Aaron sat silently in the throne room, his lips thinned with frustration and fingers interlocked as he rested his chin on his large, scarred hands. He had sat in silence for hours, contemplating this new addition to his seemingly ever growing list of problems that he had to deal with including what to do about the growing tensions with the southern kingdoms or for relations between the Nords and the Snow Elves deteriorating, the relations had improved when Aaron took the throne but they were about to boil over and the situation needed to be defused quickly and effectively. This was on top of the fact that the royal engineers were making agonisingly slow with their new projects, such as Evanz and his "Warframe" armour project or whatever it was that Sloth was always sketching in his note book and tinkering with odd looking pieces of clockwork machinery for. Or Zippie and his insistence that there could always be something learned and applied from the tomes in his tower and the castle library.

"I'm not going in there" one of the guards stated in a matter of fact manner when asked to go in and check on Aaron by another guard, "the only time he does this is when he's angry and I'm not going in there when he's angry. The guards and other advisors continued to argue about who should go into the throne room because they knew that he was in a foul mood and they also knew that the sword that he carried wasn't decorative and they also knew what the giant Nord could do with that sword. As the argued, a tall Snow Elf in blue robes with white trim walked past them unseen and entered the throne room without hesitation. She had fair skin and like Aaron; blue hair and stood at 6', 5" (tall even by Snow Elf who typically stood at 6') but even she was dwarfed by the 6', 8" Nord king. When she entered the throne room, she could almost feel the frustration emanating from Aaron as he sat there in silence but she knew that he hadn't seen her enter the room and so she walked up to the throne without fear, almost invisible and placed her hand on the back of Aaron's head and then gently rubbed his hair on the back of his head.

"Hey Aaron," she said softly.

"Hm… oh hey Lini," he mumbled, still deep in thought.

"Something bothering you?" she asked in a rhetorical manner, knowing what the answer would be.

"How did you guess?" Aaron replied with more than a hint of sarcasm, "I've got the southern kingdoms getting more aggressive, the Nords and Snow Elves are about to kick of a civil war, the engineers are taking their sweet old time with their projects and an old 'friend' of mine decided to pay me a visit and burned down a farm on arrival," he continued.

"I take it that he's the man I saw in chains being taken to the tower. He said something about asking 'Hollow' when he'll be released" she told Aaron, "Who's 'Hollow'" she continued. Lini felt that she had touched on a sensitive subject given the frustrated sigh that Aaron let out when she asked him this.

"Hollow is a nickname that Josh, Fluke, Gubi and Evanz had for me when we were children and it's stuck around since then," Aaron replied with bottled up frustration clear in his voice, his chin still on his hands.

"Hehe… 'Hollow'," Lini giggled in spite of the king's current mood.

As she did this, Aarons face softened slightly and he even allowed a small smile to cross his face "You know, you're very lucky that I'm fond of you Lini, if anyone else had done that when I'm in the mood I'm in I would have taken the liberty of introducing their face to my fist," Aaron responded in a more cheerful way than earlier.

"Now that you've calmed down, why not talk to your advisors about the situation?" Lini asked, knowing that he was now in a mood where he would listen to advice given to him.

"You're right," Aaron sighed "Tell the advisors to get in here and do their jobs and give me some advice," he instructed in a formal manner.

"As you wish your highness" Lini responded playfully and left the room to gather the king's advisors.