Arax stood in a field, with a well, in the middle of the day, but yet it should’ve been night. The well squirmed, or at least the moss around it did, it’s mass morphing and melding into a faint grimace, into a crooked cracked smile. A cicada landed in it’s mouth.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ritual done. Why, it must’ve been when. Oh you don’t know that yet.” The mouth bobbed up and down yet it’s voice did not come from it’s mouth but came from within Arax’s inner ear, it whispered to Arax.

“What the fuck is going on.” Arax laughed and looked up, half-expecting the sky to turn into midnight, but the sun only bore into his eyes.

“You know.” The smile showed it’s teeth, in them thousands of pennies stared back, a copper smile.

“Mimir.” A single penny dropped to the floor.

“The name rings a bell.” Arax felt sweat gather against his knees.

“Come then, you read the book she sent you. Not everyone can have that...” The smile paused, letting the word roll off it’s brown-gold tongue.

“Knowledge. In fact, she’s probably the only one who knows the method and doesn’t just get lucky. Fucking lucky people. I hate luck, despise it actually. Do you know how many scumbags I have to deal with just because some God of Luck existed. Incredibly irritating.” Arax’s heart beat at the pace of ten thousand drums, or ten thousand elephants, or ten thousand of anything.

“Uh sir, Mr…? Senor? I don’t know. Sir, what do I have to do?” The smile grew larger, grew more magnified, grew sharper in the light.

“Put it in and make me like it.” Mimir said. Arax showed nothing, only stared, his eyes glossed over, at the well. He walked forward.

“Anything? Anything at all, sir?” The well's water was not clear, nor murky, nor any other color, it was black. Not the black that you see on a sleek computer but the black of utter pure displacing darkness. Black that made everything around it black. The smile appeared in the water, the only white object in a sea of black.

“Ideas, memories, souls, a crush you still have on the busty girl in the apartment next to yours, she has three kids by the way.”

Arax got closer to the water.

“What should I sacrifice?” Arax said. The words rebounded against the surface of the water.

“Anything that you want. Actually I guess everything that I want. Well I don’t really want any of the sacrifices. They are just necessary. Like how pickles are necessary with salty sandwiches. I take the sacrifices in, into my body, I don’t work like you guys do, no poop, and the sacrifices go to the Tree. In fact it’s rather pointless. I don’t need any sacrifices, right now I could let you drink the water and it would work perfectly fine. You would leave perfectly dandy with some new superpower to go and inflict on your peers. Eventually you’d grow fat and strong and big and whatever else humans get and you’d die and your energy would tinkle back through the stars, right back to me.”

Arax nodded, a bee flew around the well.

“Like this bee for example, I could give it unlimited powers and make it the strongest bee of all-time but that would not enrich. That would not make it grow stronger, we run on the words between us, the words that people write about us. The words that fill the pages in-between my dialogue. To do that there has to be some sacrifice. So give it.”

The waters of the well didn’t move, yet, underneath their currents there was something there. Not Mimir but something else, something that churned. The truth could not fall out of Mimir’s mouth if he tried to entice it. Arax remembered a quote from the First Bible, “It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than a rich man enter the kingdom of God”. Is a man made out of money even allowed consideration?

“Fuck, I think I know what to sacrifice. It has to be important right? Something that really matters to me, or to someone else. Something valuable?” The smile widened, the tips of the smile reached the ends of the wells lid. It was at that moment that the cicadas started to buzz with such a fervor that Arax couldn’t hear anything. In the trees the cicadas buzzed their wings, slapped them against their flesh, and made a song out of their calls, a buzzing song.

The cicadas hated this kind of dry summer day, it made their wings hurt when they beat, and even though they loved to make the sound of a humid summer day, they couldn’t. But they beat their instrument because in their little insect brains they knew that a great thing was going to take place.

“Mimir, you know everything right? Everything in the world? Everything revealed or spoken? I have one question, and maybe you are the only person that can answer this question of course. Since you are so intelligent and so beautiful and have such a wonderful smile. What is the most beautiful name.” The smile paused in thought. It’s upper lip drooped only a little. The bee flew off.

“The most beautiful name is one that I don’t really know yet. It'll come to me and you'll help me find it but I think I have to watch you make your decision first." Arax nodded. The decision would come.

"I think I know what to give you." The smile nodded and Arax nodded to along with it. They were in agreement, for once, although Arax did not think that the smile could read his mind, he thought that it might have read his face quite well.

"My name is Arax Hinterlands, my fathers name is Ajax Hinterlands, my mother name is Cynthia Hinterlands. I was born on a mountain, I've had three girlfriends, none of which I found any attachement too. I'm bisexul but have never kissed another man. I like eggplant and painting late at night. I masturbate once a day and only right before I go to sleep. If I masturbate too much I feel like I lose something. That's it. You can have me, and mold me in whatever direction you want. All I care for are the memories from the last year, you can have everythinge else." The smile stopped smiling. No it only looked at Arax.

"Can I have your name?" The smile asked. Arax shook his head up and down in agreement, although his eyes did not agree.

"Drink." And Arax drunk the water. It tasted like lilacs and jasmine and Ves and all of his favorite scents, it tasted like the sweet sweet stews that his mother made and it tasted like the spicy scent of his father. It fell down his throat, cooling his entire body. It was like liquid ice. Like pure menthol. His body cooled, starting from his fingertips and going up his toes, it crawled along his thighs, scraping against his inner thigh, then it went up his lower back, each singular vertebrae becoming an icy pillar.

It touched his shoulders and then his face, and his skin itself took upon the chill, after that his gut, his liver, his eyes, his mouth. In fact, after a minute the only part of the body that was left unfrozen, untouched was his mind, and for only a second that persisted. His mind froze over, leaving him cold all over.

He fell into a deep sleep. With no dreams, he felt as if he was losing something, it seeped out of his pores like a black ooze, and it was gone. He did not dream. But yet he wasn't fully asleep, his mind wirred underneath the freeze, the arctic chill that inhabited him. He imagined his body as a large world, a continent, and all across his body, little men and little girls and children made war. There was some great conflict between the sides and yet he couldn't realize what it was.

Nukes fell and covered his body in a film of toxic waste. Bullets were shot and pierced through the hearts of men, and tore out bloody chunks that lay on his shoulders. For hundreds of years the conflict raged on and on, like a giant game of Harshings. Grand magics were used to destroy, smaller ones were used to rebuild.

He watched them all, or moreso he felt them. He knew they were on his body, or in his head, yet there was not the feeling of watching, every angle of the conflict appeared before him, he saw through their eyes and listened through their ears.

After two hundred years every memory of his ceased to be, he only remembered the war. His own name seeped out of him and eroded his insides. All he remembered were the faces of the soldiers as they killed and soon those faces turned to mush and into nothing, everything faded.

He was alone. He could see his body but he was alone. Time went on, so much time that he couldn't even keep track, the minutes went on a jog, the hours went by on their marathon and the days seeped through his pores.

Once in a while, a voice would say something, yet it was too far to hear, but it would keep on talking for hours and hours, sometimes it would shout and scream and hurtle what felt like insults but not a single word came through.

At last, it ended. No more wars, no more thoughts, no more anything but time going on and even that went to a standstill. He felt the hours start to slow down, the throttle from before turned into only a gentle walk, which turned into a stroll, which turned into only a meander. It stopped and his eyes opened.