Sosirs journey: Epilogue

 The mossy and comfortably cool workshop was relatively still. Some worked on small repairs, others were writing up their reports for the day. A few were relaxing and winding down, taking comfort in the earth-like smells on the evening air, moist as if a light rain had yet passed over. 

It was still enough, right up to the moment a tiny blue fleck appeared in the halls center. The tiny blue dot was a well known harbinger the occupants all knew frustratingly well. They scrambled to grab their work, weight down their notes and even duck for cover! A brutal howl of winds gushed through the forested workplace, blasting out from the now growing bright cyan dot. Henry held fast to his report, and a solid stone pedestal, grayish green with ancient lichen, to prevent himself from taking involentary flight.

With a clear brass tonal note, the gusts of racing air finally stopped. The portal stabilised, and the workshop and its inhabitants settled once again.

Tall and slender, a robed figure stepped through the gate. "Not once have I arrived here to find it organised. You always say we shee were disorganised, but never a look at yourself!"

Henry rolled his eyes. He knew the others did too, he did not even need to look. They had the same discussion over and over, but their patron just did not seem to get it. They ignored the comment and commenced the cleanup. It had become a standard fare at the shee's arrival. 

He held the report out. Their patron had quite a few interests, and the massive ring shaped space station was merely a sidenote to him. An experiment he almost never personally interfered with. That report contained the lives and deaths of untold many Nornir, Ettins and Grendels.

"Ah Henry! Always on time and well prepared. Any important changes of note before I read the report?"

"A well, the newcomers are still gnawing at the roots of the world, so to speak. The banshee poking and tugging at the fabric of reality had met his match in his own experiments. Oh, and the traveller, the agent of change, has slipped out of this experiment's scope. That should cover the gest of it."

"Surely you dont mean to say Song has passed? Tracking his ancestry out from his journeys in the warp had been difficult enough but the change his wanderlust wrought to a stalled world was very welcome!"

The callous carelesnes towards the passing of racial kin, and the potential destruction of the ring-world barely phased Henry. His patron was just distracted like that, it was only his nature.

"I take it you mean Sosir, sir? As the subjects tend to call him? He has finally entered a warp portal, as he was sprone to do. Perhaps not entirely volentary, but it will make for a grand story to the subjects."

A look of dissapointment came over the slender scientist. 

"I see. Thank you Henry, I suppose that is for the best anyway. The good Norn had somehow uplifted most of the subjects despite his own almost savage nature. Did you know he teached the subjects the parts of a high tea?" 

Henry nodded a little. "Did he now, boss?" As the head of the doozer department he had written, edited and redacted all reports and knew almost every detail of life on the ringed ship. The Shee however enjoyed to ramble about these little peculiarities. His patron did not answer. He was clearly submerged into the report, enjoying the latest adventures as if it were a bi-weekly periodical, not the lives of hunderds of thousands of living creatures.

Henry returned to his observation teams. He passed the great observation window, outside of which was the weightless outer ring of their little substation. The once small Nornir Anlong now circled that outer ring in the form of a benevolent, stone-scaled dragon deity. Henry recalled the time Sosir had passed this window and had stared him straight into the eyes. 

The observation team had hover cameras droning through the skies of the ring, observed via telescopes and long range audio equipment. They greeted their supervisor in good moods. The fall of the sorceror, the occult banshee, the warp twister, had brought at last a promise of stability amoung the Nornir and Ettins. With the great and chaotic relocation of Grendels, the stability also did not promise to be stale. "G'day chief. How was the boss today?" "Same old, same old, Sammy. So how life down in the city?"

The city effectively was no more. Though the buildings mostly still stood, the interior had been razed, plundered or burned. The Ettins had spread out across the land, and many were adapting to a more primitive lifestyle. The Grendels now roamed the land in predatory clutches, hunting critters, bugs and otherwise eating everything not rooted down.

One tower stood almost in the heart of the cities husk. That square spire rose forlorn ofer the others, and inside a small traumatised Ettin freed a tall strong Nornir and a somewhat raggidy Jotunn. All had witnessed great horror and great sacrifice only moments before and they found themselves unharrassed by the Grendels as they left. The Jotunn would return to his library almost immediatly, bringing the Ettin along as an assistant. The Nornir instead felt obliged to fulfil a request, and search out those that ate away at the foundation of his world, abstract as it seemed to him.

Henry would keep an eye out for the Nornir. To bring about change was in the creatures genes, even if travel was not.

Other observations had been focused on the tear in the world. The great ravine that had appeared where before the pastoral eden of the mediterranian climate had been. An insecure white Jotunn had worked with a clutch of Ettins to prevent the world from splitting there, and a magma Norn scout had led a campaign of extermination against the culprits. Word of mouth among the Ettins had resulted in plenty of workforce to clean up the caustic bacteria that ate the metal, as well as repair crews to mitigate the damage. Sosirs name, however had convinced Nornir to join the magma norn, Unnikar in that small war. He tought them to make tea and bake bisquits, like his friend had done for him. The walls of this rift were now heavy with huts, and though perhaps this city was temporary, it showed that a common goal could have Nornir and Ettins live together.

Small hamlets and towns were now thriving over the entirity of the ring. The edge of the great mudflats now was home to a great tribe of Civet Nornir, their poled houses safe from the twice daily floods and their fields raised from the super fertile filth. Their food reserves feeding more and more tribes of the ring, and their constant struggle against the changelings slowly yielding them ground and safety. Evil things still slithered from the horrid mud, but with none of their own assisting these things they would eventually overcome those formless things.

A formerly small community of purple mountain Norns had collected allies from nearby towns. A small militia still bore the name of Sosir, and they saw the threat of both the plains Norns and that of the Gestr, the alien gardeners that more and more corrupted the world around them. A small Nornir, still very young, could not be torn away from the watchhouse. The ombre thing sought to learn all he could of the fight, of the world beyond and of how to live in it. His father Selwin, a tender and calm Ettin who swore he had been a Norn once, knew the little Norn would in time be a journeynorn. One to never truly settle down, perhaps even inspire long-after told stories. He saw his little town rise up into a pallisade surrounded fort, and knew the world would need such Norns, it could simply not be helped.

A light rain awakened a dour, greying Norn. The ombre fur on his chest was patchy with scars, a constant light burning another reminder of a past life. He sat up, stiff with the cold moisture of his new surroundings. The stone on which the warp had vomited him was sharp and porous. Fiery colours of autumn foliage surrounded him in coniferous life, and in the distance below the distant din of clashing waves sounded. Grey skies above and a haze of afternoon fog greeted him, as did a watery sun above. Jagged peaks in the naval distance, equally dotted with foliage as his current foothold was. 

The warp had held him long enough to heal, to live and start again, once more. Sosor blinked as het witnessed mall dots of blue glow open and close in the distance on the peaks, and nearby on the land he himself stood. A wide variety of ombre colored Nornir stepped through, showing both heritage of purple mountain norns and hardmans. He had no idea how long the warp had held his unconcious form, but this time he would start again as the father of a people, never again alone.

The end.