you."

"Until you see that an endeavor that requires you to work with demons is worth abandoning for that exact reason, nothing I say or do is going to reach you," Liris said. "So we'll do this the other way."

"Your inexperience is showing, Former Candidate," Jadrhun said. "Vhannor doesn't really believe he can change my mind. He's trying to buy time to figure out how to dispel my work before I can finish activating everything and fight this many demons."

"Ah! I see. You're missing two key pieces of information."

"Oh?"

"I'll be the one dispelling your work, and I won't need his assistance. That will free him up to keep you busy so you can't make this demon incursion even worse."

Jadrhun grinned, genuinely amused. Now Liris was remembering when they'd first met, how easily they could tease each other even when they both knew Liris' life was on the line and weren't happy about it.

"A bold claim," Jadrhun said. "I'll look forward to watching you work at my leisure, unless your second piece of information can account for multiple demons."

He was her enemy, so it shouldn't have mattered that he didn't doubt what she was capable of, but it did.

This was the real problem with talking with Jadrhun. Even though he was clearly doing evil shit, she liked him.

Unfortunately, Liris didn't see a way to save him from himself under the circumstances. That was outside her scope.

Then the demons all shifted at once, like they were scenting something on the wind.

Jadrhun's eyes narrowed.

"It's funny you should mention accounting for multiple demons at once. Because the second piece of information you're missing," Liris said, "is that we're not alone anymore."

In an instant, Jadrhun cast a spell, but not faster than Vhannor, warned while Liris distracted their opponent, could dash off a counterattack and a protection sphere around one demon in close succession.

And not faster than Shry, rushing through the woods, could get the drop on another demon.

"Took you long enough," Liris called as she ran for the elaborate spell pattern.

"Bite me," Shry yelled back, a fierce grin on her face. "And there I was worried you'd keep all the fun for yourself."

"Oh, I will," Liris said.

Shry could keep all the demon fun she wanted. She couldn't destroy this many at once, but she could keep them busy and not attacking Liris, which was the foremost problem.

And Vhannor could keep all the dueling. Even with all his preparation, Jadrhun would be hard-pressed to activate more spells while fighting the top field caster in the world.

Leaving Liris to the one job she wanted.

She threw herself into dispelling the circle closest to her.

Already deciphering, the first thing Liris realized was that each of the outer circle of spells had another spell around it serving as a barrier, interlocking all the way around. She was going to have to go all the way around the voiding tapestry before she could even get inside. She could spit at Jadrhun for such a cursed clever way of wasting her time—and hers alone, because every one of them used Thyrasel. So even if Special Operations got here in time to help, they weren't going to be able to make this go any faster.

As Liris danced through the barrier spell, her second realization was that the spell it surrounded wasn't actually a circle, though she didn't have a name for the shape. If Jadrhun hadn't been able to prepare this in advance she might have assumed that was an accident, just a carelessly drawn outline.

Her third realization was that while the protected spells of this outer layer were demon portals, and they were active, they weren't open here.

She stopped, felt the chaos magic surge in her. A match for her own feelings on the matter.

A black tendril swooped toward her, galvanizing Liris into motion again before it was summarily cut off.

A blur of white in her peripheral vision as Shry snarled, "Don't stop," and leapt back away.

So Jadrhun had somehow learned how to activate demon portals remotely. How was that possible? It was like when he'd detonated the Gate—he kept doing things she hadn't thought to imagine.

Well, she'd better figure it out, fast.

Right now.

No pressure.

Pressure, fortunately, Liris could handle.

Liris closed her eyes, took a breath.

Opened them, and focused.

She mentally decoded what she could while dispelling around the edges like the wind. This was work she knew well, part of her brain tracking the overall shape of a system while translating a language she wasn't fluent in, each piece she unlocked unveiling another piece.

She couldn't tell yet how he had anchored each spell in a place he wasn't. Other pieces of the spell told Liris what realm they were in, but she knew these for distractions for her to keep her from recognizing the method. Just denoting the name of a realm wasn't enough to anchor a spell to it, only to the void.

Liris couldn't see the whole of the pattern yet, rushing as she was around the edges one spell at a time. The only commonality of all the spells, besides their usage of Thyrasel, was that none of them was circular.

The only thing she was sure of that this meant was that no help was coming. All these demon portals, activating simultaneously in so many of the Sundered Realms, meant every realm would be too focused on their own local problem, on trying to protect their people from the portals' effects, which would likely exceed their apparent capacity—

Liris abruptly froze again, gritting her teeth in frustration but managing not to smack herself in the face and disrupt the dispelling.

That was the question she'd been missing all this time:

How does a demon know whether they can fit through a portal?

Shry had said it before, magic pained demons. The idea that they could sense the presence and strength of magic seemed like an obvious step, and from there—

Obviously, demons could sense ley lines and nodes, and thus the location of Gates.

That was how Jadrhun located them. He could just voiding ask, and pay demons for answers with portals.

And the shape of each spell, the arrangement of the Thyrasel within them—the perfect language she'd just handed to him, void everything—was to convey the location to the magic.

