[ It genuinely sounds like a story that some indulgent mother would tell to her toddlers. It’s difficult for d’Artagnan to imagine any of that being real. He thinks about what she said, of the heart of the world being gone. ]

Perhaps it is. Giants sounds like another myth. But then everything about this world would have seemed that way to me, before I came. I wouldn’t have believed in it, and yet here I am. So perhaps I don’t know anything anymore.

[ He says that, but it’s easy to say. It’s not so easy to dispel the beliefs he still holds. Skepticism still makes it hard to believe in magic, and devils and angels, even though he has evidence of them. ]