I’d figure it out after the baetyl was whole.
Facing the wall again, I shifted the crystals and walked unimpeded along the floor, bending the crystals back into place behind me without looking. Outside the heart, the remaining wounds pulsed with insistent urgency. Walking was taking too long; I unfurled my—
Where were my wings? A frantic pat down my back revealed smooth flesh and no wings. How had I become this loathsome malformation?
I quested into my body with the elements, tuning them to match the foreign liquid and meat materials. When I encountered the earth, water, and wood blend of my shoulder blades, I grafted my elements to them, converting them to quartz as I grew them.
My body spasmed, and I screamed when two blades formed beneath my skin and burst out my back. The baetyl screamed in unison, every crystal shrieking. The sound terrified me, bringing me back to myself.
I lay across a waist-high crop of variegated onyx, the sharp tips gouging into my stomach and armpit. The fingertips of my left hand hung a few inches above the baetyl floor, and I watched blood drip from my ring finger onto the prasiolite below.
Breathing hurt, but as my vision darkened, I forced myself to take sips of air. Or maybe it was the baetyl that powered my lungs. It pulsed inside me more intimately than any gargoyle’s boost and sweet with possibility. I’d just moved twenty feet and untold tons of crisscrossing quartz as easily as I might push aside a gauze curtain. Stitching it back together should have taken the strength of every FSPP in Terra Haven working all day, and I’d done it without thinking.
I’d modified my body’s blood and bones and skin to grow quartz as easily as I’d reshaped the heart crystal. And it’d been easy.
I’d have grown myself wings if it hadn’t hurt too much.
I whimpered when I realized I wanted to do it again. The power swelled inside me, waiting to be used, waiting for me. With the baetyl backing me, I could do anything. Fusing human and gargoyle physiology was only the start. I could level this mountain and build a new one. I could reshape the world in the design of the baetyl, making it all a perfect place for gargoyles. I could cure any disease. It wouldn’t have to be only gargoyles, either. With the baetyl sitting in my head, the complexity of my own body became remarkably simple. I could be a healer of all creatures—the greatest healer who ever lived. I could perform the kind of magic people would talk about generations from now. No one would match me. I’d be more powerful than any FSPP in the world—than all of them linked.
In doing so, I’d destroy the baetyl. It wasn’t a gargoyle that would boost me until tired, then cut me off. The baetyl would feed me magic until it ran out.
Would that be so bad? I could cure a thousand ailments before the baetyl was tapped out. It wasn’t as if this was an active baetyl. Only seven gargoyles who’d been born here remained alive. Seven lives against the hundreds, thousands, I could save. The gargoyles would approve. They’d lived out their time, and their deaths could mean something. Their deaths could help me and the world become better.
All I had to do was reach for the baetyl’s magic again. It sang inside my head, offering itself. I had healed its heart. It would give me whatever I asked.
If I accepted and used all that power, I’d be no better than Walter or Elsa. Even with my head swimming with pain and addled by the baetyl’s magic, I knew it was wrong to throw away the dormant gargoyles’ lives in the name of using the power to save others. It was a palatable excuse to embrace the almost limitless power of the baetyl, but it wasn’t morally sound. Letting the gargoyles die wasn’t saving anyone. It was murder in the name of a nebulous greater good.
On the heels of that thought, my argument with Marcus flashed through my mind, followed by a zing of understanding. Marcus had been right; I’d been flinging myself into danger to save others, more than willing to sacrifice myself to save the gargoyles. With blood pooling beneath me and my body broken and weak, the irony of the timing of my epiphany wasn’t lost on me.
My actions might have been noble if I’d been at all discriminating. I’d been so focused on rescuing gargoyles, I’d forgotten to treat myself with the same reverence. Worse, I’d been ignoring my own value. Just as the baetyl’s power was needed here to heal the dormant gargoyles and give life to generations of new gargoyles, my life and magic was needed to heal all gargoyles, not just the ones in front of me.
I weighed my logic against my conscience. Was I being egotistical to claim my life was more valuable than any one gargoyle’s? Than the lives of the seven gargoyles? The answer came quickly: Sacrificing myself to save a life or seven lives was shortsighted and foolish. I deserved better. The gargoyles deserved more of their guardian.
Just as clearly, I knew the same logic couldn’t be applied to healing the baetyl. If my death was necessary to repair the baetyl, my sacrifice wouldn’t be a shortsighted waste of life; I’d be saving generations of future gargoyles.
Envisioning the baetyl filled with gargoyles, healthy eggs hatching in the heart once more, I found the courage to open myself to the baetyl’s magic again. It roared inside me, buffeting me with its eagerness, filling my head with its knowledge. Gritting my teeth, I severed the crystals from my back and mended my flesh. Shards of bloody quartz rained down around me, and I helped the baetyl absorb them, burying all traces of my hopeless wings. Then I rolled my fragile human body off the onyx crystals and straightened.