Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2) by Rebecca Chastain Page B

close to the edge of the field shifted and rose. Marcus cursed and danced across the top of the rocks, fighting for footing on the shifting tops. We were close to escape, but the leading edge of the bubble crept forward, pulling taller pillars into our path.
    “I’m going to have to jump,” Marcus shouted over the near-constant booming.
    “Okay.” If he could angle toward the hillside, the drop would be only a few feet, but first he had to clear the ever-rising cliff steps.
    Marcus grabbed both my legs in a crushing grip. I tightened my arms around his shoulders.
    “Here we go.”
    He sprinted up the shifting rocks, and I jounced on his back, eyes locked on the perpetually advancing edge of the field. Just as Marcus planted his foot on the last rising pillar and pushed off, the bubble shifted and grew by several feet at once. Granite burst from the inert ground beneath us, shooting toward our plummeting bodies.
    I yanked earth magic to me and sheared off the top of the growing pillar before it could break Marcus’s legs. His right foot clipped the edge of the pillar, but his left hit the top solidly. Working blindly on the rock beneath his feet, I drove pure earthen strands into the granite and stretched it the same way I would manipulate quartz. The grainy rock reshaped, as malleable as dough. Lifting the rock beneath Marcus’s foot, I launched us toward safety.
    We catapulted through the barrier, and my connection to the raw earth magic snapped. Blinded by the backlash, I lost my grip on Marcus and braced for impact with the rocky ground. It never came. Soft strands of air cushioned my fall. I opened my eyes, closing them just as quickly as the light refracted into a thousand razors inside my head.
    I sucked in a breath, then another, savoring the light texture of the air in my lungs despite by body’s conflicting pains.
    “Am I dead?” I croaked.
    “Mind blasted.”
    Clutching my head, I squinted in the direction of Marcus’s voice. When the sunlight didn’t slice my brain this time, I opened my eyes wider.
    I sat on a large boulder a few feet up the hill from Marcus, and once he saw I could support myself, his bands of air and wood magic holding me up dissipated.
    “Good move with the rock wave.”
    In a sea of pillars, one column of granite looked like it had melted toward us before being sheared off by a colossal blade. With the backlash of magic reverberating in my brain, it took me a moment to process the sight. I’d reshaped a couple hundred pounds of pure granite as easily as I might have a grape-size quartz seed crystal. That kind of strength couldn’t be matched even by an FSPP earth elemental. Yet inside the polarized earth section, it’d been easy.
    Mind blasted? Not fried, right? I scrambled for the elements, going limp when they responded. Reverently, I spun the five harmonious elements together, forming a basic pentagram and floating it in the air in front of me just to admire the beauty of the combined elements. The amount of earth I could hold was paltry compared to what I’d wielded inside the bubble, but I didn’t care. Buffered and mixed with the other elements, earth felt smooth again, not sharp and raw like it had in the polarization field. It felt whole, and so did I. Out here, with all the elements working together, we had a chance at stopping Elsa’s monstrosity.
    First things first, we had to save the fox gargoyle.
    I pushed to my feet—and fell back to the ground with a strangled gasp. The wound in my foot caused nauseous waves of pain to pulse through me, and I took shallow breaths until the urge to vomit subsided.
    “Have you ever had a field patch?” Marcus asked.
    I shook my head, keeping my lips pressed together.
    “Oh, goodie. A virgin.”
    I jerked to look at his expression. He winked at me with an exaggerated leer obviously designed to distract me. I would have rolled my eyes, but he chose that moment to unlace my shoe. My fingers clawed into the soil, but I managed