Honestly, Sophia is rather proud that she didn't scream when Oren whipped her off of the horse faster than she could blink and shielded her with his body. She damn near bites her tongue when she hears the impact of the horse and rock against his back though, especially the horse's choked off death scream. She doesn't feel it though. Not a single ounce of the jarring impact that should have reverberated through Oren's body reaches her.

  Then he's standing up and turning to face whatever attacked them and Sophia finally gets a chance to identify what they're up against as well. A Hill Giant of all things…

  Sophia knew about Hill Giants of course, but her knowledge was purely academic. They were demigods in that they were one of many types of monster that could be born from deities coupling with mortals. It was something that her father Law had always frowned upon, and of course most of her kin back in the Heavens had never engaged in such things.

  … But while Law was the King of the Gods, he tended to exercise a lighter hand on most of the Gods and Goddesses down on the Mortal Plane. He would step in if things got too bad, but there was only so much he could do at the end of the day, especially when only some mortals worshipped him and asked for his protection in the first place.

  So yes, demigods like Hill Giants were born and that was that. They tended to grow up parentless because neither their mortal nor divine parents wanted anything to do with them, but that didn't mean they were solitary creatures. In fact, from what Sophia had learned in her studies, Hill Giants tended to be drawn together by their diluted divine blood and even forged small communities in out of the way locations.

  For a singular Hill Giant to be here alone so close to human settlements and roads… well, it spoke of tragedy. It spoke of heartbreak on the same level as what she'd witnessed back in that burnt down husk of a town that had once worshipped her father.

  Unfortunately, for all that her heart goes out to this Hill Giant and whatever has made him so aggressive and furious, it doesn't seem like he's in the mood for talking.

  His club, which is more of a tree with its branches nonchalantly ripped off, comes down on their heads and Oren's sword rises to stop it. The Otherworlder grunts as the weight and force the Hill Giant exerts causes him to take a single step back, while his blade digs deep into the tree trunk before coming to a stop.

  Roaring, the Hill Giant continues to try to push down with all his might… but to no avail. Oren is simply too strong. Sophia can't help but watch the Otherworlder with widened eyes. She'd known he was tough, fast, and capable of course. Certainly far beyond that of a mortal naturally born to this universe. However, seeing him go toe to toe with a Hill Giant, a veritable demigod… well, it only goes to show how someone like the God Killer could slaughter the deities of the Heavens doesn't it? And it really only serves to harden her resolve regarding her desire to try and convince Oren to hunt and slay the God Killer for her.

  With a roar of his own, Oren pushes the Hill Giant back through sheer strength, making the surprised demigod stumble a few steps while grunting in confusion. To be fair, if she were thirty feet tall and being stymied by something a fifth her size, Sophia would be confused too. Still, seeing an opportunity, she tries to call out.

  "Hold there, Sir Giant! The mortal speaks true! We aren't your enemies! I myself share your divine blood; we do not need to fight!"

  There's a brief pause as the Hill Giant stares at them with beady eyes. At least, beady for his massive face anyways. Squinting at them, glaring at them… finally, he snarls.

  "No lies! Killers! Butchers! Try to trick me! I kill you! I eat you!"

  With an enraged, maddened roar that splits the air itself and causes the remaining birds in the area brave enough to stick around to finally flee, the Hill Giant stomps forward again. This time though, Oren doesn't wait for him to come to them. In fact, the Otherworlder is already moving the moment that the Hill Giant's first word had left his mouth.

  With lightning speed that even Sophia has trouble following, Oren strikes out, aiming his blade to cut through the Hill Giant's legs in a bid to hamper his movement. Except, from what Sophia's seen of Oren's strength and speed so far, he should have been able to cut the Hill Giant off at the ankles entirely, robbing him of both feet before the creature could react.

  Instead, his sword barely manages to gouge a single inch into either of the Hill Giant's trunk-like ankles, making the massive demigod roar more in anger than pain. Surprised by his own lackluster performance, Oren freezes up for a moment… just long enough for the Hill Giant to use his free hand to slam Oren in the side, sweeping him off of his feet and throwing him into a nearby tree hard enough to take it completely out of the ground.

  "OREN!"

