Before we start, a large part of this chapter is based on a myth, which I will explain better at the end. Suffice it to say now, the parts of the discussion that confuse you are a game. A game that *I* do not know the rules to, and a game that I did not make up. I'm only repeating it here. On impulse. Because MY impulses are such good ideas.
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It was two days later that they came to the place. A cave in the cold, black stone. Thin smoke rose from the opening.
Frigga caught her breath and drew a little ahead of him.
Odin caught her wrist.
Wordlessly, she turned on him, pinning him with fierce, blue eyes.
"You will follow," he whispered.
Her eyes narrowed and she wrenched her wrist away. "My father –"
"You father," he hissed, "sent me to keep you alive. Have you so much as seen the like of this creature before? If you would do well by your dun you will follow me."
Sullenly, she drew back.
Odin went cautiously forward to the dark mouth of the cavern. Inside, he saw nothing but blackness. Blackness that beat with a heated pulse, deep in the back of it. Breathe hissed, low and far away and deep like the breathing of the land itself, barely discernable. He pressed a little, just to feel the depth of it.
Frigga's hand closed on his upper arm and he jerked. He'd forgotten that she was there. Her eyes were large in her face, frightened and starring into the living, pulsing dark.
Odin turned back to face it.
This. It was a place of strong enchantments. Strong magic. Foreign magic.
He pressed into it, tasting it with his soul. Reaching for it the way he might reach for a were-light to cup into his palm. It was a fierce thing, powerful.
And he longed for it, suddenly, with all the strength he possessed. He wanted it a part of him. Wanted it. Wanted it harnessed to his control. He would pay any price.
The breathing quickened and just beyond his touch he felt a spark – almost a consciousness but nothing like any that he'd felt before. So utterly foreign and immense as it woke and reared its head that it was all he could do to refrain from dropping to his knees on the cavern floor.
Something like laughter rippled through it. Deep in the throat and heavy with scorn.
The sound must have been audible, for Frigga's fingers tightened until her nails bit into his arm and that brought him back. The smell of the air. The firmness of the stone under his feet. The roughness of his own clothing against his skin. The sound of his breathing and of Frigga's. He couldn't lose contact with what was. If he did, all was lost.
Laughter again and Odin shuddered.
"Well met," the voice was low and dark and Odin opened his eyes to see that the cavern had become filled with light. It was shaped as the entryway to a Great Hall, very like the one Odin knew from his home. All crafted of gold with a wide, open space of floor. A staircase curled from an opening in a higher section of the cavern's wall, and a woman stood upon it. She was beautiful, with lush, black hair that hung loose down her back and a gown the color of old blood drawn about her. It was she who had spoken.
She smiled at him and her teeth were those of a predator.
He knew with a cold sort of certainty that should he draw near her, she would be his death. And yet that did nothing to quell his longing for her. He could not begrudge her that.
Her head tipped to one side, "It has been long since I have smelled one of your kind," she said. Her hair swung like a thick veil. "By what do they call you?"
"I am Bolverk," he said. He shook his head. Names had power. He ought to have known better. Even though it was not his true name, he ought to have refused.
But, a quiet voice sounded in the back of his mind, just out of the reach of the pulsing, reminding him that vulnerability, breeds its like.
He pressed farther, standing erect before her. "By what name do you allow yourself to be known?"
And she laughed, gently, in her throat, as she leaned into her elbow on the railing of the stair where she stood, "I am Vafthrudnir," she told him.
Distantly, Odin noticed that there were objects scattered about the room. Mounded coins and gems and rusted blades. Then, as he watched, a mound of rich fabric embroidered in gold faded to cleaned bones before the fabric again solidified in their place.
So, he thought, the enchantment runs thin.
"What is it that draws you here, Bolverk?" she asked. Her voice was deep and throaty. Not the voice of a woman, nor that of a man, either. But it was hard to remember that, when she spoke. She traced one finger on the rail, "My halls are not easy to reach."
"They are your halls?"
She laughed again, flashing her sharp teeth, "Of course."
