Axium

CHAPTER 21

She came out floating in the air right at the edge of their territory. Verin followed her a few seconds later and pulled out the white hockey puck engines he showed her earlier.

She strapped them to her hands and feet and pushed a minute amount of energy into them. They roared to life pushing her higher into the air. "These things will take a bit to control."

"Yeah, but you should be able to stabilize yourself with your magic until you get used to them."

"I guess. You ready?"

"Yep, which way we going?"

"Further inland I guess."

He nodded and plumes of fire erupted from his engines as he shot off westward and into the vial magic of the broken Ley lines.

XRenia took off after him pouring a tiny fragment of her energy into the turbines strapped her hands and feet. They drove her forward and she quickly found the feeling unpleasant, nothing like normal flying. To control herself she had to keep her arms and legs rigid and reinforced with magic at the same time. She had wanted to just fly like she normally did but if she were to try to achieve her normal speed with these contraptions they probably blow up ripping her arms and legs off. And to make matters worse the instant she left the shielded area of the Emundans tar like magic pelted and clung to her.

"If you don't want we don't have to do this right now." Verin said in her mind.

"Naw, it's not as pleasant as I imagined but it's better than standing around stewing in my own anger."

They both fell into silence as they flew.

Soon run down villages and what looked like remains of overgrown cities slowly slid past underneath them.

As they both looked down at the sad shape of the buildings Verin noticed objects milling around on the ground. "Wait do people still actually live out here?"

She sent him a mental nod. "Yeah they do. Though I'm not sure how much you can call it living. Probably more like barbarianism. This was the least developed continent before the devour. Now I bet most of the people down there don't even have electricity much less proper magic."

"Wow. I mean I kind of knew. But I didn't really realize until just now."

"Want to take a closer look?"

"Sure."

They slowed down and descended as they came up on the next village.

"Uh. XRenia they're not dressed!"

They both skidded to a halt and she found herself trying to cover his face with her hand and almost smacked him in the nose because of the heaviness of the gathered Ley line magic and the engine pushing against her palm.

"Hey watch what you're going! You could burn my eyes out," he protested.

"Well don't look!"

"I'm not! Well I'm trying not to but why in the world are they running around n***d?"

"I think they're a lot more barbaric than I thought."

"You can say that again."

"Let's go back up."

"Yeah let's."

They both rocketed skyward leaving the village far behind.

"I guess that's what happens when the entire world abandons you," XRenia said coming to stop several miles away from the village. She rolled her shoulders and tried to stretch out her back. The weight of the magic gathered on her now was starting to make her shoulder blades and elbows hurt every time she used her arms to correct her course.

Verin glided to a stop beside her. "Ya, I guess we have our work cut out for us. We will need a lot of schools and educational centers, Oh and cotton fields. To make clothes! Heck we may even have to search for oil like you suggested the other day so we can make polyester and plastics. They're made from oil right?"

"Yes, you can make plastic from oil and polyester from plastic," XRenia said absentmindedly. "How long do you want to stay out here, I feel like this stuff is violating me."

He looked over his shoulder at her and frowned. "You really seem to like that word."

"That's because it's the perfect description of what you and this stuff keeps doing. You continuously dive into my most private memories and this nasty stuff is hanging on every part of me!"

He laughed.

She glared angrily at him.

"Okay, okay, we can go back if you want. I just really wanted to find a broken Ley line, too kind of see what we're up against in person."

"What's the use? If the Duke gets his way there's going to be war."

She felt an odd sensation come from Verin and he said, "No there won't be. If need be I'll kill the leaders that try to force me to take the throne."

"You will!?"

Verin's head drooped. "No.. I mean.. I don't know. If taking those three out will save thousands of lives.."

She could feel the conflict raging inside him. He knew murder was wrong, but if things were forced into war he'd end up killing hundreds in self-defense. That or just let himself be killed but that didn't fill right either.

She wanted to put her hand on his shoulder comfortingly but couldn't because the stupid hockey puck engine.

"I keep asking God about it but my emotions are all over the place and they're stopping me from being able to hear him properly. I just feel so ashamed."

She realized it was the first time she had seen him unsure about what was right. Up until this point he'd always been trying to get her to do what was right. "I could kill them. She offered. I mean I'm the one that caused all this in the first place."

He shook his head. "No! That would just cause war between our two nations."

"Well if you did it, it would just seem like a desperate attempt to stop me. Which would probably drive more of your nation's leaders to the same decision as those three have made."

He let out a heavy sigh. "I guess you're right."

