“Uh…. Why are your eyes glowing?” said Wallace.

He and Edwin were standing in a porch-like area at the back of the family manse. They, and the rest of the vis-Oddmunds were all back at the house for the weekend. Wallace was heading out, Edwin was heading in. The door opened and then Egon was outside now, and all the vis-Oddmund boys were just staring at each other.

“So what’s this thing you wanted me to see, Wall- ? Oh, hey Ed, what’s up with your eyes, man?” said Egon. Talking to one brother and then the other. A meat-packed bread roll from dinner, in his hand.

Edwin nodded in response to his brother’s greeting. Wallace was just standing there, still expecting an answer to his question, but after seeing both his brothers turn in his direction, their gaze dull but expectant like rams staring at a sheep-dog he sighed and started walking. Deciding that it’d be best to get things underway before they ended up getting sidetracked.

“Er, it’s over here. Dad said I should show you and I guess, I’ll show lantern-eyes here too, while I’m at it.” said Wallace.

Wallace lead them towards the back of the house, stopping near the root cellar, which notably enough, was now sealed by an essence-ward. A magical lock that would, violently, repulse any who tried to force their way in.

Wallace reached into his pocket and pulled out sigil-inscribed essence crystal. Waving it over the ward and making the glowing symbols of the ward, float away from the cellar door.

Wallace opened the door, grunting slightly out of habit, though it’d been awhile since he’d actually had to exert himself doing anything.

He and his brothers walked down into the cellar, closing the doors and the wards behind them.

“Well...here she is, boys. The long-lost thingamajig that the family’s enemies stole from us after beating the Oedheim name into the dust.” said Wallace.

“It looks sorta like a drill….Like a huge fucking drill….Is this a drill?” said Egon.

“Nope, this is a horn alright., The old writ tends to go on and on about how our forefathers were as tall as mountains and all that jazz. Guess they weren’t fucking joking.” said Wallace.

All three of vis-Oddmund brother’s turned to look at the ten foot tall, five foot wide column of white bone. Staring up at the metal tipped point, at the top of the column and looking down at the spiraling grooves that ran along the column, and the glowing scrawl that covered every inch of the column’s surface.

“Hm...So this is the Oedheim family’s totem?” said Egon. Letting out a long whistle.

“Yep.” said Wallace.

All of Embla’s oldest family’s possessed a totem, an inherited artifact, usually made from the body parts of the family’s Jotunheimr progenitors. Besides the raw essence that radiated from these horns and fangs and claws of titanic beings so mighty that the most the gods could do was seal them away, the totems almost always held some secret knowledge. Runes, and memories from the ancients that were left behind by the first settlers of Embla.

In any ordinary time this would be a momentous occasion. The three brother’s would be prostrate in reverence, the remnant of their ancestor’s aura forcing them to their knees. At this point, the family would go to ground. Disappearing from the view of Harta’s powers-that-be, as best they could, while they enlisted researchers from abroad, and called on their family’s most trustworthy allies so they could take advantage of this rare resource from the past.

Now though, now, the two eldest boys simply turned to their young, whose eyes glowed just a little brighter, till finally a beam of mercurial-blue light shot out of them. Turning the horn into dust, and leaving naught but a sliver of glowing blue crystal in its place.

“Shit, dad’s going to be pissed!” said Wallace

“By the gods, Ed! What the actual fuck!” said Egon. His body language seeming calmer than his actual language was.

Edwin picked up the crystal and then sent it into his ship’s inventory for further analysis.

“Mhm...it’ll probably be fine...probably, I’ve already scanned the whole thing inside and out, and this was the only portion of the horn that looked like it was worth anything.” said Edwin.

“How could you have any time to scan anything? We’ve been here for like two minutes.” said Egon.

Wallace pulled a hand through his hair and then blew out a breath, that turned into a raspberry near the end.

“Seriously bro, you and that wife of yours...I’m pretty sure we should have...I don’t know...maybe asked first, yeah?”

Edwin blinked and then frowned and then he nodded. He had the ship do a quick analysis of the crystal and print out another, then he had it print out another column of twisted, spiralling, semi-fossilized bone and teleport it into the basement.

“Better?” said Edwin. His brows gathered.

Wallace looked at the new horn, walking around it to see if it was discernibly different compared to the old one. Then he looked at his younger brother’s casual revelation of yet another capability just ripe for exploitation.

“Tch, Kind of…I think.”

“So, are you gonna tell us why your eyes are glowing or not?” said Egon.

Edwin frowned, blushing slightly. He closed his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face for a bit before opening his eyes again.

“Are they still glowing now?”

“No- they look...wait no...Nope, now they stopped for a bit now they’re glowing again. I think they might actually be brighter this time.” said Wallace.

“Like the lightbulb in an essence lamp…” muttered Egon.

“That’s not gonna happened to us right?” said Wallace. Looking a tad concerned.

“Huh? No, this is...this is something I did by accident….The sect’s got me burning the candle at both ends and I fiddled with a few things inside my head and my ship to make it less of a hardship….unfortunately, that’s resulted in making my eyes glow...I figured its some kind of irradiated waste-product or maybe its something to do with the myelination in the jotnar nervous system…”

“Uh-huh...maybe try to fix it before mom can corner you about it. You know how she likes to worry.” said Wallace. Ignoring the words that he hadn’t understood and relaxing once he realized it was something his brother had done on purpose.

“More importantly, can those ships you gave us print stuff like yours can...and could they print like let’s say...a building?” said Egon. His normally steady thoughts hurtling towards the solution of a problem he’d been working on for the last few months.