Soso's ascent out of the sump

 Soso felt great nausea upon him once more. No different then when he stepped out of the portals, he had felt like this since he had set foot on the derelict ship. After weeks, perhaps longer, on top of the forever dancing waves his feet were no longer accustomed to torpid soil.

The state of the ship itself gave him no relief either. Rather than the mad handbuild amalgamation of wood and scrap the ettins had continuously constructed, this ship appeared to him like the unrotting carcass of a leviathan from the alien depths he had just left behind. He climbed onto the monumental thing, if only to escape the cold seawind. He found an entrance, though it was better described as a torn wound in the vessel’s hull. The smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant water rose to his nostrils and his reluctance to enter the darkness increased greatly.

The entrance gave ingress to the middle of a hallway. Due to the slanted position of the scuttled leviathan one way went down as the other direction went upwards. Following his recent adventures the choice was easily made and Soso followed the path leading up into the bulk. The chill and the salty smell of the sea outside slowly made way for a steaming dampness. The end of the corridor shone with faint light as he climbed up.

The faint light turned out to be filtered through a dirty low dome and broad leaves on stunted trees. Besides insect life and things slithering in the tardy smelly streams soso noticed no trace of larger animals. The thick undergrowth made his travel upward difficult and the soil felt spongy onder his feet. Despite the growth and life around him he felt uneasy and almost laughed when another corridor took him out of the unnaturally slanted sump. The walls of the ship were slick and clean like an insect’s carapace, though his sense of unease did not disappear.

The corridors branched and turned, often ending in dead ends or in rooms of which soso could not interpret the use of. Sometimes small round windows showed sunlight, and it was clearly diminishing with the coming evening. He had been hiking for a long while now, and understood he had underestimated the size of the leviathan. He foynd a relatively small room branching from yet another dead end corridor, and decided to rest until the next morning.

He found moldy but dry leaves and grasses and did not think too much of how they got there. From his makeshift bed he thought of the fishmeal porridge he had eaten when he was with the ettins, and even more of the oatberry mash he ate with his tribe. He would go to sleep hungry, and did not want to think of having to fish a meal out of the slimy streams in the marsh the next day.

He thought hunger had awakened him to the pitch black around him, but in the distance of the corridor he heard an echoing, sucking sound. Though he smelled nothing but the mold of his bedding and the dust of the abandoned chambers the advancing sound still seemed to originate from something large. A suspicion of danger made his hair stand on end and as his eyes were of no use in the nightly darkness he knew a confrontation was a mad risk. Sneaking on the padding of his feet he made his way by touch to a machine and slowly clambered up it as quietly as he could.

While he still could sense no smell to speak of, by hearing he could surmise something as big as him, or even as a grendel rummaged through his bedding, patted the area as if searching for something, and made its way out again. Soso held his breath even as he heard the sizable thing retreat, slopping with every step as it went. He slept the half-sleep of an anxious night atop of the machine. As soon as the weak sunlight of morning shone through the salt encrusted glass he left the trapping corridor in a silent haste.

Soso stuck to his initial direction, regardless of how the corridors twisted. Eventually he had to end up in the top of the craft, from which he would oversee the situation and seek a way out. Another marsh had intersected the hallways and again thick plantlife, stinging pests and waist deep sludge had halted his ascent. The heat was even greater here and the gnarly knotted trees gave him no sweet connotations to the proud pines he grew up amongst. Once again he noticed the lack of critters and beasts, though he now had an idea what had caused it. The thing that had clearly sought him the night before had left inky trails through the tunnel-like insides of the ship, a trail which he made sure to avoid where possible.

A short halt to rest his feet, catch a sour and wet breath, and to figure out whether the things he foraged in the alien land were edible. He harbored no illusions whether they would be palatable, but the growling of his stomach made a convincing argument over his disgust. Some biting pest with more wings than it should need, a wormlike body and a hard outside, succulent leaves and some nuts, and at last a large and pale thing he pulled from the slimy mud, veiny with a needle filled mouth. It’s smell was even worse than the look of the thing, yet even if he wouldn't eat it he felt no remorse for ending it.

After eating just some of the bitter nuts and greasy leaves he heard the sound that had made his night uneasy as it were. It was not as loud this time, muffled by the compost covered floor and the sounds of the contained, echoing bog around him. He heard it clearly enough to make his fur stand on end. Soso peered into the fog and the dripping foliage around him, but struggled to find the source of the sound. He held the pale, stinking thing by its breathing tube, having quickly decided it made a better makeshift weapon than a makeshift meal.