  Sophia finally does scream, even as she races over to the fallen Otherworlder. Luckily, Oren is only dazed and not actually hurt. He's also managed to hold onto his blade. Unfortunately, the Hill Giant is barely hampered by Oren's cuts and is already starting to make his way towards them.

  "Why can't I cut him?"

  They have limited time to say the least, so Sophia tries to speak quickly.

  "Mortal blades cannot harm divine beings! Only weapons made of Celestial Metal have a chance of cutting through divine flesh. Of course, the Hill Giant is only half-god… so he's not immune, merely resistant. But you-!"

  Before she can say anything more, the Hill Giant's shadow falls over them… which effectively means the demigod is already on top of them. Sophia flinches, even as Oren lifts himself up and blocks the Hill Giant's overhead strike once more, keeping them from being harmed.

  Technically, the Hill Giant doesn't have Celestial Metal either… but Sophia can tell just by looking at his tree trunk of a club that he's been pouring his own blood over it. And that means the Hill Giant's weapon is almost as good as a sword of Celestial Metal would be. Might take a little longer for him to kill her with it, but he'd get there eventually so long as he kept smashing.

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  As Oren pushes the Hill Giant away again, he looks at her with a frown.

  "Only Celestial Metal can kill divine beings, huh? I guess I should have known as much. But then… are the God Hunters all equipped with Celestial Metal or something?"

  Is he thinking of those bodies they left behind back where she initially found him? Sophia shakes her head.

  "N-No, at least I don't think so. Celestial Metal is incredibly rare, at least here on the Mortal Planes. Up in the Heavens, we used it for everything, even silverware…"

  Oren nods to show he's listening, even as he continues to force the Hill Giant back again and again. He's taken to fighting a completely defensive battle just so he can listen to her explanation, while the Hill Giant is insistent on continuing to charge in with very little in the way of tactics.

  "S-still, I imagine God Hunters have access to some amount of it given they've proven themselves capable of slaying Gods… but I would bet that most of them just have tools for capturing and draining divine beings so they can be brought back to their bases where any Celestial Metal would be under lock and key until… until it was needed."

  Sophia flinches as another earth-shaking roar from the Hill Giant shakes the clearing. In the end, they'd gotten a little off track, hadn't they?

  "Maybe we should just run! Maybe he'll eventually give up on chasing us!"

  Really, she didn't know how else to end this. Oren might be able to match the Hill Giant strength for strength, blow for blow… and hell, he wasn't even bleeding from the hits he HAD taken at this point. But even still, how was he supposed to kill a demigod when he had no access to Celestial Metal?

  "No. He's not going to let us go and while I think I could outpace any other man even while carrying you… the situation is somewhat different when we're fleeing from something six times our size."

  That was… fair. Sophia hadn't really thought of that. She yelps and ducks as the Hill Giant goes for another swing, but of course Oren is there like always, ready to impose himself in front of her and block the blow. The force behind the Hill Giant's strikes should be having Oren's bones rattling in his body, but truth be told… he seems to be handling it rather well. That said…

  "How will you defeat him then?!"

  There's a pause for a moment as Oren shoves the Hill Giant back yet again after another exchange between his mundane metal sword and the Hill Giant's massive club. Finally though, the Otherworlder chuckles softly to himself.

  "Well… he still needs to breathe, doesn't he?"

  Sophia's brow furrows in confusion at that. Then, her eyes widen in alarm when Oren… suddenly tosses his sword aside. Before she can do much more than gawk, he crouches down and picks something up off of the ground before lunging at the demigod still finding his footing.

  "HEY FUCKFACE! YOU DROPPED SOMETHING!"

  Only as Oren reaches the Hill Giant's feet and leaps up into the air does Sophia finally identify what he has in his hand. It's a skull-sized rock, a fragment of the massive boulder that had been used to kill their horse mere minutes ago. Oren lands on the Hill Giant's front and latches on like some insane rock climber, holding on with one arm and both legs as he begins to climb the thirty-foot tall demigod like a tree.

  The Hill Giant is so caught off guard by this move that he stumbles back at first, bringing up his hand to brush Oren off of him like one might try to do upon first noticing some sort of rodent or bug on their person. Much like those smaller critters, Oren uses his size as well as his status as an Otherworlder to dodge the Hill Giant's swiping and climb higher, until his free hand is able to latch onto the monster's facial hair and pull him the rest of the way up.

