The Prodigals Return...
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 7751
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As the Norns turn, their song grows silent. The faces of the three women
do not budge, their visages as steadfast as the mountain rock the great
tree Ygg makes its roots in. A foreign presence has come to the source of
the universe, the land where only the dead go to hear the thrumming of the
pulse of creation. Unflinching, the Norns watch as a fell mist creeps into
their sanctum, carrying them away with it. Slowly, the mist clears, and the three women who may well be the weavers of all fate--or simply the chroniclers of the ancient and long history of time--find themselves in a place that is not a place. A queer little pocket-world, a space between the spaces that men walk, it is not on any but the most esoteric and arcane of maps. Then again, few of the places the Kindly Ones walk are known to men. Before them in this strange gash carved out of the void between the worlds is an assemblage most eclectic, four figures that are not unknown to the Norns. However, Urd, Skuld, and Verdandi had not expected to see these four again, especially not together. One of them was arrayed like a demon, bristling with barbed chains and carved bone spikes, its face a page out of a child's nightmare. The next bore the face of an angel, and glowed, eldritch energies crackling, rippling, undulating along its form. It was clad in white, and its feet seemed to shun the ground, as it hung roughly six inches in the air. The third shimmered and wavered like a mirage, constantly being destroyed and reborn in a new form. The fourth and final figure stood anassumingly dressed, clad in greys and browns. He never blinked, never made a movement save when it led to a desired result. The very air about him seemed to still and stagnate, captured by a curious localized natural law. He held a book under one arm. The mirage-creature would not go near him. "So," the first of the three women says plainly, "you have come back to us." "Yes. We have," the grey man answers without emotion. The demoniac figure holds up a grissly trophy, a severed woman's head, the scalp shaven clean. Upon its forehead was an oddly shaped scar, the remnant of an old brand in the shape of an arcane symbol. Her lips had been sewn shut with a leather thong and awl. "We have a few questions about your dealings with this... rather dead demoness," states a voice emanating from the core of the ever-shifting figure. The other figures nod in agreement... Lady Andrea Croix sat and pondered the course of events which had brought her to this point, and found herself wanting for explanations. As nearly as the young noblewoman could tell, something had seized her magic just as it had started welling towards the surface, twisting it. It had hurt. Immensely. Who was the man in the grey clothing? He had simply shown up, acting like he owned all of them. So cold he was, so casual. She didn't like him. He may have cured Astra, true. At least he had claimed to. There was no telling. How was she to know to believe him? Astra had changed back because the sun was out here. There was no knowing whether she was really cured until the full moon came again. No reason to trust the stranger, she thought to herself, not after he killed Lord Frederigo D'Honaire so casually. Astra would be no help, though. For the first time, the warrior woman seemed off her guard, and trusted those around her intrinsically. Andrea would have to strike out on her own. She knew it had to be that way. Deep in space, a no-longer derelict spacecraft has engaged its drives and is already plotting a course to the remote moonbase the Race has cultivated on Phobos. In a sealed cabin, the Magistrate paces nervously as it watches the ship set out on its course, knowing what it would have to do when it arrived. Its membership in the cult of Yith'cha hadn't meant much to it at the start. It had just been a way of spitting in the Emperor's eye, an act of private rebellion. Its parent had been of the Yith'cha, and had been killed during the purges when the Emperor ascended, first to the throne, and then to "godhood". It had wanted revenge, but to openly defy the Emperor meant death. The path it had chosen was the sect that had gotten its parent killed. It did not regret it. It hadn't, though, believed the prophesies of the cult. Not for a second. It realized now the severity of its choices. The cult had been the original religion of the Race, before the Emperor declared the state religion. It had also been, apparently, the one with a smattering of truth to it... The three women regarded the four figures with silence, then, Urd, the Norn called Fate, spoke. "You presume much to accuse us, godling." "We presume nothing," the grey-clad figure stated, "We have our charges. We rule existance. You will answer for your transgressions, or we will destroy you, and your tree with you. Order will be preserved." "I wonder," mused Verdandi, the Norn of Being, "are you they, or just the shadows they cast on existance? So long ago it was." "They have forgotten much," continued Skuld, the Norn of Necessity, "I think they are shadows of the four we knew. The originals must be somewhere else." "You dare question us? We are the originals. The only. We are no shadows. I hold the book," the grey figure said, gesturing toward the ponderous leatherbound volume under its arm, "I am the embodiment of the rules inside it. You will obey me." "Hush, child," Urd said, casually walking up and brushing the grey figure's face with her hand, "we wrote the rules in that book, or have you forgotten the day we gave it to you? Its contents are but a fraction of the absolute, a piece of what we have written always." The grey figure's face furrows with worry, and he looks frantically to the other three figures. Slowly, a recollection, a faint memory begins to surface, and his eyes grow wide. "Ten millenia ago, you four came to us, mortal men, and that only. You asked of us a boon. We gave you the trappings. We let you assume the roles," Skuld continued, "and we gave you time. You asked for a way to prevent the coming disaster, and we gave you the power neccesary. Ten thousand years, we said, the time in which you would have to prevent the crossing of the world-skeins. The crossing came. You failed. You know what happens now, and that it is none of our doing...
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The Traveler
2/24/2000 6:57:24 PM
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