Gilgamesh roamed the wilderness, and cried bitterly
over his friend Enkidu.
“I am going to die! – Am I not like Enkidu?
I fear death, and now roam the wilderness.
I will set out to the land of faraway Utnapishtim, son of Ubartutu,
And will go with utmost dispatch
To seek life everlasting”

“I don't like the look of this, Salah,” Masun said, looking sideways at the four Wolves unpacking the mules. “You know what they're like.”
“It's only a precaution. With any luck, this place will be empty, and the scribes can come in and do their job.”
“I hope you're right.”
Salah had seen a great many doors to a great many places of worship, and in comparison this was almost too simple: only as big as the entry of a home, with a simple swinging slab to serve as a door, and the only ornamentation was a carving of a gear above the entryway. It was located at the back end of a thin gulley, accessible only by donkey, hidden from the rest of the world. Far too small and humble for the Church of the Broken God. They preferred their places of worship big and visible, and many times animated. Salah remembered the walking cathedral that had been the news of the year when he joined the Initiative. Most likely, this was only a small chapel built by a few worshipers that had been driven into hiding long ago. This region was a good place for hiding.
Salah hoped that it would just be some empty rooms beyond that slab. He wanted to be home: two weeks away was too long for his liking.
“Rashid, are you ready?” he called over to the Wolves. The leader of that group, a young man with a scar on his right cheek, nodded.

Then he reached Mount Mashu,
Which guards the daily rising of the sun, and
The gate to the pass into the land of Utnapishtim
Was guarded by great scorpion-beasts.
Upon the left a thing like a great heart, babbling
Like a man with fever.
Upon the right, a beast within the shadows,
A beast with one hundred legs.

The entrance led to a small, square antechamber, and beyond that, the main hall of worship, a natural cavern with perhaps enough room for twenty people, illuminated now by their flashlights. The walls were engraved with the usual symbols: Gears of Wisdom, the Eternal Clocks, Iron Saints with cog-shaped halos. The style was far less detailed than the modern designs of the Church, but very much recognizable. The altar had been stripped of its decoration by looters a long time ago: the wall behind it was a chipped and faded mural of the Machine Radiant hovering above the prostrate masses. Small passages led off to the sides: priests' quarters and storerooms, most likely.
“Rashid, if you and your men will take care of the side rooms, Masun and I will handle this chamber. Bring back anything you might find.”
“Right.”
The Wolves tramped off. Salah moved his flashlight beam around the ceiling.
“Do any of these look unusual to you?”
“No, not at all,” Masun said as he took photos. "It's old enough to be at an awkward time, but that's it as far as the unusual bits go.”
“A day spent for nothing, then.”
“No, not nothing. This is an intriguing find, especially in light of the jihad against the Church in 840. Finding anything from this period this far south is rare. Anything from this region is either far younger, or far older. I would bet that this is built on top of an older ruin.”
“Secret passage?”
“The Church loves them. I'll check the altar for the mechanism.”
“There's nothing in any of the side rooms,” Rashid said as he returned to the chapel.
“Nothing? No texts, no items?”
“Nothing but dust.”
Salah nodded. He hadn't expected much, but at least a dusty copy of the Brass Gospel would have been something to take home.
“Aha! Got it!” Masun called out from the altar.

[The following 67 lines are missing, wherein Gilgamesh persuades or defeats the beasts.]

The wall behind the altar folded in on itself, moved by ancient machinery. The dust settled to reveal a staircase.
There we go.
“If I know ancient temple complexes, and I do believe that I do,” Salah stood at the cusp of the stairway and swung his beam down into the blackness. “I predict that we will face various traps involving spike pits, dart launchers, and rolling boulders, perhaps a puzzle or two, a monster of some kind, and then a room wherein we will find a small amount of treasure or an individual of some plot importance.”
The joke was answered with dust and silence. No laughs, no groans, nothing. Just lonely silence.
It was times like these when Salah realized how little he fit in anymore with the world he had grown up in. What sort of Muslim favored the likes of Chaucer and Milton?
He wished Mary-Ann was there. She would have elbowed him in the ribs and gone off about suplexing a criosphinx. He belonged there.
“Or more likely, it's just empty.” He shrugged, and took the first step down the stairs.

These twelve leagues of darkness,
This path of the dead,
Gilgamesh of Uruk did traverse in a single night
And upon the dawn he found himself in a great valley,
The place there the gods had made their garden,
But the garden was burnt and desolate,
And all was ash.

Salah had been wrong and right, as it was. There were no traps, only dark, wide stairs, eventually leading down to another chamber, with another altar and another wall mural. The inner sanctum. This mural looked something like a tree: a trunk of cogwork building up to a single gear, from which sprouted fractal branches, bare of leaves. The design was inlaid with copper and bronze, the metal engraved with tiny lines of script.
“What does it say?” Rashid said impatiently.
“Hold on, hold on.” Masum squinted at the text. “These aren't the usual mantras.” He snapped a couple pictures. “It's an older dialect. Look here: Ahkpan lon-shal khi-khidan. Anywhere else that would be akkaphan lon-sal khiddan. There's a slight difference in meaning between the two: the older version uses the form of 'evil' without the connotation of 'flesh'."
“How old is it?” Salah asked.
“This? Four thousand years, at the youngest. The chapel above us is maybe…a thousand. And beyond all that, nowhere here do I see 'Oolzhak Le'an', the God Who Has Been Broken. Instead, we have simply 'maddiz', the machine, but it's the smaller form. Closer to 'tool'. Masun stood up, brushing off his knees. “Very curious. This might have been converted into a sanctuary afterwards, which if that's the case, this might be an entrance of sorts.”
“An entrance to what?”
“I don't know, and even if I did, I have no idea how to get in. The upper door is a simple key, just arranging the circular plates on the altar. Really nothing more than a complex combination lock. This…I have nothing, if it is a door.” He turned to face the tree. “Iftah ya simsim.”
Nothing. He shrugged.
“It was worth a try.”
“Is there any sort of clue in the text?” Rashid asked.
“Not that I can see. I think this would be a job for the scribes.”
As he finished his sentence, Salah became acutely aware of footsteps on the stairs behind them.

There Gilgamesh came to the house of Utnapishtim
And found that man alone,
Marked with a brand upon his brow
And arms of living metal.
“Why have you come to this place, King of Uruk?
Why have you come to this desolate place?”
Spoke he, with weariness of heart.
“I seek life eternal, son of Ubartutu,
So that I might not die.”
With heavy heart, Utnapishtim spoke again.
“Come, and follow me. I will show you
This thing which you seek
And perhaps it shall spare you
Of your desires.”

The man who stood there now was old and shriveled, skin like leather from desert sun. He was clad only in a loincloth, and had a walking stick of copper tubing in his hand. The top of his head was a buzzing, clicking array of gears and clockwork, and his eyes were two glass lenses.
The nearest Wolf raised his gun.
“Hold fire!” Salah shouted, putting all his authority into the words. The Wolf paused. The old man did not seem particularly fazed by this: in fact, he was smiling.
The man started babbling to them. Salah could pick out a few words of Arabic, but the majority was cogspeak. He stepped out of the way, allowing Masun to come to the fore.
“Salah, need I remind you that this man is an enemy?” Rashid whispered to him.
“He's unarmed and elderly. Perhaps a nibbanic hermit.”
“Do not undermine my authority again, Salah.”
Salah found that somewhat funny, as he was fifteen years older than Rashid and far more experienced in the Initiative, but he kept his mouth shut.
After some time, Masun turned to face the group.
“He says he can show us in, and invites us to rest and refresh ourselves.”
“Tell him that we…”
“…Will be honored to be his guests.” Salah cut Rashid off.
Rashid scowled.
“I just told you…”
“I cannot undermine your authority if I am leading the expedition, which I am. Calm yourself. We don't know the whole story.”
Masun and the old man finished speaking. The old man skipped over to the tree in the wall, and began poking at the branches with his walking stick, muttering some things to himself, as if reciting a list. The clockwork in his head whirred faster for a few moments before, the wall split apart, stone grinding on stone.

Unapistim led Gilgamesh
Through the garden,
Through the blackened trees
And soil of ash.
There were men there,
And women, crawling in the ash,
And their eyes showed no life,
Like a goat, their eyes showed no light.
“These are the sons and daughters of the tree.
They live without death, without
Fear of death. They do not suffer, and
Yet they do not see.”

What lay beyond the door was an open space, halfway between cavern and valley, maybe half a mile or so across. A jagged line of sunlight ran through the roof, letting light down into the cave. A river ran through it, flowing down into the earth off to their left. In the distance, Salah could make out the roar of a waterfall. The ground was grassy here, a much more verdant green than what would be expected, and was dotted with various boulders and monoliths, all of which bore some sort of carving on them. A breeze from some unknown source brushed against his face.
The old man chattered as he led them down a simple stone path, Masun speaking with him as best as he was able. Here and there Salah could see little stone houses, light shining from within. Some were on the flat floor, but the majority were built up against the walls of the cavern in perilous tiers, braced by a rickety wooden frameworks of walkways and ladders.
“Have you learned anything else?” Salah jogged a few steps to walk even with Masun and the old man.
“I've told him why we're here, and he asked if we were on pilgrimage to meet the Voice. They have a piece, and it seems to be a big one.”
“Then we will destroy it,” Rashid said.
“Tell him we are,” Salah said. “Rashid, we are here to investigate. If it must be destroyed, it will be done later. Six of us is too few.”
Rashid sulked as Masun talked to the old man some more.
“He says he will take you directly to it.”
Salah nodded. His stomach was roiling. His mind knew that there was a massive danger involved in this, but his gut said that he was safe. The old man seemed to be completely in control of his own mind. The villagers that were emerging from their homes to watch the procession from the margins looked much the same. Men, women, and children, all of them touched by clockwork, but all still very human. None of the jerking, puppeted movement of the Church, none of the babbling diatribes of nonsense tick-tocking syllables, no violence. He could see no basilica, no Towers of Blessing, no clockwork monsters, no real machinery at all, beyond what was in the heads of the villagers.
With the age of the door they had passed through, these may very well be the descendants of the original Church, before whatever corruption that befell it had set in.
This had become quite exciting, quite quickly.

“What disaster befell this place? What scourge
Befell this garden?”
“It was laid to ruin by my brother,
A man of a black heart,
Who with his armies and dark masters,
His masters the black Daevas of Gothog
And Molug and Carthac and Moluch,
With banners of red and black,
Did descend to set this place
To the torch and sword.
For he sought life undying
And stole it from this place.”

