“Okay. What are you saying?”

“You entered a dream by means of a dream, we're using that word in the specific technical Old Works, sense, of a dream; we understand each other. Not a dream about your teeth falling out or a bird flying off with your cock, we're not in that space, we're discussing Old Works. And the dream. Right, I'm right to say that, the dream?”

“Go ahead.”

“- so I thought you might have guessed.”

“What's that?”

“You're a sorcerer.”

Pheel stopped and paused and thought and stopped and paused again, said, “I'm a sorcerer.”

“You're a sorcerer.”

“I'm a sorcerer.”

“Here. You're a sorcerer.”

“I'm a sorcerer? I'm obviously not.”

“You obviously are.”

“What are you talking about in terms easily understood by a person obviously not a sorcerer?”

“You're a sorcerer, so you can do magic.”

“I'm not a sorcerer, Art, at all, I can barely... lift a sword, swing it with a verb.”

“You can barely lift a sword and swing it, exactly, whatever the verb, like a sorcerer -”

“Incompetence in one area doesn't -”

“- You're writing this world, maybe especially, as you've explained it, me anyway, but extend it, why not, out the back of your own fucking nut-head there. Your nut, Pheel. Out the back of your nut. Nut. Nut. Nut. Nut. Nut. Nut.” He said the word again, he liked to, it must, to Art anyway, explain a lot, and then again, and a couple times after, “Nut. Nut. Nut.” Hard on the T. “Nut.”

“So? I'm not a Cyclops.”

“Use the back of your nut to alter this reality and that of the characters peopling it. Wait, you're already doing that.” He was being rhetorical, he wasn't a complete sub-literate dunce. A mouth drooler. Obviously a species he didn't disdain, if species wasn't unkind – he liked people. “- Now do it in a fashion that will be useful in terms of not getting us killed. I'm being gentile here. You killed. You. You can die, obviously, you've explained. It's not like – this world's still fucking real. Do you want to die? - No, you're a coward, like every sorcerer I've had the misfortune ever of encountering; you understand, and no offence again, I can't help liking you despite – you know - masculine deficits, on your part, not mine, that -”

- “I'm not offended -”

“Yeah, well – go ahead. Use the back of your nut. Go ahead, in a fashion at this time a lot more useful - do magic, sorcery, do some sorcery, you are a sorcerer, do some sorcery, using the powers, as you've explained them to me, out the back of your nut. Which are obviously by definition sorcery. Go ahead. Do it. It's a story, so if it's motivation – I can hit you with a big sword, but I don't especially wish to.” He stared at him very sincerely. “But if that's of any help,” Pheel's mouth was open, “I can hit you with the flat of my sword in your coupon if you think that would be of any help, otherwise, Cazzo, do some sorcery. I don't mean instantly. But try your best. Take a minute, and then just do it. That bush over there,” he pointed, “Incinerate it.”