“You don’t seem to have a problem with quartz-tuned earth.”
True. The baetyl had a soft spot for quartz, but I couldn’t do much with a singular element, and whatever I did wouldn’t be enough. Feeding the gargoyles magic was a stop-gap measure until we could get them into the baetyl. If we couldn’t get past the baetyl’s barrier, it wouldn’t matter how much magic we threw at the gargoyles; they wouldn’t wake and they wouldn’t get better.
Why hadn’t I thought to bring the gargoyles into the baetyl before I’d sealed it? Or earlier, before I’d healed the heart? Why had I sealed the baetyl at all? I should have known it wouldn’t let me, a human, back inside after it was sealed, but I’d been too exhausted to think that far ahead. Some guardian I made. I might have doomed these gargoyles in my attempt to save them.
I squelched my self-recriminations. Focusing on the past and things I couldn’t change wasn’t going to save the gargoyles. I needed to work with the problems as they were now.
As far as I could tell, there was only one solution.
“I need to wake them,” I said.
“Can you?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try,” I said. I gave the tiger a nervous pat, wishing Oliver were at my side. The gargoyles were so weak that forcing them from their comatose state could kill them. I wouldn’t even consider it if the only other option wasn’t watching them fade away on the doorstep of their cynosure baetyl. I considered what I had to work with. A simple infusion of quartz magic wouldn’t be enough to wake the gargoyles. I would have to attempt something far more drastic—and dangerous.
Tugging my hair behind my ear, I moved to the warthog-headed bear, the strongest of all the gargoyles. If any were going to survive waking, it’d be her.
She should have glistened like snow in the golden light of Marcus’s glowball, but her white quartz body was marred with grit etched into her pockmarked sides. Sickly green prasiolite striations wrapped her wide belly and coated her folded wings.
“What’s the plan?”
“First, we drop our link,” I said.
Marcus didn’t comply. “Why? We’re stronger together.”
Because being linked mucks up my individuality. Only I couldn’t tell him that, or he’d guess what I planned and stop me.
“Waking the gargoyle might attract the baetyl’s attention. I need one of us to be on guard,” I said instead. The weight of the baetyl pressed against my thoughts, and my fear was genuine. What if it lashed out, seeing me as an enemy to its gargoyle?
“All the more reason for me to be inside the link, helping you fight off the baetyl’s lure.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that now. The baetyl doesn’t like me anymore.”
“How do you know?” The shadows cast by the flickering glowballs made his scowl more impressive, but I was immune.
“I tried to connect with it to see if it’d let me through.”
“You did what?”
“And it slapped me aside. It’s done with me.”
His thick jaw muscle bounced as he ground his teeth. “That was stupid.”
“Yep.” No more stupid than what I was about to try, but these gargoyles deserved a chance to live, and I wouldn’t stop until I’d exhausted my options—short of killing myself in the process. “So I don’t need you in the link. I need you to protect us while I do my healer work and try to wake a comatose gargoyle.”
My healer work, such a nice euphemistic phrase. So much better than telling him I was going to try to imprint part of my spirit into the warthog’s and use my energy to wake her.
I hid my trembling hands against the gargoyle’s round side. I’d shifted pieces of my spirit from my body before at Focal Park when Elsa’s invention had latched on to Oliver and his siblings. It’d been the only way to simultaneously break the connection between the deadly magic and the gargoyles, and it’d been an act of desperation I hadn’t realized until later could have killed me.
By comparison, using a piece of my spirit to stimulate a single gargoyle wasn’t half as dangerous. For starters, it wouldn’t kill me. But if I could think of any other means of compelling the gargoyles from their comas, I wouldn’t have considered using my spirit. If this went wrong, a part of myself could be forever trapped inside the gargoyle, and having my spirit split would leave me mentally unbalanced or physically diminished, or both—for life.
I concentrated to keep my breathing even and not give away the frantic beat of my heart.
“We’re wasting time,” I said, my words clipped with tension.
Marcus stared down the tunnel, the end outlined by the faint glow of the baetyl around the corner. I knew he was weighing our options. When the link dissolved, I closed my throat around a belated protest. The magic available to me shrank, and for a second I was the small, ugly creature inside the baetyl again, letting go of all its fathomless power.
Marcus shifted closer and I purposely didn’t look at him. If he read the fear in my expression, he’d try to interfere again. Closing my eyes, I grounded myself inside my body. I am Mika Stillwater, gargoyle guardian.
The familiar moist, earthy notes of the tunnel and the dry, smooth odor of quartz reassured me, as did Marcus’s warm scent. He’d stood close enough to be accused of hovering, but having his solid presence at my back helped quiet the jangle of doubts bombarding me. The tangy odor of kachina greenthread and lamb’s ear leaves wafted from us both, an unnecessary reminder of the dangers.