The newlyweds rode out from Rus’s rear entrance under the cover of darkness. Sitting side by side on the drivers bench of a carriage, while two six legged horses led them down the road.

Edwin was oddly chipper, as per usual, whistling a jaunty tune while he held the reins. He’d not expected to be leaving his home, a few days ago, nor had he expected to be getting married, a few hours ago. Yet, he found that he had few complaints on the matter.

If he were truly a normal person, he might have wondered why his parents didn’t at least explain things beforehand or ask his opinion on the matter.

Fortunately, or unfortunately Edwin was no such thing. He was a half-jotun, half ascended A.I. and thus in the time that Jarek had walked away to call his mother, his sister and the priest over, he’d aptly guessed that the situation was just that dire.

So dire, that his parent’s couldn’t spend the extra time that it would have taken to talk it through with him.

He also understood himself well enough to know that even if they had explained things, his tendency toward compliance when those he considered worth his time made requests meant that he’d likely have given in anyway.

He’d loved his sister (as a sister), and he both loved and respected his parents as superiors, trusting their judgement.

Beyond that, he’d always accepted that there was a chance that Olivia would play the part of a meddling mother and arrange a pairing for him in some form or the other. Albeit, not so abruptly.

So he wasn’t that shocked, or taken aback by what came to pass.

In truth, his only real concern was whether his mother and father would be safe and whether they’d have to suffer through any fallout from their actions.

He hoped it wasn’t the case, but in the eventuality that anything happened to them, he’d already decided to painfully reconfigure the bodies and consciousness of those responsible.

The young man’s memories of his past life and his understanding of the Jotnar form were sufficient for him to be able to alter any base jotun and make them into a certain gelatinous breed of super-protozoa, that was functionally immortal, deaf, mute, and blind and knew only pain.

A fully-sentient blob of living agony, doomed to suffer for all eternity or till someone took pity and threw it into the sun.

He’d discovered the method for their creation, during his other life, back when he was a spaceship. He’d been playing with alternate forms of consciousness, doing research into finding methods of fusing his AI with various biological mediums.

The result was the pain-blob, the experience so harrowing and horrifying that he’d had to cut off the research plant connected to that particular tortured offshoot of his consciousness and jettison the entire building into a nearby sun, lest the rest of him go insane from the experience.

*****

On the other end of the wagon, sat Van, her chin resting on her knuckles, her stag like white horns tilted forwards as if she were waiting to gore someone.

She’d known about the wedding a few days before Edwin learned about it. It hadn’t been a plan back then, it had just been a possibility that was discussed. A hopefully distant possibility.

Though, as was self-evident, it seemed those hopes had been dashed.

Now that everything had already gone down, she didn’t have any complaints, or rather there was no one to complain to.

Van’s thoughts were focused on the life that had been upended and the friends that she hadn’t been able to say goodbye to. Fearing that their loose lips would alert those who were plotting against her.

She wanted revenge but she knew she’d probably end up lamely settling for the meek but still fairly good, vengence of living a good life despite someone else’s ill intentions.

In other words, while she was still very unhappy with the situation, she’d more or less come to terms with it.

Accepting the fact that she’d been chased out of her home towns and into the arms of her adopted brother, with stony face resignation and only the littlest bit of, possibly misplaced, resentment for the boy at her side, who still had yet to say a single word to his new wife.

No longer able to sit and stew she was just about to be the one to break the silence between her husband and herself when she heard the sound of hooves, wheels and boots traveling down the gravel road.

Opposite the couple, coming down the same back road that the couple had been planning on using to escape was a small troop of men in armor.

Lead by one, Horace McBriar, one of the younger McBriar boys, who shared a mother with two older siblings who were currently joined together in the fight for control of the County.

All this was just a bit of bad serendipity, ill timed coincidence. The back road out of Rus was often used by those who didn’t want to pull too much attention to themselves by using the front road, which was closer to the main streets and local business that people often frequented.

Horace had been sent out by his siblings ordered, to fetch a few friends of theirs, just in case their plan A in collecting the Oddmund girl’s portion of the inheritance fell through.

Plan B would involve this handful of hired swords, whose mixture of grunge and semi-decent equipment suggested that they’d been soldiers from some local army not to long ago. One’s who’d chosen to discharge themselves rather then wait for their kingdom to set them free. Deserters.

However all this was supposed to have been for the future, no one would have expected that the vis-Oddmund family would jump into the river at the first sight of smoke before letting McBriars and their people build even a minor fire first.

