"...huh. Well, he may in that case have been telling me to fuck off, but... I don't think I'll put it out of my mind entirely. Ignoring what Father Nikos tells you just because he's half-mad and what he's asking for doesn't exist seems like a very stupid mistake."

"Oh I'm with you on that, if a wizened mentor who saves your life and gives you a unique magical artefact tells you to figure out what's under Midgard you fuckin' learn how to fly. ...that may be more true in novels than in real life but it's Nikos Velsignet, he's older than most novels, he's inspired some of them.

"So that's what you've been doing, before running into our intrepid novice adventurers? Walking to Ræl?"

"That was the destination, yeah. But the journey was the proper part. Falling in with caravans, helping people with their monster problems. Staying places when I liked them. I almost got married once."

"It seems to me like the kind of situation that can be described with that sentence was probably not going to be a long-lasting, successful marriage, so I'm happy it didn't happen?"

"Yeah, I mean - she was great, honestly, I don't mean to be flippant, I loved her like anything, smart and funny and she actually understood what was going on with me, but we weren't done growing and I was still half-feral and she really needed to marry somebody who could run a goat farm? Was the issue."

That was. Such a sentence. What is going on with that sentence. That was the sentence of all time.

How does he move on from that sentence.

"Oh there's the restaurant," thank the gods.

"Food!"

They're seated in short order; Arik is provided, by the unflappable and forward-thinking waiter, with a towel to sit on. The options available in the menu are heavy on cream and wine and vegetables of all sorts, and very light on red meat. There's fish and chicken and frog and, at an absolutely eye-watering price, "filet of snail".

There's also a separate menu for cheese. There are so many cheeses. They have some kind of arcane ranking system from one to four.

"I tried to teach her magic, but I didn't know back then that most people don't want to drop their lives and go adventuring," Arik continues, ignoring the conversational gap. "My gods I want to try filet of snail. But I could also buy a small house instead."

"We could always try to find a snail and cook it ourselves, but I expect that would not taste as good. Also the snail is almost as tall as you and will be attempting to eat you right back.

"Now, how adventurous are we feeling with the cheeses?"

"Yes!"

"Alright so we've got the Geffenia blue which is the least adventurous of the adventurous ones and the Geffenia green which is more adventurous than that. This one here usually goes well when paired with a peach wine but by itself can be a bit too, I want to say spicy? That's not what I mean exactly but it will make your nose run. And then there's..."

It turns out Vallynn has a lot of opinions about cheese.

Taharqi is not often surprised about other people but it happens every now and then.

Arik wants the cheese that burns and is good with peach wine. (Also some peach wine. Also a frog the size of half a chicken, atop a wine-soaked cream-of-mushroom pasta.)

Taharqi can also generate opinions but he seems a lot less enthusiastic about them than either of his companions.

That's alright, not everyone can have correct opinions about cheese.

"So! I guess I should do Modern Aventuring 101 now?"

"Let's have it, yeah. I'm told resurrection features heavily."

"It's not that—" Pause. "Okay I guess from a background of it not being kind of normal it is pretty heavy, yeah. How much of the history of the last hundred years do you know?"

"'History of the last hundred years', really, Vallynn?"

"I feel like it's important shared background that's taken for granted!"

"Most adventurers don't actually think that hard about it."

"I—hmm. Guess that's fair."

"A hundred years ago, give or take a decade, the walls between our world and Yggdrasil thinned. Within the space of a generation or two, any fool with a sword and a book could do things that used to be the purview of legendary heroes, and the good ones could do it better. At the same time, monsters went from an occasional threat to a constant erosive tide. The world yet lives because some strange mutants care more about the preservation of Midgard than their own primacy, and enough of those were good at their new jobs to form the Eden Group. They... um, may not, actually, have grown paranoid and corrupt and called a dark god to smite Morroc and wake the rest of us up, I'm told that's probably insane and a lie. And - there's been politics and things, Baphomet's hanging around being a bastard, Glastheim is full of dark spirits and possibly Beuriman's ex... is that enough to get you into your part of the exposition?"

"...your evil witch thinks Eden Group somehow summoned Surt?"

"Thought, she's dead. And we've been through this. Just to confirm, though, what would you personally want to do if it did turn out that Eden had done it?"