Celeste and Oliver helped me move Marcus, shifting him until he lay as flat as possible on the bed of sharp crystals. His leather pants and spelled shirt did a much better job protecting him than my clothing had. It was his head I was worried most about. I didn’t have a spare piece of cloth to put between him and the bladelike tips of the crystals, so I removed one of his leather boots and used the leg of it to cushion his head. He might get some cuts on his exposed foot, since I doubted his socks were spelled, too, but it was a fair trade-off.
I tried folding his arms over his stomach, but he flailed and fought me, smacking his hands into the crystals around us. I gave up and backed away, and he calmed. Blood oozed from nicks and cuts on his hands and wrists, and I let them bleed. If I knew more about healing people and could grasp more elements than quartz, I would have healed him, but quartz wasn’t going to do him any good.
Instead, I did the only thing I could: I turned my back on him and walked away. He’d been a true friend, helping me when there was no incentive for him, risking his life to get me this far, and I abandoned him.
11
From the shadows of overhanging crystals, the gargoyles swarmed, but when they drew close, they turned, parted, and let me pass. A braver person would have been able to walk confidently through the bombarding apparitions, but my steps faltered and shook, and I flinched when the gargoyles darted out of the shadows, mouths agape and faces contorted with killing rage. The baetyl might be temporarily confused by the flavor of my magic, but once it realized I wasn’t a gargoyle, it’d crush me.
Behind me, Marcus wasn’t as lucky. I turned, watching helplessly as the apparitions dove into his body, their ghostly forms disappearing when they touched his flesh. He thrashed and moaned, feebly slapping the air. I almost ran back to him, but I knew it would be pointless. I could stand over him and guard his body or I could fix the baetyl and save his mind.
I wasn’t stupid enough to test the baetyl’s crystals with so much as a grain of quartz element, but the deeper I crawled and climbed through the maze of crystals, the more heavily its magic pressed against my skin. Its jagged disharmony set my teeth on edge. A headache unfurled across my skull, the pain a dull pound compared to the sharp sting of the cuts on my arms.
I examined my wounds in the glow of an especially bright, clear crystal. Blood oozed through my shirt at my left bicep, caking the rip in the fabric. I didn’t think peeling the cloth from the cut would help at this point, so I ignored the gash. A series of nicks spiraled down my forearms, with one long scratch on the underside of my right arm. Most had stopped bleeding already, and my shirt was doing a decent job soaking up the rest of the blood. My hands hurt the worst. Lacerations crisscrossed my palms, oozing blood.
Oliver and Celeste walked across the crystals without being cut, but the tension in them reminded me of their first steps. Not only was this baetyl broken, but it also wasn’t their cynosure baetyl. The magic in here was not theirs, and every step hurt them in a different way. I picked up my pace.
Celeste led us to the cave-in. Amid all the flat planes and jewel tones of the crystals, the mound of soil and rocks lay like a physical insult on the otherwise pristine floor. High above us, a jagged dark patch marred the lines of the ceiling.
It wasn’t a natural collapse. The sturdy beams of enormous crystals spanning the breadth of the baetyl should have prevented any part of the cavern from caving in, but if the structural integrity had been destroyed from above by the Hidden Cache miners, it wouldn’t have mattered how strong the crystals inside the baetyl were.
We paused as I assessed the ugly gap in the crystals and waited for inspiration. I had hoped that when I encountered the problem, I’d see the solution. Obviously, the cave-in needed to be mended, but the scope of it worried me. Even from a hundred feet below it, the hole looked large enough to drive two trains through side by side. Enhanced by Oliver and Celeste, I could probably do it—if I had a few days and control of all the elements.
Which meant I needed to get started right away. For Marcus and for the dormant gargoyles waiting outside, none of whom had time to spare. Except . . .
I couldn’t focus on the cave-in. I peered into the gloom of the baetyl, straining to see . . . to hear . . . something.
“What’s that way?”
“The heart,” Celeste said.
Yes, the heart. “Take me there.”
The crystals grew denser the deeper we traveled, and their internal light increased until a dozen different shades of soft twilight lit the cavern. Celeste was forced to find her own way, not fitting through the same spaces as Oliver and me. I spent more time crawling through gaps than walking, with Oliver helping me over the larger crystals. The blood from my palms blended into his carnelian sides when he let me use him for handholds rather than the sharp edges of the quartz.
We passed two other cave-ins, both smaller than the first but not by much. I examined them without really seeing them. The baetyl’s magic had grown stronger, the broken and pure notes shredding my senses like a cheese grater, disrupting my ability to concentrate on anything else.
I lost track of time. My sense of direction narrowed to the painful-sweet siren song of the heart. If I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have been able to find the exit, but leaving had lost all sense of importance. The heart was all that mattered.
I slid down the slope of a citrine crystal as wide as my shoulders and landed softly on a bed of onyx peaks, then paused in surprise. The network of crystals opened, creating a gap that stretched to the ceiling. Another twenty feet in front of me, a massive wall of interlocking crystals wove from the ceiling to the floor. I scanned the surface, hunting for an opening in what looked like an impenetrable maze of quartz.
Celeste coasted to my side from a large gap higher up, and I stepped aside to give Oliver a place to land when he slid down the crystal behind me.
“The heart is inside,” Celeste said.
I’d assumed as much. “How do I get through the wall?”
“There are openings up higher,” Oliver said.
“How do you know?” He’d been at my side the whole time; he hadn’t had the opportunity to scout ahead to check for gaps in the wall.