“I think that’s the worst of it,” I said as Marcus tied off the wrap on my foot.
“Good. We need to get moving. Here’s your shoe.”
The leather fit snug around the bandage, making me grateful I couldn’t feel the puncture. When I stood, I put my full weight on my foot and all I felt was the cool press of Marcus’s magic.
I looked for Oliver, and the view took my breath away.
Beyond the misshapen wedge of the earth section we’d escaped, an expanding triangle of the park lay scorched and strewn with embers. Flames belched from pockets in the ground and lightning crackled brilliant streaks through the shimmering hot air. Viewed through this, the air section beyond looked to be one giant sandstorm, and dirt hazed the sky above it. Oliver’s slender orange-red body had been swallowed by the storm, and I fought the urge to run to find him. I should never have sent him with Captain Monaghan. Oliver was my responsibility, and now he was all alone and fighting through a sandstorm created by powerful, unpredictable magic.
Logically, I knew his humping lope would have been a disaster in the air-sensitive earth section. Oliver wouldn’t have been able to fly to even out his gait, and while Marcus was strong, I doubted he could have carried me and Oliver out. It wouldn’t do any good for me to get trapped in the sandstorm with Oliver, either, as much as I yearned to go help him.
Telling myself I wasn’t abandoning Oliver, I hobbled a few steps toward the fox gargoyle. When the numbness in my foot held, I hurried to the base of the pile of boulders.
From this angle, the gargoyle was hidden. While I hunted for a foothold, I kept an eye on the leading edge of the creeping polarization bubble. At best, we had ten minutes to free the gargoyle before the field reached us.
“Here.” Marcus indicated an almost natural staircase up the rocks on the other side of the boulders. I clambered up, trying not to rely on my injured foot. Just because I couldn’t feel the wound didn’t mean I wouldn’t make it worse by stressing it.
I forgot about my foot when I reached the gargoyle. Hardly larger than a bear cub, she lay curled in a tight ball in the narrow bed of rocks, her long tigereye fox muzzle partially hidden under her thick tail. Up close, I could see her wings weren’t dusty brown; they were a smoky citrine so gritty and scarred and covered with dirt that they looked brown. Her eyes were dim, as if she’d been sleeping when the purifier exploded and locked on to her. Or knocked unconscious. Her magic passively fed into and boosted the atrocious polarizing magic just as the marmot gargoyle’s had. No quartz had been necessary to forge a connection between the purifier’s braid and the fox, either; it’d burrowed in using raw power.
“I think if I can remove the braid, it’ll be like unhooking an anchor,” I said. “It might cause the purifier to unravel. Having another gargoyle to feed off of must be strengthening it.”
“Okay. I’ll check on the others.”
Almost on top of his words, an air message opened above us and Winnigan’s voice emerged. “We’re out. Seradon’s going to get healed. I’m headed your way.”
Marcus responded as he continued to climb up the boulders toward the peak. Movement in the periphery of my vision pulled my head up. Seradon and Winnigan jogged across the flat sunbathing grounds, skirting the expanding polarization field. When she reached a natural path, Seradon peeled away, angling toward the tunnel exit. Despite having been magically stunted from the initial blast and then swimming her way out of the water section, she managed a cheerful wave and smile before she disappeared out of sight. In her place, I would have been dragging myself on all fours toward the nearest escape route. For all our sakes, I hoped an FSPP healer waited just outside the park, ready to repair Seradon’s metaphysical pathways so she could rush back before the captain was ready to link.
Maybe the link wouldn’t be necessary if I could break the purifier’s hold on the fox.
Forming a basic mixture of elements, I slid it into the gargoyle. As I expected, I had to adjust the elements immediately. The purifier’s braid of fire and earth had warped the fox’s insides, and it was pulling her apart. I wasted precious seconds trying to sever the braid where it tunneled into the gargoyle’s neck. The massive bands of elemental energy were too strong for me, so I switched tactics. Laying my hands on her wings, I drove my magic deep into the gargoyle, hunting for the tip of the purifier’s magic where it anchored to her body. If I couldn’t cut the purifier off before it entered her, maybe I could stop it from digging any deeper.