They had walked over a mile by now, right up to the base of the waterfall. The old man had fallen quiet as he led them along the slick stone path. Rainbows danced in the mist.
The path curled around the pool, running right up against the sheer rock wall. There would be no point to that unless…yes, there it was. A cave. He didn't mind the fact that he was sopping wet by now: his heart was in his throat. For a moment, the cold water crashed down on his head.
There was a cave behind the waterfall, a large cave, lit by lamps of oil and clockwork. Beyond the platform they stood on, it was filled with a lake, the surface oddly still. There was a single island in the center of the lake.
Salah was certain that his heart had stopped.

At this Gilgamesh despaired.
[The following six lines are missing]
“There is more to see, and more to learn.”
To the center of the garden
Gilgamesh was led, to see
A great form, a god of living metal,
Of many parts of metal that moved about
As if a living thing,
And it bore great scars and misshapings
As if a rent shield, or a melted candle.
At its side was a tree
Small, old, and twisted.

On that island was a mass of metal, maybe a hundred and fifty feet across. Thousands of moving parts, clicking and ticking and moving. It was roughly spherical, and much of it looked heavily damaged: segments were melted, crushed, torn, broken. The moving parts looked to have grown around the dead regions, to make up for lost capability. Salah couldn't help but think of it as scar tissue. The noise the thing made sounded like a heart-beat, but it was an old, weakened heart. Near to it was a single, shriveled tree, black-barked and withered, without leaves.
Bump-bump.
Was this it? The actual Machine? Salah could not help the chill that ran down his spine. This place…this was a sacred place. This was the same chill that ran through him when he had stood in Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām or St. Peter's. That same feeling of smallness, of insignificance amidst a space that had been made God's own…it surrounded him. This was a sacred place.
A voice inside his head cursed at him, warning not to be fooled by this devilry. It is a lie, it is an idol, cast it down, cast it down! There is no god but God!
But the voice was wrong. He knew it was wrong, but he could not explain why. In that moment of clarity, he knew. This was the Machine, and they were wrong. All of them. Every one outside of this valley was wrong. So very wrong. It was not a god to be worshipped, it was not a force of destruction, it was not evil. This thing, this machine, was a tool of God, even as broken and twisted as it was. The rest of the Church must had been corrupted by incomplete parts, and from seeing only them, so the Initiative had inherited their corrupted version. Here, with the core of the Machine, these people were unharmed. They remained human.
He had to know more. They would get the scribes, come back here with an army of researchers. Interview every villager, translate every text, trace the family trees back to the beginning. This was world changing. Salah's imagination ran wild. When the Initiative was done here, they could take it to the world, reveal this place. It was always said that it was not time, but if this here did not mean that it was time, then there would be no time.
He stood a few moments longer in stunned silence, and then it spoke. The Machine spoke.
The Machine spoke with a voice that was nothing like thunder. This was the voice made in the forge of stars, where worlds were broken and remade. It was not simply heard with the ear, but felt with the bones, felt with the soul. It layered upon itself, harmonized with its own note. It was eternity, all of creation, in a word.
Then, it was over, and there was silence. Salah could feel himself trembling. He was trembling. This was fear of God.
There was silence for a long time, before Rashid broke it.
“It is settled then. It must be destroyed."

“This is the Voice, the Voice of the King of Gods
Who created Apsu and Tiamat with a thought.
To its right is the tree that bears knowledge.
To its left the tree that bears life is no more,
Stolen by my brother.
The children of the garden, they chose
The tree of life alone, and their minds
Are that of animals.
I am of both, and I am cursed.
My brother is of both, and he is mad.
Do you see now, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk?
Do you see the foolishness of your quest?
It is not life eternal that is to be sought,
But knowledge instead.
It is knowledge that separates man from animal,
And it is death that separates man from monster.
Without knowledge, man is not man,
Without death, man is not man.
This is the test, and the gift.”

Salah was speechless as his thoughts came back together. He knew that tone, knew that mindset. He had been in that place once, and he saw his past reflected back at him in all of its small-minded pettiness.
Anger boiled up with a speed and fury he no longer thought possible.
He punched Rashid in the face.
“You idiot! You lunatic! This…this is the voice of God! And you wish to destroy it?"
"You've become deluded by the Path, Salah." Rashid rubbed at his cheek. "God needs no machine to serve as His voice. This is like all the others, a false god to be destroyed and its worshipers to be purged.
Salah laughed. He couldn't help it. There was no joy to be had.
“You're going to destroy the greatest discovery in human history, the tool by which God spoke to man, and on top of all of that murder scores of innocent people, all to preserve the world as you imagine it to be! Are you really so fragile of faith that the first challenge drives you to murder?”
Rashid was unmoved. Salah knew that look as well.
“Innocent? Look at them. They are still idolaters, their brains are still filled with clockwork, they still reject their humanity to embrace metal, and the Machine still whispers its blasphemies to them. The only difference is in the words used, and in how you perceive them.” He waved a hand. "Enough of this. Musa, Tahmid, take him."
Two of the Wolves pinned Salah's arm's behind him. The third took hold of Masun. The old man scampered off, out of the cave. Salah hoped he would deliver a warning, bring help, do something.
“Can't you see it? Can't you see it, Rashid?”
“I see nothing but a false idol. If we cannot stand strong against the lies of this world, then we have already lost. Salah, I have great respect for you, but you have been misled. I will be merciful, but I will not allow you to interfere with God's work here. Bassam, destroy the camera. We have no need of it."
The guard took the camera from Masun's hands and tossed it into the lake.
—
Later, Salah sat on the rocky ground of that little gully, his knees pulled up against his chest. Bassam sat on a rock, his gun in his hands, and Salah was certain he would be shot at the first movement. Not lethally, but at least in the leg. Rashid had said that he would be handed over to the Initiative authorities when they returned, and Salah did not particularly care. So long as he went home.
He felt the ground shake, and along with that shaking, a great pain in his soul.
He closed his eyes, and thought of home. Home, where there was still some good left.

“Have you seen them, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk?
Have you seen the throngs in those cold cities to the east,
Where men wish for the death that will never come
Upon their heads?
Do you wish for their curse, the curse laid upon me?
To live eternally and to endure suffering without ceasing?
Weep not for the dead, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk.
Go home, and embrace your son Ur-Nungal whom you love.
It is better that a man live well, than he live forever.”

Thousands of miles away, Mary-Ann sat on the couch, watching the Uruk-hai charge the Deeping Wall. She rested a hand on her belly, and the baby kicked underneath, as if to join in the defense of Helm's Deep. Mary-Ann chuckled.
"Easy there, kiddo. Aragorn's got this, don't worry."

« Crossing The Streams | Hub | Nor Gloom of Night Shall Stay »


Night comes in early in Orinsville. The sun rises at seven AM exactly, every day, and by two PM has already begun its slow descent behind the mountains. Come four, it's fully dark. The only light comes from the moon, and even it is often obscured by the thick clouds. There are no stars. The citizens don't see anything unusual about this. To them, night is as mundane as wind or sun, and so is what comes with it.
As the city travels deeper into gloom, it begins to change. The streets distort and shift, rearranging themselves into tangled webs of asphalt and dirt. Buildings grow, shrink, twist, until they no longer resemble normal structures but the constructions of a massive child. The sky lowers itself until it brushes their tips. The trees dance and push together, forming a wall around the town. The few remaining lights go out. Still, this is normal, and the people don't bother to notice anymore.
Then They come. They're different each time, but a few things never change. There are always ten of them. They are always almost human. They never make a sound. And They always take one.
Sometimes it's a house's brick. Sometimes it's a bush, or a toy. Sometimes it's a person. But They always take one thing.
Even this doesn't bother the citizens anymore. They wake up and shrug, and wonder briefly what was taken. Then they go on with their lives. Night comes again. The cycle continues.


Masipag sat in the sterile briefing room, her expression of slightly nervous boredom mirrored by Fritz, Cyrus, and Kulzn. Kraito stood at the front of the rooms only table, fiddling with a black projector.
"Just a moment guys, sorry, the damned thing conked out on me right as we started."
Director Cyrus shot him a withering glare. "I hope that this briefing is important enough to have used forty-five minutes of my time. Some of us have places to be, Mr. Byron."
"Okay, okay, I think this'll work…"
A click, then a whir, and an image began to be projected onto the wall. Jumping up from the ground, Kraito scrambled to stand beside the projection.
"Now, is everyone… ready?"
Cyrus grumped. "Get on with it. We're busy people."
"Right… here we go." Kraito clicked a button, and the image of a rather large steel cube began to be projected.
"This is the 'Telekill Alloy' that Masipag recovered from the Prometheus ruins. We've got about a ton of it, in the research labs."
A series of nods and murmurs of assent echoed from the assembled audience.
Another click. This time, it was a picture of a young man grasping his head, with a nasty looking older guy behind him.
"This is, uh, a visual aid for what telepathy is. Someone can mess with your mind, and-"
Cyrus harumphed again. "Boy, get to the point, and don't insult our intelligence. I'm sure everyone here knows what telepathy is."
"Sorry sir… moving on…" Another click. A man wearing a metal helmet was grinning at the camera.
"From the notes Masipag recovered, as well as our own research, we've determined that Telekill alloy is able to block telepathy. This, ah, could have great research applications for our telepathic anomalies."
The projector clicked off, and Kraito flipped on the lights. "Now, I propose we allocate funding to this project, since the impact on containment for telepathic anomalies could be huge."
Cyrus stared at him, moving his lips from side to side as he thought. "You make a very… adequate case, Byron… well, the object does. Approved."

"You sure you know what you're doing?"
Masipag slouched in her plastic mess seat and stared square at Fritz. "You guys seem like you're moving kinda fast through all this stuff."
Fritz took a bite of his spaghetti. "The science guys know what we're doing. All the proper tests have been done, and I can trust Kraito."
Masipag rolled her eyes. "Just like you trusted him with the corn?"
"Nevermind." He picked his tray up and began stalking out. "I have to, uh, go, more tests to do."

