Chapter 21

I know why the universe likes circles. There's an elegance in the inevitability; comfort in the familiar.

Not for me.

This close, Liris could see the spell, beautifully clever and existentially horrific. Jadrhun had the ley power, and he knew how to magically anchor each realm. He had everything he needed to do what he wanted, and she'd been too late to stop him.

In one fell swoop, Jadrhun severed Gates in each of the four other realms Serenthuar had once been geographically attached to before the Sundering.

And at the same time, he sundered Serenthuar.

Too late to matter.She'd missed her chance again, all her efforts for naught.

Liris' eyes swam as she forced herself to bear witness, clenching her teeth against the scream clawing up her throat like a spell she'd lost control of, chaos desperate for release or relief.

It took her a moment to realize nothing more had happened, dousing all her emotions like a bucket of ice water.

Jadrhun's eyes widened at the same moment. That spell, untethering ley lines from each formerly contiguous realm, should have triggered the next layer of his pattern, directing them to Serenthuar, since at the time of the Sundering the magic couldn't locate it on its own.

Liris scanned the sub-layers of the spell pattern as Jadrhun did, confirming the magic gathered from destroying those Gates was still held, still ready. Waiting, like a spell missing a variable that just wouldn't go, except this wasn't.

The spell hadn't done something other than he intended. He hadn't destroyed the realms, which would have been excellent news, except if his anchors were correct, and of course they would be, because he'd tested them after gaining the knowledge from—

Demons.

Jadrhun whirled madly to face them, and the world darkened as an enormous shadow loomed over them.

"What did you do?" Jadrhun screamed at the demon.

Liris looked up, stiffening as the demon's shadows rearranged themselves into a rictus of a toothy grin.

Then a sound, like a whisper and a shriek and a wind, like nothing of the physical world:

"Your magic won't work if there's nothing to anchor it to, will it?"

The demon twisted, coiling around Jadrhun like it could speak—of course they could speak, of course it would be horrible, don't think—directly into his ear.

"Even a sundered realm that gathers its magic can only hold out so long," the demon hissed, taunted, screeched. "And we can work very fast."

Demons could sense magic. A sundered realm, with its untethered ley magic, would be like a voiding beacon.

Jadrhun's expression shattered.

Liris spelled, successive blasts of magic that blew the demon back away from him while he stood there stunned.

"Jadrhun, focus!" she screamed at him. "We have to reattach Serenthuar!"

He shook his head sharply and gazed around all his careful, beautiful, useless preparations with wide, glassy eyes.

Liris didn't need him to tell her there was nothing there he could use. Whatever anchor Jadrhun had to magically locate Serenthuar no longer existed, and without that—

She was desperately hoping she'd been wrong in her assumption he'd depended entirely on demon senses to find it, but his visible despair was its own answer.

And worse, all he was seeing now was endings, not beginnings. With his plans in tatters around him, he wasn't in any state to find new options.

"We have bigger problems right now," Vhannor said. "The longer those portals are open, the more magic drains from the world, and the more demons can come in, especially in the realms whose Gates you destroyed. Get the demons out of here before they overwhelm those realms and use the Gates to travel to the rest. Once there's too little magic to hold the realms together, you really will have completed the Sundering."

Liris wanted to scream. The longer Serenthuar was sundered, the less chance there was of saving it.

But neither she nor Jadrhun knew how to do that, and Vhannor wasn't wrong.

Jadrhun didn't hesitate. He pulled back his sleeve, exposing scabbed lines Liris couldn't see in their entirety. With his spell pen, he jabbed himself in the arm, completing a circle and activating the emergency spell he'd carved into himself.

And then he vanished.

Liris' heart dropped all the way into her feet.

Oh, void everything. He'd brought demons as backup, not trusting other casters not to sabotage him, because the demons would protect their ‘investment' in him—or so he'd thought. So that transportation spell was only meant to look to them like an emergency escape for him, so they wouldn't suspect—

Vhannor stared aghast. "He ran?"

"No," she said, feeling sick. "I messed it up. There's another transportation spell on the tapestry, and I reversed it so he couldn't get away when this was all over. He must have meant it to transport the demons if we didn't get rid of them—"

"Transport them where, Liris?"

She shook her head. "That's not on the tapestry. It would be on his arm, if he had an anchor—"

Vhannor's desolate gaze met her own.

