“We think so,” Marcus said. “I think that’s what broke the ward around the park. This fire–earth line already overwhelmed one gargoyle. We weren’t fast enough to save it. Then it jumped to Oliver.”
“Oliver jumped into it,” I said.
“Why would he do that?” Grant asked.
“To save another gargoyle.” I slashed at the evil burrowing magic, pushing it out of Oliver. The small dragon balanced the disruption to his internal magic, but the fire and earth braid forced its way back into him before he had normalized. I blocked it with swift strokes of wood and water.
“Mika’s keeping the purifier from taking root, but she won’t last much longer,” Marcus said. I gritted my teeth. It was the truth, but I didn’t appreciate hearing it.
“It seems to be helping,” Winnigan said. “Velasquez and I have been throwing everything we’ve got at the fire section, trying to weaken it, but I don’t think it’s made a difference, Captain. Mika preventing the purifier from feeding off Oliver has done more to slow the tide than anything we’ve done.”
Really? I checked the polarization field. It had swallowed the boulders where the fox gargoyle lay trapped, but it hadn’t advanced more than a foot up the hill beyond it.
“Marciano and I tried the same thing against wood with similar results. We’re going about this wrong. We need to use this freakish magic against itself.”
“A destructive pentagram?” Winnigan asked. “How are we going to get a mix of elements through this field?”
“Any way we can. Link up.”
A massive bundle of elements shot from Winnigan and flew out of sight over the curve of the polarization field. I watched it go in amazement. A thousand yards had to separate us from the captain, yet these FSPPs acted like linking across such a huge distance was nothing new. For a woman who was proud of being able to work earth a mere five yards away from her, what they did seemed incredible. Seconds later, the magic swelled in Winnigan and Marcus, proving they’d made their connection with Grant and Marciano.
“You, too, Mika,” the captain said. “We need a full five for this.”
What they needed were five elementals with full-spectrum pentacle potential strength, not four FSPPs and a midlevel earth elemental. I glanced back up the trail toward the tunnel, hoping to catch sight of Seradon returning, fully healed.
“I need to stay focused on Oliver.”
“You need to multitask.”
I glared at the mirror sphere. “If I stop, even for a minute, it’s going to take root. And if it does, this whole field is going to get stronger.” And Oliver would be trapped.
“If you don’t link up, it won’t matter. The field is getting stronger with or without Oliver’s contribution. If we want to stop it, we have to work together.”
“You can still protect Oliver after you’re linked,” Marcus said.
I remembered how easily the FSPPs had yanked control from me when I’d been working to save the marmot. This time, the squad wouldn’t be controlling a small containment ward. They’d be creating an acre-size pentagram through the polarized magic. That seemed like it would take everything we had and then some. How much magic would I have left to use to keep Oliver safe?
I shifted to sit beside Oliver, laying a hand on a patch of wing I’d healed. Four other gargoyles were trapped throughout the city, and by focusing all my efforts on saving Oliver, they were suffering, slowly being torn apart. I was delaying because I didn’t want to see my gargoyle hurt, and that wasn’t fair to the rest—or to the fox and marmot already engulfed in the polarization field.
“Some party this turned out to be,” I grumbled, trying to sound brave.
Winnigan looked at me like I was crazy, but Marcus grinned.
“That’s the spirit,” he said.
“Winnigan, fan out,” Grant said. “This’ll be easier if we’re not so far apart.”
“Right. Let’s destroy this monster.” Winnigan ceased her water-focused onslaught, clapped Marcus on the shoulder, and jogged back toward the water section. The pond Winnigan and Seradon had swam through less than a half hour ago now spanned the entire polarized wedge, accelerating the erosion in the neighboring wood section. A hundred yards remained between the river and the leading edge of the polarization field, but the spontaneous lake would soon bridge the intervening land. We were running out of time.
The captain’s mirror sphere remained beside Marcus, but from the jostling of Grant’s image, I guessed he was running to the air section.
