I grimaced. “You know what I mean. What if I…wantto break the bond because I’m in a mood or something?”
Lhorine placed a hand on my back. “All couples have trouble from time to time.” She sighed. “I’m certainly no expert, despite my many years. I’ve not had a relationship which lasted more than sixty years.” She made that sound like a short time, and for an elf, I supposed it was. “But I’ve never been so angry with someone I considered putting a binding on them. Something tells me you’re more levelheaded than you think and wouldn’t rush into something so damning.”
Was I though?
I sighed.
I did have a temper and a rather overinflated sense of justice, but I’d never completely gone off on anyone, at least, not someone I cared about. Saldrea made me want to punch her in the face constantly, but even with her, I’d resisted that urge for a while now.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“Are you ready to do this now?” she asked.
I nodded and got up. “Let’s do this!”
“I have an idea,” Lhorine said. “Something which might help.”
“Whatever it is, I’m game,” I said.
“Good.” Lhorine rose and turned to Koar. “Can you join us?”
The dragon nodded and came over.
Lhorine pointed out the nasty wound on Koar’s cheek. “Saldrea’s work?” she asked.
He nodded.
That made sense.
“It’s not easy to see,” Lhorine said, “but it looks faintly like her house crest. And she put a binding on it so it wouldn’t heal?”
Another nod from Koar.
Wow… that was cruel and vicious and… exactly something Saldrea would do.
Lhorine turned to me. “How better to learn than something practical? You’re going to remove the binding on this.”
I nodded, though I had no clue if I could do it, at least not yet. But Lhorine truly was an amazing teacher. She had Koar kneel while the two of us stood over him, hands on his face near the nasty injury. She guided me through how to feel the binding, how the anima around it felt, the strength and solidity.
“Yet, as permanent as it feels, all bindings can be undone if you’re powerful enough.” She looked me in the eye. “And I know you’re powerful enough. From what Olinara told me, you wore down your own mother’s binding, and she was one of the strongest elves of the age.”
“I didn’t fully break it,” I said, feeling like I needed to stipulate that.
“You would have, given time.”
That… was probably true.
Lhorine focused back on Koar’s cheek. “Saldrea is strong, and most elves, myself included, could not break one of her bindings… but you can.”
As the night progressed, she helped me work through it. How to feel the boundaries of the binding, feel its shape and gauge its power. Then how to use my own anima to overwhelm it, break it down. She described the usual process of breaking someone else’s binding — or even one you placed yourself — as wearing it down, like a river slowly carving a gorge, since most of the time you were working with bindings of roughly equal power to your own. Yet once I fully understood what to do and how to do it, my breaking of Saldrea’s binding felt more like a tidal wave washing away what should have been a sturdy, unmovable building.
“Wow,” Lhorine breathed as she stepped back.
I pumped a little extra anima — not that I had much left — into Koar to heal the wound, now that the binding was gone. Then I too stepped back, a little unsteady on my feet.
“That was… impressive,” Lhorine whispered. Then she seemed to recover. “You used more power than you needed to, but… yes… that’s how it’s done.”
Koar stood and helped steady me, perhaps seeing I was about to faint. Yeah… I’d used up way too much of my anima… but I’d done it.