I found the end of the braid less than two inches from the gargoyle’s opposite side. The purifier’s magic twisted and churned inside the gargoyle, corkscrewing her innards and creating a rift inside her as if she were just another rock, not a living creature. Only her innate magic bound into her tigereye body kept her alive, and it was failing.
While I examined it, the braid of fire and earth tunneled through another half inch of her body. It wasn’t anchored in her; it was boring through her! If it managed to push out her other side, it’d shatter her body.
Knowing I had mere minutes to save her life, I gathered counterelements—water and wood—and threw them against the fire and earth of the purifier. I anticipated the backlash of pain that resonated into me, and I didn’t let up. The forward progress of the braid halted; then it began to swell inside the gargoyle, opening physical fractures.
Cursing, I released my countermagic and grabbed quartz-tuned earth. As fast as I could, I healed the fresh wounds; then I shifted my focus to the fox’s neck. The divisive magic of the purifier had polarized the magic inside the gargoyle, and I patched the large fractures just under her skin, hoping it would thwart the purifier. Undeterred, the fire and earth braid passed seamlessly through my magic and continued to burrow into the gargoyle.
While I wracked my brain for a solution, I countered as much of the purifier’s advancement as I dared. Anything more would have injured the fox.
I couldn’t form an inverted pentagram in front of the purifier’s braid as I’d done with the marmot. For starters, I didn’t have a convenient quartz crystal to embed the pentagram in or glass loop to contain the bulk of the purifier. The braid was also exponentially larger than before, and without the combined magic of the FSPPs at my disposal, I doubted I could create a pentagram large enough to absorb the incoming fire and earth elements. Furthermore, though no one had confirmed it, I was pretty sure my inverted pentagrams around the marmot were strengthening the purifier, and I didn’t want to give this monstrosity any more power.
At a loss, I did the one thing I knew how to do: I healed the gargoyle.
Splitting my attention, I sewed minute quartz stitches deep inside the fox, bridging the dichotomous elements tearing her apart. While she continued to resonate with earth on one side and fire on the other, the divided elements no longer physically split her. It was probably wishful thinking, but I thought her faint life signs might have strengthened, too.
I’d patched up the gargoyle from her neck almost to her hip before I realized why the purifier’s magic wasn’t interfering with my healing: It didn’t fight or overpower my gargoyle-tuned magic because it recognized it as part of the weave.
“She tuned the purifier to gargoyles.”
“What does that mean?” Marcus asked.
I glanced up to where he perched on the top boulder, standing on the narrow peak of rock as if it were solid ground. The sight of him that high made my legs feel funny.
“I think there’s a gargoyle at the end of every purifier line, feeding it magic.”
“Shit.”
Elsa hadn’t just embedded her original contraption to the marmot gargoyle through the quartz; she’d tuned the magic to feed off the gargoyle. And when the purifier had exploded, it’d still been tuned to lock on to gargoyles. That’s why the fire–earth braid ended here, with the fox, while the other four braids stretched out of sight. They’d locked on to the closest gargoyles in their paths, and all the others were outside the park.
I had no way of
knowing how far away the gargoyles were, either. I was almost certain this fox had been dormant before the purifier wreaked havoc on her. Otherwise she wouldn’t have remained in the park when everyone else evacuated. Were the other trapped gargoyles dormant, too? How many dormant gargoyles existed in the city? Was it an epidemic? Why hadn’t I known about them? I didn’t deserve the title of gargoyle healer—
Oliver landed heavily next to Marcus, claws digging into the boulder, and the sight of him snapped me out of my self-recriminations. His long body drooped beneath heavy wings, tail limp. Sunlight sat heavy on his dull red-orange scales where normally it glistened, and he was breathing so fast it had to hurt.
“You’re okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
There wasn’t enough room for him on the small landing with me and the fox gargoyle; otherwise I thought he would have climbed down. He settled for reaching one stubby leg toward me. I lifted my hand to rest it on his paw, then immediately jerked it back. He wasn’t dull from fatigue; his entire body had been scratched a thousand times over. The sand. He’d been scoured in the sandstorm when he’d flown through the air section.
