Page 66 of The Sundered Realms

“No, I mean ‘now’ literally. We needed to be there days ago.”

Yet he hadn’t just gone ahead without her. Validating, but Liris frowned. “What? Then why didn’t—wait. Not another message anchor?”

“Yeah,” Vhannor said grimly. “The demon portal should be straightforward, but it’s waited long enough they need to make sure whoever comes to deal with it won’t need time for research or setup. That’s us. They’re not sure which message anchor has been subverted yet, so the messenger just ran it to us. And we’re taking skimmers back.”

And then from his pack, he withdrew two.

Shry couldn’t cast spells, so that meant—

Shry said, “Oh, so we do have time for a magic lesson?”

Vhannor smirked. “If you’re too bored...”

Shry looked at Liris. “Learn fast.”

This didn’t even count as a test. “I always do,” Liris told her.

Shry snorted and stepped away, not disputing that, and Vhannor’s smirk grew.

Liris ignored how heat spread through her and focused.

“You’ll be able to pilot the skimmer without any trouble. The problem is, at the speeds we need to travel, your reflexes will need to be augmented to keep up,” Vhannor said briskly.

So that was how Jiechit hadn’t crashed them into any trees.

“Up until now, all the spells you’ve worked on have been in the incorporeal category, but this is what we call corporeal magic.” He whipped out his spell pad.

Liris did likewise, though she was going to need to figure out a better system. Her sparring clothes had a pocket Lady Inealuwor had added a button to so she would have a pad with her even now, but it took her precious seconds to access.

“Corporeal magic infuses magic into a shape, binding it to a physical form with a purpose. The main difference with incorporeal magic is that corporeal can’t hold indefinitely. If you infuse an object with magic, eventually the magic will wear out.”

That made sense. Magic liked to move.

“Copy this diagram out while I talk. Corporeal magic is incredibly complex and dangerous. Only specialists perform tasks with it using much of their body or for long periods—like message runners. You don’t see most casters walking around picking up heavy shit all the time because it’s easy to miscalculate how much time you have and make a mistake, you burn through spells re-upping corporeal magic fast. Plus, when you can’t be constantly adjusted your body gets confused about what’s ‘normal’ and it’s easy to injure yourself. Infusing and augmenting are specialized disciplines. Today we’re going to focus on just one augmentation: reflexes. But that in turn will augment all of your body, and you’re not a corporeal specialist so—“

“This is a limiter.” Liris jerked her chin at one spell layer. “When the spell starts running low, our—elbows? Will feel like ice, warning us to stop and recast.”

“It’s hard to find a body part we might not otherwise pay attention to while spellcasting or navigating a skimmer.” Vhannor ran a hand through his hair like this embarrassed him.

“Elbows it is.”

“How many copies do you have?”

“Four.”

“Any questions?”

Liris shook her head.

“Then try casting.”

Just like that?

Vhannor’s gaze was open, steady. Taking her at her word that she knew what she was about and would tell him when she didn’t.

Liris closed her eyes, breathed, and began. She didn’t want to rush and fail, and she knew she should take a new spell slowly, but—this one was just easy.

She opened her eyes and took a few steps.

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