|Introduction|

This...this is not a very good piece of writing.

All Wisestarted off as an idea I was kicking around for a potential submission to a certain Weekly Writing Challenge at the Maidens of the Kaleidoscope forums. But because I'm slow, fat, lazy, and prone to procrastination, the idea remained a soccer ball in my head, until fairly recently.

I decided to use my favorite character from Norse Mythology: Vafthrudnir. I probably like his character because his story is a bit unusual for one from Norse Mythology, largely because it doesn't really involve any violence except until the very very end. Most other tales involve blood, slaughter, combat, violence, or at the very least Mjolnir being used to smack things, but here, in Vafthrudnismal, the contest is between wits and knowledge, not swords or fists. (Of course, being Norse Mythology, someonestill dies in the end, but hey, this was the sort of stuff the Vikings believed in, the same stuff where "heaven" was reserved only for those who killed lots of the right people at the right time.)

Likewise, when I started planning out this story, I figured that I'd try for one without any real action or violence; just one guy wandering through Gensokyo, learning what he could about his strange new world and about learning itself, a bit like Kino's Journey or Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro. Problem is, this sort of story depends very heavily on the strength of the writer, since now there's no cheap spectacle or drama to liven things up...and, uh, this is the second story I've ever written, and the first beyond a crappy short story I threw together once. Compounding this is the fact that I've never taken a formal creative writing class before.

...as I said, this is not a very good piece of writing.

But at the very least, I wanted to get this story out there, if only because I felt that Vafthrudnir deserved at least one goddamn piece of fanfiction, no matter how bad it is.

[If you'd rather read this story on a forum, go to . /topic,12209. ]

| Verse 1: The Last Journey of Vafthrudnir|

Sealed was my fate. Lost was my life, upon the black blade of death.

I said, "I doomed myself when I dared to tell what fate will befall the gods, and staked my wit against the wit of Odin, ever the wisest of all."

So did Odin One-Eye, All-Father of the Aesir, reach forth to claim my head, his face a countenance of triumph. In my arrogance I bet my head, in my pride I wagered my life, on a game of wits, a contest of wisdom. For who could stand before Vafthrudnir, Mighty Weaver, the All-Wise, greatest of frost giants? Surely not Gagnrath, that weather-beaten wanderer who sought hospitality in my halls.

Surely not Gagnrath, who was but Odin in guise.

Defeat. Humiliation. Despair.

Death.

Odin said nothing. He only smiled, one terrible to behold. I wondered for how many other sons of Ymir this sight was what bade them farewell from life.

Should I have fled? Or struck him down where he stood? Or pleaded for my life, or any other thing but to embrace my dark fate? But a wager I made, and though my pride had been reduced to near nothing, what little is left I shall honor alongside the wager.

And so there I sat, helpless for all my vaunted wisdom. All that I knew, from the names of the nine worlds to the fate of the gods at the world's ending...worthless, all worthless.

Odin's hand came closer, grasped my head about the crown. Battle-scarred fingers dug in, to tear my head away.

Then the world slipped away from me.

Stars wheeled over my head, and I felt like someone had thrown me across the Nine Worlds. I looked down and saw Jotunheim, land of the frost giants; Midgard, the home of Men; Alfheim, the home of the elves; and other lands I'd never seen before, but I didn't even have time to marvel at these things before my feet found solid ground again.

*Thump*

It took me a moment to find my bearings again. When I did, I opened my eyes to see where I was.

I first noticed that I was in a room, but one much bigger and much more different than any I'd ever seen. It easily dwarfed my own house, and I wouldn't have been surprised if even Valhalla itself were smaller than this colossal chamber, but what really made it stand out were the furnishings. Chairs, candles, tables; I could recognize each of them, but they were made in a style I'd never seen before.

Then I noticed that everything seemed...alien. Odd. Unfamiliar. From the taste of the air to the sights and sounds...even my own thoughts didn't quite feel like my own.

Before I could really make sense of anything, I heard a voice.

"Ah, there we are. So as I was saying, it's entirely possible to summon something from far beyond Gensokyo, you just need to modify the original spell, following Voladarsky's own instructions..."

I saw what appeared to be a young woman, with purple hair and striped, lavender robes. A golden, crescent moon bedecked one side of her cap. Just from her eyes I could tell that she had much of the same knowledge and wisdom as Odin himself.

I said, "Tell me, stranger, of your name and why I am here."

She blinked, surprised that I'd said something. After a moment, she shrugged and waved her hand. "Pointless. I changed the summoning spell so that you'll only be here for another second. Now, as I was saying..."

Another girl, this one wearing black and white and with straw-colored hair, spoke up. "Oh yeah, about that—when you weren't looking I tweaked the spell's duration. He'll be here for, uh...about a month, I think."

The silence that followed was most awkward.

The first girl sighed heavily and rested her face in her palm. "...and why did you do something like that?"

The second girl just scratched her head and grinned. "Well, you said it yourself—you can only really understand a spell once you've messed around with it. And the summoning spell looked kinda neat—"

"You weren't supposed to mess with thisone!" She waved her hand at me as she said, "What am I supposed to do with this now—"

"Ahem."

