Soso and a destination below

 Almost instantly after he stepped into the portal, the umber norn stood on solid ground again. Again he felt a strong nausea and vertigo but as he waited for it to wear off, it did not disappear completely. 

Soso looked around him. An odd combination of metal tubes, timber and glass made up the hall around him. What he could see of the horizon through the glass shifted and turned rhythmically and a new, fresh scent carried in the air. The horizon itself seemed to be a mirrored sky, and the air smelled like sweat without the sourness of fatigue.

His nausea remained constant as he wandered through senselessly constructed halls. However solid the ground he stood on seemed, it swayed and rolled like a treehouse in the wind. The confusing architecture seemed to worsen his ill feeling, as every way he went appeared to go downward despite the horizon remaining constant.

He roamed the artificial burrow aimlessly, hoping to find a way out or a meal, until he heard the clangor of construction. The source was easily found, and turned out to be small but quite alien. The pale beings had doll eyes and missed their tail. Though they spoke little their voices sounded deep and hollow. The creatures appeared as if a hatchling made a clay doll and life had been breathed into it.

As wary as his recent ordeal with the crowned grendels had made him, these diminutive creatures could not be dangerous and they ignored him totally in favor of their work. This work consisted of endless reconstruction of the bizarre halls, soso concluded as he watched for a while.

Soso wandered the mad halls for a time, eating the gray puree the small workmen did, and sleeping in their hammocks while they worked. All of them seemed to constantly tear down and rebuild the village in new strange ways. Soso had concluded it was a vessel, a barge of sorts, though he had never seen that much water before. The only thing that was never torn down was a large elevator, a bell hanging over a dark pool in the heart of the barge.

Every day different teams would work on it, and frequently soso watched them on his hikes. Soso’s wounds had healed and he was searching for the way out of the factoreous limbo fate had caught him in.

“Hello good stranger nornir, would you care to speak with me?” 

The words startled Soso, for he had accepted the creatures as living automatons rather than conscious beings. 

“Pines! You startled me little man! Sure, I’m happy enough to speak, it has been forever since I’ve heard the words of another!”

The cream colored artisan did not change his expression. “It seems you do not work. You eat our meal and sleep in our quarters, but despite your size and strength never assist in tearing down or reconstructing the final ship.”

“What for? Your kind ignores me, the food I need and therefore take. What purpose do the endless reconstructions serve? I desire to continue my journey, not rust in endless labor.”

“We toil because we need to go down, good nornir. Every fiber in my body tells me so, and all of my tribe concur. As one group works to finish the final elevator, all others work in solidarity, and little other work exists on these endless waves.”

Soso weighed the words and found them sensible enough. He needed something to keep his body strong and fit while he thought of an egress, and perhaps this lift was just that.

“Fair then, my artisanal friend. I will take up employment amongst one of the crews. As you’ve taught me about the grand goal and the ways aboard your township, can you teach me your name and that of your kind?”

“Mine is Aoi, good nornir. We call ourselves the ettin. I am glad to have spoken to you. You can report to the band marked with a 3. Yua leads them.”

The ettin went back to work, leaving Soso somewhat unexpectedly alone. He had thought to be asked for his name. He shrugged. This was none of his kin, nor even a norn, little good could come from strangers and he wanted as little as possible to do with them.

Yua told him what to do, and how to do it. The ettin was patient in an uncaring way. While the heavy labor strengthened him, the days went on. In time crew three was assigned to work on the bell shaped elevator, and though he knew little of the specialist work, his strength was of great help with moving great parts.

Unpleasant and large things swam in the water below the diving bell. Soso watched them while he worked. Some formless thing swam past with a surprising speed for such an awful hulk. Yua had seen the beast too, but shook his head and worked on.

“You and your kin are madder than the eyes in the moon, yua. I fully wish my fate was separated from yours.”

“But it is, nornir. You’re still fully free to brave the sea alone.”

Soso in his turn shook his head. Days crawled on in labor and the barge shrank while it yielded materials for the diving elevator. Eventually, and uneventfully, it was finished. Large enough to hold all ettin crews, and one unenthousiastic norn. Filled with almost all supplies of the barge and underwater suits for all passengers, the barge itself was abandoned to the waves above when the elevator submerged into the dark waters.

Soso learned of new emotions then. His breed were known for fearlessness and stoicism in the face of danger. But soso found himself completely powerless in this situation. The water was an invincible enemy, and the beings that swam the cold oily depths could not be fought by a thousand nornir. He felt anxiety, a helpless fear he could do nothing against. The ettins stood at the windows and had no eye or interest for anything but the way down, a handicap which the norn to his dismay did not suffer. He saw blackness around them deepen, and stranger and stranger beings circled their artificial bubble.

After time that his fears endlessly lenghtened, a great shock stopped the descent, and jet black clouds blinded the windows. The ettins were quite excited as they were putting on their suits. Soso sat in the middle, tried to find his calm where his helplessness had filled him with an adolescent anger. When he had refound it the silty clouds had receded. The ettins were leaving through the elevator’s airlock, marching into the water’s black mist in a single file. Soso watched them from the window as one of the suits failed and crumpled like a bug underfoot. None of the ettins stopped, and they stumbled on, blindly following their one bizzare instinct.

Soso gave in to his anger. He tore loose a pipe and smashed the entire interior of the bell until tiredness left him again on the floor, his ears ringing and his arms heavy with senseless effort. This situation could not be resolved with anger. Nothing could, he was totally dependent on fate. He had trusted the ettins, went with the flow while they had trusted their instincts. Now he realized he should have taken his own way, it was too late. He could not operate the complex bell on his own.

Soso made himself comfortable in the bell. The lights were slowly failing but the air still breathed easily. Outside the black sea slime rolled over the fallen ettin, and the bell shifted somewhat. Slowly the tracks in the slime fell from view as the bell moved over the bottom. At first this alarmed soso, but he soon understood the waves played with the barge above, and he was dragged along with it. He ate some of the gruel the ettins left behind in their exodus and took some shut-eye the excitement of the descent had robbed him off.

A twisting fall abruptly awakened him. The bell was turning all around him and all he could do was hold on. Debris and supplies were falling all around him and battered him with every turn. He surmised that the elevator cable had snapped and the ocean had taken hold of the vessel as if it were a children's toy. 

Soso held on for his life in the darkened vessel, but later came to from a daze while faint light shone through the windows. From the windows he saw motion, and at a distance between the sea weeds he thought he saw ettins. Both blue and green ones, with a fin solidly planted on top of their head. The light flickered through the waves and they were gone.

The bell lightened as parts broke off, and after a few days of both stormy tides and relatively calm but anxious moments the vessel came to a standstill on a sandy bank just a few feet from the surface. Soso opened one of the hatches and swam outside. He felt light in his head after breathing the musty air for days and even the wet and saline breaths were like the freshest pine air to him. The bank was scattered with gadgets as far as his eyes could see, like a giggling god’s playground. Raising his head above the water line he followed the trail of debris to a scuttled ship, seemingly too big, too heavy to float and certainly not shaped like any shape he knew.

The ettins, be they suited or waterborne, could stay in the water for all he cared for. He had seemingly failed the stars’ second test but a third test would be much preferable to staying in the water with his failing.