She looked down at it. It was tiny, compared to Pel.
“Around that?” She sounded faintly incredulous.
“Around that,” Tor agreed.
Tor had honed his skills over more than twenty years. Larexa had Manifested all of five years ago, and she hadn’t trained in defense.
The first few times, Larexa’s magic just fizzled out and collapsed, drawing back into her without her will to guide it. She looked pretty surprised. Pel looked equally taken aback and then managed to school his expression into something neutral. Tor was sure that both of them had been taught that Larexa was the most powerful person in the castle apart from the King.
That was true (at least when Tor wasn’t here), but that didn’t mean she’d learned how to use her magic.
Larexa stared in dismay as her magic collapsed again.
“You made it look so easy!” she protested.
Tor grinned at her. “That’s because—”
“—he likes to show off,” Pel finished for him.
Tor shot the other man a look. Pel stared back at him with mock innocence, but his eyes were dancing.
Tor grinned at Larexa. “I do like to show off, actually. Obviously, everyone should admire me at all times.”
Pel scoffed, and Larexa’s lips tipped up. She seemed a lot less tense now. “Obviously.”
“Truthfully,” Tor continued, “I’m older than you are, and I’ve been doing this for a lot longer. This is the sort of thing that my brother and I practiced when we were kids.”
She made a face. “You’re saying I’m hopelessly behind.”
“I’m saying that the idea that Var and I could throw glowing avatars at one another was the coolest thing two fourteen-year-old boys had ever heard.”
Larexa laughed and relaxed again. “All right. Keeping in mind that I’m not a fourteen-year-old boy, do you have any advice?”
“When you manifest magic, you’re usually using it to strengthen something that’s already there, or it’s just beneath your skin, strengthening you. You’re thinking of it as something that is supporting what’s already there.” He pointed up at the lights. “You do that a lot, right?”
She looked up at the chandeliers, her face bathed in their light. “Yes, of course.”
“Do you ever make a light without the crystal?”
She frowned. “Why would I do that?”
Because this was Tond, where the crystal came from, and King Forex was keen on showing that off. Maybe because Larexa hadn’t Manifested at fourteen at the same time as a twin brother, and so there hadn’t been two of them to come up with a series of increasingly wild things to try. (Making the avatar into a horse had failed, though Tor stilldidn’t really see why, but they’d made all sorts of shields and weapons and lights, shapes they could clamber over, even ropes of pure magic they could climb.)
Tor formed a glowing light in his hand. “Because if you don’t live in Tond, sometimes you want to make a light and there’s no crystal on hand.” He tossed it at the wall, where it stuck, squashing into a half sphere, making Larexa suck in a sharp breath. “Mantling something is easier. Crystal, armor, shield, sword, whatever. The structure is already there, and the magic is just coating it. But to create a free-standing shield or a ball of light, you’re providing the magic, giving it structure,andcontinuing to support it once it’s no longer touching you. It’s part of you, but it’s also a thing unto itself.”
Larexa was still staring at the ball of magic on the wall.
“How long will it stay there?”
“Honestly,” Tor admitted, “I could probably keep it there a day or two if I wanted. Crystal lights, probably twice as long. But even though they’re not attached to me physically, they’re part of my magic, and so while they exist, they’re draining my magic.” Making a face, he added, “I probably started this training all wrong. You know the warning signs of magic overuse?”
It was highly unlikely that Larexa would ever raise a shield that could endanger her, but Tor shouldnotmake assumptions about something like that.
Larexa nodded. “Pink means I’m beginning to exhaust myself and should stop and give my magic time to replenish. The redder it gets, the more core magic is being used.” She swallowed thickly. “Blood red is the last of the core magic.”
Tor nodded seriously. “Yes. If you see so much as a hint of pink, you stop and rest. Nothing we’re doing should strain you even close to that degree, but if it’s not something you’re used to, you want to keep an eye on it.”
Avatars had gone blood red in the battlefields, apparently, as Extraordinary were pushed beyond their limits at the height of the fighting. Illustrious had strained their ability to shield, and evenUnremarkablehad apparently perished from magic overuse, which Tor had never understood. He knew they didn’t have very much magic, but didn’t that mean they never used it in a way that it could be overused? Yes, they could shield themselves internally in a minor way, but surely not so much that they’d use all their magic? Wouldn’t they stop as soon as they saw any pink? Or had the battles been so frantic and their magic internal so they hadn’t noticed?
