Odinn's Child

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To my holy and blessed master, Abbot Geraldus, it is with much doubt and self-questioning that I pen this note for your private attention, laying before you certain disturbing details which until now have been hidden, so that I may humbly seek your advice. In choosing this course I am ever mindful how the works of the devil, with their thousand sharp thorns and snares, lie in wait for the feet of the unwary, and that only His mercy will save us from error and the manifold pitfalls of wickedness. Yet, as you read the appended document, you will understand why I have been unable to consult with others of our community lest I sow among them dismay and disillusion. For it seems that a viper has been nurtured in our bosom, and our presumed brother in Christ, the supposed monk called Thangbrand, was an impostor and a fount of true wickedness.

You will recall, my revered master, that you requested of your unworthy servant a full and true inventory of all documents and writings now in our abbey's keeping. As librarian of our community, I began this task in dutiful compliance with your wishes, and during this labour discovered the above-mentioned document where it lay unremarked among the other volumes in our collection of sacred writings. It bears no identifying mark and the script is well formed, the work of a trained penman, so - may I be forgiven if I have committed the sin of presumption - I began to read, imagining to find recorded therein a life of one of those saints such as Wilfred of most blessed memory, whose shining and glorious example was so ably recorded by our most learned predecessor, the monk Eddius Stephanus.

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