The polarization field pulsed, and the moment the braid connected with Oliver, it inched toward us. Oliver fought back, but his efforts weren’t as effective as mine.
I bent forward to whisper into Oliver’s ear. “Don’t give up. I’m going to be right here, fighting for you. And for all the gargoyles. We’re going to free you, but you have to fight it with me.”
“All you have to do is push the elements into me; I’ll do the rest,” Marcus said. He squatted in front of me.
“Just think of you as a gargoyle?”
“Exactly.” His smile was tight.
I slashed through the baneful braid, temporarily freeing Oliver, then forced myself to pause long enough to gather a balance of elements and thrust them to Marcus. For a second, I could feel only the two of us, and the power radiating from Marcus wrapped me in comforting warmth. Then he dropped open the barrier between us and the rest of the squad.
I fell into the pool of linked magic and unraveled.
The elements buffeted me, shaving away bits of my identity until I couldn’t tell where my body sat or what held me together. Panicking, I flailed for control. The elements flowed around me, cocooned me, battered me, but I couldn’t hold a single strand. I was part of the magic, fluid and shifting. Drowning.
“Open your eyes.”
Seradon must have held me together last time. She’d buffered me through the whole process, not just when the purifier had exploded.
Damn it, I had no business working with these people. Every one of them was three times as strong as me and mountains more talented. I couldn’t even find myself in the link. I was alone. Lost. Where was my body? Where was I?
“Look at me.”
Marcus’s harsh growl rumbled against my eardrums. My body shook, and the movement pulled me back to myself with a snap. I opened my eyes.
The fire elemental held both of my shoulders in crushing grips, and he jostled me again, snapping my head back and forth.
“Are you with me?”
I nodded when I couldn’t find my voice. Two of me were here: one looking into his eyes, the other floating in a conglomeration of magic.
Thinking about the link widened the rift between my two selves, pulling me back into the nebulous expanse of elements. I grabbed Marcus’s forearms and squeezed, using the tactile sensation to ground myself.
“You have to hold yourself separate. You’re a part of the link, but you’re not the link. Think about what makes you, you.”
What made me, me? I’d never had to think about it. I just was me.
“How?” I croaked. “Can’t you just . . .” I hunted for the right word. “Isolate me? Like Seradon did?” Every second of delay cost Oliver and strengthened the purifier. We didn’t have time to teach me fancy tricks. I needed to get back into Oliver to protect him.
“If you’re going to be any use, you have to be in control of yourself. Focus.” His serious lapis lazuli eyes bore into mine. “You’re an earther.”
Yes. I was an earth elemental. I tested the thought, and all the earth available to me through the link tumbled into me, burying me.
Marcus shook me. “You’re a gargoyle healer.”
Earth magic refined to quartz at my thought, snapping into a shape I could use to heal gargoyles. I held the thick elemental band separate from myself without falling into it. Progress. The resonance of four powerful people on the other end of the magic jarred me, but I clung to my identity. I was a gargoyle healer, an earth elemental
with a specialty in quartz—
In the middle of a magic catastrophe that required the skills of someone far more talented than me.
Doubt and fear separated me another step from the link. The fate of Terra Haven depended on me being the earth elemental in this otherwise competent FPD squad. It was enough to make me want to vomit—a sensation unmatched in the link.
I settled back into my body with a feeling akin to waking. I was me, unique and separate, a part of something larger but not the linked energy itself.
I relaxed my control, and the linked magic swirled through me, pulling me back into the immense mixture of elements. I teetered. I am a gargoyle healer. I am an earth elemental, I chanted while watching the bubble of polarized magic expand. I am terrified.
I dropped a hand from Marcus’s arm to Oliver, and contact with the gargoyle crystallized the separation between me and the link.
“Okay. I’ve got this.”
Marcus scanned my face, then released me. I let go of his other arm and flexed my fingers. My knuckles popped. I’d probably left bruises.