Something heavy and powerful hit him square in the back, sending him face down into the mud. An instinctive anger shot to his head, strenghtened by fear and humiliation. Rolling through the mud back up, soso bounced back at his assailant. His impromptu weapon swinging with his fluid motion, the pale thing burst like an overripe fruit or a pustule. Acidic bile covered the formless tar-like fiend, stunning it with pain. Returning the favor, Soso kicked the squirming beast down to the ground before fleeing in the fog.

Hastily making his escape he plowed through the undergrowth. Despite his common sense telling him to run it felt cowardly to flee from something already howling in pain. The feeling of humiliation and anger was beginning to slow him down, though his reason quickly returned to him when the slopping sound returned behind him. Nothing natural could recover that quickly from such an assault, and he alone would not win a fight with that unnatural enemy. Struggling his way through the brambles tore at his fur, but he made sure that despite his haste and the steam he would still move up.

The wals narrowed until he was funneled unto a wide corridor. It was darker in there than in the domed swamp, but he was unsure wether is assailant was still on his heels. The smell in the hallway was more raw than it was in the swamps and it seemed to originate with the oozing stream that ran through its center. It appeared only a little more fluid than honey and soso made sure not to step in it while running up the path. 

The end of the corridor was blocked by a heavy and broken down bulkhead. Something Soso certainly could not accept, still feeling his battered back after the single punch the dark thing delivered to him. The ooze came through an opening between the two heavy, inwards fallen doors and putting his shoulder to one and praying to his blood, ancestors and the stars he managed to squeeze through before the doors’ snapped closed behind him.

Covered in the molasses like ooze and with his entire body aching with exhaustion, Soso teetered on the edge of passing out for a moment before he caught his breath. He had expected darkness, or at best the light of outside windows. Instead the blue glow of screens flickered around him in a very large and orderly chamber. Spots of light lead his eyes along the trickle of ooze to the center of the hall where something moved, slowly. Along the path to this pedestal he found dessicated offerings and kneeling and prostated nornir, mummified in eternal worship. 

Tardid a pointed face on a long slender neck turned to him, looked at him with bulbous eyes and with a steady monotonous voice said: “Do you approach in pilgrimage, little norn?”

With disgust, Soso looked back at the mechanical creature. Like his assailant it had no smell to speak of, its movement and even its life appeared very unnatural to him. From a gash on the pedestal, slightly below the neck, the oozing ripe petrichor bled. From this wound the ecosystem on the juggernaut was fed.

“Its seems you have servants enough, stone adder. What is the black thing outside, is it born of that oozing wound of yours?”

“Its tarry black is nothing like my life giving blood, blunt Nornir. I accepted it through the warp when my chosen ones grew silent. I had hoped it would be something like myself, but its only interest is to feed.”

“So I have noticed. All that life you bleed into the world has gone from your mind I'm sure.”

A loud noise rang like a bell behind him and the heavy bulkhead shifted a little, letting more of the stream through again. A shape in the darkness suggested it did not shift of its own volition. He looked back at the slow, metallic creature. He would feel sorry for the deluded and damaged thing, were it not that it was responsible for his current danger. 

Soso took the machines slender neck in his hands, ignoring the confused and dazed look in those mechanical eyes. “If your head cannot fix the problems you have caused, I will use it instead.” He said in an angry irony as he began to pull. Sirens rang and the screens flashed in bright lights around him, the head flopped and twitched a worm above ground, but with a squelch and a rip the thing came loose, with which the entire ship fell silent. Holding it like a flail or heavy whip he stood waiting in the darkness for the worst yet to come.

The bulkhead shifts one last time, and again the heavy sucking footsteps he heard. They home in on him with a steady gait and Soso readies his weapon, tensing his arms, clenching his paws around the severed cables as it is held over his shoulders ready to strike.

A strike which never falls, a tremendous crack shakes the ship and with a shock the leviathan mass shifts, breaks and shifts again in an implosive collapse.

Again water was all around, a cloud of bubbles swirled about him, though quickly enough he was standing again. Standing in the unpleasantly cool and salty water, still holding his improvised weapon he saw he had been thrown clear of the gray, scaly, still collapsing mass that had been a metallic hulk before. The pedestal, screens and gadgets were strewn all over the bank. It seemed the artificial adder had held more control over the ship than he gave the delusional thing credit for.

One of the gadgets he recognized. It must have been the one that had admitted the tarlike devil onto the ship. He pushed it, knowing it would take him away. He no longer dared to hope, but he prayed to the stars that at least it would be a place he could understand. He glanced back over his shoulder. Clear against the pale blue sky stood his jet black antagonist, hulking over its now ravaged hunting ground. As he sandbank was washing towards the sinking leviathan beneath his feet, he scoffed as he fell again through the blue swirl.