Edwin Oedheim missed his wife. Feeling an odd loneliness that he hadn’t felt since he’d been reborn as a Jotun.

Van hadn’t been joking when she said she was going to have a nice long visit with their people in Rus; it had been two months since he’d seen her last, and two weeks since he’d last talked to her.

He’d just gotten word from his parents that she might not be back for even longer, and now he was worried that she might have decided she honestly didn’t want to be married to him anymore, and this was his her way of letting him down gently. Though for now it was only a slight worry sitting nested in the back of his mind, with all the more irrational bits of his psyche.

With likelihood of his parent's saying something, if this was the case, and the unlikelihood of Van being indirect when it came to such an issue, keeping those anxious whispers in the back of his mind faint.

Normally he would have gone to visit as well, or at least dropped in to say hi, and be around his kinfolk for a bit, but lately he’d been pre-occupied with things in the sect.

This morning like all other mornings he teleported down from the ship. Lately he'd been sleeping on a second ship, a vessel he’d built in his free-time making use of a printer from the original ship and a nearby mountain range that he didn’t think anyone would miss.

The ship itself looking like an island sized nautilus with an ornate metal cathedral for its shell. The outer portion of the hull covered in fortifications and projections that would be meant to house knew additions, or accommodate connection points and walkway should Edwin decide to turn the ship into a station. From which he could monitor all of Embla and its neighboring worlds while suspended in the planet’s orbit.

As he understood it, he’d been trapped in a Universe, and not just on Embla alone, he figured that eventually he might want to get around to seeing what else was out there in his cosmic prison.

That was for later though, much later. For now it was just so that he’d have a ship for his own use, while Van had the other for her’s.

He’d spend part of the morning checking up on the herb fields that the sect been made part of his duty.

Recently there’d been a few new additions to the roster of plants and medicine flora that the sect had him growing.

Joining the fields of the more innocuous modified glass-petalled flowers, were fields of nine-eyed grass, and clear-soul mandragora. Two herbs that were known to be particularly useful for the purification of poisons, and the boosting of essence levels, respectively.

Naturally he had cultures of more wildly modified versions of those plants, and many others that he’d sampled from around the sect’s grounds, growing on his ship, but that went without saying.

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The fact that they’d raised the number of rare plants in his trust from one to three, was a sign that the sects trust in him was rising. At least that’s how Edwin chose to see it anyway.

He was even considering the idea of talking to his seniors and showing them some of slightly more impressive samples of the herb strains he’d cultivated.

He’d taken to heart the idea that he had to at least look like he was trying his hardest to “stand above all others”, like Elder Skinner, and the other Seniors of the sect apparently wanted.

It wasn’t hard to exceed expectations when it came to completing his sect duties. The Radiant Orrichalcum Garden’s bread and butter was the cultivation and collection of rare resources. Once upon a time, Edwin could quite literally say he was built for that kind of stuff.

Satisfying their demands of him as a cultivator on the other hand was a bit more difficult.

This day’s afternoon was like all other afternoons where Edwin would find himself standing on the stage of the inner-sect arena.

He fought an average of two to three title matches per week, progressing an average of ten ranks with each match he’d won.

Just now...with the fall of the youth who knelt before him, breath heavy, eyes gloomy and unresigned, one hand clapped over his broken arm,  Edwin had just managed to climb past the inner-circle of the sect and into the core ranks.

While the rest of the arena, and the seniors of the sect who were watching, all sat astounded, some of them accepting that this final step was all but inevitable, others staring at the youth as if wishing they could tear him open to find whatever secret was behind such a meteoric rise, the youth himself was questioning himself.

Wondering how high was high enough, wondering when it’d be okay to just hang about for a bit again, and work on his hobbies. Instead of constantly picking fights, researching his prospective opponents so he could know exactly how to effectively crush them, and prove both to them and the entire sect that he was exactly the go-getter that Elder Skinner and his wife thought he should be.

For Edwin the win was more or less meaningless because he knew he’d still be researching his next opponent by the week’s end. His “obligation” as a cultivator to crush all that lay before him, wasn’t done...and if that wasn’t enough, there was something else that he had to deal with.

Just as soon as the match that made him a member of the sect’s core-circle had been won, a group of shadows fell from the sky, having leapt them from the stands. All of them dressed in the blue, white and yellow that were the sect’s colors. All of them bearing familiar faces.

This little gang of sore losers, was made of every disciple that Edwin had, had to defeat on his way to the sect’s core-circle from the hundredth rank of the inner-sect up.

Being ambushed by this group had become almost routine. He’d win a match and then they’d appear. He’d hang out in the sect’s common areas and then they’d appear. He’d leave the sect for a bit, and then they’d try to trail him, hanging around dejected for days, till he came back and they’d appear. Sharp and in formation.

If it weren’t for the sect’s rules and some protections that Edwin had put over his courtyard they’d probably have appeared there as well.  It was tiring and somewhat confusing and took up a troublesome amount of his time. He’d normally have just crushed them, but he couldn’t since they were his fellow sect members, and he wasn’t entirely sure of their motive.

Edwin sometimes thought they hated him, but then other times he’d just feel as if they just had too much free time on their hands. It might have been because both he and they, seemed to be well aware that they weren't really a threat to him.

Looking at the group, he could only sigh, and then cast a healing spell on the youth he’d just defeated, so that the youth could join them, and get the second chance his hateful eyes seemed to dearly desire.

He figured he might as well, so he could get used to fighting the group with its inevitable new member, a little sooner. The likelihood of the youth joining the group being so high, it might as well have been carved in stone.

After some hesitation and a slow roll of his shoulders, the youth stood and then awkwardly added himself to the dozen or so other youths that surrounded Edwin, standing with their weapons drawn.