Turning back to Oliver, I peeled a slice of magic from the link and cut the purifier’s braid. It resisted and when I added more countermagic, rather than severing the intrusive magic from Oliver, my elements sliced into him. I jerked back and hastily patched the wounds, murmuring an apology to the unresponsive gargoyle. More gently, I countered the fire and earth, pushing the purifier back as far as I dared. It clung to his chest an inch under his skin, rooted in his stone flesh. The time it’d taken me to orient myself in the link had cost Oliver his chance at freedom. If I’d made the wrong call, I’d doomed Oliver to unending pain.
“Settled?” Grant asked. I jumped, having forgotten about the mirror sphere floating beside me.
“Yes.” Tears blurred my vision.
“Good. I need an anchor of solid quartz.”
“Really?” Surely they had a better anchoring system for pentagrams.
“Unless you can create a wind funnel in the ground.”
I glanced at Marcus in confusion.
“Seradon usually makes our anchors,” he said. “She can reshape the earth to harness our elements’ strengths: a miniature wind funnel for air, a molten pit for fire, that sort of thing.”
Oh. Right. Seradon could do things with earth I only dreamed might be possible. The captain had asked me for quartz because it was what I did best. “Where do you need it?”
It took precious minutes to pinpoint over here. With Marcus instructing me through the process, I located Grant standing in front of the expanding air section. Distinguishing the captain from the vat of magic required recognizing his signature, which Marcus described as a cold firestorm but to me looked and felt like the leading edge of a thundercloud, a harnessed forefront of natural violence. After I pinpointed the captain, making the anchor at his feet was easy. With all the magic of the squad at my fingertips, I quested into the soil and yanked a vein of quartz to the surface. A few modifications removed the flaws from the quartz, and I molded it into a head-size sphere.
“That’ll work,” Grant said. His magic slid into the quartz. In less time than it’d taken me to separate the quartz from the surrounding rock, Grant wove a constructive pentagram, anchored it in the quartz, and grafted a powerful band of air to it. He shot the air straight through the polarized sphere, bisecting the wood section and angling for the apex of the water section.
The impressive display of power would have been distracting under different circumstances, but I had Oliver to worry about. I yanked my awareness back to my body and worked to combat the creep of the purifier’s magic into Oliver. It had rooted deeper into the gargoyle while my attention had been elsewhere, doubling his pain.
“Hang in there,” I whispered.
“Place another anchor there, Mika,” Grant ordered through the mirror sphere.
Finding the indicated location was easier this time: I simply followed the straight band of air Grant had created to a distance beyond the center of the water section’s arc. The selected location happened to be underwater, but that didn’t matter. I reached into the earth below and drew out more schist, then refined a tall finger of quartz to protrude above the waterline. A cool, smooth presence in the link locked on to the new anchor. Winnigan. She built a constructive pentagram into the quartz just as Grant’s air element slammed into the anchor, and she deftly wrapped the incoming magic into the quartz, locking it in place. One branch of the pentagram was set.
I switched back to fighting the purifier’s encroaching tendrils in Oliver and didn’t look up until Marcus called my name. When I did, I felt the strain in the link as Grant shoved raw water magic across the wedge of purified earth and out through the fire section. Setting the air line had been relatively easy; both the wood and water sections contained plenty of physical air to bolster Grant’s magic. But shoving water through the damming energy of earth and then through the dry fire section taxed the considerable strength of all the squad. Grant had almost forced his way free of the polarized field, but at this rate, we wouldn’t have enough power to finish the last three lines of the pentagram.
“Watch, Mika,” Marcus said.
He reached into the polarized fire section and shaped a funnel of fire around Grant’s line of water, softening the heat and molding a pathway for the captain. The line of water surged to punch through the polarization field.
“Now you,” Marcus said.
“Anchor first,” Grant barked.
I’d barely finished forming the quartz outside the fire section when Marcus and Grant took hold of the crystal. Marcus shaped a pentagram, Grant slammed the water into the anchor, and Marcus locked the second line of the pentagram in place.