A patrol vehicle made the slow turn around the darkened road, making its way back towards the sight. Masipag squinted to see the road, as Kulzn silently sat next to her. Not a single word had been uttered since they'd left the Site.
"So… Kulzn… ol' HK… what do you think of this telekill business?"
He grunted, in an affirmative way.
Masipag glanced over to Kulzn, then back to the road. "… Nobody seems to care about any kind of foresight, it's all full steam ahead all the time."
"It's an important project. Even if they're enthusiastic, I'm sure Commander Willie and Director Cyrus have them under control."
"Pshh." Masipag drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm pretty sure Fritz is too busy with Cassie to supervise whatever Kraito does."
"Are you still going on about him and SCP-085? We've been over this…"
"Yeah, we've been over it, but you don't seem to get it. Fritz spends so much time with Cassie, it's really starting to interfere with his other projects. I mean, the other day he slipped up and called me Cassie."
Kulzn turned to the window. "That's… slightly odd, but we ought to give him more slack. He was very on-point about organizing the Prometheus clean-up operations-"
"You're just defending him because you're his favorite."
"Can we just finish this patrol without an argument?"

"I feel like I'm being completely sidelined here, y'know?"
Masipag looked up to Kraito, who was standing on a scaffold about twenty feet overhead. He was drilling another sensor into the big, shimmering cube that took up most of the research floor.
"I'm sorry, did you say something?" he shouted, peering down over the guardrails at Masipag.
She sighed. "Nevermind. Just hurry up and finish."
He shrugged. "Finished now, I think."
Masipag watched as he made his way down the scaffold, taking the stairs around the massive cube and eventually reaching the floor with her. Wiping his brow, he hung his safety goggles on a wall-mounted peg.
"So… wanted to talk, uh, about something?"
"Yeah." Masipag leaned against the wall. "Wanted to talk to you about the telekill stuff, what you'd learned about it so far."
Kraito beamed. "Well, lots of things! We know that it measures HRC 39 in the Rockwell hardness test! it can, uh, well it has similar properties to platinum, in some… gimme a minute…" he scrunched his eyes together, bringing his fingers to his temples.
Masipag placed her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, don't sweat it. You've been working too hard."
"I just… don't want this one to fail, y'know? Every other thing I've worked with either got decommed or destroyed somehow, and I can't let this one go the same way."
Masipag nodded, and squeezed his shoulder. "Hey… it's alright, I'm sure the project will go great."
He wiped his eyes. "I just want something I do to have an impact… work all damned day, just to see whatever I was working on crushed, or burned, or whatever. If I can avoid fucking up just this once… maybe I won't be a joke anymore."
She released his shoulder. "I should… let you get back to work then."
Kraito nodded. "Thank you." Turning, he donned his safety goggles and ascended the scaffolding.
He would work on through the night.

Site-19 Director Cyrus flipped through the telekill proposal. It all seemed to be in order, all the t's crossed and i's dotted. Only thing left to do would be long-term effect testing. Buuut…. that could probably be done during a provisional approval process. Couldn't hurt to let them get started right away. Kraito and the other researchers were chomping at the bit for funding, and the less they came to him whining the more time he would have.
APPROVED
He tossed it into the outgoing document pile, and moved to another project.

« Prometheans| End Of Olympians Hub | Psychiatric Profile For Researcher Lee Byron »


At half past five, it began to rain.
Brother Raymond of Baskerville was trudging his way back from the Achrenite compound, his boots sucking on the mud of the fertile fields surrounding it. The weather was utterly miserable, but still, he was not looking forward to returning to the shelter of the Horizon Initiative's lines, no indeed, and certainly not to reporting his humiliating failure at making the Achrenites see reason. It wasn't that he was afraid that his superiors would reprimand him for it, since he knew they would understand. No, it was that very same understanding, so typical of the Shepherd Corps, which infuriated him. He could already picture the Abbot's kindly smile, that look of vaguely disguised condescension that would no doubt accompany the metaphorical pat on the head he was about to receive, like some sort of slow-witted dog. He was well and truly sick of being looked down upon, and the fact that his fellow Shepherds didn't even have the dignity of doing so to his face only made it worse. He should have stayed at the monastery.
Raymond cursed under his breath as he ducked under the red-tape marked lines, and slunk his way to the derelict electric shed that served as the command post for the Shepherds. He expected the Abbot, maybe a few other high level operatives, but instead he found the tiny space occupied by no less than twenty people, most of whom Raymond had never seen before. The exceptions were the Abbot and his two assistants, relegated to standing dejectedly in a musty corner, and the figure in the very center of the room, currently peering at a tactical map of the area with a disinterested look on his sharp-featured face. While the man wasn't particularly tall, or handsome, or otherwise very notable at all, there was a certain aura of command about him that Raymond couldn't deny. He had only seen him once before, on the day he left his monastery to join the Horizon Initiative- Director Henry DeMontfort, head of Project Malleus. Seeing Raymond enter, the Abbot waved him to approach with as much magnanimity as he could muster while attempting to brush an old spider web out of the folds of his robes.
“Raymond, I am glad to see you returned to us safely. Tell me, how fared your mission?”
Another thing Raymond detested about the Abbot was that flowery way he used to talk to his underlings. He wasn't quite sure what made the man think that it was anything other than ridiculous, but he supposed he had to suffer through it quietly. That was what being a Shepherd was all about.
“Poorly, Sir. The Achernites refused our offer of gradual integration, and furthermore rejected any regulation of their preaching or expansion within local communities. Sir, if I may ask, what are all those people doing here? And why is he here?”
The Abbot sighed, giving up on the attempts at cleaning his now dusty attire, and gave DeMontfort a wary look. “It seems like Project Malleus does not approve of the way we conduct our business. He said he is taking charge of the situation. I was hoping you'd have good news I could use against him, but now…”
“Honestly, Sir, this really couldn't have gone any other way. The Achernites are heretics, and should be treated as such.”
“That is not for you to decide, my son. We are Shepherds, and our role is to guide the lost into the light.”
“Lost? They're Neo-Pantheists! Every word that comes out of their mouths is filth, besmirching everything we believe in. They spit at the face of God, and you're telling me we should turn the other cheek?”
The Abbot was about to reply, when a clear, steely voice interrupted him. “You, emissary. A word, if you will.”
Raymond turned to see DeMontfort exiting the shed, and winced as two very large, very scarred, and very well-armed individuals grabbed a hold of his shoulders and dragged him after the Director. DeMontfort stopped beneath the shadow of a dead pine tree and started going through his pockets in a search of something, as his lieutenants tossed Raymond on the mud at his feet. He tried getting up, but a not-too-gentle prod of a steel-toed boot to his ribs made him reconsider. Finally, DeMontfort produced a small paper packet from an inner pocket and examined it with a look of vague displeasure on his pointed face.
"Gum?"
"Er, no thank you?"
"Smart man. This nicotine stuff is rather terrible. I understand that your… peace mission was a failure." That wasn't a question.
"Um, how did you know?"
DeMontfort snorted, and began chewing on a rather unappealing piece of grey gum. "I read the dossier. The Achernites are the worst type of heretics. The Shepherds were fools to even attempt a peace mission. No, they must be dealt with more severely."
Despite being stuck in the mud under the boot of the human equivalent of a bull shark, Raymond found himself nodding. "I told the Abbot just that. The things I saw them do at their camp, Sir, the things they said… no godly man could bear them to live."
DeMontfort gave him an apprising look, and motioned to his lieutenants. The weight of the boot lifted, and Raymond got to his feet, gingerly picking globs of greenish mud from his hair. The Director began moving again, and Raymond followed, the two hulking lieutenants not far behind.
"You're not as stupid as you look. I half-expected you to weep and faint at the mere mention of violence. That's what your Abbot would no doubt do."
"I'm nothing like that doddering old fart!" Raymond was surprised by his own outburst, but DeMontfort looked pleased.
"Hah, that's the spirit! Maybe there's hope for you yet, Brother Raymond. Come, walk with me for a while, we have some business to attend to." Again, this wasn't a suggestion, as the the two lieutenants, whom Raymond dubbed Brickjaw and Sawscar after the only notable features on the slab of meat they called a face, made abundantly clear. For a short while the group walked in silence, until Raymond realized with a growing sense of horror he walked this way earlier today.
"Um, Sir, I don't think we should be going this way, we'll wind up right in the Achernite camp."
"I should hope so, since that's where we're going."
"But…why? I though you said negotiating with them was stupid."
"I'm not going there to negotiate. I'm going to talk, and they are going to listen."
"And if they don't?"
"A good question. Lieutenant, what's the ETA on the Gofrit team?"
This was directed at Sawscar, who checked something on a small tablet computer and replied, in an unexpectedly soft voice: "About ten minutes, Sir."
DeMontfort nodded, and continued walking, as if that answered Raymond's question. It didn't, but Raymond thought it would be unwise to argue. The group continued its track along the wheat fields, finally reaching a clearing in front of a small, gated community. DeMontfort stopped before the gate and rang a brass bell connected to a long piece of rope that hung on a post next to it. The sound of other bells came moments later from within the community, but all stayed quiet otherwise. Raymond gingerly approached the Director, who was tapping his foot impatiently and struggling with the packing of another stick of nicotine gum. "They wouldn't let me in, at first. I had to wait outside for nearly an hour before someone came out to meet me."
DeMonfort cursed and dropped the gum, instead pulling a silver cigarette case from an inner pocket. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to attract their attention. Lieutenant?"
Sawscar nodded, and with one swift movement drew his handgun, cocked it, and fired three quick shots into the air. The silence following the gunshot was soon punctuated by shouts. The Director smiled, and lit a slim cigarette with a match he managed to produce without Raymond noticing. "That should do it."
And indeed, a few minutes later a trio of figures approached the gate. Two were scruffy-looking guards, each carrying an ancient carbine and sponsoring a filthy beard. The third was a woman even older looking than the guns, her skin and hair mottled with strangely textured patches of brown, green and grey, though it was too dark to see exactly what they were. She hobbled over, heavily leaning on a stout branch she used as a cane, and stared at Raymond and DeMontfort with unconcealed disgust in her eyes. DeMontfort, in turn, looked like he just stepped on something nasty and was examining the results. After a silence which Raymond thought would last forever, the old woman finally spoke, her voice creaky with age:
"What do ye want, fat monk? All that was said still holds, ye know, and ye big friends ain't gonna change that."
"Mistress Achren, if you'd please reconsider, I'm sure you'd find our terms quite reasona-"
"We told ye, we ain't interested in none of your fractional god muck! Off with ye!"
DeMontfort gave the woman a smile that held all the warmth of a glacier. "I think talking to my young companion might have given you the wrong idea about our organization. We weren't asking. You will cease your preaching, dismantle your complex, and disband, or we will be forced to take action."
"And by what right would ye do that, priest? This is our land, and we'll preach as we wish. The Gospel of Wholeness will be spoken, like it or not. Ye shouldn't reject it, you can't anyway. You're part of it, as is everything. You'll listen."
"I'm not here to debate theology with a heretic, woman."
"Heh, well I ain't asking. You want us to disband, you'll listen."
DeMontfort considered that for a moment, exchanged a few quiet words with Brickjaw, and finally nodded. "You have four minutes."
The old woman cackled, and sat on a wooden post near the gate, still clasping her cane. "Ye see, it's really simple if ye just look, but you're too busy nosing around in old books to see it. Yer looking for some beard in the sky to give you divinity and think ye all have some invisible light in ye, or some such nonsense. Ye aren't looking in the right place at all!"
"Get to the point."
"God is everything, ye daft bastards! It's the trees and skies and soil and birds and bees and it's me boots and me stick and me nose and me arse! There's no reason to look anywhere else if yer God, and I am, and so are ye and yer fat friend."
DeMontfort clenched his jaw, barely holding back a furious snarl. "Two minutes. If you wish to be spared, hag, I suggest you consider what you say next very carefully."
"I ain't got nothing else to say. I'll show ye all you need to see." With that, the old woman reached with a skeletal hand and, to Raymond's horror, tore at the skin of her other hand with sharp fingernails. Ripping and clawing, apparently not in any kind of pain, she tore a long strip of skin from the top of her hand.
"You're mad!" Raymond mumbled, edging away from the bleeding elder.
"You just watch."
Slowly, the old woman bent down to the ground and with her uninjured hand tore a handful of grass, roots and all, then thrust it into her open wound. Raymond gasped as the roots began to knit themselves into the broken skin, weaving through flesh and tendons. Now, Raymond understood what the strange blotches on the old woman's skin were; patches of brown were soil, grey was iron and rock, green was living flora. Indeed, now he saw that the mottled beards of the guards were spliced with moss and ivy. Shaking, he turned to look at DeMontfort, and was surprised to find the man utterly unmoved.
"Time's up. I've suffered through your witchcraft for long enough. Do you submit yourself to the Initiative's judgement?"
"Hah! Not bloody likely! Ye see what I can do, why should I listen to anything ye say?"
"Because if you don't, I'll destroy you. Simple as that."
The old woman limped towards DeMontfort, and thrust her now healed palm, grass blades slowly waving in the evening wind, under his nose. "How could ye destroy us, when we and the land around us are one?"
Brickjaw laid a hand on DeMontfort's shoulder, and the Director turned his eyes to the gated community, a strange look on his face.
"Well, I can think of one way."
A wave of heat and sound knocked Raymond off his feet. The world around him was a cacophony of flames and noise and screams, and his mouth was full of dirt and there was ash in his eyes and he couldn't breathe and around him people were fighting and twisting and dying and he just couldn't breathe why couldn't he breathe why couldn't he brea-
A sharp pain in his side, and nothing more, for a while.
The sound of dirt crunching under feet, the labored breath of the man carrying him.
Uniformed men, their faces covered in gas masks, appearing from between the wheat stalks, looking at their work. DeMontfort doing the same, exaltation and terror wrestling on his visage.
"Wake up, brother."
Raymond found himself laying on a bed of pine needles, and was greeted with the fairly unpleasant sight of Sawscar's face hovering above him.
"What happened?"
"Gofrit team happened. Got a bit overzealous, but that's to be expected, I suppose." Raymond was again surprised to hear the man's gentle whisper of a voice.
"They…burned them?"
"It's all in the name, really."
"What about all the people? There were more than a hundred in there, families."
"God will find his own."
Curiously, Raymond wasn't upset. Shouldn't he be upset? He was a Shepherd, he was supposed to guide the misguided into the light, and yet he didn't seem to mind at all that the only light this particular group found was a funeral pyre. It was…right. It was divine will.
"I…don't think I want to be a Shepherd anymore."
Sawscar nodded, and helped him to his feet. "You were never a Shepherd, my friend. I could tell from the moment I saw you. "
"Really? How is that?"
"Shepherds don't have fangs."

