Sosir the overseer, or the wound in the world

 Static sparks still fizzed though the hairs of the ombre Norn's fur. The gate he had travelled through closed behind him, and he dropped the Norn he had dragged along with him on the ground with a thud. Night, or perhaps darkness greeted him, and less than a moment later exhaustion overtook him with the even greater darkness of dreamless sleep.

Eventually hunger pulled him out of the depths. The warmth of a steam circulation pipe radiated to the heap of rags and hay he was laying on. A sneaky peek through his eyelashes showed a simple furnished room, clearly part of the ettin tunnels. The concrete and ettistone walls, the metal piping and furnishing all gave it away, but wood racks and cloth curtains fit the style poorly. The smells were perhaps that of lengthy occupation, earth, and of Jotnar.

The Norn-like comforts lowered Sosir's alarm somewhat. The temperature smoothed the knots in his weary muscles. He found some simple dry cakes by the nest, and ate carefully. He walked around the room, listening for hushed voices, something that would suggest whether he was someones guest or captive.

A set of rooms, warm and wel lit sat behind the curtain. The grand chamber was furnished again comfortably, with wood and roughspun cloth. Unnikar and a Jotnar were chatting comfortably on a bench in the sunlight. He sighed with relief; his question was answered well enough.

"Aha! The sleeping savior has awakened!" 

"Hah. Perhaps, Unnikar. I don't feel very awake yet. Do you remember me, or what happened?"

"I remember fire, churning blue portals. I recall you pulling me out of that madness into another one. Weightless, numb, and suspended in a weird endless falseness. Flashes of creatures, motionless or horrid, and of you again dragging me out of it. Hah, I remember so little, yet my debts are unforgotten!"

"No need call them debts Unnikar, you would have done the same. Instead I'd like to know where we are, and who our host is."

"We are in the walls of the great gash. Our host, the occupant of this home, is the respectable Eagr. He is the guide and archivist of the gash, and this village of exile Ettins, so he tells me. But you, both our gentle host and I would like to know your name as well!"

"I suppose we only met when you were under the sorcerors trance. My name is Sosir. I am only a traveller, no more. Good to meet you Eagr and Unnikar. Tell me of this great gash, I have not yet been there I think."

The youthfull Jotnar, Eagr, started then:"it is the great wound, the rend in the loop we live upon. Before here had been the warm and lazily rolling slopes of a gentle land, but only a Nornlife ago that land crumbled inwards, revealing the start of a cut that continues today."

Eagr and the Nornir stepped outside, onto a bamboo and rope porch that prove to be a balcony. Below it was a deep drop into darkness, out of sight. It spanned wider than Sosir could throw, but both sides were dotted with simple balconies and huts clinging perilously to the walls. It was, as Unnikar had said, a village filled with surpisingly mellow Ettins.

"It is difficult to recognise from other parts of the ring, but the great gash is immense. Even te Ettins, who travel up and down the rainforested length of the gash do not know the full extend of it, as it seems longer each time the journey is made. Once the ends of the gash meet the edges of our world, I believe it might all be over..."

The melancoly and hopeless attitude of the young Jotnar nauseated and unsettled Sosir. He looked at Unnikar, who met his eyes and seemed to feel the same way.

Sosir has lived on that lonely island for longer than he could have lived anywhere else, and spent an eternity in the warp before, he grew up on his pinewood covered homeplanet, but realised the ring is where he has lived the most, and knew and cared for the most creatures, despite his own nature.

They would see the cracks for themselves. He had build and repaired the strangest things, and here that experience and skillset might mean something.

Outside the hovel, bridges, walkways and rope trolleys connected the former tunnels in the walls of the gash. They made for a complex looking maze of interconnected rope, probably appearing more intricate than it really was.

He and unnikar set out into the distance of the gash. As they walked the wel traversed ridges and walkways Unnikar ruminated: "It is strange to know you only from a dream, Sosir. To remember only short visions face in nightmarish vistas. To think I have only seen flashes and remember even less, yet to you it was all very real. To live through horrors or to only dream of them is a great difference."