“Wrap the water with earth, Mika,” Marcus said. “Buffer it. We need to free magic for the next line.”
I grunted, too busy countering the fire and earth braid in Oliver to respond. He was weakening, and I did my best to shore up his strength even as I fought the burrowing magic.
“Now, Healer,” Grant ordered.
“Just a minute.”
“Now!”
With a snarl, I forced my attention from Oliver. Mimicking Marcus’s tunnel, I spun earth around the line of water. I hadn’t compensated for my strength when working the purified earth inside the purifier’s sphere, and the ground leapt upward into a rock tunnel through which the water magic slid unchallenged.
“Nice,” Marcus said in approval.
I barely heard him, having spun back to protecting Oliver. Only now I had to split my attention between maintaining the earthen tunnel and fighting the malicious braid. Oliver fought, too, but he couldn’t prevent the braid from dividing his internal magic. Already, fire swirled on his right, earth on his left, and the unnatural divide sapped his strength. Every task that forced my attention from Oliver enabled the purifier to bore farther into him, and I despaired at the increasing difficulty of battling the mindless magic. Worse, the magic in the link was dwindling. Winnigan required a chunk to lock the incoming air and outgoing water lines to the anchor in her section, and Marcus required twice as much to lock down the incoming water and outgoing fire lines as well as maintain his protection around the water line inside the polarized fire wedge. On top of that, the captain required the majority of our linked magic to build the remaining lines.
I jumped ahead of Grant to build a quartz anchor at the apex of the wood section and Marciano lashed the incoming fire element to his anchor. Not stopping, Grant plowed a wood line across the wood and water sections toward us. I built the last anchor a few feet to my left, in front of the earth section, but before I could turn back to Oliver, Grant thrust rough-hewn wood magic across the earth section, and I had to scramble to build a new tunnel through the rocks all the way to the anchor to protect his magic. At the last second, I remembered to make a constructive pentagram in the quartz anchor.
“Brace yourself,” Marcus said.
The wood magic slammed into the anchor and me at
the same time as the captain transferred control to me. I fumbled to grab the fraying ends of the wood line and wrap it into my constructive pentagram inside the quartz. Grant gave me barely enough time to lock it in place before he shoved a fresh band of earth through the anchor. I held tight as Grant shot the final line of the pentagram across the park toward his air anchor.
Magic pulled me in four directions at once, and when I reached for Oliver, all the pieces I held started to unravel.
“Hold it!” Marcus said.
I lurched for the anchor, squeezing the wood and earth lines back into place, only to have my earth tunnels crumble. The entire pentagram trembled under the strain as I righted my fortifications.
“Just a little longer.”
My world narrowed to holding my four pieces of magic. If I failed, the pentagram would collapse, the purifier would continue to grow, and Oliver would die.
I shook with the need to get back to defending Oliver.
Marcus said something, but his words garbled against my anxiety. The braid tunneling into Oliver had thickened to span his chest. Without magic, I couldn’t tell how far through him it’d burrowed, or how much damage it had done. If I didn’t mend the rifts of the dichotomous magic, he’d be torn apart.
Magic blossomed through the link, doubling its strength. I gasped, looking around for what I already knew I’d find.
Gargoyles! We had help!
I spotted four winged shapes against the bright sky and my heart soared.
Through the link, I felt everyone shore up their defenses. Grant connected the earth line to his anchor and a surge of power swept through the five overlapping lines. Yet even with the influx of magic, when I attempted to split a fifth layer of magic toward Oliver, the four others I held quaked.
Far too slowly, the captain took control of the anchors, and when he had mine, I spun immediately for Oliver. The purifier had burrowed more than halfway through him, and I fought it back with precise ferocity, looking up only once I’d reduced the purifier’s magic to the weakest hold possible.
I saw Kylie first. Her white-blond hair streamed behind her as she ran down the hill at Seradon’s side. The crack of rock feet landing on granite announced the arrival of the gargoyles. Not just any gargoyles, either. My gargoyles.
Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) Page 9
