"...right, sorry," he says, rubbing the spot on his forehead where he was flicked. "He's super famous because he's, like, immortal? I wasn't sure he existed and I'm honestly still not sure he exists but if he does and that necklace was made by him then it's probably worth like a billion zeny or something, and I am not using the word 'billion' as hyperbole here. ...he's not just famous because he's immortal, he's famous because he's immortal and he keeps to himself in Lutie and he makes the most bizarre enchanted things ever and if he likes you or the gods smile upon you or whatever he'll give you something and it'll be unique and plausibly the most impressive thing you'll put your hands on in your life."

"A... billion... that's not. I know that's a real number but that's not a real number."

Taharqi is whistling, though. "That must be fancy. I mean, the stuff he described to me was fancy, but—"

"Enchantment often compounds and one of the things he's good at is making enchanted things that kind of work with everything. Or so I hear. Like—okay so I don't actually know to what extent this is really like how it works but a way I've seen it described is that enchanting is sort of like making a statement about who and what you are to the world. And so you usually will make a sentence or a paragraph out of the stuff you're wearing, and that's why adventurers don't just stack up on enchanted stuff until they're just a barely-mobile bundle of bling, the sentences need to make sense. And if each individual enchanted item is like a word in that sentece, Nikos Velsignet's stuff is like the word 'the'. It just—fits most sentences.

"Which is to say that I am positive there are effects you have no idea about just waiting to be discovered when you get other things to synergise," he says, to Arik specifically. "But what do you know about it?"

"It's kept me alive. I'm harder to hurt than I should be, and I come back from anything that leaves me still breathing. And I don't get hungrier than I could eat, or thirsty at all, and when I do eat, nothing... comes of it... and I can swim under ice or walk for days through the desert sun or hold my breath for nearly an hour. I don't know about any other effects. But it's very good at keeping me in one piece."

Halfway through that, Vallynn starts cursing profusely under his breath. By the end of it he's quiet again and trying to do some quick maths about how much it'd all actually be worth, on the market, trying to account for any effects Arik hasn't discovered yet.

He's not sure the number he comes up with could possibly be real, either.

"Are you okay taking it off and trying to heal yourself again to see if anything changes?"

"Um."

He clutches it in his hand.

"I... haven't."

"...you don't need to, it's just—well, it's mostly—scientific curiosity. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"Thanks. I'm already uncomfortable with what you've told me, I don't need to add... that."

He nods. "Sorry. We don't need to keep going, if you don't want to." Even though he is dying of curiosity.

"Not knowing doesn't help. Except for, you know, how it did. But it's not going to help now."

That sounds like tempting the hamingja but he's not going to argue. "So, anyway, assuming it is your necklace that's making healing you easier, I think you've got a reasonably standard Heal Skill there, or maybe some strange cousin. Which is bizarre, if you got that from a dream. The actual full form of the Heal Skill is a pretty closely-guarded secret by the Churches of Odin and Freyja, there are variants around but none nearly as good as what the Churches have."

...honestly, Vallynn isn't sure why it should be so hard, now that he thinks about it. It's obvious what it's doing—well, not obvious obvious, you can't actually glean the full mechanics of most popular Skills in use from just looking at them because they're just that mana-efficient, but from the effects and from what he can see it's kind of obvious, and sounds monstrously complex, but not in an intractable way.

"...I do... he does invoke Freya when he does it. I don't. What with being Deic."

"Oh I mean if there are any Skills that require invoking any gods I don't know them, it's just a purely practical matter of trade secrets. The Churches seem to have some way to reliably teach their members how to get the standard Heal skill in a way those people can't then replicate while anyone outside the Churches trying to do it without instruction will only get it right about one in a hundred times or less while everyone else gets clearly inferior cousins of it, which means that most people don't actually try because it'd be a waste of a Skill slot."

"No, I mean - every time he heals, he says a prayer. Every time he eats. Every time he kills someone. He's more faithful than people are. Normal people. I wouldn't - mm. If he were real, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he'd trained with the Church."

"Oh wait you're thinking you—dreamt someone real? That, like, really existed at some point?"

He doesn't sound disbelieving; there is far too much shit in this world that no one understands and "Arik dreams of a real person and learns Skills from them" would be bizarre but he knows nothing that would prohibit it from happening.

"The more I think of it, yeah. I mean - dreams, right - but that's not how dreams work, I don't think? People talk about these dreams they have where their shoes bite them, or their cow grows wings, and I remember having those when I had my milkteeth, but... they stopped. And it's just him now. And he's like me, but not just some ideal of me, right, he's powerful but he can't do some of what I can and I don't want to mutter about Thor for five seconds between every round of beer. He's just different."

"Do you know if it's, like, someone from the past or present? ...or maybe future, if some people's theories about the nature of time are right?"

"...I don't know for sure, but. He's got a castle, I think he might've built parts of it himself or at least come up with them. And he... feels... proud of the wrong things? His wife came up with these cunning little stones that cool down part of the cellar, so you could just pour in wellwater and shave it off into a bowl, pour in some honey or fruit juice... it's just like snow-sweets, taste it! In the middle of summer! Isn't my-"

Y̵̧͈͎̅̄r̸͍̭͌́͛s̷̖̱̽͊͘å̷̞͂

He flinches.

"...clever. Isn't she clever. But I don't know her name. ...anyway, I don't think you have to invent coldstones anymore."

"You... don't, no."

Taharqi, though, is looking thoughtful. "I haven't forgotten my dream."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's been weeks but I still remember it. And I didn't know their names, either. We were in Glastheim, and I'd died, but Kafra didn't exist, or at least I didn't think of it as a possibility. My party's priest brought me back after they'd retreated.

"I think Glastheim being filled with ghosts was a recent event in it. And I don't know their names and it's bugging me so much. I don't even know the name of the archer's wolf, even though I was petting her and telling her what a good girl she was."

"So about three hundred years ago, then? ...well, now I'm curious about my dream, too. We had just defeated something called 'the Destroyer' but I don't know of any historical monster by that name offhand." Is he seriously considering the possibility that they're all connected to past heroes, somehow? That seems a bit too storylike even for him.

"It does seem... generic. Or absolute. Whoever named it either wasn't very creative, or they were very sure that this was the worst thing that would happen in a long time."