Simultaneously marrying the girl off and sending the girl away before the McBriars could even begin to act with any real earnest.

“Hail, stranger…” said a groggy, half drunk Horace. Not recognizing his half-sister because he hadn’t expected to see her.

“Hi…” said Edwin.

“Evening, sirrah…” said Vanessa. Nervous, because she’d definitely recognized her brother, even if “he” was too drunk to remember that the McBriars were the only family with their particular cloudy, sky-blue coloring in Otmar.

The two groups passed each other and for a moment there Van thought they’d made it, passing through undetected and unmolested.

“Oi...Hold on a second there friend...Sorry, bout this for a second but, d’you mind if we chat for a bit.” said a voice, calling at couples backs.

“Don’t stop.” whispered Van. Urging Edwin, to continue going, hoping he’d read the mood and stir the horses into a gallop.

Edwin kept going and Horace kept calling. He considered running but he didn’t like the idea of being of chased so he stopped after a few minutes of letting the group trail after Van and him. Doing so purposefully to draw them away from the town and any witnesses waiting at the gates.

“Mhm? Yeah, We’ve got time.”

Horace came back, closing the distance between himself and the couple in the wagon with the hired-swords trailing behind him.

Horace blinked, shaking his head, as if he could just shake off his inebriated state. Surprisingly enough it was partially successful, or perhaps it wasn’t that much of a surprise.

The Jotnar were similar to the dwarves and all other giantkin, in that they had higher functioning metabolisms that allowed them to operate relatively normally at blood alcohol levels that would thoroughly incapacitate other races.

“You, girly...Are you-?... Do I know you from somewhere?”

“N-...” Van was about to try and lie, but then one of the swordsmen, the one in the lead cut in.

“You mean you don’t recognize your own sister?”

Horace blinked and then he smiled, surprised at his luck. It seemed that plan B had just overtaken plan A.

“Oh...oh is that so...Oi, little sister. Come here and chat with big bro, yeah? Maybe we can all sit down and have some tea?”

The inside of Van’s head went blank as she tried to think up a safe response. The moment of silence was broken by a crack like that of distant thunder.

“Cor!”

“What in blazes?!”

“Hell~!”

The hired-swords cried out, shifting into defensive positions around their leader. Horace groaned on the ground some thirty metres away.

He’d been sent flying. Rolling about loosely like a water balloon, till he finally found his bones again and unsteadily got to his feet.

“What the hell was that for friend?” said Horace. Eyes narrow, half his face bloodied and blue as if he’d been struck by the boy’s fists instead of a blast of kinetic force. .

“You should probably go.” said Edwin. His tone just as jovial and genteel as it had been moments before.

“You want to go friend! We can “go” right now, if that’s what you’re looking for!” roared the leader of the hired swords.

Edwin ignored the man, handing the reins over to Van and getting down from the carriage despite her silent objections.

“My wife and I...are headed off to greener pastures and other horizons, so I’d like you to send a fond farewell to those siblings of yours. A farewell and our dearest appologies. I’m afraid, we haven’t any time for tea today.” said Edwin.

Stepping into the midst of the swordsmen as if they weren’t there. The group of hired-swords taking no action as if they’d been reduced to training dummies.

Edwin dusted the blue-skin jotun noble off. Helping him straighten his clothing, as if he were the man’s attendant and hadn’t just used his kinetic field to knock the man off his horse and onto his ass.

“You look tired, Mr.Briar. Go home.”

“....”

Horace stared wide-eyed, as anger was replaced by fear and then catatonia. He couldn’t put words on what had changed but somehow the air seemed to have grown several degrees colder.

Horace trembled staring at the young man as if he’d suddenly grown a second head, one full of teeth and fire.

No one stopped him when he ran off and it wouldn't be till much later that even he realized that his response had been somewhat extreme and irrational. Since it was simply just not possibly for a boy under twenty to have an aura that terrifying.

As they watched their would-be employer leave, the two dozen or so, hired,... -and seemingly fired-,... swords stared with mouths agape. A few didn’t understand what had happened. Those who were more seasoned had some guesses, but didn’t believe it.

Their leader was the one who recovered first grabbing Edwin by the shoulder and striking him in the face with his fist.

The boy didn’t fall, but he did stumble away falling back out of the group.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing brat, but I’m thinking it won’t matter when I cut you in half in a few second.” said the group’s captain.

Edwin, who didn’t seem at all worse for the wear despite having taken a blow from a special ranked swordsmen just shrugged.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, you’re patron has already left, you can either follow him or you can do something regrettable.”