They both floated there in silence the only sound being the low roar coming from the engines keeping them aloft.

"Well even if we are forced into war I want to come back here with you. Thaxium needs our help and I went to help them."

Their eyes met. A part of her had been hoping there be a war so they could just get this whole stupid thing over with and she could go back to her every day normal life but as she looked into his sinless blue eyes XRenia realized that would never really be an option again. She could and never would be able to go back to the way things were just a few days ago. "I.. I think I'd like that."

He hovered closer to her leaned over and softly kissed her on the lips.

She tried to lean closer to him but the wind pulled them apart. And as their lips parted a chilling thought ran to her. "That means you have to come back to. You can't just let someone kill you! You have to survive to come back with me."

He smiled at her. "I promise you, I'll come back, for your sake and for the people of Thaxium."

"You promise?"

He nodded.

They both fell back into silence.

Verin stirred and looked off towards the western horizon. "Well enough depressing talk about war let's go look for this broken Ley line."

"Okay but how do you plan on finding it? If we stand here too much longer I don't know if even these jets can keep us up."

"Yeah I was thinking about that. From what I seen on the pictures on Shan's website I'm betting that no one lives within a hundred miles of one, so all we have to do is fly in the direction where there seems to be less and less population. I also think that the vegetation probably thins out to."

"So we are looking for something like a desert?"

"No more like a wilderness with distorted grass and weird shrubbery."

She nodded formed a spell to enhance her vision and scanned the horizon. "Well to the northwest the trees and grass huts and other structures just kind of drop off."

"Sounds like what we're looking for." Verin said flying off in the direction she had indicated.

XRenia followed him.

As they flew farther and farther in that direction though the magical tar like fog became thicker and thicker, until it was even hard for XRenia to breathe. "Well I think we're going in the right direction but I'm not so sure this is a good idea."

"It should be fine as long as we don't..."

The heavy magical weight of the tar like magic hanging on the suddenly shifted from pulling them down to pushing and pulling them towards the north."

They both skidded to a halt or tried to but the weight kept pulling them. "Run!" XRenia shouted to Verin as she flipped herself around and poured her energy into the Jets. The turbines explode into action almost ripping her arms off as they rocketed her away. Then her legs slipped out from underneath her and she went spinning through the sky.

Knowing she had gotten far enough away to escape the pull she cut the engines and spread her arms and legs until she achieved a control fall then slowly fed energy back into the engines until she glided lightly to the ground.

She glanced up to see Verin's escape go a lot more gracefully than her's.

He landed nimbly beside her and anxiously asked, "Are you okay."

"Yeah I'm okay I just panicked. The thought of being pulled in and drowned in the stuff is terrifying."

"Ya." He glanced off in the direction they had been flying. "I guess this is as close as we dare get."

"So much for actually seeing it," she said.

Verin gazed at the brown spiky grass and randomly placed thorn bushes that continued for as far as the eye could see. "We could try flying over top and looking down."

She took off the engine on her right-hand and massaged her shoulders. "Not worth the risk. If we fell in that be it."

He kicked at a tough of grass with his heel. "True. Well at least we know where it's at now."

"Sort of I'm not quite sure where we are but I think we're some seventy to eighty miles to the northwest."

"Something like that. Either way it won't be too hard to find if we ever figure out how to deal with it." He sat down in the dirt and took off both of his palm engines and massaged his forearms with his hands. "If you get a chance should probably ask your grandparents how they fix their first one."

"Yeah, I sho... Hey look at that!" XRenia exclaimed pointing up in the sky to the south with her free hand.

Verin twisted to see what she was pointing. "Is that a plane?"

"Yeah, a giant cargo one at that."

"What's it doing all the way out here?"

XRenia shoved the jet back on her hand. "I don't know but I intend to find out," she said blasting off into the sky.

She felt Verin scramble to follow her as she shut off after the plane.

"From the looks of it it's an old design," she mentally told Verin as he caught up to her.

"Yeah as old as headmaster Alton I'd say."

She laughed

"So what are you going to do?"

"Continue to follow it of course."

"Why not just fly up and ask the pilot what he's doing."

"Because if it's a secret he will change course."

"Oh, duh."

She crafted a spell around them to make sure the pilot couldn't pick them up on radar. "He can't detect us just don't let him see you," she said as the spell formed.

Verin nodded.

They followed the slow-moving plane for some time until at last it flew out over a giant lake.

Half way over the lake it's cargo doors opened and it dropped a tractor-trailer load of something that look like meat.