"I have heard much of the wisdom of the one who had come here." The ground swayed delicately under his feet and he closed one fist to feel his nails bite his palm. Thought of the discomfort, as he spoke. "And the beauty. I came to see for myself if there was any truth to them."
She drew languidly back from the barrier, "What would so little a one as you know of Truth," she purred. Her eyes flashed, "Well," she smiled with her mouth, "Are your curiosities satisfied?"
"The tales fall, utterly, short."
She smiled the smile one gives a coy child. "You lie, Bolverk," she smiled, "It was not curiosity after tales that woke me," her lips spread, baring her teeth as she laughed, "You hunger for me. For my" she hissed, "…power.
"So," she clapped her hands abruptly against the railing. Black claws retracted on her woman's hands, like those of a large cat. "I propose a game. You know the way," she said, "you know the rules, I feel its knowledge in you. You know that if you win you may ask of me a boon, and that if I win," the smile spread, "your life is mine. But first," she frowned, and her eyes narrowed. "What do you know? Do you know the name of that stallion that draws the Day?"
Heat swirled in the space of the hall.
A game of knowledge, he thought.
"The name of that stallion is Skinfaxi."
Her claws clicked against the railing. "And what the name of that who draws the Night?"
Odin breathed deeply. The heat and the ponding made his head spin. "His brother, Hrimfaxi," he said, "draws the three-faced Night."
Her eyes narrowed, "And what is the name of that river that runs betwixt the giants and the gods?"
"Iving is its name," Odin straightened and the spinning subsided.
"And what," she smiled, "is the name of the field, a hundred miles square, where the last battle will be fought?"
"That field is Vigrid."
The woman was watching him, and behind her a curtain shifted in the rising heat.
Odin took a long breath that rasped in his throat. "And there will the Fire Giants vanquish the gods and the branches of Yggdrasil go up in flames."
Vafthrudnir stood a moment, watching him. Then she came down the stair. She gestured with a fluid motion of her wrist to a table that Odin had not noticed there before. It stood laden with food and candles that flickered in the wind of her passing and two chairs stood at it. One facing the far wall, the other facing the door.
"Sit," she purred, "eat. And we will talk."
She went past him, very close, and Odin shuddered. She took the chair facing him.
Which left one seat remaining. The wrongness of that cut through the haze all of a sudden and, recalling his companion, he glanced toward Frigga.
Seeing her was like a cold draft, pushing knife-like through the smothering heat.
Frigga's mouth was a thin line. She said nothing but pushed him to move forward. She herself, stepped back, carefully, to go around to the other side of the hall.
Odin could not fathom what it was she might be doing.
The woman's head tipped to one side. "What do you look at?"
She turned, but when she looked back to him she hadn't an answer and Odin realized through the heat and the haze that Frigga was hidden from her sight. Best to keep it so.
She shook her head and raised one hand to cut him off as he began to answer.
He came forward and took the empty seat across from the woman.
She sat back, "Begin, oh Wise One," she purred. Her nails clicked on the tabletop.
Odin watched her very levelly. He could no longer see Frigga behind her and he did not push to. He did not want to expose her to the woman's scrutiny.
Then he took a long breath.
And the game began.
"Say first, Vafthrudnir, for they say you are wise and you know, whence comes the earth below?"
She tipped her head and smiled very slowly, "An odd choice," she said, "To begin with that place. But," she waved one hand, "as you say. From the body of Ymir, father of the giants."
"And say," he leaned forward on his arm, blinking clear his eyes, "Vafthrudnir, for the people extol your wisdom, whence came the moon and the sun?"
She sat straighter, "They are the spawn of Mundilfari. He bore them and raised them and set them in the sky for the reckoning of time, the turning of the day and the night."
"Say, Vafthrudnir, for all tell of your knowledge, whence comes the day and night for them to turn?"
"Their sire, Delling," she purred, "Their dam, Nor."