"My own bashfulness have put me on me on a road where such things seem unavoidable. But despite all I have seen I remain restless."

Sosirs face shifted with a sudden realisation, and a peacefullnes after that. A little hesitantly he concluded:

"I have come to accept it." 

The walkways were distributed unevenly, often in ramshackle state. Rope ladders lead to different levels, as did wooden elevators. Some times they travelled through ettin tunnels in the cliffwalls, and they learned quickly not all rope was of the same quality, and the moisture of the rainforest gash had rotted some older ropes Into untrustworthy and soggy brown bundles. 

A long route was taken through. They had little directions, but figured they needed none. The end of any branch of the canyon would be good enough to learn what caused them.

Sosir often looked up at the walls and down into the depths. He had become used to the openness of the island, where he could safely see far about him. The constantly looming drop besides them was another thing he had never expected to feel concious about. He spat down into it, shrugged and attributed the sensation to his age.

Their histories were little comperable. Where Sosir had left home abruply and indefinetly, unnikar had lived with his tribe until they had come under the sorcerors spell. The varied places Sosir had seen, and the otherness of the creatures he had spoken to were all new and alien to Unnikar. "In all my days I had not yet before seen another kind of Norn, or another kind of grendel besides the Rammers. Now I know strange creatures like Eagr and the Ettins."

The canyon itself was brimming with life. Trees clung to the ridges and jaggedly broken walls. The fruit and flowers attracted great amounts of bats and hummingbirds. Insects swarmed in great clouds of colour where the wind was still. Grapevines blanketed some of the chalky walls, and sunbathed ridges held stubborn olive and fig trees. The former sleepy hills that made this land must have been a haven, a place where life would come easy.

The silence beared upon Unnikar. The scale of the ring overwelmed him, and the scale of the problem and the existencial threat made his gut heavy with great dread. "Can we do anything about this instability, anyway? This gorge is in a way the problem, and it is so large that one could get lost and wander though it for an entire lifetime. How can to Nornir control something so great?"

Sosir kept his pace and kept his eyes on the ledge. He shrugged. He clearly didn't know either.

Camping was often difficult, when no suitable tunnel could be found a narrow ledge had to suffice. The tunnels in turn were usually damp and unhealthy when available, now the conditioning systems are out of service. Fruit and seed was however plentyful, and they kept their pace consistant.

The last walkways had been a days walk away. Some of the soil and rock on the walls was barren and newly cracked now. 

The crack was fresh here. Piping in the wall still oozed with black and raw smelling petrichor, and the pale milky lifeblood of the ring seeped from other tubes. Water gushed out of giant pipes, yet this seemed to never abate, as these artificial waterfalls could be found all along the gape.

A rusty slime covered all metal struts and piping. When sosir lived and worked on a barge with Ettins he had asked about the possibility of such a thing existing, a question that the Ettins had ridiculed him for. Yet, here it was. Piping and strutting foamed and dissolved under the reddish brown slime. The metal framework of the world and the ettin tunnels through it had been digested and dissolved, leaving brittle chalky stone and cement to collapse into itself.

The cause had been found, though not yet the solution nor culprit. 

They camped out in the furthest accessable reach of the gorge. Nightfall set them on edge, taking turns to watch the gorge as the other slept.

To no avail. Through the night the chasm widens, as more supports are eaten. While it might take several nights for the damage to progress a few yards, it was constant and branched out over several gorges. Throughout the night both are frequently woken by the noise of collaps, and with the earliest light they left for the ramshackle village again.

They march their arduous journey back, perilously clinging to the cliff walls. Sosir watches for the metal mold as they travel, but to his relief it seemed to shun sunlight.

They passed under one of the bridges that spanned the depth. A small, diverse village of exiled grendels clung to the underside in leathery tents and hammocks. Like a nest of fat spiders waiting for prey they patiently sat. Their attentions were aimed fully upwards, and the two nornir passed safely.