As soon as the first skid load hit the water the lake burst forth into a thousand foot spray of water that reached up and sucked the remaining skids right out of the air and into the lake.

They both came to a dead stop and the plane slowly turned around and went back the way it came.

"What in the world." XRenia breathed.

"Something unsettlingly large is in that lake," Verin said stating the obvious.

XRenia formed a shield around herself. "Let's go find out what it is."

"No!"

"What are you scared?" Said teasingly as she flew down towards the water.

He reached out and grabbed her with his magic bringing her to an abrupt halt and causing her head to lightly bang against her shield.

"Hey!"

"The instant you suggested that I felt if we go in there were not coming back out."

"That's just fear. There's no creature alive that can overpower us."

"No this is different. It's.. It's the Holy Spirit warning me just like he did when I stopped you from trying to steal the ring."

She turned around and gazed back up to him. "What!?"

"If I hadn't stopped you then not only would you not got the ring I'd be dead now. And the only reason I did is because the holy spirit told me to."

"Okay.. And who exactly is this Holy Spirit?"

"He's God. Well a part of God. God is three in one. God the father. God the Son. And God the Holy Spirit."

XRenia truly thought of this God talk was insane but at least this was interesting. "Go on."

"God the father is God. God the Son is his word. And God the Holy Spirit is how he chooses to manifest himself in the world. Each is its own person but they're all the same entity. And it's not like God puts on a mask and he's this person. Each is different but all the same."

"Okay." Now that was some high-level crazy talk there, she thought.

"It's not. It's just hard to explain," he said.

She felt that he really wanted to go on but wasn't sure if she would listen if he did. She had slightly felt this filling from him every time he opened his mind to her. It was like he really wanted to talk to her about something but never felt it was the right time. "Alright spit it out already."

He floated down to her and smiled. "Have you ever heard of Jesus?"

"Yeah, learned about him in history class. He was a powerful mage that used his power to heal people and help those in need. Eventually his helping the everyday Joe peed off those in power and they killed him. But his beliefs and teachings kept on going and in time the first turn of the ages was named after him. Some still to this day calculate time by his birth."

Verin smiled warmly at her. "Oh, he was so much more than that. He was the son of God. God in the flesh if you will. He came down to earth to become a sacrifice. He lived an absolute sinless life and when he died he took all of our sins upon himself so that we may be free of sin and have a personal relationship with God. You see everything you've ever done wrong, every selfish act every evil thing is sin. And God being a perfect holy God can't abide sin so it separates us from him. That's why most people think as you do that he doesn't care or isn't there. But when Jesus died on the cross he made a way for both you and I to be free of our sins and have a personal relationship with God."

XRenia just floated there not knowing what to say. The ideal that she could have a personal relationship with the creator of the entire universe was mind blowing. Being a powerful mage herself she knew what it was like for people to seek to be her friend and had more or less caused her to become a recluse.

"But God's not like, he won't pull away like you have." Verin told her. "He wants to know you he wants to have a personal relationship with you. He wants to love you just as much as your father mother and grandparents do and he wants you to love him just like you love your family, even more."

She couldn't believe such a thing was possible but as she looked into Verin's eyes, his blue sinless, pure undefiled, eyes she knew it was true. "I.. I don't know," she found herself saying.

Verin nodded. "I.." His words caught in his mouth.

Her eyes grew to the size of saucers and she blurted, "Someone just ported right into our palace!"

"I know! But that shouldn't be possible!"

XRenia reached out her arm and pushed against the fabric of reality, it only gave a little. "Here help me open a portal the stupid stuff is interfering."

Verin nodded and raised both hands.

Together they forced open a portal and stepped through it.

*

They stepped out to see XRenia's grandfather standing there talking to Zach.

The shock was such that neither of them even really noticed as the Emundans burned away the magic that had collected on.

"Grandfather how did you?"

"Last night you sent a message to your mother, and I tracked it here."

"But how did you open a portal right in the middle of my protective spells!?"

"You have much to learn my granddaughter. But that is not why I'm here." He turned to Verin. "It's time that I began your training. You have put it off far too long already and time is of the essence."

Verin bowed his head. "I understand. But will you tell me how bad the situation is before you release some of your frustration on me?"

XRenia's grandfather's face turned hard. "I was forced into signing an alliance with your nation to keep you off your throne."

"So there's no way for us to avoid war now?" XRenia asked.

"Besides both of you flying off into space and never returning, which I will not allow! No."

"oh."

"The lines are being drawn and the armies gathered. They will be at our eastern border by your birthday."