"Mountains... are very big, right. They're a lot of rock and dirt and sometimes magma. But they're not... complicated? They don't think. They don't have - if there's something inside a mountain, it's a cave, or a different kind of rock or metal, or something. Maybe the cut will intersect a bear, or some trees. Maybe it'll hit an old dwarvish mine - that might actually mess up the technique. On the other hand, it might not."

"Surt is big. And Surt is... deep. Surt is a lot of things. He's got meat in him, probably, flesh and blood and bones, all reinforced against attack, not in the way that stone's hard to cut but in the way that it's hard to kill a man who doesn't want you to kill him. He's got magic in him, roiling oceans of it. He's a demon, he's a god. He's got belief. Some people worship him. Everyone at least fears him. He's got a story."

"If I tried to cut him like that, my sword would shatter in my hands. And I think I'd go with it."

He sighs explosively. "Also, separately, mind-controlling me to believe in myself won't work. The fact that none of this is true doesn't mean I'm making it up. It'd be like trying to sculpt an entire cow out of ground beef."

"Well, what if you had a better story, then? A bigger one? One more people believed in? Some people worship him, but it's not that many, at least not over here on Midgard, and what—I mean I guess it could get really uncomfortable to be worshipped and I don't even know how I'd go about doing it but—no I obviously don't understand any of this, you're the Artist, not me, sorry, I got carried away."

"You're closer than most get, I think, but... no, worshiping me wouldn't be a good way to get anything done."

(He sounds sort of thoughtful, though.)

"Anyway, none of that's to say that I couldn't fight Surt when I'm ready. Nor that being able to cut a mountain wouldn't help. But you use different tools for different jobs."

"Alright. Okay. But I still want more details, that was all kind of vague and I guess from what you said it's kind of inherently vague but still. What else can you do?"

"...that really is most of it, I wasn't kidding when I said my repertoire was limited. Annika kicked my ass, and Taharqi would probably have an even easier time, he's twisty. I could probably beat you but I don't think that's a terrific surprise. The blade's stronger than a normal sword but what do I know about fancy magic swords; same with the armor. Um... sometimes I can sort of slip past magic, I should work more on that but it's hard to practice when I don't have somebody to toss fire at me recreationally."

"He's really selling himself short, there. He tanked a rank 2 bounty for us."

"You're rank 2 already?"

"Nope! And he doesn't have a rank, either!"

"You know perfectly well what tanked that bounty," Arik mutters.

"Wait if he doesn't have a rank how'd you two meet?"

They finally step outside the mages' guild and, after looking around a bit, Vallynn decides on a direction and starts going that way.

"We ran into each other entirely by coincidence. Annika and I were chasing a bounty and he'd heard of the same thing just by chatting to people, and he almost died, and he hadn't ever been to a Kafra and didn't have a resurrection point."

"Right, you mentioned."

"So another part of the reason I wanted to introduce you two was that I felt like you'd be able to better, like... explain to him the basics of adventuring, for people who were kept away from civilisation their entire lives and have zero context."

"I was only kept away from civilization for thirteen years," Arik mentions. "After that, I was mostly keeping myself away from civilization."

"Aren't you glad you ran into us, then?"

"Yes! I'd be dead otherwise, and you have an excellent penis."

"Aww, shucks."

"Well alright that's. Doable. I suppose. I'm gonna need to get my bearings. Arik, I've been interrogating you a lot about your magic, what do you want to do?"

"...Annika said some things to me, that made me... recontextualize some things. I want to get strong. Strong enough to do important things. More important than whatever falls into my lap while I walk from Lutie to Ræl. I need to learn how to win, that's how she put it."

A few more seconds of walking pass. "Also, I eventually need to find the Heart of Ymir, but it's waited this long."

"Find the what now."

"Heart of Ymir? I know you've heard about it, Odinites love that thing. And Freyjans, they say Sessrúmnir's got something to do with it. That's why I was going to Ræl. Nikos said if I wanted to be helpful I could bring it to him, and, you know, it seemed like as good an idea as any, so I said I would."

"I'm not an Odinite, or a Freyjan, but also as far as I know their mythology is that Midgard is Ymir's bones and flesh and blood, I don't think his heart was anywhere in those tales?"

"Taharqi, am I being the weird one here again?"

"You're not being weird in saying that people talk about it but I don't think it's, you know, part of the religious canon? There are things about how the mountains are the bones and the earth is the flesh and the seas are the blood of Ymir, where's his heart, it must be powerful, and so on, and there are some old phrases like 'and bring me Ymir's heart while you're at it' grandmothers like to say when they think whatever you're doing is impossible, but I don't actually know of there being anything that could actually be called Ymir's heart in Ræl.

"All of that said, the temple of Sessrúmnir there is occasionally referred to as the heart of Ymir—mostly by particularly devout Feltzeen Freyjans—as a metaphor for being the center of the world."

"...huh."