Axium

CHAPTER 20

She arrived in the courtyard just as the three unknown mages landed on the other side of the shield she had erected around the palace.

To her surprise she instantly recognized the mage in the middle. It was Lord Shan.

He gave a flourishing bow. "Lady XRenia I've come to offer you a tour of my kingdom in hopes that we may come to some sort of allianc..."

His words came to an abrupt end as Verin stepped out of a rift and took his place beside her.

The look on his face was one of pure unmistakable shock and rage filled XRenia. "Yes Verin is still alive! And I know full well how you and headmaster Alton tried to kill him yesterday."

The blood drained from Lord Shan's face and he became ashen white.

Lightning crackled along her body and her hair floated in the air as the energy inside her surged. But as she raised her arm to release the most powerful lightning bolt she could conjure into Lord Shan's heart, Verin grabbed her wrist.

The lighting blot exploded skyward dwarfing the bright morning sun as it flashed and its thunder caused Lord Shan to stumble backwards.

"Leave now!" Verin shouted his voice shaking the palace to its foundation.

Shan recovered from his stumble, turned around and blasted away leaving his guards behind.

The two men took one look at the enraged XRenia and quickly followed their master.

As they fled XRenia reached out with her hands fully intent on grabbing them with her magic and slamming them to the ground but Verin's grasp on her wrist tighten like a steel vice. She tried to pull her arm away but without warning he grabbed her with his magic and shook her like a rag doll.

The sheer magical might he exerted on her made the power she had felt underneath her grandfather's wrath a few days ago feel insignificant in comparison.

She stared up into his eyes in shock. Verin's lips formed a straight line and his face was hard. "You will not kill them, you are not a killer."

He held her absolutely still until she felt Lord Shan's presence leave the protection of the Emundans.

The instant he finally released her she did her best to shut him out and stomped off towards the throne room.

She was fully intent on going to the war room and using its map to see if she could locate Shantopia and rip it out of the sky. But as she aimlessly wondered the corridors of her palace she suddenly realized it didn't have a war room.

"I'll fix that!" She said smashing her hand it to the floor and punching a giant hole in the middle the hallway leading down to the unused room underneath the palace.

She floated into the giant empty dark chasm and yanked out the blueprint she quickly arranged walls to form an octagon room, placed in an enlarged rectangular table in the middle of it and poured her energy into the blueprint.

The room swirled into existence as the remaining resources left in the blueprint's dimensional inventory appeared.

Putting away the blueprint, she flew into the newly created room and walked up to the giant rectangular table and that's when she realized she didn't know what spells were crafted into the map back home.

She trudged over to one of the walls and plopped herself down. She had been exiled from her home, foolishly bound herself to some random guy, not had a real meal or slept in a proper bed in three days, argued with her family like she had never before, and to top it off the random guy she had bound herself to was almost murdered and no one seemed to care.

It was all just too much. Just too much. She dropped her face into her arms and started to sob.

Verin sat down beside her and she found herself being gently lifted into his arms where he cradled her.

He didn't say anything he just held her gently rocking back and forth as her head lay against his chest.

She cried and cried releasing all the pent-up sadness, anger and frustration just letting it flow out of her.

Then the sound of a harp playing field her makeshift war room and she looked up to see the harp Verin had left laying in the field the day they had bonded come floating through a rift and Verin gently using his magic to strum it strings.

Somehow he had retrieved without going there or using a scrying.

His magically strengthened arms pulled her closer to him and she found her own muscles relaxing.

The gentle music from the harp continued to play and for the first time since her mother had told her that she was going to be exiled XRenia felt safe.

*

Sometime later XRenia awoke, her muscles felt soft and she felt truly rested. To her surprise she was still curled up in Verin's arms and he smiled down at her. She groggily stretched out her arms as she smiled back at him.

"Good morning sleeping beauty."

She yawned. "How long was I out?"

"Not long." He lied. "There's food here for you," he added jutting his chin towards a plate sitting on the floor. "I believe it's something you'll enjoy."

She looked in the direction he had motion and she couldn't believe her eyes, the giant clay platter was almost hidden underneath a giant heaping of rice, pork in hot garlic sauce, two century eggs, and a bowl of shrimp dumpling soup. She crawled out of his arms and sat down beside him as she floated the platter to her. "Where in the world did you get all this?"

