Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 126030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“Nowww,” he said. “We tray-nn.”
Two hours later, yes, I did the flying equivalent of limping out of the gym. Tristan hadn’t gone any easier on us here than he usually did at Ivy House. Maybe less so.
I landed on two feet and sank to my butt. I always worked on my flying stamina, but this time I’d pushed past my limits. I hadn’t wanted to look so pitiful in front of Evan’s cairn, but…well, here we were.
I turned to lie down on my face so my wings could stretch out.
My connections told me that Tristan had landed near me. My bonds told me Austin had come over and some of the shifters and gargoyles besides. I couldn’t see any of this with grass obscuring my vision.
“Incredible,” Evan said, and I heard skin slapping skin. High-five, forceful handshake—who knew? “I’ve never seen a cairn with that level of flying. Most of your Guardians are smaller in stature, slower in flight—didn’t matter. You ruled the sky.”
“It’s not that it didn’t matter,” Tristan replied. “It’s that working together in this way creates a stronger force. Add in more muscle and speed, and you get better results. The beauty of this structure is that, if we all practice it, we can easily integrate other cairns when we need to.”
“And how does it relate to those…on…the…” Evan trailed away.
“Boys, boys! Austin, Tristan, I am surprised at you!” Patty’s quick footsteps came my way. “Indigo, come here, dear. Jessie needs healing. No, no, leave that gargoyle as he is. If he can’t go on with a couple scrapes, can he really call himself a Guardian?”
“His entrails almost fell out from a spell gone wrong,” Indigo bleated.
Patty was not having it. “But they didn’t, did they? No. Leave him there. Come here, you need to heal Jessie.”
“I’m okay,” I said, not bothering to lift my head. “I can heal myself in no time at all.”
“Jessie is the most important asset we have in the sky,” she went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “I will not let her lay in the grass like discarded luggage while the boys talk amongst themselves. She is a leader. She should be treated like one!”
“It’s fine, really,” I said as I felt Indigo’s hand brush a wing. Ah. I’d forgotten I didn’t have a mouth that could easily form words.
Indigo’s healing energy soaked into me. “Jessie,” she said, and then tsked. “Jessie, you pushed way too hard. I told you not to overextend like this in training, remember? Tomorrow, you’ll have to spend all day healing yourself because you’ll be so sore.”
Very likely.
“I apologize,” Evan mumbled.
“She’s fine missing the strategy part of flying,” Austin said to Evan. “She’s learning it now. She came later to it than most of the Guardians.”
“That’s my fault,” Tristan said. “I wasted time trying to learn her way of doing things, forgetting she’d never been trained. She’d learned by improvising in extreme situations, trying to keep herself and her people alive when she barely knew how her wings or magic worked. What she’s teaching us is the logistics of combatting mages. Of using flight and magic, along with her team. In that, she is the pinnacle, and yes, as Patty said, our main asset. We revolve around her, or we all die.”
“Exactly. Yes,” Patty said. “Thank you, Tristan. That is correct.”
“And how…” Evan paused indecisively. “This can wait until she’s recovered, but how does this strategy alter when combating mages? Or someone on the ground?”
“The flight plan was devised with ground enemy in mind,” Tristan said. “The diving is to do damage, where Jessie shields us from magical gun or mage fire, and then we pull out and make room for the next team. If we loiter, we give them more targets, and she has to do more work to protect us all. She is our chief asset, as we’ve said, and magic takes a lot of energy. We need to protect her at all costs, and that includes minimizing the work she does to keep us safe. That is just one piece of the battle plan that Alpha Steele and Jessie devised.”
“For the rest, we should have Jessie and Sebastian available,” Austin said. “Orchestrating our ground crew with the flight team is a dance, allowing for Jessie and Sebastian to move among us all and seek out the most dangerous threats. She uses her connection to the team to communicate with us all. It is incredibly complex, but she does it naturally.”
“That is the wonder of the female gargoyle,” Tristan said, a note of pride in his voice. “She is the glue, as we told you.”
“Jessie!” Gerard’s heavy footsteps crunched through the brittle grasses, almost sounding like a floppy puppy compared to Austin’s. “What are you doing laying down there on your face?”
“Finally,” Patty said. “Someone thinks about poor Jessie.”