AXIUM

CHAPTER 15

XRenia woke several hours later and despite the artificially cooled air she felt sticky and sweaty. Magical CC is so much better than this gimmicky science stuff. She thought as she rolled out of the elephant sized bed.

She trudged over to the master bathroom and made her way over to what was obviously the shower, tossed her clothes on the floor and walked in. But when she turned it on the water came out in a curtain instead of a fine spray.

"The nozzles are too big," Verin said.

She half jumped out of her skin as she desperately tried to cover herself with her arms. Then she realized that he had spoken in her head and he wasn't actually there. "Do you mind I'm trying to take a shower!"

"I'm sorry it's just that I encountered the same problem earlier in the servants washing area. When you supersized the Palace it made the nozzles too big."

She reached her hand towards the door and locked it with her magic. "Okay, fine I'll figure it out, get out of my head." She snapped. She was obviously never going to have another moment of privacy in her life.

"I'm sorry. I'm not looking or anything I just."

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth desperately trying to give him a mental slap.

Verin's presents vanished from her mind.

*

After taking a good long rinse and bemoaning the fact that she had no soap she ran water through her clothes then dried them out with magic.

"Much better." She said to herself as she left the bathroom fully dry clothes and not filling icky at all. Despite still filling slightly irritated at him for so thoroughly invading her privacy she reached out with her magic to search for Verin.

He was doing something in what appeared to be the kitchen. She lazily strolled in his direction through the insanity of what was her new palace. The architecture was nice the walls aesthetically placed the archways just the right amount of curves the rooms more than just roomy and the furniture though not her preferred style elegant. The Duke had decent taste.

If only he had designed everything to run off of magic not tech, she thought as she finally found the entrance to the kitchen through a well-hidden servant's walkway.

The smell of delicious food wafted in her face as she walked in. "What you cooking?" She asked.

"The turrets killed this man bull cow like thing while we slept. So I decided to cook it up for our lunch." Verin said pushing an image towards her.

"Ah, that's called a Minotaur. Though I've never heard of anyone eaten one before."

"Well I've already had a few bites and if I can rely on your memory for my taste buds I think it taste sort of like beef. Which isn't all that bad. It does have a slight tangy taste though so I'm trying to fix it up. Sadly the castle didn't come fully equipped with an assortment of spices. Thankfully the blueprint did collect a few herbs I recognize so I'm using them."

XRenia eyed the giant clay frying pan Verin was using and the unique meat in it with a tad bit of trepidation.

Verin laughed. "It's not bad really."

She was not entirely convinced but her stomach was rumbling so she sat down at the table in the middle of the room and watched him grind up various green plants and sprinkle them in the pan.

"O, ya I checked out this Lord Shan online. He has a nice website that is surprisingly quite informative about Ley lines." Verin waved his hand at her in the table she was leaning on lit up and an image of the website he was talking about came into view.