| Hub | The Horizon Blues »


Another couple came to visit today. The man played a piece I'd never heard before, perhaps slow jazz; he wasn't too much of a pianist, so I helped him out. He just needed to relax his wrists and get his posture right. He reminded me of myself, a little. The woman laughed, she reminded me of you. They embraced, they walked off.
Apparently I'm the talk of the town on certain days. Lots of visitors, lots of songs, lots of smiles and laughs and most of the time I need to rescue someone (don't worry, I only help them out if they seem sincere) because their hands are shaking and a pianist wouldn't want to mess up on a song they're playing for the love of their life.
I don't remember the first time someone visited me, out in the woods on the outskirts of town. Someone played a charming little love ballad, but their nervousness made the piece too forceful, so I stepped in to aid them. Their partner thought it was beautiful. The next week another couple visited, and somehow whispers of “a true love piano” started spreading.
Not that the piano itself is anything special, though. It's just the old one that used to live in my basement before you convinced me to haul it out and keep it in the living room so we could play duets.
Do you remember when we met?
Once I was your music tutor. Your mentor was once my mentor. Your mother thought it would benefit both of us to play a few songs together a few times each month.
Do you remember the first concert we shared?
It was sometime in the very end of winter, when the first flowers of spring were starting to unfurl from the snowbanks on the hills. I wore a blue tie you nagged me to wear, you wore an azure (azure, not just blue, you assured me repeatedly) dress to match. You worried about skipping notes, I worried about my heart skipping beats.
Do you remember the first time you told me of your dreams?
We were working on a slow waltz. You sighed and told me you dreamt of leaving your quiet household and living in the cacophony of distant, foreign cities. You tired of the simple song of our hometown, you yearned for the intricate music of the wide world. I encouraged you. I supported you. It was your dream.
Do you remember the last song I played for you, the day you left for a plane that would take you across an ocean and away from me forever?
Edward Elgar's Salut d'Amour. When you left, I couldn't bring myself to play any other melodies. Maybe I needed the practice on that piece, maybe I wasn't satisfied with my technique overall, maybe I wasn't satisfied with the way I played that day—
Maybe I believed that if I had played beautifully enough, I could have convinced you not to leave. But then one day I woke up with the snow surrounding me, and I realized that I couldn't leave that spot. I stayed with that piano you loved, because you loved it, and I believed you loved me, even though now I can no longer coax melodies from the keys.
Now, I am no more than an instrument of countless others' affections, the impetus of a hundred charming romances that I wish I could have had with you.
Whispers in the town continue, couples still visit and both men and women confess their feelings and play songs for each other with my help. A middle-aged man who apparently lives nearby tunes my strings and sets up makeshift shelters for me in the winter. I saw him once with a group of other men in white coats, who looked at me a few moments, talked about moving me somewhere, and ultimately left and never returned. I don't know why they let me stay here.
I don't know where you are now. I don't know if you ever thought of me since we went our separate ways. I don't remember the sound of your voice. I don't remember your name. I don't remember your eyes, your smile.
But I remember you.
I remember why I want to stay here.
I love you.


Senior Researcher L. Byron(aka "Kraito")
SCP Researcher and Telepathy Specialist.
Security Class: 3
Duties: Research of Telepathic anomalies, Objects recovered in the field, SCP containment doctrine development.
Current assignment: Site-19, Prometheus project.

Lee "Kraito" Byron was not having a very good day. Not that he usually had good days, but fate had been particularly cruel to him on this one. He'd missed the tram coming into Site-19, and been forced to wait 2 hours for the next one to come in. At least now, alone in his office, he might have some peace and quiet.
"Hey, Kraito, you busy?"
Cursing his own hopes, he turned to see a familiar young woman standing at the door. Dressed in standard task force attire, and standing at a robust 6', she struck an intimidating figure. Kraito rolled his eyes, then grumbled a reply.
"A bit. Did you need something, or did you come just to waste my time?"
Lt. Masipag walked into this office, taking time to note the mountains of papers and geegaws littering the ground.
"Actually, Fritz sent me here to pick up some papers you had, for the recon."
Kraito snorted. "You agents are always getting all the interesting stuff. I get to sit in an office with papers and broken A/C. Here are your stinkin' papers." He thrust a handful of crumpled documents to Masipag.
Masipag took them, with eyebrows locked in an amused stance. "Someone's in a rare mood this morning. Something on your mind?"
"No…" Kraito grunted. "Sorry. I've had a rough morning, y'know?"
She nodded. "We all have those days. I'll let ya be, for now."
"Thanks…" he looked back to the papers at his desk, and renewed his work. He didn't notice Masipag stroll out of his office, and out of sight.

Field Commander F. Williams(aka "Fritzwillie")
SCP Field Retrieval and Containment Commander.
Security Class: 4
Duties: Field Evaluation and Command, Field Recovery.
Current assignments: Site-19, Prometheus project.

"Sir?"
Masipag poked her head through the heavy office door, and peered inside. It was a bare, drab room, with heavy velvet curtains blocking the windows. A single desk lamp sat heavily on the wooden desk, illuminating a note taped to the desks edge.

Sorry Mas, scheduled for testing on 85 today. apologize for absentness. please deposit papers on desk.

"… goddamnit Fritz." She dumped the papers on the desk, and stalked out of the office.

Administrator K█████ D██████(aka "Director Cyrus")
Site-19 Director, under oversight of O5-12.
Security Class: 4
Duties: Administrative
Current assignments: Site-19.

Director Cyrus wasn't a hard man to please. Just do your reports on time, don't bother him, and you could be on his good side forever. So when a peeved young woman burst into his office, he wasn't exactly pleased. Not looking up from his terminal, he noted her entrance.
"Good evening Lieutenant Masipag, did you need something?"
She frowned at him. "It's Fritz. He's messing with Cassie, and missing our meetings. Again."
"Commander Williams has had a scheduled test with SCP-085 since last week. You had plenty of time to check-"
"He told me to meet him today!"
Cyrus glanced up at her. "Perhaps you should have double-checked the dates. If you're going to be doing more recon missions, it'd be in your best interest to be punctual."
"Are you… seriously… sorry for wasting your time, sir."
"Apology accepted. Now, if you please…"

"Cyrus said you were pretty pissed at me."
Fritz took another bite of his sandwich, doing his best to avoid her icy glare.
"He warned you, huh?
"Yeah… Look, I'm sorry I missed the meeting. We were doing major tests with…"
"Sure, sure, whatever. Listen though, did you look over Kraito's research?"
"… Can you give me the cliffs notes?"
"You're impossible, you know that? We spend all this time researching and… y'know what, nevermind."
Fritz sighed. "Look, I know that I've been-"
"Save it. Kraito's stuff showed the metals imported by Prometheus have been weird. Like… really weird. Weird enough to be an anomaly. So I had proposed we upgrade from reconnaissance to a full-blown raid."
Fritz scratched his neck. "Nah, I don't think that'll work, we don't really have enough data to go in gung-ho like that. You gotta remember, Cass-"
"Masipag." She stood, taking her tray with her.
"… Ah, jeez."