Jadrhun was probably lost to the void now.

Demons zipped toward them on either side, and Liris and Vhannor tore away from each other to throw up shields. No time to hang onto each other now: their hands had other business to be about.

"Keep reinforcing the shield for a minute," Liris yelled, and Vhannor answered with a new multi-layer protection sphere he'd apparently been saving up for when he was actually next to her. Still, it was only seconds before a demon smashed through the outer layer, but Liris trusted Vhannor to keep them safe and turned away to see what he couldn't.

That was why she was here.

She took in everything around them. Serenthuar's anchor still lost. The magic still waiting. The portals still active. Demons still rampant here, converging on them—they knew Liris was the threat now.

"Special Operations may be able to banish these demons eventually, but only if the portals are closed and they stop multiplying before our strength gives out," Vhannor said. "I'll watch your back while you take care of them."

Slowly, Liris said, "No."

He looked at her sharply.

"What then?" Liris asked. "All this magic will still be lost, and all the realms will start to fall, one after another. It will only be a matter of time. How will you protect me from the Sundering, Vhannor?"

Vhannor opened his mouth, closed it. Tried again: "You're not suggesting giving up."

"I am in no way suggesting giving up," Liris said. "I told you before, I'm not leaving you. And I'm done running."

She punched through the last of Jadrhun's barriers, stepping into the center of the spell pattern.

"I'm fighting. And I'm going to win."

Vhannor braced himself, spell pad ready, and asked,

"What do you need from me?"

That was all.

Liris swallowed. "Believe in me?"

In an instant he'd followed her inside the spell, and he kissed her swiftly, fiercely. Vhannor drew back, and she saw the reflections of fire in his eyes.

"Always," he said, his voice hard and sure. "Never doubt it."

Liris opened her mouth but none of her own doubts had a chance to emerge before Vhannor covered her lips with his spell pad.

"Never doubt it," he said again. "Believing in you is the easiest thing in the world. But if you think I'm just going to stand here wringing my hands while you do something crazy, it's you who isn't believing in me."

Well then.

Liris' smile peeked around the spell pad, and Vhannor's eyes glinted as he stepped back.

"Whatever I do, I'm going to make the demons mad," Liris said. "Don't let them get in my way."

Vhannor shot her a wild grin that zinged straight to her heart. "Stymied demons, coming up. Do your worst, Liris."

That was it exactly. She'd done her best already.

Back in Theiraos, Chaeheen had told her she needed to dream bigger, and all at once Liris agreed.

Jadrhun had wanted to accomplish something so big no one could deny him. She understood.

Liris was going bigger.

She'd always wanted to leave her mark on the world before she died, but that wasn't enough for her. Not anymore. It was past time to dream bigger than anyone else could imagine and brighter besides.

She was going to mark the world so hard she wasn't going at all.

The spell still held the magic Jadrhun had gathered from destroying the realms' Gates. It just couldn't do what he'd intended, and if she didn't work fast, that magic would dissipate.

Liris couldn't make the spell do what Jadrhun had intended—even he hadn't managed it. But Liris had deciphered the spell, which meant she could dispel it.

Except.

Except dispelling meant the realms' Gates would be lost. With demons there, the devastation from the sudden loss of magic in those realms Jadrhun had tried to reconnect Serenthuar to, the people Liris had met—they wouldn't be able to recover. The realms would be lost, and the only way to save the rest of the realms that remained would be to sunder them, too. And the ones that remained would be even further weakened.

Sooner or later, they'd all fall anyway.

But if she couldn't complete the spell, and dispelling it wasn't going to be enough—that left changing the spell.

Changing spells had not gone so well for her, historically. And no one would be able to help her here—if she got overwhelmed, she was done.

Whatever she did, she was about to handle the fundamental magic that held the world together, and there was no space for error.

Liris hadn't understood Jadrhun soon enough to help him. Even as she took in all the lines and letters of the spell in front of her, the shape of it and how each piece was oriented, she might still be missing something. She'd missed a critical spell connection earlier today—

No. No more holding herself back.

Vhannor believed in her, and she had to, too. Hadn't she told Jadrhun?

Liris had a secret.

She knew she could save the world.

And she was going to.

Even if that meant sacrificing something after all, and a part of herself with it, she was going to make it.

