Chapter Five: The Flow of Time
"You mean you can dig living things out of salt?"
When the black dragon told Surtur this idea, the fire giant's first reaction was disbelief.
Surtur was born even before Ymir; before the black dragon's arrival, he was the sole master of this world.
He had wandered this world for countless years, seeing nothing but fire, frost, and the magnificent King Gallon Canal.
"Living things can be dug out of salt on glaciers?"
"Why don't you say giants can grow from the mist?"
"Ah, Ymir really did grow... Well, never mind..."
While Surtur didn't quite believe that living things could be dug out of salt, he had experienced the black dragon's magic firsthand. This black dragon indeed possessed the ability to foresee the future, having long boasted to him that he knew the entire course of the world's development.
"Even Ymir's birth!"
He hadn't expected Ymir to be so powerful. Not only did she occupy the Kinggalon Gap, but she also dared to dream of conquering the Land of Mist and even trying to destroy the Land of Fire—something Surtur couldn't tolerate.
He considered himself the guardian of Muspelheim, the Land of Fire, and would not allow anyone to lay a finger on his desolate home.
"Alright, then tell me what you want me to do? As long as it's not about fighting Ymir to the death, I'll agree to anything," Surtur said.
"That salt block covers the glacier. The glacier is hard and thick; even if cows lick it for hundreds of years, it won't be enough. I want you to use your fire sword to melt the glacier. The salt will dissolve in the water, and before long, Buri will be able to surface!"
The black dragon was full of confidence. This would be far more efficient. Then, the three of them could gang up on Ymir—wouldn't that be wonderful? Surtur didn't object, but voiced his inner question: "You mention years and months, but these words don't have corresponding descriptions in my mind. Nidhogg, you foreign dragon, you often mention these words, what do they mean?"
Nidhogg shook his head and said, "Time, Surtur, time, sequence, the flow of things, all movement is time."
"Years, months, days—later there will be a burning flame hanging in the void, rising in the east and setting in the west, repeating a fixed action. The flame rises, sets, and rises again, that's a day."
"Thirty days piled together, that's a month."
"Twelve months added together, that's a year."
Surtur looked at the black dragon, still puzzled. He had no concept of the alternation of day and night, so he still didn't know how long the so-called hundreds of years actually were.
The black dragon had to give an example that the fire giant could understand.
"If you raise your sword and strike the cliff face seven thousand two hundred times, that's roughly a day."
Surtur finally understood how long a "day" was.
"I see, then a hundred years is indeed a long time..."
Strangely enough, when he had no concept of time, Surtur felt that striking the cliff face with his sword was nothing special.
Whether it was a thousand times or a hundred million times, it made no difference to him.
But after Ymir was born, everything seemed different.
The world changed.
Yes, changed.
Surtur thought of that word. With change came difference. The world, unchanging for millennia, began to accelerate, and besides desolation, other landscapes appeared.
That unique vitality belonging to Ymir.
The frost giant Ymir was like a newborn infant, playing and frolicking, treating the whole world as a toy. The world changed because of Ymir.
The eternally unchanging King Gallon chasm was thrown into chaos in just a few days; or, to put it another way, it was as if a stagnant world had been injected with tremendous energy.
"Change brings time," the black dragon said.
"And what we need to do now is simply to make the change more apparent. Let us accelerate time."
Surtur didn't resist change; what he resisted from the beginning was only Ymir, the giant.
Therefore, he agreed to the black dragon's proposal.
So the black dragon chanted an incantation, plucked the illusory fur, and the real dragon scales were grasped in the giant's hand.
"Your size is too large; I cannot forcibly shrink you. It must be of your own volition."
The fire giant held the scales, silently reciting the shrinking incantation.
And so, the towering fiery mountain gradually shrank, its magnificent, sky-obscuring form becoming a low mound of earth. Then, Surtur, the volcano that had been erupting so vigorously, became a roadside flint, the size of a mortal.
"What a magical experience," Surtur thought, marveling at the black dragon's magic. Compared to his own sweeping, powerful fighting techniques, the black dragon's unpredictable spells were endless, always finding a new way to outmaneuver him.
This was the first time he had received assistance from the black dragon, and the effect was equally astonishing.
"The shrinking spell is hidden in my scales. If I don't hold it tightly, the spell will immediately lose its power. We won't confront Ymir directly. We'll wait until Ymir has eaten and slept before we begin our attack."
Following Surtur's instructions, the black dragon, with Surtur's cooperation, shrank his divine sword. Because it was an inanimate object, the black dragon had to embed its scales into the hilt.
Thus, Surtur's weapon gained the ability to change shape at his will.
The fire giant was clearly very satisfied with this, and wielded his sword with incredible power, still unleashing bursts of fire.
These two enormous creatures then left the Land of Fire and plunged into the Land of Mist.
Even in his shrunken form, Surtur still radiated immense heat; glaciers melted and rivers evaporated wherever he went.
However, this was no challenge for the black dragon. With a mere illusion, the fire giant's arrival in the Land of Fire subsided.
The Land of Mist was located north of the Kinggalon Divide, and the salt flats licked by the cow Odumbra were in the far north of the Land of Mist. The black dragon and the fire giant could only slip from the Land of Fire to the Land of Mist while Ymir slept, and then escape from the Land of Mist back to the Land of Fire before the frost giant let out its first yawn, to avoid being discovered by Ymir.
After this cycle repeated hundreds of times, Surtur, who had once again melted the glacier with his sword while Ymir slept, remarked, "If you were to explain the cycle of time to me now, it would be much clearer. When Ymir sleeps, it's night; when Ymir wakes, it's day. A round trip between the two realms takes a day, right?"2
The black dragon had nothing to say to this.
Thus, for the first time in the chaotic world, a time standard agreed upon by both sides appeared.
Some time passed, and in the dead of night on the three hundredth day after Surtur divided time, the black dragon, who had calculated that it was about time to flee, was astonished to find—
a head emerging from the pile of salt melted by Surtur!