Agent Saul Kulzn(aka "HK-016")
Special Retrieval Operations
Security Class: 2
Duties: Field Agent
Current assignments: Site-19, Prometheus Project
Status: Injured during testing of SCP-313. On paid leave until further notice. Returned to active duty.

"… And then he totally gets my name wrong! Like, I know that he was doing all those tests with eighty-five, but he could at least get my name right!"
Saul nodded. "Commander Willie could make do to get his priorities straight. He's been spending more time in the test chamber than his team. I mean. I can understand oh-eight-five being cool to study, but…"
"Study, nuthin'." Masipag harumphed. "He's just trying to spend every second he can with Cassie."
"… That's a fairly serious accusation, Lieutenant. What makes you think Commander Willie would break his professional duty like that?"
"I-"
"And don't say 'it's a hunch', because we both know that means nothing."
"…"
"That's what I thought. Now come, you're going to need to get out of that agents uniform if you're headed to the dorms."

As Masipag stuffed the last of her uniform into the locker, an alarm crackled to life above her head.
« ALL FIELD AGENTS OF THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT, PLEASE REPORT TO YOUR ACTIVE HCML SUPERVISOR. AN IMMEDIATE MEETING HAS BEEN CALLED FOR »
She looked down at the now full locker, sighed, and began pulling out the uniform.

Helicopters flew low over the orange-tinged horizon, and circling the ruins below. Their spotlights showed the scope of disaster. Wrecked cars, obliterated research laboratories, and dead men littered the earth. Masipag squinted from the passenger window, trying to catch a glimpse of anything familiar. Before she could, Fritz's booming voice emanated from the cockpit.
"Masipag! Kulzn! Are you ready to drop?"
Masipag turned her attention from the window, squinting to the brightly lit cockpit. "Fritz, where are we being dropped?"
"Well, we believe the initial detonations happened in the eastern wing, so Kulzn and I will be dropping there. You're going to the western wing, see if you can recover any of the documents."
"What? Shouldn't I go with you?"
"Negative. Kulzn's the better man for the job."

"Unbelievable…" Masipag muttered angrily to herself, slowly moving through the ruined facility. It didn't look at all like she'd imagined. For one, the corridors weren't some glowing, white marble, but plain concrete, scuffed from explosive damage and the collapsed rooftop. Most of the labs looked barren.
As she turned around the corner, she was faced not by another endless row of laboratory doors and broken concrete, but an opened steel vault. Dropping to a crouch, she slowly made her way to the door, keeping her ears and eyes peeled for any kind of sudden movement. As she got closer to the vault door, it became more and more apparent that this vault was hanging on by a thread.
One moment later, it wasn't hanging on at all. It fell to the ground with a tremendous CLANG shaking dust from the ceiling and shuttering the doors. Masipag scrambled backwards, stumbling back around the corner and out of sight. As the dust settled, she peeked her head around a corner, looking towards where the vault door had once stood.
There was a shimmering block of steel, visible through the doorway. It stood taller and wider then the doors confines would allow, limiting her view to one of the corners. This was something big. This was huge.
«Fritz, can you hear me?»
«Yes, you're coming in clear. What is it?»
«You're gonna want to see this for yourself Fritz. It's something else.»
As she drew nearer, something crunched under her foot. It was a piece of charred paper, which was soon in her hand being read.
Research has been drawing to a close on the project. Although we've made some great progress, we haven't been able to solve the diminish/replenish issue that dofs the research and study. Putting in a notice that the budget for next quarter should be reduced unless we get more commercial results.
She flipped it over to the back. There were two simple words printed on it.
TELEKILL ALLOY

« Looking Back| End Of Olympians Hub | Meeting of the Minds »


Dr. Jacobs stood at the head of the boardroom, advancing through a slideshow as he gave his presentation. Projected on the screen was a photograph of a somewhat ill-maintained livery stable bordered by a chain-link fence. A horse stood off to the side, gazing at the camera.
"One thing to keep in mind before entering the house of inconstant horses is these horses simply can't be relied upon," he said. "They are very untrustworthy, even though they may not seem it."
Click. The slide changed to a tilted photograph of one of the stables inside. Daylight shone from an opened door behind the camera, partially washing out the scene. A horse stood at the darkened far end, away from the photographer, its throat bulging.
He continued narrating. "Also, during periods of high stress, their necks are known to swell threateningly and exude intoxicating odors."
Click. A D-class was shown eagerly following a horse away from several members of a field team, all of whom were wearing gas masks. The D-class was not. The agents were going after the D-class, whose gait suggested extreme speed.
"Men have been led to their doom by the swollen necks of terrified horses."
Click. An aerial photo, most likely from a helicopter, of three D-classes chasing the swollen horse and eight agents chasing the D-classes into a mile-wide, sprawling, gnarled thicket of thorny branches and prickly hedges.
Dr. Jacobs described the picture. "Men led to the center of a deadly maze by bored horses who are also rude."
Click. A rotting human corpse wearing a D-class uniform being found in a clearing in the thicket by the field team. The timestamp showed that only half an hour had passed.
"Horse-pranked fools slowly starving to death in the center of a large, complicated bush."
Click. The slideshow came to an end. Dr. Jacobs switched off the projector. The overhead fluorescent lights came back on.
"So it's best to keep these things in mind and also probably other things. It sometimes seems there is no end to the things required to keep in one's mind, but I recommend limiting the things you bring with you into the house of inconstant horses, as a busy mind is upsetting to the horses."
Dr. Jacobs smiled at his audience, a group of several other researchers sitting around a table. No one spoke for a time until a man near the front coughed.
"I am entranced by the world you inhabit," said Dr. Adelie, clearing his throat.
Dr. Jacobs blushed. "Thanks."
"I will find the house. I will conquer it. I will whip these horses into shape, goddammit," exclaimed Dr. Taylor, on the warpath as usual.
Every swiveling chair turned as the door to the meeting room opened. A black-haired woman stuck her head inside. "I heard the word "horses." I like that."
"Hi Dr. Hanawalt!" Dr. Jacobs yelled awkwardly. He stuck out his hand, holding a fancy slip of paper. "Here is an invitation to play my game "DOUBLEHORSE." It's where you draw what you think a doublehorse is. It's fun!"
Dr. Hanawalt hissed through her teeth. "Oh dude, I'm working right now…" She thought for a second. "But I might have an hour free to play DOUBLEHORSE tonight!"
"Hell yeah, a genuine Hanawalt doublehorse would be amazing!"
"I appreciate the invite," she said. "Most people are too intimidated to play DOUBLEHORSE against me…"
In his awkwardness, Dr. Jacobs let his thoughts drift. "I accidentally just pictured Dr. Lockwood a doublehorse into battle."
Trying to be reassuring, Dr. Hanawalt shushed him. "That was no accident! She's riding the main horse and I'm in the little attached sidecar horse."
Dr. Kelly, who up until this point had been silent, now spoke up. "When I visited the house of inconstant horses, I tried to sneak a horse stability expert in with me, but the foothills did this little escalator trick and carried her away…"
"I feel ashamed of my doublehorse," sighed Dr. Walters. "He can't even run. The doublehorse Dr. Taylor described could do some kind of little sideways sashay but mine, ugh…"
Dr. Sterrestof, the resident xenobiologist, then spoke. "I've only seen alien doublehorses … they're extremely sweet yet notoriously unreliable. And they come in all shades of pinkish purple."
The room was silent. She went on, her greener eye looking around independently.
"Oh, and contrary to the Earth doublehorses, they're always into french kissing."
There was still silence.
"With each other, I might add."
Dr. Adelie cleared his throat again. He seemed to be coming down with something. Dr. Kelly patted him on the back.
"If you double a horse's Pokédex number, which is 472," Dr. Nate Tarrant, the mathematician, remarked as he discreetly typed into a calculator, "you get UNDEFINED, which is made up of a bunch of cough SFX and mountain sprites. Speed-runners use it to bypass time-consuming areas like [BIRTH] and [DIRECTIONLESS LONGING]."
Suddenly, Dr. Jacobs struck the table with a fist, remembering something he had forgotten. He turned the projector back on. The lights darkened and he called up a final slide. On the screen, an ancient Greek philosopher was sketching a strange, indistinct animal amidst geometric formulae.
"This is Euclid logically deriving a doublehorse from a simple, made-at-home axiom that anyone can use!" Everyone oohed and ahhed in acknowledgement. There were a few more slides of Euclid's tablet at increasing magnification; Dr. Jacobs advanced past them until the slideshow was over.
The lights came back on. Inexplicably, Dr. Tarrant stayed dark, as well as a shadowy copy of him lurking in the corner of the room.
"BOTH DARK NATES HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT DOUBLEHORSE," Dr. Jacobs screeched. The shadowy figure flickered out. Dr. Tarrant stayed dark.


