Fallen One (Book three of Alfireán age)

- Gravitational Flux -

Alf stared at the sparking ball of energy jumping between his hands and decided it was more than enough. He wasn't certain what would happen when he released his spell, but one thing was for sure, it wasn't going to be pretty.

"Zaph, get Drake on his sphere and get ready to get us out here. We don't want to be in the range of this thing when it goes off," he said, skidding to a stop and spinning around to face the blood oaths.

Alf shifted his hand. Olivia had found this spell attached to the Gypsy's traveling devices. It was how they were able to fly and float above the ground. Whoever had designed the gravitational spell had set an array of satellites around the sun and was using miniature teleportation stones in the satellites to allow the gravitational pull of the sun through: at least, that's what he could understand from the notes in the script he'd read.

Redesigning the spell to let more of the gravitational force through had proven no easy task, but now the world was about to be flipped on its head.

"Already on it," the grand champion declared, motioning to the prince perched nervously on one of her spheres. "Let her rip, Brockovich!"

Alf pulled back his arm and hurled the sparking mass of energy at their pursuers.

As the blue sphere hurled towards them, the blood oaths slid to a disheveled stop. Looks of alarm crossed their deformed faces, and as one, they threw out their hands, hastily erecting a large, brown wall.

Blue shadows danced across the shoreline, and a sound equivalent to that of a thousand crickets resounded in the air as Alf's crackling ball of energy raced across the gap between them. Broken trees lifted off the ground; dust rose upwards, and the air roared, tearing at the blood oaths' clothing and pulling up clumps of sand as the enemies' wall finished solidifying.

Right before Alf's sphere hit the barrier, however, it vanished.

"Go!" Alf roared. Mentally choosing to follow Drakovian, the group shot away as the energy Alf had taken so long to gather flooded into the miniature teleportation stone aboard a satellite in low orbit around the sun.

Suddenly, the full gravitational force of the fiery star reached out from where the ball of energy had disappeared. The sky darkened, and the world seemed to flip on its side as the equivalent of twenty-eight Gs pulled everything in the immediate area towards it with violent force.

Sand, dirt, lava, water, air... everything raced towards the new center of gravity!

Despite being hundreds of feet away, what felt like an all-powerful hand grabbed Alf and yanked him backwards. His back smashed into a wall of spheres the grand champion had created, and he found it nigh impossible to breathe while the ocean water underneath them rose into the sky and flowed towards the new gravitational force in long, spindly streams.

Craning his head around, Alf stared back to see what had become of the blood oaths.

For a brief moment, the enemies' barrier withstood the pressure, but then the blood oaths' wall crumbled. Like a castle of sand, it shattered into thousands of particles as it succumbed to the immense gravitational force.

Screams rang out as the blood oaths' feet left the ground, and they clawed desperately at the earth.

But to no avail.

One by one, they somersaulted through the air as the altered gravitational spell sucked them into the growing sphere of dirt, sand, lava, and hissing water.

Many of their numbers instantly vanished as more dirt and sand piled onto the giant floating sphere growing in the middle of the island. But against all odds, others managed to stay conscious and on top of the growing mass.