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purifier. I could feel myself—or rather, my magic—resting on the underside of the shield, buffeted by the pounding pressure of the polarized water element, but the sensation was distant. Seradon was buffering me.
    She had aligned us with a thin metal strip defining the line between the polarized water and earth elements, and I got my first good look at the complexity of the purifier. A tangle of helixes so dense they looked braided spiraled around the metal, each made of one strand of earth and one strand of water. Hundreds of tiny fingers of earth connected each helix, all of them feeding magic from the polarized earth section into the strands of water, strengthening them. In turn, the water strands spun pure water into the polarized section on the left.
    I’d never seen anything like it, especially not the way the helixes cascaded down the empty center of the metal loop, maintaining a perfect wall between the two polarized elements. On the left, the spinning water strands kept the water from flowing back into the earth section. On the right, the earth strands absorbed energy from the polarized earth section and fed it through the helixes into the water.
    Seradon used a scissor of air and wood to sever the helixes atop the metal and provide a clear path for us. Raw water element battered her weaves from one side, earth on the other, but they couldn’t counter her destructive magic, not on the scale she wielded through the link. Faster than I would have thought possible, she tore apart the magic surrounding the thin metal and unplugged it from quartz.
    Success! If we could break through all the loops and the magic that wrapped them as easily, we could take the power out of this contraption in no time.
    It almost seemed like the marmot was helping or fighting back, too. A thin inner bubble of normal, coexisting elements rested between the gargoyle’s pockmarked skin and the polarized energy.
    Behind us, the helixes divided and duplicated, reweaving a tangled braid along the metal. Before today, I would have said with complete conviction that the elements required a person or creature to shape them into a pattern. Destroyed weaves dissipated; they didn’t reconstruct a previous pattern—only this one just had.
    “How is that possible?”
    “Elsa might be able to explain it,” Seradon said. “All I need to know is it rebuilds itself and it’s faster than the five of us could counter, thanks to the fuel source of the gargoyle. That’s partly why we need to disconnect it.”
    Of course. If it had been easy, the squad would have taken care of the problem already.
    “Your turn,” she said. “Cut off the purifier from the gargoyle, and we’ll deal with the rest.”
    She made it sound almost easy.
    I gathered a balance of elements, and magic swamped me, feeding from five incredibly powerful people and enhanced by Oliver. Flailing, I fought for control.
    “Relax,” Seradon said. “Let it go and try again.”
    With a gasp, I released the elements. Instantly, I was back to being a part of the link, not drowning in it. I took a deep breath, then teased a minuscule balance of elements from the link. A rush of magic responded, nearly as much as I could wield when enhanced by a gargoyle but still a manageable amount.
    I probed the quartz implant. Elsa had drilled the ragged, two-inch hole with a blade of elemental wood, then wedged a sharp quartz crystal into the wound, fusing the rock to the gargoyle’s muscles and flesh with crude bridges of earth. She hadn’t even tuned the earth element to quartz, let alone to the more specific resonance of the gargoyle’s jasper body. She’d anchored her doomed purifier to the gargoyle the way a person might pound stakes of a tent into the ground, as if the gargoyle had no more feeling than the soil. I gritted my teeth. Being nullified was too good a fate for Elsa.
    I tuned my elemental bundle to resonate with the gargoyle by rote, narrowed the amount I held to a gentle stream,