“Does it hurt?” I asked even as I slid my magic into him.
“Not much.”
He lied. It felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to his skin. He stung from the tip of his nose to his tail, more so along his wings. Internally, his body rioted in a nauseating imbalance. Using so much pure air to fly had altered his internal systems far worse than if he’d helped me work exclusively with air magic for weeks.
“Feed from me,” I ordered. Seeing Marcus beside him wielding a hefty amount of water, I added, “Feed from both of us.” I followed the direction of Marcus’s magic and saw he’d linked with Winnigan. The red-haired water elemental stood at the base of the boulders, and together the two FSPPs pummeled the polarized fire section with water.
Magic blossomed inside me, opening a wellspring of strength that more than doubled the usual amount of elements I could hold.
“No. Passively, Oliver. Cycle our magic while we work. We need to balance you before you do any enhancing.”
“But I feel fine.”
“Liar.”
The little dragon snorted, but the power boost winked out. Still monitoring him, I experienced an echo of the pain of each breath stretching his chapped sides. Wishing I had more time and my bag of seed crystals—a gargoyle healer staple, I’d learned—I fanned fire in gentle waves across the carnelian just beneath the scratched outer layer of Oliver’s skin, taking special care around his muzzle and eyelids. My patchwork healing sped his natural regeneration on the worst of his wounded flesh, coaxing his skin to grow fractionally. Oliver shuddered, then stilled as I worked, and I stopped after less than a minute and well before he was fully healed.
“I’m sorry. I have to—”
“Help her,” Oliver said, finishing my sentence. He opened his glowing eyes to study the fox gargoyle. “Is she . . . dormant, too?”
“I think so. Whatever you do, don’t get close. The purifier is tuned to gargoyles. It might jump to you.” I knelt by the fox and slid magic back into her. My quartz stitches were holding, but they weren’t doing anything to balance the energy within the gargoyle. Half of her body swirled with fire magic, the other with earth, and her body thrummed with a constant, cramping pain that alternated between her left and right sides.
The leading edge of the polarized energy inside the fox broke through the skin at her hip and shot toward Oliver.
“No!”
I sliced the feeble strands, shocked when my desperate ploy worked and the polarized magic broke and disintegrated.
“Oliver, you’ve got to get out of here.” I tried to close the braid’s exit wound on the fox’s side, but the moment the braid became trapped inside her, it started swelling, crushing her insides.
“I can’t hold it inside her. It’ll kill her. You have to go. Get out of the park. Out of the city.”
“What will happen to her?” Oliver asked. He hadn’t moved, and I hacked through two new shafts of the purifier’s magic as they speared toward him.
“I’ll save her. She’s going to be fine as long as the magic doesn’t build up inside her. Which is why you have to leave. I can’t keep holding it back.”
“Where will that magic go if I leave?” Oliver asked.
“Out. It’ll go out.”
“To another gargoyle?”
Yes. But not to my gargoyle. I couldn’t say that out loud, though. “Oliver, please. Go. I need to concentrate.”
With an unreadable look, Oliver launched from the rock and disappeared. Praying he didn’t stop flying until he reached the edge of Terra Haven, I turned back to the fox gargoyle.
Larger and larger bands of Elsa’s hideous polarizing braid escaped from the gargoyle’s hip. Dividing my focus, I slid a feeler into the fox and continued to hack and slice any escaping magic. My patches held despite greater amounts of fire and earth feeding into and out of the gargoyle. The purifier showed no signs of weakening.
I no longer nursed the marginal hope that the river would stop the expansion of the polarized magic. Winnigan’s earlier prediction of the bubble swallowing the city seemed more plausible, and when it did, the divided magic would decimate Terra Haven and any living creatures in its path. Everything in the wood section would erode; everything in the water section would drown. The air section would choke everything with dust and erode anything left standing. The earth would tear apart homes and offices; the fire would consume anything in its path.
