Origins (Book 4 of Alfireán age)

Bathhouse

Olivia flapped her wings as she flew above Merinia's capital city and towards the castle's silhouette. Cool air and a brisk night breeze blew through her hair and over her wings, tempting her to fall asleep.

Olivia shook head. Just a little farther, she told herself as she spotted the cat-shaped castle in the distance.

Fixing the spring had turned out easy with Rex's help, but once it was done, her zikarôn had notified her of a class one infrastructure failure. Rex had rushed her to the location miles inland and had stayed to help her. But as it turned out, it was a spell failure, not a physical problem. The primary spell governing Merinia's underground aqueducts had had its calculations thrown off by the recent earthquake. Initially, she had thought fixing it would be easy and had sent Rex on his way.

But she had been wrong.

The daily memory she had downloaded had dealt with maintaining the kingdom's springs, and Olivia had assumed it would also apply to the aqueducts. Such a thing couldn't have been further from the truth.

Warm air brushed past Olivia, and she curved her wings, catching the upstream. Gliding on the wind currents flowing up the mountainside, she sighed in relief as the colorful city of Aurania passed beneath her.

Olivia had ended up having to mentally dissect the complex spell and reconfigure it to get it to work again: an act that had taken hours and left her utterly exhausted. Shaking her head, she gazed down at the vibrant metropolis below.

Unlike most cities, Aurania's buildings were dug into the hillside, and lush, green gardens grew on top of them. A crystal-clear stream of water flowed down from the right paw of the cat-like palace and gradually split into smaller streams that fed fountains and hanging rooftop gardens alike.

It truly was a city merged seamlessly with nature: one straight out of a utopian fantasy.

Sadly, as Olivia was beginning to realize, that utopian picture came at a steep cost. The people were incapable of doing anything themselves, and practically none of them had achieved Patuah. They received all their news, knowledge, and life instructions from the kingdom's officials, and...

Olivia shook her head again and pushed the thoughts aside. She was not here to reform Merinia; she was here to keep it from falling into Vackzilian's hands.

A shudder ran down her spine just thinking of it. If the king ever turned evil, or Vackzilian conquered this country, the poor Merinians would likely end up starving to death by the hundreds of thousands.

"Hopefully we can stop that," Olivia muttered to herself as she flapped her wings and came to a hovering stop above the castle.

Using her wings like parachutes, Olivia floated downwards and landed lightly on the back of the cat-shaped castle. Then, kneeling down on one knee, she dispersed her wings. As her magical, dove-like wings faded into a shimmer of light, she closed her eyes and began drifting off to sleep.

"Finally, it works!" a joyous female voice declared triumphantly.

"It does appear this configuration and set of equations are correct," a younger male voice replied in a smug tone.

Olivia startled awake and glanced around. There, on a balcony amidst a plethora of scryings, stood Drake and Zaphaniea.

She stumbled wearily to her feet and walked along the spine of the castle. "What are you two working on?" she called out.

Hearing someone's voice, Drake lifted his hand and snapped his fingers, dispersing all the scryings and plunging the area into darkness. Then turning towards her, his blue eye slowly adjusted to the darkness, but Zaphaniea recognized her first.