Fallen One (Book three of Alfireán age)

- Up for a Ride -

"That will be all," Silver told Olivia as the earthen stove finished forming.

Olivia frowned. "Are you sure? I can-"

"That's quite all right; we can take care of it from here," the head maid said leaning down to start a fire.

"But-"

"No offense dear," Silver stated, cutting her off yet again. "but I have been overseeing the Brockovich meals for far longer than you can imagine, and the last several times you insisted on helping, your constant... adjustments to our cooking style slowed our preparations. We can handle the rest on our own."

"Oh," Olivia muttered.

Zaphaniea chuckled from where she floated overhead, resting on a bed of invisible spheres. "I think she just told you you're too bossy," the grand champion stated while she combed her flowing red hair and powdered her face with some form of cosmetic dust.

Olivia's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She hadn't meant to be bossy, but it was something she'd kind of picked up while being one of the head doctors and overseeing the orphanage's paperwork.

Ignoring Zaphaniea's sarcastic comment, she glanced over at Alf as he finished storing away his tent and moved on to packing up the other shelter. His strong muscular arms flexed in the morning light, and he moved with a speed and fluidity most athletes could only dream of. Did I really just say yes? she thought to herself as she thought about going over to help him, but quickly decided it would be too awkward. Olivia sighed; she wasn't at all sure how this whole courting thing was supposed to work.

Struggling to figure out what to do, her eyes floated up to the woman preening herself overhead. Thankfully, the grand champion had been asleep while all the others were spying on them, and no one had told her yet about Alf's confession of love. If they had, Olivia was certain Zaphaniea wouldn't be missing the opportunity to tease her mercilessly.

With another world-weary deep sigh, Olivia left the maids to their work and strolled over to the edge of the camp. Using wind magic to blow away the small mounds of ash and dirt, she then cast an earth spell to smooth out a place to sit.

Their campsite looked so odd she thought as she sat down, tucked her legs underneath her, and leaned her back against Alf's shield. With the forest green tents being stored away, all that was left was a circular, barren patch of blackened soil, an earthen stove surrounded by busy women, and Alf's opaque shield casting a blue tint over the busy party. It reminded her of one of the Brockovich Hospital's sterile operating rooms where the lights glared overhead and everyone rushed about as they prepared for surgery.

Olivia shook her head at the weird comparison and pulled the book Mr. Havanger had given them from her traveling satchel. She had meant to finish the book days ago, but with all that had been going on, she'd completely forgotten about it. Flipping the worn leather cover open, Olivia glanced through the shield plug-in programs: imbuement, advanced shaping, energy signature recognition, hole formation, reverse shield for entrapment, merging, resonating frequency manipulation, and anchor transference.

For a brief moment, she contemplated trying to form an auto translating spell but tossed the thought aside. Something like that would take all day and they didn't have that time. Reviewing the list once again in her mind, Olivia settled on anchor transference.

When it came to shields, anchor referred to the person who cast it. And normally, transferring anchors would be useless, seeing as once a charged shield was cast, the only thing an anchor could do was reshape or dismiss it. However, with traverse wake, that changed. As the laws of physics dictated, charged shields were stationary and could not be moved, but for some reason, traverse wake did not follow that law. In fact, if someone acting as an anchor to a charged shield followed another person via traverse wake, for unknown reasons, the charged shield followed along as well. So if Alf could transfer his shield over to one of them, the protective barrier would follow along. Which, ultimately, meant they would have an easier time warding off the mutated creatures.