A wall of heat pressed against my back and sweat dripped down my nose, but the polarized magic escaping the fox grew stronger each time I cut it, and I couldn’t spare an ounce of concentration to blot my face.
“We’ve got to move,” Marcus said, suddenly standing beside me.
“It’ll swallow the gargoyle,” I said, glancing up. The wall of polarized magic pushed close enough to touch.
“And us, too. It was hard enough getting out the first time.” He grabbed my arm.
“Wait.” I fumbled to assemble fresh quartz patches and stitch them into place where the purifier cut into and out of the gargoyle. The polarized magic slid through my elemental bandages as easily as it did through the fox, but my magic might lessen her pain.
I slashed through a helix of fire larger than the fox as Marcus lifted me. Air exploded from my lungs when my stomach crashed down on top of Marcus’s shoulder; then he leapt from the pile of boulders to the ground ten feet below.
I tried to scream, but without air, no sound came out. His thick arm held my legs as I jounced helplessly when he landed. He set me on my feet and I whirled to check the fox, but the tall rocks hid her from sight.
Seconds later, the fire–earth braid burst over the rock, and the polarized field swallowed the boulders where we’d been standing. Marcus grabbed my arm and propelled me up the hill to safety, but my eyes were riveted on the gargoyle-tuned braid.
A sinuous shadow intercepted the braid as it shot straight as an arrow across the ground toward the city.
“Oliver! No!”
The young gargoyle dove into the purifier’s questing magic, and it burrowed into him, slamming him to the ground.
7
“Oliver!” I flung myself toward his crumpled form, falling over my own feet when they couldn’t keep up. My magic reached him first, and I drove it into him and slashed the purifier’s twisted weave. Unlike the other two gargoyles, Oliver fought back with me, and our combined magical assault pushed the insidious braid from him. Immediately, it dove back into his chest.
“We need to roll him. I’ll push the magic out of him and then we’ll get him free of its path.”
“No.” The weak protest came from Oliver. He couldn’t move; the braid had paralyzed him, and continuing to fight off its intrusion left him no strength to move his limbs, but he managed a few words. “Me, not others,” he rasped.
Oliver, not another gargoyle. He didn’
t want me to spare him just to sacrifice another gargoyle.
“No. Not you.” I bounced the purifier’s strands from Oliver before they could take root. “You’re young. I don’t know if you have the strength.”
“You’ll save me.”
My chest caved in at his trusting look. Then Oliver closed his eyes to concentrate on fighting the purifier’s intrusive magic. No matter how many times we thrust it from him, cut it off before it could enter him, or tried to blockade against it, the strong braid plowed back into Oliver’s chest.
All our actions were a stopgap measure. Eventually we’d tire and the purifier would take root in Oliver. It’d divide him just as it had the fox gargoyle, and it’d tunnel through him with the same ruthlessness, only to jump to the next gargoyle.
The polarization field crept closer. What would happen when it reached Oliver? I couldn’t abandon him. I couldn’t leave him to face the pain and terror alone and paralyzed.
I swiped tears from my cheeks.
Two bundles of elemental energy wrapped in air rocketed over the top of the bubble and dropped beside Marcus and Winnigan. The outer layers peeled back, revealing twin images of Captain Monaghan. He looked as if he stood underwater, his image reflected in the wavy lines of thin water layers.
“Status report,” both captains barked, their voices crystal clear.
“We’re together and linked,” Winnigan said. She hadn’t halted her assault on the fire section even as we’d retreated; she’d merely changed tactics, sending crushing waves of water and wood straight into the braid that attacked Oliver—with minimal results. Speaking and wielding massive amounts of complex magic didn’t appear to challenge her.
“That explains the echo,” Grant said. One of the mirror spheres disintegrated. The remaining floating head moved, spinning until the captain looked at me. “Good. Oliver found— Crap. Is the purifier connected to him?”
“Elsa tuned the purifier to gargoyles,” I said.
“That means there are five gargoyles feeding this thing?”
Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) Page 8