Seriously you need to read The Place Where Two Rivers Meet first

Salah opened the door, and thanked God almighty that he was finally home. He hung his jacket on the hook and slipped his shoes off. Mary-Ann was at the stove, cooking.
“So, how was it?”
“It was. That's about as much as I can say about it.” He walked over to her. Hug and a kiss. “Need any help?”
“I'm good. Though I hope you're in the mood for breakfast for dinner, because we're having breakfast for dinner.”
“Breakfast for dinner sounds fine. Are you sure you don't need any help?”
“Salah, chivalry is supposed to be dead. You're supposed to be getting all offended that I, a woman, am doing such subservient domestic activities as cooking.”
Salah smiled, and got the butter out of the refrigerator and syrup out of the cabinet.
“So then, tell me how the newbies were.” Mary-Ann flipped the pancakes on the griddle one by one. “You get a fundie in your group?”
“Just one this time.”
“And?
“Very conservative Christian, not entirely sure why he joined, but that's a digression for another day. It was actually pretty funny, because I'd say something and when I looked over he had this constipated look, and I just knew he was this close to saying something offensive.”
“How big did his eyes get when you showed him the dinosaur gospel?”
“I thought he was going to have a heart attack.” Salah took two cups from the cupboard and filled them. Water in one, milk in the other.
Mary-Ann laughed.
"You told him the story of Blue-Feathers and the Tournament of Bright Autumn, right?"
"Of course." Glasses on the table. "'Blue-Feathers, his crest at peak and teeth bared, roared challenge to the Black-And-Green Scale, so that they might meet on the field in single combat and settle the matter of the honor of She-Who-Tears-At-Furred-Ones. The battle would be by bone-spear, riding upon their beaked beasts, until one lay slain and the matter of honor had been sealed, and the line could then continue by her eggs.'"
"Ah, so romantic."
"Except for the part where they all die horrific gory deaths, the kingdom is toppled into war and chaos, and the resulting dark age continues for almost three centuries before the emergence of Softwalker."
"We have the best job ever."
Salah nodded.
“That all said, the rest of the group was fine, nothing too unusual. Had an atheist in there, just for the tour. Scribes brought him in for consulting on the Fifth Church.”
“He didn't get in a fight with the fundie or anything, did he?”
“No, he was actually quite pleasant. And Benson, the fundie, he'll be fine. Just needs a few months.” Salah sat down.
“Well, I had a pretty exciting day myself.” Mary-Ann set the plate of pancakes and bowl of scrambled eggs on the table and sat down. Salah looked across the table, eyes locked with his wife's.
“Why do I get the feeling that you're going to tell me something important?”
“Because you're a perceptive and intelligent person. And also because I'm pregnant.”
Salah blinked a few times, the words registering in his brain. Stunned flatness turned into a smile, into a grin, into a laugh, into a uproarious, gasping guffaw.
"I…I don't even…I don't even know what to say," he wiped a tear from his eye. "I'm sorry, I…this is wonderful…I'm glad you got me to sit down first…thank God…"
"You're totally going to brag when we go into work tomorrow."
"Of course. Oh, so many things to do now. Living arrangements, making the announcement. And names, have to think of names…" Salah's expression became somber.
"Something wrong?"
"Just thinking ahead. Schooling, how we'll raise them. What holidays to celebrate in the house. All of that. You'll want her baptized, I presume, and I'm fine with that, but…"
Mary-Ann placed her hand over his.
"Salah, I wouldn't be where I am now if I wasn't able to compromise. Yeah, it's tricky. It's all tricky business. But, just look at what the Initiative's been able to do with the New Path and the Universal texts and all that. We could always go that way, raise them on the New Path. Or we could go for the trifecta and bring them up Jewish." She paused for a bit. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the most important thing is that you're a good person. The ritual's just the dressing on top, at the end of the day. God cares more about what's inside. Whatever we choose, I know we'll be doing what's best for our baby."
Salah nodded, saying nothing.
"And we don't have to decide just now. Let's eat first."

« The Place Where Two Rivers Meet | Hub | Crossing the Streams »


Salah felt as if he was about to vomit butterflies. He was married. He was a married man, sitting next to his wife, a big smile on his face. This was a thing that had happened.
The actual wedding had been a short, simple affair. The New Path required only an exchange of vows before God and the community, and beyond that there had only been words said by friends, some prayers to bless the union, and a couple choruses of “Get on with it!”
Salah was happier than he could recall being in a long time, sitting there at the head table, Mary-Ann's hand in his. The angry young man that usually remained caged inside his soul had been replaced with a giggling, excited child, running about and laughing with the simple joy of simply being.
And Mary-Ann… she was stunning. She was wearing a blue silk dress, simple, modest, but very fitting for her. Salah was so used to seeing her in her well-worn jeans, baggy Notre Dame sweatshirt, and her favorite knit hairnet that the change was startling. She had her hair done and was all made up, and she was beautiful by any reasonable standards. More importantly, she was happy. Salah could see it in her eyes, her smiles, just the way she held herself. That was enough for him.
The Chapterhouse's meeting hall was packed full, tables with white tablecloths lined up in a big square around the open space for dancing. One whole wall was lined with the food: in lieu of catering the affair, a potluck had been chosen, which meant that everyone had dug out grandmother's secret recipes, which triggered that eternal struggle that burns in the hearts of all men: my grandma's secret recipe is better than your grandma's secret recipe. The table was weighed down with twenty types of bread, ten vats of pasta, casseroles, salads, roast beef and mashed potatoes, lamb and chicken and whatever else people could put together. For practical purposes, there was labeling for dietary restrictions. After no small amount of finagling and argumentation, a corner had been cordoned off for alcohol, so long as things didn't get too rowdy.
The head table had been host to a constant stream of well-wishers, to the point that Salah was sure his food would be cold by the time they'd finished greeting them all. The line was almost done when…no…it couldn't be…
An old man now stood in front of their table. He was brown and bent and creased, with a hardwood cane. He had that mellowed, soft, grandfatherly look with a twinkle in his eye, the look of a man who would sit in his chair reading National Geographic and doing crosswords while watching his great-grandchildren run about.
Salah nearly leapt out of his chair. “Assalam alayka, sayyid.” The two shook hands and exchanged a short hug.
“Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatu Allah”, the old man responded, smiling. “You're looking well, Salah.”
“Adnan…I…I didn't think you would be able to make it!”
“People have been saying that more and more now that the Tribunal has opened up, and I don't know why: I always show up sooner or later, except for those times when God sees that I am better suited somewhere else.”
“Wait wait whoa whoa whoa hold on…” Mary-Ann said. “Adnan? As in Adnan of the Tribunal?”
“The very same. I was Salah's mentor when he joined the Initiative.”
Mary-Ann looked from Adnan to Salah with bemused bewilderment.
“You realize that I'm now expecting you to say something like ‘Mary-Ann, I've invited the pope over for coffee and donuts' in the near or distant future? Because right now I wouldn't be surprised if you did that.”
“Maybe, maybe.” Salah chuckled. “Sayyid, please, have a seat, have some food.”
“I plan on it. We have a great deal to catch up on.”
—
“They are a wonderful couple.” Adnan said to Rabbi Arnheim some time later as they stood by the punch bowl. Mary-Ann and Salah were dancing in the center of the hall.
“That they are. They'll be happy together, I'm sure of that. Are you leaving now?”
“Yes, I'm afraid. Henry has been off causing difficulty, as usual.”
“What's happened?”
“His wolves attacked an artists' commune on the west coast yesterday. The reports say over one hundred dead. I'm going to speak with him personally about it, and then return to Istanbul for the conference.”
“Hmm. Think it has to do with the inkblood those two found in BackdoorSoHo?” Aaron nodded towards Mary-Ann and Salah.
“Henry believes it, but I say it is better to wait and see. The blacker artists worship all manner of foul things, to the point where one and the other seem very much alike.” Adnan sighed. “But these are my troubles for tonight. Don't let yourself be troubled when there is so much good here.”
He walked away, hobbling on his cane and vanishing in silence.
—
The evening went on. Good friends, good food, and good drink were had in full.
—
Mary-Ann stood up, motioned for Brother Ivan to pause the music and cleared her throat obnoxiously loudly.
“Excuse me! I have an announcement. I'm going to sing a song, and I'd like to dedicate this song to Salah, because he's made a great sacrifice: he put the Queen in second place.” She swung her arms out dramatically and took a deep breath. “Christians have their hymns and pages."
Salah pinched the bridge of his nose, an embarrassed smile spreading across his face. He knew where this was going, and it was going there.
Hymns and pages. Di and Toton and Sazed and RC4 and a few other friends echoed back.
"Hava Nagilas for the Jews."
For the Jews. More echoing now, and louder.
"Baptists have the rock of ages"
Rock of ages
"Atheists just sing the blues…"
This had to have been planned beforehand.
"Catholics dress up for Mass, and listen to Gregorian chants…"
Had to have been planned ahead of time.
"Atheists, just take a pass. Watch football in their underpants…"
Watch football in their underpaaaaaaaants…
There was one mass inhalation for the last, ceiling-shaking lines.
Atheists…
Atheists…
Atheists…
Mary-Ann swept an arm towards Salah, a massive smile on her face.
Oh, what the hell. It was his wedding day.
“Don't have no SOOOOOOOOOOONGS!” he shouted.
—
The apartment door swung shut softly behind them.
“Ugh…I think I gained five pounds from all that food.”
“It can't have helped that you drank as much as you did.”
Living room to bedroom.
“Salah, I've got a cast-iron liver. And you don't drink, so I drank for ya.”
“Fair enough.”
Some rustling.
Mary-Ann flomped down on the bed.
“It's almost like we're reasonable adults or something. I love it.”
Salah lay down next to her, resting on his elbow.
“My mistresses's eyes are nothing like the sun, and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare, as any she belied with false compare.”
Mary-Ann gave him a coy smile.
“You are so classy it's unreal.”
“I could be classier. Madame, ye ben of al beaute shrine, as fer as cercled is the mapamounde, for as the cristal glorious ye shyne…”
She laughed, punching him in the shoulder.
Life was good.

« The Good of the Other | Hub | Breakfast for Dinner »


"Hey Mista Tallyman, tally me banana. Daylight come, and me wan' go home. Day, me say day, me say day, me say day, me say day, me say day-ay-o. Daylight come, and me wan' go home."
The little girl shivered and drew her blankets closer to her. Singing sometimes helped, but today it just made her feel even more lonely than usual.
She missed the sun. In fact, she kind of missed everything. Mom, dad, her brother…
"I never shoulda let him dare me to go up the stairs," she murmured to herself.
Maybe she could try again to find the exit today…
The little girl shook her head. It was a silly thought, especially today. Her last flashlight had finally run out of batteries a little while ago. She was out of food and everything, and it didn't seem like she would find any more anytime soon. It's not like she ever got anywhere when she tried, anyways. There was always just more and more stairs, stairs up, stairs down, stairs where the door used to be…
"Yeah, um, it's just a dirty, concrete wall. There's like nothing on it. No, wait. It's a little bit sticky right here."
The girl's head snapped up, even though she knew she wouldn't see anything. Someone was coming in! Oh yes, yes! A grin as wide as the platform she sat on stretched across her face.
"Hey! Please, please help me! I'm scared, come get me! Hurry!"
She screamed and pleaded at the top of her lungs, quickly degrading down into incoherent sobbing. With every growing moment, she felt the darkness getting heavier and heavier. In between cries, the girl heard slow but steady footsteps echoing through the stairwell.
After hours and hours of this, a piercing scream halted her sobbing.
He found her.
The even rhythm of the footsteps became a frantic cascade of thumping and yelling. The child started crying and begging once again as she heard the form get gradually closer. A bouncing light, illuminating random patches of stairs preceded the fleeing woman. She was trying to look over her shoulder when she finally made it down to the crying girl.
The girl reached out with a single bladed finger and cleanly sliced the woman's head off. The featureless creature caught it in his hands and stared at it while the child picked up the flood lamp, and examined the prey. Nice and plump. She nodded towards him, and he smashed the equipment.
"Thank you so much, mister. I don't know how I'd survive without you."
The face appeared to nod, then slunk back into the darkness. The little girl's eye was still adjusting to the light, but she was so hungry that she started using one of her right hands to haphazardly slice the body into sections though her vision was obscured. First, the arms. Then, the legs. Then the rest. As she prepared her food for the next few weeks, the child continued singing the song she had learned from that one little human that came down here oh so long ago.
"Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch."