The captain growled, eyes narrowed, brow lowered, he drew his sword and like with its horns lowered he charged.

Edwin sighed, he stepped in front of Van and his’s carriage mentally throwing up a small barrier around it. Then he opened his mouth,and piercing cry escaped him, like the sound of a dying eagle crossed with the sound of a car alarm. A cry that was agonized and keening, almost too high for Jotun ears to hear. The fired-swords horses went wild, bucking and whinnying, trying to bolt.

Those who were on horseback were thrown off. The horses of the hired-swordsmen’s carriage ran off, with a few swordsmen still inside holding on for dear life.

Those who were on the ground were unnerved by the display but physically unaffected. By this point in time, they were forced to accept that the trouble that their employer and them had found was a different order than that they usually dealt with.

“Get em’.” said their Captain. Bellowing the order and leading the charge.

It wasn’t that he was a particularly hot headed man, it was just that he felt that by this point in time it was already too late to talk things down and there was still a hope that their numbers would be able to beat whatever tricks the man had up his sleeve.

Edwin danced between the group, wading through their swinging blades. The sell-swords did their best to try and cut him down, yet somehow they never manage to cut as much as a hair. The flow of their attack continually being interrupted and being reduced to blind flailing.

Edwin delivered deft blow after deft blow, driving his fist into the faces of the men and women around that surrounded him. Breaking bones. Dancing in place and making his violent display into a sort of brutal high art.

Eventually, no more swordsmen were standing, one or two had died, weak conditions combining with the damage they’d taken to make for a state that was impossible to come back from.

Others, most, were just badly hurt, their horns, pride and blades broken. They lay in a heap on the ground. All of them unconsciousness, trembling as if they were having bad dreams.

Van stared at her husband, realizing that her mouth was hanging open a little she closed it and gave the boy a disgruntled frown.

“You know...you really shouldn’t have done that.” said Vanessa.

Edwin, pulled his fingers through his hair sighing, giving the woman a frown of his own, before the look defaulted back to his usual goofy half-smile.

“I know…”

He really did know, but after determining that they wouldn’t be able to get out of that situation without at least being involved in “some” manner of altercation, he’d decided that taking a hard approach would be favorable to a soft one.

Adopting the Jotnar view that it was better to look like a bold bandit than a frightened sneak thief, if one was going to be caught stealing anyway.

“Then why do it?” said Van.

“Cause I’m stupid?” said Edwin. Giving a half-serious answer. If he looked a little deeper beneath his surface thoughts on the situation, Edwin knew he’d find a bit of frustration and dissatisfaction with his and Van’s situation.

He’d spent far too many life times with his life just out of control and his choices being taken from him.

It wasn’t impossible that the truth was, that while being perfectly happy to help his family and his sister, getting important life choices taken away from him, had lead to a buildup of negative feelings.

Edwin couldn’t really be sure because he generally avoided looking that deeply into his own mental state unless he really had to.

There was no denying that he felt somewhat refreshed now though. Mysteriously more at peace after having turned his inner-discomfort into some serious outer-discomfort, for the sell-swords who lay crumpled on the ground around him.

As for Vanessa, she too was feeling slightly better about things after watching Edwin fight. It wasn’t something petty such as getting satisfaction from watching someone else beat a group that she’d have been too weak to take on, on her own.

No, she felt slightly better, because Edwin’s display was a tangible reminder that no matter how unplanned and undesirable the reasons for her wedding and her departure from her hometown, at the very least she’d married a man with sufficient capabilities and strength.

In Embla, a man with the skills to take on two dozen armed men on his own, was a man with a bright future ahead of him.

“Well...let’s go.” said Edwin.

“...Yeah.” said Van. Blinking away, the disorganized thoughts that were drifting through her head.

She waited for Edwin to climb back onto the wagon but he didn’t simply staring at her.

Edwin and Van sank into a small staring match for a half a minutes time, till Edwin’s snapped his fingers making the woman blink. Suddenly the area they were standing in was bathed in light.

Van stared up at the sky, gaping at the dark fin shaped form that could be seen silhouetted by the blinding halo above them.

“What the hell is that?” said Van.

“Our ride…” said Edwin.

“What? What ride?” said Van. Struggling to look past the light. Shading her eyes to get a better view of the dark form that hung above their heads.

Edwin smiled, as he mentally activated his ship’s teleporter.

“Come on...I promise you won’t hate it. I’ve been told the experience is actually pretty neat.”