"I opened a rift to Maghai for Neo and the others. They sold some of the resources we obtained yesterday from terraforming and they used the money to buy basic supplies." Verin said as he stole a piece of pork from her plate and shoved it into his mouth.

"Hey!" She squeaked guarding her platter with her arm.

He winked at her teasingly as he chewed then swallowed. "Your bed also now has sheets and there is some cotton and polyester if you want to try your hand at fabricating yourself some new clothes."

She stared down at the beautiful assortment of food in her hands and a tear trickled down her face. "Thank you."

He wrapped his arm around her. "It may take a little more work but I promise you that this place will be a kingdom you are proud to call your own."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "Thank you," she said again. "You're so good to me."

He smiled and stroked her hair.

The wonderful smell from the platter wafted up into her nose and She sat up ravenously digging into the food. As she ate the taste of her home country's food warm her up inside and made her feel happy.

"Good food always makes me feel happy to," Verin said.

"Though I'm not sure I'd call those black eggs good food," he added as she took a slice of one of the century eggs and put it in her mouth.

His face twisted in disgust as she made a show of eating it.

"How can you eat that? It's actually rotten!"

"No it's not it's fermented."

"Same difference."

"Ha, shows what you know fermented food is good for you."

"Maybe sauerkraut.. maybe.. But not that."

"Don't knock it to you try it," she said waving a piece in front of him.

He pulled his arm from out behind her and pulled away. "No thank you. It stinks."

She laughed and put the last bit of the first egg into her mouth.

Verin stood up and stretched out. "So what did you want to do today?"

She shrugged as she picked up the bowl and took a sip of the soup. "I don't know, I guess either try to get the ring or shift more ground."

"I was think we should go look for the closest broken Ley line, you know just to get a feel for what we're up against."

"That sounds reasonable. But how do you plan to look for it? I mean we can't fly more than a few minutes in the icky magic outside of the Emundans and I'm certainly not walking."

Verin grin from ear to ear. "With these." He said pulling out four objects that look like wristwatches from their dimensional inventory.

"And just what are those?" She asked as she eyed the mysterious machinery.

"Well when Shan's guards left the protective area created by the Emundans, leaving our territory I fully expected them to open a rift and teleport away but they didn't. They just kept flying. Neo noticed it as well and he asked the lady noticed them coming if they had flown the whole way and she said yes. Naturally both me and him thought maybe they had rings as well. So while I came after you he went to hack Shantopia again."

She floated one of the objects down towards her. On closer inspection it appeared to be a white disk a little bit thicker and bigger than a hockey puck attached to a band. "So these are larger version of the rings?"

"Not exactly. They are jet engines that run off a magic. Apparently all of Lord Shan's security force have them so it wasn't that hard for Neo to obtain a blueprint. He got the necessary resources in Maghai when he was there today and he hack the Palace blueprint to create these."

"Ah." Now they're strange design made sense. She slipped the strap over her hand and held the white hockey puck against the palm of her hand. She experimentally channeled energy into it. The engine roared into action spewing a flame from its nozzle and driving the back of her hand into the floor. "Ouch!" she cried.

"Careful!" Verin exclaimed. "They're made for everyday normal mages. Not us. So you have to feed only the tiniest bit of energy into them."

"Well you could've told me that earlier!" she moaned taking the palm jet off and rubbing the back of her knuckles while healing the few places her skin was ripped.

"Sorry," he said absentmindedly then he heavily sighed.

"What's wrong?"

"The tablet blueprint. Neo just sent me a message saying that he still hasn't been able to fix it."

"Huh? What do you mean? It's broke?"

"Not exactly. But when he hack it to make these," He held up the hockey puck engines. "He accidentally disconnected it from the Palace, so while it still works to create objects and other things, it doesn't directly edit the Palace anymore."

Well that just socks, she thought.

"I'm sorry," Verin apologized.

"Don't worry about it too much. If worst comes to worst I'll give it to my grandfather he should be able to fix it." She said picking up the last piece of rice and absentmindedly playing with it before she put it into her mouth.