SCP-173 looked at the ground of its cell. As always, it was strewn with blood and shit, along with the corpses of the most recent cleanup team. However, on this day, something different lay upon the stone ground. A small, red object, with two bumps on one end and a small point on the other, with a white, waving pattern curling around the edges.
Without pausing in its mad, frantic scratching of the walls, 173 picked up the object and peered closely at it. Beneath the stains from the floor, there appeared to be some sort of indecipherable scribbling across the object's front. What intrigued 173, however, was the picture on the front, for it was a picture of itself, standing in the corner of the cell, glancing over at the viewer. This puzzled 173 immensely; it knew many came into its cell with many strange objects, but it was not aware any were capable of capturing an image of it in such a fashion. Still, even after years of isolation, the sculpture recognized the image as itself, in some rudimentary fashion.
173 went about its usual business, dashing around the room and clawing at the walls, occasionally coming to a halt in the dead center of the room, so as to stare intently at the door and gather its thoughts of hatred towards those beyond. It did not let go of the object, though, for it still puzzled the statue. For what reasons, 173 could not say why, but there was a sense of mystery about this thing.
Hours later, 173 took to examining the object again. A little molding of the edges revealed an interior space, which it could open with a slight amount of effort. More of the strange scribblings were laid down on both sides of the inside flaps. Thinking they must mean something, 173 put its crude knowledge of human writing to use, trying to decipher the meaning behind the scratches. After an hour of hard work, 173 had managed to work out something that sounded like it might pass human lips. Putting all the information together in its head, it sounded out the words internally:
"Hach-aa-pehpeh-eeey… vvvvv-aa-llintt-aaaayyy-nehs… deh-aa-eeey…"
Complete and utter nonsense. 173 had a firmer, if still very loose, grasp of human speech than human writing, and this did not sound like anything a normal human being would say. Perhaps one with a mouth like its own, but certainly not one like those who kept it prisoner?
Could it be that they were mocking 173? Had it really come to that? They spend years upon years keeping it frozen in one place with their glances, locking it away, denying it the satisfying sound of a sickening crunch of revenge… and now they would mock it? Rage rose up inside 173; if they truly had descended to such cruel levels, then it would let them know just how cruel it could be in kind…
Fortunately, a thought of reason broke through the madness: It had not yet deciphered all the scratchings on the object. Perhaps if it were to do so, there would be a different course of action open. Of course, if they really were mocking it, then a wholesale slaughter would definitely ensue.
173 turned its attention to the scribblings on the left side of the object's interior. Two of the words, "to" and "from," were not hard for it to figure out: they were monosyllabic, and already ingrained into its limited vocabulary. So someone from the outside had sent something to 173, and wanted it to know the origination point of the object. A further examination of the words after "to" confirmed this suspicion. "Ess-Cee-Pee… Iee-vvv-eee" It didn't sound like much, but turning the phrase over and over in its head, it came to the conclusion that it was the name they had chosen to give it.
Shifting its attention back to the right-interior side, 173 noticed something else. The scribbling "Hach-aa-pehpeh-eeey" almost sounded like a word it knew. Something it always thought when snapping necks, something the people whose necks it snapped never seemed to be at all. Something like… "happy."
This gave 173 pause for thought. Someone beyond the door, one of its captors, wanted it to be happy. What could that possibly mean? The two words after happy remained incomprehensible to it, but they were surely just a further extension of the message of happy. So what could happy mean? Were they pleased with its performance as of late, and wanted to reward it for killing so efficiently? Did they understand now why it killed, and wanted to make sure it stayed happy by doing so?
Did they see it was unhappy, and that it wanted out?
As unlikely as it sounded, this seemed the most reasonable to 173's disturbed mind. It had served so much time, been held prisoner for so long. And it wasn't like it had been completely perfect before they took it in. Had these past decades been nothing but a long waiting game, one it simply had to sit through until the end? After so much time, it certainly hoped so.
And the shape of the object… 173 folded it back up, placed it on the ground, and tore into the bodies of the dead men on the floor. It took all three of them, but 173 was eventually able to extract a heart and, with much trial and error, mold it into a shape approximating that of the object. To 173, necks were the most fragile, and thus most important, part of the human body, but from what it had seen of the frightened, panicked reactions of those it had killed over the years, many held the heart up as most important. Whoever had sent this not only wanted 173 to be happy, but to connect that happiness with something distinctly human.
Having entirely stopped its routine of scratching at the walls, 173 stood there, in the middle of the room, staring at the card. There was more text to decipher on the front, but it was stunned by the potential implications of the interior of the card. For the first time in ages, it felt something towards its captors other than blind, seething rage, and cold, bitter hatred. Some deeper meaning was hidden here, some message that potentially meant its freedom. This surpassed the man seeking to die. This broke through to some deeper part of 173's… soul, it supposed.
It made a decision: It would spend as much effort as it took to decipher the writing upon the front of the card. If it turned out to be something negative, something mocking the sculpture, the aforementioned slaughter would take place. If it were some message of compassion and understanding… then it didn't know what it would do. But the lives beyond that door would be spared for another day. Sitting down for once, 173 set to work, spending hours staring intently at the front of the card, calculating to the best of its abilities the meaning of the scribblings upon the red, heart-shaped object.
At last, words and a meaning emerged. 173 stood slowly, stared at the door, and then went back to scratching at the walls.
***

At 0900 hours, Doctor Martin placed a Valentine's Day card in the pocket of D-3521, set for cleaning duty in SCP-173's cell. At 0906 hours, all three cleaning crewmembers were dead by an attack from SCP-173. Due to an internal mechanism jamming, the door to SCP-173's containment cell could not be reopened, resulting in the corpses of the cleaning crew remaining in the cell, and SCP-173 discovering the card. SCP-173 displayed highly uncharacteristic interest in the card, carrying it around the cell for several hours, and spending a significant amount of time sitting on the floor staring at the card. At 1700 hours, the internal mechanisms of the door were fully operational, allowing for retrieval of the bodies.

At this point, SCP-173 breached containment and attacked personnel all around Site 19, killing forty-two staff members at last count, including Doctor Martin. SCP-173 was restrained at 1727 hours by sixteen Foundation agents, and returned to its containment chamber shortly afterwards.


ATTACHED DOCUMENTS: Pages recovered from a journal in the forests of the Yukon Territory.

JANUARY 7, 19██

I've just received word from my superiors regarding my new stationing. I'm to be stationed at the newly formed Fort Tingenek, all the way up in Yukon Territory, in Canada. Apparently, it's meant to be a little military installation to provide defense for Site 804. It's a bit of a journey from here in Virginia, but orders are orders. I've always found it fun operating in other countries, under the noses of the government. It's terribly exciting, though sometimes I do fear we'll be found out. I suppose it doesn't really matter. This is where I've got to go, and the higher-ups know what they're doing. I've got my things packed, and I'm off.

JANUARY 10, 19██

At last, I'm settled in at the fort. It's not very large, and there's only about fifty of us on base. We're a few miles out from the site, just far enough so that we feel totally isolated. I'll tell you one thing – it's freezing up here. Human beings were not meant to make the jump from Virginian heat to Canadian frigidity in such a short time. We're out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by towering, snow-laden trees, and the ice is so thick it could stop a bullet. Honestly, we've tried shooting at it. The Colonel told us we were acting like children. Maybe, but there's not much to do in this goddamn freezer. Hopefully the temperature warms up a bit in the morning.

JANUARY 11, 19██

I've met some of the locals now, from a nearby Inuit village. The translator indicated that they were not thrilled about our presence in the area, and that they disapproved strongly of our usage of weaponry. I assured them that they were perfectly safe, but nothing seemed to ease their minds. Perhaps they'll come around to us, in time. In other news, it has only gotten colder since I arrived. I'm afraid to spit for fear that the saliva will crystallize on my tongue. One of the men got severe frostbite last night, his entire leg consumed by the blackness. I worry about my safety in the cold. I was not prepared for such extreme temperatures, although I suppose I should have been.

JANUARY 13, 19██

While training with live ammunition last night, we were interrupted by the panicked cries of the local villagers. When we went to find out what was wrong, they began babbling about “waking the spirit” and “eyes of indigo”. I've no idea what they're talking about, and the Colonel says to ignore them. “The eskimos are a superstitious bunch,” he told us. “You need to chant and throw rose petals to take a piss in those villages.” So we're resolved to blocking out the obnoxious yelling of the Inuits. Hopefully, they'll stop bothering us if we don't acknowledge them.

JANUARY 16, 19██

Our policy of ignoring the Inuits seems to have paid off, as we have not been contacted by them in a few days. We can only hope it persists and we can train in peace. Frankly, I'm not sure why this esoteric stretch of wilderness requires a military base. I'm sure there's a good reason, but at the moment I'm seriously questioning the judgment of those who set Fort Tingenek up. I haven't been able to feel my extremities for days, and the ice and snow gets into our weapons and ruins them. This place is a frozen hellhole.

On another note, Site 804 has gone quiet recently. Communications are shot, and we're a bit concerned. A group of us went out to the Site, but no one answered us. For the time being, the Colonel told us not to worry about it. These secretive, esoteric bastards are probably involved in some foul business that they'd rather not discuss, as is typical. They'll respond as soon as they can, he said. Of course they will.