Each spell wasn't a circle because it was a magical map of the realm it targeted.

Liris spat out the remainder of the translation in fury, and she picked up her pace even faster.

She finished the outer edge and took down the barrier. Jadrhun glanced her way, but that was all. He didn't have time to think about her anymore, which was his mistake.

Liris didn't stop.

She was never stopping herself or waiting for anyone, not ever again.

"You may not know this about me," Liris called, "but I have a secret."

With a swipe of her hand, she dispelled the first demon portal.

Jadrhun did look her way at that, and she bared her teeth at him.

"I never lose what matters," Liris told him.

Least of all herself.

Jadrhun's expression twisted, and demons descended her way.

That was the moment Liris realized that Special Operations had arrived at some point, by the multiple barriers that popped into existence around her. Vhannor couldn't have managed them all.

She turned back into the spells, her blood singing, believing they might have a shot at this after all.

When she glimpsed a particular spell further inside the tapestry, Liris made a brief detour from her whirling massacre of the demon portals, taking over a transportation spell, so innocuous Jadrhun had probably expected she'd ignore it, given all the actively harmful ones she had to deal with.

But it was anchored elsewhere: an emergency escape.

With Special Operations here to apprehend him, Liris wasn't letting him get away, not after this. And definitely not with this tapestry.

She couldn't afford the time to dispel it entirely, so she changed it instead: a lower risk than taking too long. In less than a minute she viciously reversed the spell's anchor rather than dispelling it entirely—let Jadrhun believe he still had an escape route until he didn't.

Then it was back to the immediate problems, and Liris' righteousness and certainty of success rapidly faded in the face of her increasing awareness of the evidence.

Which was that, despite having—she thought—figured out his secret trick, none of this made sense.

What it came down to was that all things considered... she was still dispelling this too easily. She might have believed that Jadrhun had underestimated her but didn't.

And the faster Liris got at taking down these remote demon portals, the more of her mind was free to notice that none resembled any of her theories of what she'd thought to expect, and she had thought a lot about what to expect.

She knew Jadrhun was planning to sunder Serenthuar to try to reconnect it differently, and none of the spells she'd seen had anything to do with that. Since she was able to dispel them at all, their activation couldn't have been critical to his main purpose. Jadrhun wasn't stupid enough to situate them on the outside if he'd needed them close to hand.

That was it.

Of course she knew that even as fast as she could go, this was taking too long, that this was all a horrendous distraction. The portal spells weren't designed just so that they wouldn't have backup to deal with the demons, but also so that she personally would have to go through them. Jadrhun might not have planned on Shry being here, or Special Operations—but what if he had?

What if every second she didn't take to get to the center, he could put another piece of his real plan in motion?

She couldn't stop dispelling all these demon portals that no one else would be able to. That was the trap, designed for her, a person who desperately wanted to help people and wanted to feel like she, personally, mattered.

You can't fight every battle. I can't be sorry about the one you chose.

It was like she'd cursed herself. Liris hoped Vhann would forgive her.

All along she'd been playing Jadrhun's game, doing exactly what he'd known she would, because it was just like how she'd played the elders, thinking if she was just good enough, she could win.

The only way to win was not to play—or to change the rules.

Liris finished dispelling one last portal, and then she stopped.

She closed her eyes; breathed.

Opened them: focused anew.

Liris looked at the world the way she'd been trained, to take in all the information around her at a glance.

She looked around her the way only she could, processing the patterns.

"Liris, look out!" Vhannor screamed.

She dove fast and far, and the descending demon just missed her.

No: demons.

All of them.

"Keep moving!"

She shook her head, staring around the spell pattern.

"Liris!" he roared. Probably thought she was trying to die again.

"This matters," Liris whispered, and barely even tracking the thought as she spoke: "You promised."

Vhannor stared at her in confusion, and as she kept scanning around, taking in angles and curves and shapes, she could practically see the moment he remembered.

You promised not to hold me back. You promised you could keep up.

Vhannor swore as he disengaged Jadrhun to defend her, and Liris breathed easier, even though she knew it meant Jadrhun was free to act.

Vhannor had her back. He believed in her and supported her and would make sure she could do what she needed to do.

And what she needed to do was see what no one else could, and understand what it meant.

That was why Jadrhun wanted all her attention directed elsewhere.

Each individual spell on the outer border had a different shape: that had been the key.

She'd whirled around the edges of the entire spell pattern, but focusing on the spells on their own and what they had in common she'd missed the shape of it.

The entire pattern wasn't a circle. That mattered.

It would be a map. Not a physical one, but a magical one.

Liris turned toward the center of the spell, toward Jadrhun, toward the wall he'd erected between them.

Liris snarled and flipped her spell pad to a shattering, while Vhannor followed behind her, close at her back to keep the demons off it.

Another barrier went up, this one activated by a spell on the tapestry, and she took it down.

But not before Jadrhun said, "You're too late."

And when Liris looked up, it was only in time to take in the sight of the spell Jadrhun activated as she watched.