Verin sat down on the edge of the giant table in the middle of the room. "Hopefully Neo can and he doesn't have to."

The room fell silent and Verin swung his legs back and forth as he watched her eat.

Suddenly she felt very self-conscious. "Don't watch me eat!"

"Why not you look so cute."

She quickly drew a scrying the air made it completely black and placed it between him and her so he couldn't see her.

He laughed.

As she looked at the blank scrying between her and him she suddenly remembered what her mother said about her grandfather teaching some reporters a lesson about privacy. If she had to guess that probably made today's headline news and it was definitely an article she wanted to read. She connected to the web and made her way to her favorite website however when she got there she was greeted by a headline she did not want to see.

"War on the horizon. Shepherd boy turns out to be son of Tsar"

She stared at the title in disbelief then slowly scrolled down to see a grainy video image, the type that was synonymous with the view the past device.

In the image it showed her taking Verin's hand in what looked like a normal handshake but as her fingers wrapped around his hand golden light exploded from her arm and raced up his.

"What. . What are you doing!?" Verin gasped

"I'm making you my spouse." The grainy image of her said as the golden Magic flooded over the boy's chest.

"You're what?"

An evil looking grin played across the grainy image of her face. "You and your nation will help me take over the world."

The clip came to an abrupt end.

XRenia exploded to her feet sending the platter flipping through the air.

Verin quickly reached out with his magic and caught the food and the platter before it clattered to the floor as XRenia shouted, "I didn't say that!"

Placing the platter on the table he jumped off and ran to her side as she angrily kicked her foot through the scrying.

"I know. I know you didn't say that. But this isn't good," he told her as he reformed the scrying.

"How could they distort the truth like that!?" She screamed.

Verin hastily read down the article. "It looks like your grandfathers lesson backfired and they have decided to try to make your family seem like public enemy number one even if it causes world... war..." She felt his breath catching his lungs.

"What, what is it?"

"Oh no this isn't good at all." he scrolled down a little father. "It says." He took a deep wavering breath. "It says that you forced me into a packed but I in an endeavor to stop you from gaining what you want gave up my birthright. Now however three of the top leaders in my nation have already declared that they will not allow me to relinquish my throne and when a reporter asked why this is what they got." Verin maneuvered the scrying so she could see.

An image clip of the Duke Ireland spoke up. "War is on the horizon have no doubt of that and we will not be on the losing end this time."

XRenia's eyes grew wide. "That.. That bloated cow! You should've killed him when you had the chance!"

She felt his feelings's spike sharply in agreement but he quickly pushed the thought away and choose not to respond to your comment, instead asking, "How many people visit this website?"

"I don't know the exact number but it's a pretty popular site. And with a headline like this.." She exclaimed slapping the back of her hand through the scrying causing it to disperse into a rainbow colors.

Verin nodded. "It's already late in the morning so thousands if not hundreds of thousands have probably already seen it."

"What do we do?"

"I don't think there's anything we can do."

All the joy and happiness she had felt vanished like fog underneath the hot sun and she clenched her fist in frustration. "Do you think Neo could permanently take down this website."

Verin shrugged. "You might be able to, but doing something like that would probably just blow up in our face. Especially since it seem like you were trying to hide the truth."

"Well we can't just do nothing!"

"That's probably all we can actually do," Verin said trying to calm her down.

"Well I can at least tell my family about this!" She said throwing her hand up to push against the fabric of reality, but Verin grabbed her wrist.

"There is a very high chance they already know and you teleporting into the Palace and shouting is most likely going to end up with you on your face again as your grandfather shouts back."

She stopped and stared at him and was about to say that her family wasn't like that when she remembered this whole thing was her fault. Her grandfather was a patient man but if this whole thing ended with him having to m*********r thousands of innocent soldiers because of her mistakes... "uh, maybe you're right," she said lowering her hand.

He nodded and slowly pulled her into his arms.

She had made a right good mess of everything, she thought as she stared unseeingly over his shoulder at the table.

"I'm going for a fly," she declared.

"Are you sure you haven't finished your food."

"I don't feel like eating anymore."

"I understand," he said taking his arms from around her and waving his hand at the food freezing it solid.

She pushed open a rift and step through.