I saw a third girl, also with golden hair, but she wore clothes that were a variety of colors. She sat at a large round table, drinking something from a small cup. She looked at the other two, then at me, and said,

"I think we're being rude to our guest here."

The purple-haired girl made another exasperated sigh, running a hand down her face and pacing around in thought. After a moment, she stopped and turned to me.

"Fine. I'm Patchouli Knowledge, and you're here because I summoned you through a customized summoning spell."

Summoning? What was she talking about? I suppose my confusion was visible, because one of the other girls said, "I don't think he knows what summoning is—from what I remember, Norse magic doesn't have anything like that."

"Huh? Oh, right. Hrm..." The Patchouli girl took a moment to think, then threw a stream of words that me that made absolutely no sense. I managed to pick out things like "planar boundaries" and "space-time editation", but what they meant I had no idea.

After some time, the girl in black and white snickered. "You're going right over his head, Patchouli."

Patchouli grunted in irritation. "Well, how else am I supposed to explain it?" she said, throwing her hands up in defeat.

The other blonde sighed and stood from her chair. "That's enough, miss One-Week, I'll take over." She walked over to me and politely bowed.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Vafthrudnir. I am Alice Margatroid, the black-white one over there is Marisa Kirisame, and you're here because my purple colleague over there brought you from your world to ours. As for where you are...you are in Gensokyo."

Gensokyo...the word sounded completely foreign to my ears. I found myself also wondering how I understood their language, and especially how I could talk to them.

Alice continued. "As you might have heard, you weren't supposed to stay here for much longer than a few moments, but, well..." She glared at Marisa, who showed no hint of shame or remorse.

I said, "And once this sorcery's time runs out? What then?"

Marisa replied, "You're automatically sent back home, right where and when you left it. Handy, huh?"

I thought for a moment, and images of a worn, weathered hand, its owner eager for his prize, appeared in my mind. I said, "Could you not summon me once more, when my time here is run out? I do not wish to leave."

Patchouli shook her head. "Not possible. It took me six months of reagent gathering and preparation for this." She sat down at a table and began reading a sheet of parchment, while she motioned for a winged servant to begin cleaning the floor. "It'd take at the very least another five months after you go back home to bring you here again."

Marisa spoke up. "But why don't you wanna leave? Don't ya miss home?"

Alice shook her head. "Marisa...haven't you ever read The Sayings of Vafthrudnir?"

"I think so, yeah. Kourin read it to me one time when I was a kid. About how Vafthrudnir and Odin—oh. Oh.Huh. Geez, that really sucks, man."

As they talked about what to do with me, I looked at the three of them, then at the chamber I was in.

There I was, in a land I didn' know, brought at the whims of some girl, with just one moon's turnings to shelter me from death. I knew nothing of this place, or of what I could do to escape my predicament.

Did Odin carry this burden too? The knowledge that no amount of strength or wisdom can withstand death once it's foretold? Odin traveled far, sacrificed much, for just one more rune, a scrap of advice, to avoid the jaws of Fenris, the Mad Wolf of the Fens, and save his kinfolk...but the wisest knew that this was pointless, and Odin was the wisest of all. Odin, son of Borr, is to die at Ragnarok. His family are to die with him.

Would I die as well? Was my own Ragnarok destined to strike in one month's time?

I've traveled to many places, walked leagues and leagues in my lifetime. By now I must have traveled the length of Jormungand several times.

But I've never before felt so tired.

Next Verse: The Sayings of Witches

Author's notes:

I tried a little experiment at the beginning of the chapter, where I switch from an old-school style prose to a more modern one. This was designed to both reference the age of Vafthrudnismaland create a noticeable distinction between Vafthrudnir's world and Gensokyo. He's in an unfamiliar place, and to highlight this I tried to see if suddenly switching prose styles would create this sense of unfamiliarity.

Jotunheim, Midgard, Alfheim: These are, of course, three of the nine worlds that make up Norse cosmology. It was believed that the roots of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, connected all of them. Midgard, Asgard, and maybe Nifelheim are sufficiently important in Norse Mythology that they often appear in modern popular works that feature or reference Norse Mythology.

Voladarsky: is an entirely fictional fellow. Don't worry about it.

The Sayings of Vafthrudnir: This is the translated version of the title Vafthrudnismal.

Fenris, Jormungand: Two of Loki's most terrible children. Fenris is quite famous; pick any named notable wolf in modern fantasy and there's a good chance that he's named Fenris, or something like it. During Ragnarok, the Norse end-times, Fenris was destined to make the first kill in the epic battle between the gods and their enemies. That first kill was Odin. As for Jormungand, he was the giant serpent who was so long that he could encircle all of Midgard (aka Earth) at its widest and still be able to bite his own tail. He was destined to kill Thor. The point about Jormungand, of course, was to highlight how far Vafthrudnir has traveled. Speaking of which...

As far as I know, there's no reference in Vafthrudnismal to Vafthrudnir ever wandering around. But, to better draw the analogy between him and Odin, I retooled his backstory a bit so that, like Odin, Vafthrudnir had to travel far and wide to gain the knowledge he has by the time he dies. To my credit, in most of the Norse myths I know of, the protagonist must often travel far or even go on a quest if he wants to gain knowledge.