Walter walked toward me. Once I saw him, I saw the rest of Focal Park spread around us, the dome of blue sky and puffy white clouds above me and the etched-marble pentagram beneath me. I’d been positioned in the center and seed crystals locked the elements in place at all five points. My head went light on my shoulders. Stuck in the center, I’d be the focal point of the spell, my life drained to feed whoever controlled the pentagram. I needed to escape or I’d be killed.
I gathered magic, gritting my teeth against the rush of pain, but no matter how hard I clung to the elements, they kept slipping from my control. Walter smiled. He used brushes of air to shove the crystals holding the net closer around me, tightening the magical cage until I couldn’t move.
“Good.” Elsa stepped up beside Walter. The inventor looked as insane as the day she’d unleashed her gargoyle-enhancement replication invention upon Focal Park. I panted against the elemental restraints, tasting quartz in each breath.
Walter hadn’t been at Focal Park, and I hadn’t been alone—
Silver cracks split the air around Elsa like lines of tinsel opening into nothing but silver light.
Elsa leaned close, breathing on my face, pulling my attention back to her feverish eyes. “This will change everything.”
I strained to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. Elsa wove a spear of wood tempered with water and drilled into my neck. Pain like fire erupted from my throat and seared across my brain in white-hot agony. I screamed inside my head, but no sound escaped my frozen lips.
I could feel the hole in my neck.
A hole in my neck.
I should be dead. I couldn’t survive a hole in my neck.
I wasn’t made of stone . . .
Silver cracks fractured the air around the inventor as she readied her next wood and water attack. I tried to study the fissures, but Elsa filled my vision. She plunged her barbaric elemental weave into me again. Scorching pain burned through my brain, but I clung to my last thought. It was important. I wasn’t made of stone. I wasn’t made of stone.
I wasn’t a gargoyle. I could fight back.
I grabbed for the elements. Like grains of sand, they trickled through my grasping mental fist. All but earth.
I refined earth to pure quartz, and the magic solidified in my grip. Elsa loomed, another wood and water spear poised to stab me. The silver lines around her faded. My instincts demanded I defend myself. I could block her, shatter that damn magic spear before it hit my stone—
I wasn’t made of stone.
The silver lines burst back into existence, and with a soundless roar, I drove the quartz into the shimmering fractures with every ounce of my strength.
Focal Park, Elsa, the trap—it all shattered. My magic hurled through the baetyl, burrowing into an amethyst cluster five feet away. The crystals shattered and reshaped, falling to the baetyl floor in perfect amethyst snowflakes.
“Mika?”
Oliver loomed in my vision, his head as large as mine, his body the appropriate size. I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around his smooth ruff. He whuffled my face with soft, relieved breaths. When I let him go, he pulled back far enough for me to see Celeste. Light fractured across the crystals around her, defining her dark outline more than illuminating her.
“She is herself?” Celeste asked Oliver.
“I am me,” I said, taking comfort from the simple statement. I looked for the source of the light, surprised to see it coming from the crystals. When had they started glowing?
“What happened?” Oliver demanded. “You were fine; then you were both screaming and collapsed.”
“Where’s Marcus?” I sat up, hissing when the movement woke the pain in a dozen cuts on my arms and hands. Marcus lay a dozen feet away, sprawled on his back across a bushel of mint-green prasiolite crystals. His head lolled off the edge of a sturdy crystal and his hands and feet twitched, but the light underneath him left his face shadowed.
I staggered across the crystal floor to him, Oliver so close to my side that I had to grab his wings to prevent myself from being knocked down.
“Marcus.” His eyes moved behind his eyelids, and he mouthed mumbled words. I prodded his arm, and when he didn’t respond, I added more force to the next poke. He twitched and moaned but didn’t wake. His sword protruded from the baetyl wall a few feet away; he’d managed to wedge the tip of it between two crystals. The scabbard was still strapped to his back, but his fall had broken the rigid bamboo, and splinters of it dusted the crystals below him.
“He’s trapped in the nightmare.” I reached for magic—maybe a jolt to his senses would wake him—but it was as if I were in the nightmare again. The elements slid from my grasp, all but earth. Its jagged edges vibrated against my skull until I tuned it to quartz; then the element stabilized and smoothed out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything with quartz to wake Marcus. Growing alarmed, I lightly slapped his cheek. He swung a halfhearted punch without opening his eyes. I danced out of reach. “Marcus, wake up!”
“What nightmare?” Oliver asked.
As if his confusion summoned them, gargoyles seethed from the baetyl’s geode-like walls. They swarmed over the crystals and rushed us. An enormous green aventurine bear with delicate dragonfly wings led the charge, a half ton of rock galloping on clawed feet to demolish me. I widened my stance and threw a quartz shield around Marcus, Oliver, Celeste, and myself, bracing myself for impact.
“What are you doing? Mika, what do you see?” Oliver stood on his hind legs, flaring his wings for balance, and squinted in the direction of the charging bear.
My legs trembled. If not for Marcus, I would have run, but I couldn’t abandon him and I couldn’t carry him.
The bear skidded to a stop just beyond my shield and reared up on her hind legs, releasing a soundless roar. I frowned. A mute gargoyle? My brain tried to make sense of it but was too distracted by her massive paws. They were larger than my head and tipped with finger-length claws; with one blow, she could kill me, yet she only waved her paws in front of her as if testing the air.
If she had been a real bear, I would have been scrambling for Marcus’s sword and making as much noise as possible to drive her off. But she was a gargoyle, a reasoning creature.
“I’m here to help,” I said.