He breathed deeply but the scent of the food only blurred his vision further and her face became that of a woman, beautiful beyond telling. "And say whence, Vafthrudnir," he pressed, "for thou art wise, come the Summer and the Winter that they travel between?"
She leaned forward with her elbows on the tabletop. She smiled, "From the loins of Vindisval, Winter's Cold, was Winter come, and from those of Svasud Summer sprang."
"Tell me," Odin held her eyes. She was pushing her enchantments, he could feel their workings about the room pull tight. He put his hand flat on the tabletop. Felt its firmness. "Vafthrudnir, if thou knowest more than I, from whence come the gods? And whence the giants?"
"Their sire is one," she said, "Bergelmir, son of Thrudgelmir whose own sire was Aurgelmir First-Made."
"Whence came Aurgelmir, Vafthrudnir? If thou truly art wise as the people claim." His chest ached for breath, without any obstruction he could find.
Her eyes flashed, and her hand caressed his on the tabletop before her. Her nails were jagged and black. "From the drops of poison out of the Elivagar that shoots up from the depths of the deepest Niflhel," she murmured.
"And how, being alone," he met her eyes and they held him, "did he beget children, Vafthrudnir? If thou dost know."
Giving a soft laugh, her dark mouth tipped upward at one side. "A man came from under his arm," she said, "and a woman from the other. One foot beget a six-headed giant on the second," she motioned fluidly with her hands, "and thus the children of Aurgelmir."
He looked at her a long time, until it seemed as though she thrashed with impatience. He felt the rise of her powers like the swell of an angry sea and he was sick with longing. But he would allow her no hold on him. He had the strength. "You are old, Vafthrudnir," he said, then. "What is the first thing that you remember?"
She tipped her head, "That is not the way of the game," she said, but she smiled and he felt a quick, coldness in the stuff of the air. "But as you ask I will oblige. I recall Bergelmir, climbing aboard a craft to save himself from the flood of his grandfather's bleeding. That was in Jotunheim and it was long ago, if you know the tales."
Odin sat back. The cold gave him further power and he drew away from her. "Much have I travelled, much tried, much tested the Powers. If you have heard tales, tell me of the sun to rise after the end of all things."
She watched him curiously as she spoke, "After the end the sun's daughter, Alfrodel, Elf-Beam will rise up from the bloodied sea."
"And tell me," Odin said, pushing forward again, flinging out the old pieces of the game, rising above the swells of her magic, "who are the maidens who will wing over that sea?"
"The daughters of Asgard and Jotunheim both, united in one blood. Three times three maidens will fly over Mothrasir's Hill."
"And tell me, Vafthrudnir," a new configuration. He was bold with his victory, "who are the ones who teach the way of runes to those who would know?"
She began to laugh, then, and the air shuddered.
Her power reared its full head and Odin felt he was falling, knew that that last had been a gamble too far and she would have the game. He knew that she would be his death.
And he wanted it with the strength of all he was.
She was beautiful. She was worthy of his life. She was fierce and powerful. She would kill him. She ought to. Supremacy should be hers.
He would go to her. If he had the Realms in his hands, he would give them all to her.
He…
He would go to her.
Then the cavern erupted in a scream that sounded like worlds being rent apart. The cavern was crumbling and the earth roared up underneath him.
The world turned in on itself.
When he opened his eyes, the Hall was gone, though the cavern yet was standing. The dark had run all out of it and the center was bathed in the thin light of the sun. He felt it going, sucking, clawing, dragging out into the day.
He'd forgotten, almost, that there was a world beyond.
He felt raw and aching through every part of him. Dizzy and stammering after what had been. His eyes flashed in fractured lights that stabbed deep into his head and the floor of the cavern rocked. Acid licked the back of his throat.
About the cavern lay the dragon's hoard, as he had seen though the glamor, clean bones, rusted weapons, tarnished gems.
He thought he might be sick.
And immediately before him, on the ground, with the light all gone out of its eyes, lay a dragon, the color of old blood. Frigga stood panting behind the back of its great neck, her legs straddling its throat, her arm slick in its steaming blood, her knife barely visible in the mess of it as it bubbled out of the creature's neck.
