I climb onto the table.
Yes. I climb onto the table.
Look, I'm five-foot-four and a hundred and twenty pounds. He's—I don't even know. Seven feet tall? Four hundred pounds? More? If I'm going to make any kind of dent in this geological disaster, I need to use my entire body weight, and I need to stop thinking of this as a massage and start thinking of it as a structural engineering problem.
I position myself carefully, one knee on either side of his spine, straddling his lower back. The furs are soft beneath my knees, warm from the heat lamps. His body is a solid, unyielding mass beneath me, and I can feel the cold radiating up through the stone, through the furs, into my skin.
I place my hands on his shoulder blades and lean forward, driving my weight down through my palms.
Still nothing.
I grit my teeth. This is ridiculous. I've never had a client I couldn't affect. Never. I've worked on Olympic athletes. I've worked on professional fighters. I've worked on people whose pain tolerance was so high they didn't even flinch when I dug into their trigger points with my elbow.
But this guy? This guy is a mountain.
I shift my approach. Instead of using my palms, I curl my fingers into fists and drive my knuckles into the space between his shoulder blades, using my body weight, leaning forward, pressing down with everything I have.
And then—
Something shifts.
It's subtle. So subtle I almost miss it. But I feel it—a faint give beneath my knuckles, a softening, like the stone texture beneath my hands is warming slightly, the cold granite surface becoming just a fraction less rigid.
I press harder.
The crystalline tracery beneath his skin flares. The dim, unstable orange light brightens, pulsing with sudden intensity, and I can feel heat radiating up through my knuckles, spreading across my palms, warming my skin.
And then I hear it.
A sound.
A faint, mineral crackle. Like ice breaking. Like stone splitting.
I freeze.
Did I just break him?
Did I just crack a gargoyle?
Is that a thing that can happen?
I hold my breath, waiting for him to move, to speak, to do literally anything that indicates whether I've just committed malpractice or achieved a breakthrough.
He doesn't move.
But the glowing tributaries beneath his skin are brightening now, the dark orange light shifting to a softer gold, pulsing steadily, and the calcified ridge along his shoulder blade is softening, the charcoal discoloration fading to a lighter gray.
I did it.
I actually did it.
I found a trigger point.
I exhale slowly, my heart pounding in my chest, adrenaline flooding my system. My knuckles are still pressed into his back, and I can feel the warmth spreading beneath my hands, the stone texture giving way to something smoother, more pliable, almost like flesh.
I lean in harder, driving my knuckles deeper into the muscle—or whatever the gargoyle equivalent of muscle is—and the mineral crackle intensifies, echoing through the room. The luminous seams flare brighter, spreading outward from the point of contact in waves of molten gold. I can feel the calcification breaking up beneath my hands, the rigid stone softening, warming, transforming.
I work the area methodically, using my knuckles, my forearms, my elbows, climbing higher on the table to get better leverage. My thighs are pressed against his sides now, my knees digging into the furs, and I'm sweating—not just from the volcanic heat, but from the sheer physical effort of working onhis stone body, from the intensity of feeling his body respond to my touch in ways that feel almost intimate, almost dangerous.