Fundamentally, the crux of the problem was that the realms were too badly weakened by separation. What she needed to do was strengthen the realms, and that meant connecting them.

She still had the magic for that. Right here.

Liris closed her eyes, tears spilling out as the emotional intensity of holding this spell threatened to overwhelm her, trying desperately to breathe.

But she heard Vhannor's voice, and held on.

For him, and for herself.

She couldn't connect Serenthuar. She didn't know where it was.

Serenthuar may have believed in sacrifice, but Liris didn't. She'd trained her whole life to save Serenthuar, and now that was the one thing she couldn't do if she was going to make sure there was a world for them to come back to.

Someday, if she could find them. If they could hold.

Liris would have to believe in them, in the people she barely knew who had never known her, the way Serenthuar had never believed in her.

She was never going back to Serenthuar. Only forward, now.

Liris opened her eyes, and focused on the pattern before her. How it existed in its current form, the possibilities in it. The connections she could make to reshape this pattern into a new spell, and a new purpose.

The rest of the world fell away. Her mind blazed.

Liris traced the outline of the spell and made it her own.

Through the rush of more magic than she'd ever felt, Liris was a calm in a storm, the magic honing her into an unerring blade rather than clamoring around her.

She took in the orientation of the dimensions of each realm in how Jadrhun had arranged the spell's shapes and scrawled an ancient powerful language without hesitation. She determined how that orientation was calculated and affixed, adjusted.

Serenthuar had no other Gates to use as anchors, but these drifting realms did. She didn't have Serenthuar, but she still had them, and now they would have each other.

Liris changed the spell.

With a new layer of spellcraft, she linked one realm to another it had been severed from. She wove a new shape around them, changing the shape, changing the anchor.

With the fundamental force animating the universe, Liris built ley connections between the realms and spent the magic to tether those realms firmly to the rest of them. She wove them into a new pattern and put the magic back into where it had been taken from.

Fixing what was broken by fashioning a new shape, and new ways. Strengthening what she, and they, had.

In an emotionally deafening rush, all the magic of the spell vanished.

The world remained.

The demons screamed.

With the rush of more magic than she'd ever directed, Liris' consciousness whited out. When she came back to herself—mostly; it felt like she wasn't fully settled into her own skin, but she could think and move her body and for now that was what mattered—Vhannor was holding her up. She smiled faintly, got her bearings, and gingerly took over balancing on her own two feet.

Vhannor's eyes had never left the demons around them, and Liris flipped her spell pad to a new page and joined him.

Shoulder to shoulder, fighting at his side. As she would have it be always.

He'd never stopped, would never stop, and she wouldn't either.

Vhannor's magic cracked out in rapid bolts of lightning. Each one pushed advancing demons back farther.

Penning a quick adjustment, Liris unleashed a blaze of magic. No hesitation: anyone close enough to be hurt could protect themself or was her target.

The demons stopped advancing.

In fact, they were backing away.

"With the realms' magic renewed, its presence makes being here painful for the bigger ones," Vhannor said quietly.

But they weren't defeated, or destroyed, and the sudden calm on this battlefield was ominous, not peaceful.

Drained as she was, Liris still felt the unease of leaving an enemy at large, as the demon with that horrible rictus of a grin still grinned even as it retreated.

Leaving, for now. But that was too confident a look for Liris' comfort, even if she wasn't sure the demon knew what it conveyed.

But to her, it looked like another strike would be coming, and they didn't know from where.

"They think it's only a matter of time for them now, don't they?" Liris murmured, her lips barely moving.

She kept her pen on her spell pad and didn't look away as the last demon vanished from sight.

"We'll stop them," Vhannor said confidently. "I have faith."

Not today. They weren't prepared, and neither were the demons.

But Liris and Vhannor would be.

Then she did look away, because she felt his burning gaze on her, and her breath caught at the force of it just before he gathered her in his arms and crushed her to him. He kissed her so fiercely that Liris, still lightheaded after the spell, after the relief that she'd done it, that they'd lived, lost her balance.

To her surprise, Vhannor didn't catch her, just tumbled down after her. They both blinked at each other for a moment, and then Liris was laughing and he was kissing her again and maybe they'd get through this after all.

There was still work to do. So, so much.

But they were here to do it.

And they'd do it together.

That, she could celebrate without reservation.