AXIUM

CHAPTER 23

The last of the sun shrink over the horizon as XRenia and the four women who went shopping with her walked out of a portal and into court yard in front of her palace.

"Good evening," her grandfather said as he nodded at them took the last step down into the courtyard, opened his own rift and disappeared through it.

She reached out for Verin and found him somewhere underneath the palace. "Verin?"

"Not my name," he moaned back semi-unconscious.

She empties the food seeds and other random paraphernalia they had bought out of her dimensional inventory and placed it on the ground for the men to take care of and shot off into her palace.

She dashed through her throne room into the long hall and down the hole in the floor she had made that morning.

The make shift training ground looked like a category five hurricane had ravaged it; quite a few of the pillars had chunks taken out of them, her whipped together war room had been obliterated and where the eastern wall of the underground chamber had been a massive cavern now replaced it. She raised her hand forming a light and flew into the cavern that had been crafted by some forum of explosive.

Verin lay siting against the circular wall at the far end of it.

She floated down to him and sat beside him as she asked, "How do you feel?"

He looked up at her and with a half-smile and said, "Like your Grandpa summoned a herd of elephants and trampled me with them."

She laughed and scooted closer.

He laid his head on her shoulder as he said, "You know at one point he teleported us to the sun and tossed me in, Just so I learn to forum a proper shield."

"No, he didn't!" she laughed

"Well it felt like it. And that solar flare was close enough."

"Wait, What?"

Verin waved his hand and the dirt at his feet fell away revealing a small sphere shining so bright it forced her to turn away as it light up the entire cavern. Verin motioned with his fingers lifting it up and thickening the shield around it so it was not so eye burning bright.

The small sphere floated through the air till it was in arms reach as he said, "It's a fragment of the sun. Your grandfather said you can use it to power your palace just like he uses his own to power his."

She stared at the small sun blazing in front of her in dumb shock then turned and wrapped her arms around Verin. "Thank you," she whispered. It was the nicest thing anyone is ever given her.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

His skin was cool to the touch and he had been sweating but he smelled nice something like freshly plowed earth, it was a weird smell but somehow it instantly became her favorite smell and she breathe deep pulling herself even closer to him.

After some time said, "It's too bad that we won't get to use it here."

She uncoiled and sat back down beside him. "So you know about us having to take over our own regions after the war."

He nodded. "It was hard not to listen in, though your Grandfather let me have it bad every time I lost focus. That's kinda how this cavern happened," he said with a sheepish smile glancing around at the rock and dirt then continued, "But to be honest with you the whole ruling thing isn't what bothers me most with your grandma's plan. It's the wiping every one else out that makes my skin crawl, I mean most of those people in her scryins were either every day security guards or politicians, almost every one of them is a noncombatant!"