JANUARY 17, 19██

Something is going on in these woods, and I wish I knew what. The Colonel sent a few of us out to meet with the villagers, since their disappearance ceased to be convenient and began to be suspicious. We were not prepared for the sight that we beheld in that village. All of the buildings had been burnt to the ground; some of them were still aflame even as we approached. In the streets lay innumerable amounts of dead, slaughtered there on the frigid soil. They looked as though they'd been torn apart by animals, yet upon further inspection, we realized that they had torn each other apart. Some of them clutched handfuls of their neighbors' flesh, their mouths filled with human meat. It was a horrifying, grisly scene, and I can't say I've ever heard of anything this brutal.

We searched for survivors, but if anyone had lived, they were nowhere to be found. Judging by the state of the bodies, we determined that they had met their ends a few nights ago, shortly after we stopped answering their cries. What form of madness had overtaken this peaceful village? We had no answers. No one did. When we told the Colonel, he said nothing, but his eyes were fearful. We will not be firing live rounds tonight.

JANUARY 18, 19██

At 0200 hours this morning, one of our men came crashing into the barracks from his post, white-faced and breathless. He spoke of a shadowy figure watching him from the bushes, and how he had gone to investigate. Shaking, he recalled the overwhelming odor of death and decay, and how it had frightened him away from the shape. As he had backed away, he caught a glimpse of what the figure was, and fled. He described some sort of “giant zombie”, tall and gaunt, with mottled skin and tight, ragged flesh. This prompted an uproar of laughter, leading the Colonel to interrogate him about where he was keeping his drugs.

That was when we heard that terrible, spine-chilling screaming. Weapons readied, we stormed outside to find a soldier tearing into the stomach of another, ripping at his innards. His mouth was blood-soaked and we noticed that the eviscerated man, still shrieking and clinging to life, was missing much of his face. We aimed at the cannibalistic soldier and demanded that he stand down, and he turned to face us. Those eyes, those godforsaken eyes! Those hollow, deadened indigo eyes! He – it? – bellowed at us, and we opened fire. We cut him down and burned his body, and we buried the disemboweled man. The wind was howling as if it were roaring at us, or perhaps laughing.

No one slept. Today, we were afraid to move, and no man's hand left his weapon. What is happening? Why?

JANUARY 19, 19██

Two more men died last night, victims of yet another flesh-eating, maddened soldier, again with those unholy eyes. There is no time to grieve, for there may be another death at any moment. I can't sleep; I can't bring myself to close my eyes. I keep seeing those indigo eyes, every time I blink. I was lying by the window and I looked outside, and I swear I saw something move by. Something tall and thin to the point of emaciation. I'm trying to convince myself that it was my imagination, but I'm not the only one who has seen it.

There is something out there, and it is stalking us. It is driving us mad. I keep remembering the village and the violence and depravity we witnessed there. I'm afraid that our fate is the same. The villagers wanted us to stop firing, so as not to awaken something. We didn't listen, and they paid the price. We're next. The Inuits were never alone in these woods. Something slumbered, biding its time, collecting its strength. Some malicious entity slept out there, in the cold, ice, and snow.

We woke it up.

JANUARY 20, 19██

It came for us.

JANUARY 21, 19██

I don't have much time. I heard noises in the bushes and I'm going to have to move soon. The fort is gone, razed to the ground, a smoldering ruin. The men ripped at each other like savage beasts, feasting on their own kind. I had to kill so many of my brothers in arms, lost to the madness. I feared I was losing my own grip on sanity. Even now I question the status of my mental health, for who can see so much horror and escape unscathed?

As I ran, fleeing the burning fort before the tall thing could take my mind as well, I saw the Colonel firing into the darkness. I saw a shadow of a colossal, narrow being, and it grabbed him by the skull, dragging him into the blackness. As he disappeared, screaming pleas of help, the stench of rot and corruption permeating the icy air, the thing looked at me. I looked into its lifeless, soulless, godless indigo eyes, and I felt the hatred, the greed and hunger and bloodlust of this creature, intensified a thousand-fold over centuries of existence, feeding and dementing and lurking. I saw its true, primal desires, and the feeling of its unquenchable drive to devour brought me to my knees. Then it was gone, returned to the darkness as my fellow men murdered each other in the snow. I stood, my knees shaking, and I ran, not daring to look back.

I write this now by the side of a huge tree, hidden by a bank of snow, miles from the fort. I dare not move for the Site. It is abundantly clear to me what transpired there. But I cannot rest. I must keep going. It is coming for me. It does not leave survivors. I know that now.

JANUARY 22, 19██

This is a goodbye. The creature has found me. I am in a cave, dark and cold like the rest of this wretched forest, and there is nowhere to run. I hear it moving near the entrance, and I can smell its putrescent stench. I hope someday, however unlikely it may be, that someone will find this journal and learn from our mistakes. The forest must remain undisturbed. There is something that lives among these trees. It is not human. It feeds on the minds and flesh of men, turning them against each other and satisfying its never-ending starvation. It cannot be stopped or killed. Those who would come to this forest – turn back! This is a dead place, an unholy part of the world abandoned by God and left to the demons. You mus

I see the eyes now. The indigo eyes, never blinking, never faltering. It is here.

May God have mercy on my so

Item Recovery Log:
Journal was discovered in a small cave located 21.6 kilometers outside of Site 804. Upon investigation of the diary's contents, Site 804 was immediately condemned. A request to post guards around the perimeter of the area was denied due to the likely loss of life and waste of resources. Journal was not accompanied by a body, and no bodies were located in the ruins of the fort or village, though traces of blood were found. As of now, the area is deemed off-limits to all personnel.


Freddie Jones tramped over spongy ground with a gun in one hand and a split stick in the other. He was making enough noise to scare off any wild thing within a half mile radius, but he didn't have a damn to give; the sun was shining in a raw blue sky, and Freddie was waist-deep in reminiscence.
Reminiscence, in this case, took the form of sawgrass and mud, the staples of Freddie's sweaty boyhood. Marriage had driven Freddie and the swamps apart, and business made the afternoon sun a stranger. But today was for seizing— seizing and then shooting, right through its flat reptilian skull.
One thousand dollars were waiting for the man who bagged the longest python, and fifteen hundred for the hunter who could kill the most. A snake shot into two pieces was acceptable; three was suspect. Freddie didn't need to splice his snakes together— he had a secret. Not two days earlier, he'd spotted one of the scaly bastards sliding across the asphalt into the preserve that backed his local gas-n-go, and he'd be damned if it wasn't the longest snake he'd ever seen.
After two hours of prodding logs and stones, the would-be hunter had uncovered three sluggish king snakes and more black racers than he'd bothered to count. Sweat ran down his neck and back and the sound of the highway was the only confirmation that he hadn't been swallowed whole by brown and green wilderness. Freddie was crouching in the sand, cursing the fire ants that had raided his left boot, when he caught a glimpse of something smooth and blotchy.
The blotches moved, glinting in the sun. The undulation of scaly skin over muscle was unmistakable, and Freddie nearly tripped over his feet to cut a path through the brush. He could see a tapered tail, now, but the animal was outpacing him. Slicing and scrambling, heedless of cut shins, he pursued the creature's end half until he saw it curve abruptly to the left. It stopped moving, and so did Freddie— winded, heart thumping in his ears.
He realized that he was shaking, violently, sweat dancing over his forearms. For a moment, he was certain that he had given himself a heart attack by running through the sand with the recklessness of a younger man. Blinking at the ground with a hand over his heart, he could see that the sand was shifting, too. The earth beneath his feet was trembling.
In the same instant, not fifty miles distant, a weather station was sending a coded signal to a secluded facility on the East Coast. Research Sector-09 received the untimely alert that SCP-1108 was manifesting over Tampa. Aerial observation confirmed that the anomaly was significantly larger than previous manifestations, and growing. Office windows vibrated with the sound of thunder, and children shrieked when the classroom lights flickered.
Half a country away, a hunter heard the same thunder. He grabbed his son by the jacket collar and tried to haul him out of the way of a buck with antlers that spread like a sycamore. Low-lying branches couldn't snag the proud head— only snapped, showering splinters, as the beast carved a trail of wreckage through the woods.
The thunder that sounded from the depths of the sea was too faint for human ears. But along the New England shore, seventeen pairs of binoculars caught a flash of white, before their tour boat was crushed by a skyscraper's weight of barnacled flesh.
No tourists or hikers had ventured far enough afield to see the strangely bulging earth in South Dakota's Black Hills. Alone, surrounded by locusts and prairie grass, the ancient bear-king pawed his way toward the sunlight. He lumbered out of the dirt and collapsed, panting like a hatched chick. His curving teeth were longer than a grown man's arm, and the fur and skin that once stretched over his bones had long since rotted. The beast shook off his old flesh like dust and reared upon two legs. The lightning recognized his roar, and raced to join him.
In a similar wilderness, a tumble of rocks that had once been a mountain shook itself and groaned. The commuters on the highway looked toward the horizon to see the hunched back of a massive buffalo.
In Texas, the cacti contorted themselves to make a path for the queen of armadillos. The bullfrogs hollered in the Louisiana swamps, drowning out the screams of boaters caught up in the paws of a hollow-eyed raccoon. A panther scream split the quiet of California vineyards, sprawling mansions enveloped by its shadow, and every sky was blotched with nervous clouds of grackles, blackbirds, pigeons, starlings.
Freddie Jones was deaf to this great revival, too busy trying to keep his footing. The tremor passed almost as soon as it had begun, and Freddie glanced up to see that his prize python had not stirred an inch. If anything, there seemed to be more of it. He could make out its patterned back more clearly, and began making his way sideways along its length, guessing at the location of the head.
He took six steps, moving loudly and awkwardly through wire grass and saw palmetto. The tawny body stretched on and on. He took a step back, and another, trying to scope out its size, when the whole length gave a great shudder. Freddie glanced behind him and saw brown blotches in the brush. He turned, and turned again, and found himself surrounded by the same gleaming pattern, peeking through sand and greenery. There was no way to tell where the python began and where it ended.
He raised his gun and shot at one broad side, which seemed, impossibly, to have swollen to the girth of a horse. The crack of the gun echoed over the swamp, but the scales slid on unblemished. Freddie gaped, too astonished to shout. His gaze was so fixed on the body growing thicker and longer in a loop around him, that he never saw the great flat head that was rising above the trees— not until it dipped to cover the sun.
The yellow eyes never met the watering grey ones, nor did the creature pay much heed to what flora and fauna were crushed beneath its coils. A tree-sized tongue flicked once, twice, and the beast turned to make its way toward the sea.

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