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made my skin crawl.
    “You’re making it worse. Concentrate on the gargoyle, Healer,” Seradon said.
    I jerked my attention back to the gargoyle, heart sinking to find him weaker. I severed the purifier’s connection with the gargoyle again and grabbed the quartz knob, flattening it against the metal. It wasn’t enough; the pathway was established, making the quartz redundant, and the purifier’s weave jumped the gap again. I needed a blockade.
    Hoping I could count on the purifier to behave like normal elemental magic, I formed a destructive pentagram, layering the elements to counter each other. I wedged the pentagram into the reshaped quartz and bound it in place with ties of quartz-tuned earth. When the purifier’s weave hit the quartz this time, it burrowed into the pentagram, shredding it. Without the presence of all five elements to balance the pentagram, it couldn’t withstand the influx of earth and water. I reshaped it, stronger this time in wood and air to counter the disproportional elements; then I grabbed the center of the pentagram and inverted the elements. I’d never tried such a complex maneuver before, yet with the strength of the squad behind my weaves, it was almost easy.
    The purifier’s energy fell through the center of the pentagram, then curved back to spin through the destructive elements embedded in the quartz. The affluence of energy reinforced the barricade, cycling through the pentagram in a nonstop five-pronged loop that prevented it from jumping the hairbreadth of space between the metal rod and the gargoyle’s punctured neck.
    “Good thinking. I wouldn’t have considered using the quartz like that.”
    Seradon’s voice floated across my consciousness but didn’t fully register as I raced for the next quartz implant. With righteous fury, I severed the purifier’s weave—this time wood and water from a wicker loop—then sliced through the clumsy earth elements grafting the quartz to the gargoyle. In seconds, I’d flattened the quartz onto the wicker, pulling it from the gargoyle’s side in the process. I layered the five elements in a destructive pentagram, embedded it in the quartz, and inverted it, all before the purifier reknit the weave down the length of the wicker. Coating the open wound of the drilled hole with gargoyle-tuned patches took a little longer, as I had to compensate for the variations within the marmot. It wasn’t my best work, but it’d hold until the squad could destroy the purifier.
    I shifted to the next quartz, only to be brought up short as the magic I’d been using pulled away from me, taking bits and pieces of me with it. I scrabbled with metaphysical fingers to regain control.
    “Easy. Hang on,” Seradon said, squeezing my fingers until the bones ground together.
    My eyes snapped open. The polarized magic fluctuated and dimmed as one of the squad siphoned a chunk of elemental wood through the shield and released it harmlessly into the air. The pressure of the purifier slackened, but the maneuver had weakened the shield’s structure, and the squad strained to hold it together, using every scrap of our combined magic.
    “I’m going to pull you out for a second.”
    I gasped as my part of the link flew up the wicker of the purifier, scattering tatters of the self-replicating helixes, then shot into the shield. The pressure of the polarized elements burst through my senses. The separation Seradon had maintained slipped, jerking my awareness to the bombarded shield. Magic dragged from me as someone—Winnigan? Grant?—wove increasingly complex patches, manipulating the elements faster than I would have been able to follow if I hadn’t been part of the link. I watched in awe as more than thirty strands around the shield shifted and knotted into discrete patterns—at once. And I’d been impressed with being able to invert a tiny pentagram!
    Inside the shield, the elements swirled more volatile than before. The sections I’d capped pulsed with