His heart lurched in his chest, keening within him that such a beautiful thing should be ended.
"You," he panted, "You killed her?"
"She would have killed us and ended the life of the Valley." Frigga's eyes blazed, though her voice was cold. "I did what you would not."
Odin let his head hang down. He stared at the ground between his hands. He knew it was true. There was no use arguing it. He'd been so wooed by the monster's enchantments that he would have died, had it not been for Frigga's action.
"She had great beauty," Odin said.
He heard Frigga's movements check as she stopped to stare at him. He did not look up.
"And power," he said, "We could have learned much from her."
"Are you telling me," she asked softly, "I did wrong?"
Odin pressed himself to his knees, "The rules of the game are clear," he said. "She was the victor. I owed her my life. And you killed her. You make me oath-breaker."
"You would die for honor to a beast?"
"Are we more than beasts without it?"
She drew back a little and her chin went up. "Yes," she said. "We are." She turned about in the doorway, "The honor that binds you is idiocy."
Odin shook his head, laughing a little in his throat.
"You mock?" she flashed, whirling back on him, slick blood dripping off of her arm and onto the cavern floor, "But for me we would both be dead and my father's dun ash. I will not regret that action."
Odin picked himself slowly up from the floor of the cavern. The scent of blood was thick on the air and his head spun. His hands shook, and he knew, if left to himself, he would have failed. He ought to thank her, but the death of so powerful a thing had caught on some part of his soul and threatened to drag him down with it. All of it mingled in his throat and made it hard to breathe.
Frigga did not speak to him again. Her eyes flashed and her mouth was grim as she strode out of the cavern and into the sunlight that Odin felt would pierce his eyes to blindness.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To wash."
"The blood," his voice was quiet.
She turned and looked at him, very blank.
"The blood is heavy with power," he murmured, almost more to himself, "The knowledge of the future, of the speech of the animal-kind, of magic…"
Her face, as he raised his eyes, was a map of disgust. "Would you drink it, Vegtam?" she asked, "Or bathe? I have magic in my blood also," she gestured hotly at the blood-spattered underside of her bare wrist, "Would you have that for your power?"
Weary beyond telling, he did not fight. "Would you not know?"
"I would not," she spat. "Your lust for it was nearly the death of us all. I would have no part in it if it was all between us and Ragnarok itself."
She vanished around a bend in the rock and left him in the mouth of the cavern.
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The myth I based this on is a contest of wills/wisdom between Odin on one of his many wanderings (I believe it's actually the one in which he goes by the name Vegtam, actually, but I may be wrong) and a giant (not a dragon) named Vafthrudnir (and, also, Vafthrudnir was male. But I liked this better). The story goes through these series of questions which I reorganized (in a few places) and paraphrased. Odin wins, and so Vafthrudnir lets Odin kill him and Odin…I guess…inherits his magic. Giants and Vanir had magic in the mythology. Any god who had it had it by theft or this kind of…game. It makes little to no sense to me, but as I was writing the myth just came into my head and I thought it was too fun to pass up. I feel like it gave a cool sense of the difference of their culture from ours.
Oh, and sinse I'm writing a long-ass note anyway, I should have noted earlier that Nidavelir is one of the realms, and it's the one where the dwarves live (though there is dispute among myth-nerds about that, and idk what Marvel thinks). In my head, the Vanir are a little like wood elves from The Lord of the Rings, and, thus, have a rivalry with the dwarves. And because dwarves and dragons go together… (that's how I explain the dwarves living underground. That the dragons made it unsafe to do otherwise). The Nidavel is a place in mythology that was supposed to either be a valley land in Nidavelir, or one adjacent to Hel, in Niflheim. Either way, I thought that was cool.
And the idea that a "mythic being's" blood/body parts could impart knowledge/super-human skills is common to MOST mythologies. And Thor has confirmed that it's part of the movie canon too in his shorts with Daryl. Look them up on YouTube if you haven't seen them. They're priceless.