  Sophia only realizes what's about to happen a moment before it actually does. Even when it does, she has a hard time believing her eyes. The Hill Giant's mouth falls open in a roar of pain as Oren hangs off of his beard. And as soon as it does, Oren is there, lunging forward and shoving the skull-sized rock right down the Hill Giant's gullet.

  He doesn't just toss it in either. The Otherworlder buries his entire arm up to the shoulder in the Hill Giant's mouth before letting go of the rock, or so it looks like. Sophia can only watch in a strange mixture of mortification and fascination as the Hill Giant chokes and sputters and finally grabs Oren by his torso and yanks the human man off of his front. But by that point its too late. The Hill Giant keeps choking, his free hand going to his throat.

  And Oren… Oren isn't kind about it either. He lands in a crouch at the Hill Giant's feet and in an insane move that really shouldn't have been possible, immediately pounces forward and wraps his body around one of the choking Hill Giant's legs. He then completely lifts the Hill Giant off the ground… and slams the thirty-foot tall demigod down a moment later.

  Still choking, the rock lodged perfectly in his throat, the Hill Giant tries to fight back but can't quite muster up the concentration. Even when Oren rips the Hill Giant's club from his hands, holding it in both arms and struggling with it for a moment before slamming it down onto the Hill Giant's head. And then he does it again. And again.

  At some point, the massive hands trying to bat Oren away weaken and fall to the side, but the Otherworlder keeps going anyways. At some point, the movements from the Hill Giant's massive body are completely a result of Oren's actions. The jolting, twitching death throes of the demigod are greatly disturbing, but Sophia can't quite bring herself to look away.

  Once again she's reminded that this… this is what an Otherworlder is. An unparalleled fighter, a peerless warrior, and an unstoppable killer. On the one hand, Oren has once again proved himself perfect for Sophia's purposes. On the other hand…

  "You… what was that?! You put yourself in grave danger there! What if the Hill Giant had grabbed you before you could reach his face? What if he'd thought to hold you aloft and beat you senseless where you had no leverage, rather than stupidly throwing you away?!"

  Oren blinks as he looks at Sophia, his front splattered with Hill Giant blood. He looks between the gargantuan corpse he's made and the fuming Minor Goddess before him for a moment.

  "Uhh…"

  "It's like you have no self-preservation instincts whatsoever! Don't you care whether you live or die?!"

  The Otherworlder's face suddenly becomes expressionless, sending a shiver down Sophia's spine.

  "No. Not really."

  Sophia gapes for a moment, leading to Oren tilting his head to the side at her curiously.

  "I'm not sure why that bothers you. I don't really care if I live or die… and shouldn't that be a good thing where you're concerned? I've chosen that the best way I can spend my life is to protect you to my dying breath or until we reach our destination… whichever comes first. You should be happy with that."

  As Sophia grapples with Oren's words, he looks at the Hill Giant's huge club for a moment consideringly before shaking his head.

  "Too unwieldy."

  Letting the demigod weapon drop to the ground with a tremor-inducing thud, Oren hops down from the Hill Giant's now-headless corpse and moves to retrieve his sword and then their supplies. Some of their supplies were on Oren when the Hill Giant attacked. Much more were on the horse they'd bought back in Amberwell. Not everything that was on the horse was destroyed by the boulder, but not everything made it either.

  Sophia watches Oren take stock for a moment in silence, trying to put her thoughts in order before she speaks. But eventually she just can't hold her tongue anymore.

  "What… what happened to you? What did those that summoned you do to make you so cavalier about dying?"

  Oren pauses at that and Sophia can immediately tell that he's not just thinking about her question.

  … He's remembering.

  A/N: Fair warning now, next chapter... is a Flashback Chapter. I don't tend to like them myself, but they were necessary in this story, so they'll come up a couple times. Not often though!

  As an apology, here's some Sophia taglines to go with this chapter. Pick your favorite! Or make your own!

  "Oh right, dangerous slightly unhinged Otherworlder. Forgot for a moment."

  "Fuck yes, he's going to kill the God Killer for me SO HARD!"

  "This better not awaken anything in me."

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