They passed a waterfall of surface water, and found it to be a welcome change from the brackish waterfalls from the torn piping. They filled their waterbags and drank their absolute fill. "I wonder if I could return to my tribe and feel fulfilled again as a scout." Unnikar broke the quiet. Sosir threw a rock at the opposing side, coming short a few yards. "The fire forest is a long way from here, Unnikar. If you may be lucky and crafty enough to make it back, you might just be content to live safely and to live at all."

As the pair returns to the village they meet with Eagr and the available Ettins. Eagr notes all sosir tells him, partly because of his nature, in part because the nornirs hopefulness is infective. The ettins living in the gorge are effectively outcasts, but such things mean less to the almost eusocial creatures. Sosirs suggestion of simply cleaning the metalmold by hand would be an immence chore, were it not that the entire community of cleaner, worker and tunnel ettins was effictively at their disposal.

As the days pass sosir travelled and worked all over the gorge, in every branch and reach. Worker cohorts of ettins scoop, scrape and mop up every drop of the slimey reddish brown foam. Bottles, buckets and jars of the sludge are mixed with caustic ashes, killing it and rendering it inert. The Ettins promised to dry the mixture and deppse it in the ancient recycling ovens.

Though the ettins were still uneasy with Sosirs presence due to his earlier transgressions, they respected his work ethic and efficiency. Respect soon took the upper hand, and before the mold had even been fully removed they named him honorary taskmaster. He knew well enough though that the crisis was what kept them from detaining him, but proudly thought of how he had grown since he first worked with ettins, ages ago at the endlessly rebuilt barge.

Reports came to him of several possible causes of the mold. Two instances of a captured grendel came to him, bothe were metallophagus grendels, caught in the moldy, damp caves near the sludge like river on the bottom of the gorge. A recent threat to small metallic instruments, the oddities had come from stray warp portals and lived out of sight in seclusion. They however, ate metal directly and were ruled out by Sosir and the Jotnar.

The other probable hint at a cause was more of a rumor. The tunnel ettins were usually stoic and level headed, but some of the cohorts had talk among themselves about a pale ghost of an Ettin, furtive and uncatchable in the deepest tunnels by the gorge.

Unnikar, the often unexpected champion of camouflage volunteered to confirm the sightings. He functioned mostly as a messenger while the cleanup was ongoing, and had too little technical experience to supervise the ettins. In short: he was bored and hoped for action. Action Sosir was very ready to share. The ettins managed themselves now that they had their instructions, and Sosir knew the mold had spread faster than it could have naturally.

Sosir teached Unnikar how to boil water and make tea along the way, and they ate the traditional magma norn cookies as they travelled. The ceramic kettle the Ettins had made on sosirs instruction while the mold was being removed proved quite usefull in making stale water palateble, and Eagr had told him which plants the ancient shee used for tea.

When they arrived they learnes the caves were, to their surprise, not all former ettin tunnels. Many passages were cut crudely, or showed signs of chemical melting. The mold was still active there and they made a mental note of it. Reports from the tunnel Ettins were sure of the locations cleanliness.

They hid out by a great pool of the metal mold. It dripped down from foaming supports in the ceiling, a feature that would attract attention. They snuffed their wavering candle, ready for a long wait in the damp warmth of the cavern.

A silent and uncomfortable time was spent on the unyielding rocks. The dripping and oozing echoed endlessly, a noise that seemed louder with each every passing moment. Mesmerising and constant, the dripping had dulled their senses. With an unexpected suddenness they both noticed the things lapping and scooping at the rusty brown pool. In the dark the things were well camouflaged, and nigh invisible. Their carefull motions had kept the noise low, but a sudden change in attitude betrayed that they had sensed the two hidden Nornir.

Brashly, Sosir dashed forward, tackling one of the creatures. The eyes were on wide stalks, its skin rubbery and yielding and the tentacles tipped with suckers. 

For a moment the Gestr and the Norn stared at each other, the other Gestr and Unnikar all unsure what to do next. With a sudden flash, the caves were lit, and soon after the dark was back. 

Unnikar was alone in the cave. The echos were again all that remained.