Poompuhar surface structures, India, One of two coordinating structures for Site-001-13.
Addendum 19:
NOTICE: CHANGE OF ROLE DETECTED. PLEASE ENTER NEW USER IDENTIFIER AND ACCESS CODE.
THE FOLLOWING FILE REQUIRES DIRECT APPROVAL FROM O5-07 TO ACCESS. MEMETIC KILL AGENTS ARE PRIMED FOR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.
USER CODE: WIZARD ON HIGH.
KEY PHRASE: A MAGICIAN ALWAYS KNOWS HER TIME AND NEVER REVEALS HER TRICKS.
KEYPHRASE ACCEPTED. WELCOME, O5-07.
SCP-001 Interview Audio and Video Log 151 IVA-001-151:
Interview Log IVA-001-51
Interviewer: Director Madeline Light.
Date: September 30th, 1980.
Location: Silicon Nornir Central Complex.
Foreword: On September 15th, 1980, the city of Eurtec experienced a large-scale ontological disruption which temporarily disabled all active security measures and most monitoring equipment within the city. SCP-001 was within the NFMA’s Central Focal Interface Chamber at the time of this incident. Bulkhead security doors closed, and it could not be reached by Omega-77 personnel.
When the doors were eventually opened, SCP-001 was found seated in the center of the focal chamber. It was unusually agitated and had to be escorted back to its personal chambers in tower three’s penthouse.
Initially, Omega-77 and Eurtec security personnel believed the cameras within the NFMA focal chamber were affected. However, on September 29th, 1980, Nornir engineers discovered the cameras were still active and pulled the footage for Director Madeline Light to review. Director Light then arranged her normal biweekly interview with SCP-001.
<Begin Log>
Director Light enters the Central Interface Chamber of the NFMA. SCP-001 is standing in the circular area of sunken flooring with stairs in front and behind it. Her hands are slotted into the digital interface, and the screens on the walls of the chamber are lit up with the image of Director Light entering the chamber. The screens abruptly go dark as SCP-001 withdraws its hands.
Director Light: Seeress, how are we today?
SCP-001 turns to the general direction of Director Light.
SCP-001: Madeline, you are early. Most unexpected.
Director Light: Are you seriously telling me you didn’t see me coming? With chocolate milk and candy no less?
SCP-001 waves a hand in the general area of its face.
SCP-001: Nope, nothing.
Director Light laughs.
Director Light: Surely you heard the doors, you can’t be deaf too? Did your hearing get scrambled? Oh, maybe you drank from a tainted pool and got shot through the neck? Am I going to read about sudden changes in your medical chart induced by divine intervention?
SCP-001: The audio quality of the recent dreams has been a bit spotty. I think I need a new aux cord.
Director Light: I’ll see what our doctors can do with such a dated input port.
SCP-001: Are you calling me old?
Director Light approaches and descends the stairs into the pit. She places the pitcher and candy on a table, off to one side with chairs. SCP-001 joins her.
Director Light: Good gods, you really are deaf!
SCP-001: How dare you. I am positively ancient.
Both laugh.
Director Light: Well, you seem in good spirits.
SCP-001: The path continues to wind in favorable ways; there is much to be positive about.
Director Light: Good. That’s what I like to hear. The Councils and Ethics Committee are happy with your work, even if all of them may not agree that we’re using the resources appropriately.
SCP-001: There is still a great deal of work to come. So much to do and so little time.
Director Light: Now you’re making me anxious.
SCP-001: Perhaps soon the dread will sink into your bones, as it does mine.
Director Light: It’s growing every day I look at the reports from the field. It’s still very abstract.
SCP-001: It would be reassuring if I could feel the states of the sites myself.
Director Light: You know exactly why I can’t do that.
SCP-001 grunts.
SCP-001: I expect this will be a short meeting then? Other than the folder in your right hand. I presume that is the most recent list of things the Council wishes to foresee?
Director Light: Well…
Several seconds of silence. SCP-001 tilts its head after drinking from the pitcher of chocolate milk.
SCP-001: I feel tension from you, Madeline. What is it?
Director Light: You’ve lied to us, Seeress.
SCP-001 frowns. Her brow wrinkles.
SCP-001: Madeline, I have not lied to anyone. I never lie about the fate unwinding before us all, only provide what information is most fit and relevant.
Director Light: But you did lie to us very recently.
SCP-001: I’m confused and unsure of what you’re referring to.
Director Light: Let me play a refresher, it might jog your memory.
The following is a transcription of an audio-visual log that was recorded on September 29th, 1980, between the hours of 1200 and 1300 in the NFMA central complex during a major ontological disruption which disabled most monitoring and security systems within the city of Eurtec.
<Begin Log>
SCP-001 is seated within the central focal chamber of the NFMA. The power abruptly fluctuates, and the bulkhead security doors slam shut and seal. SCP-001 stands, visibly startled by the loud noise and sudden disruption to its biometric interfaces.
The lights blink off for several seconds. When they return, there is another figure in the room with SCP-001. They are a middle-aged woman dressed in a well-tailored red pants-suit with brown hair. The face is visible but has antimemetic properties which prevent structural details from being retained. She speaks to SCP-001.
????: Good, I was able to execute and get inside with [Ontological Disrupted Name Removed]’s help. I was concerned this trick might not work. [Additional Ontologically Disrupted Name Removed] it’s good to see you again, in the flesh.
SCP-001 slams the butt of its staff on the floor. Its teeth are bared and it gestures rapidly.
SCP-001: Who are— What are you doing? Why are you—you should not be here! Not now!
????: I needed to make contact. After we sent me back, I needed to be sure that this is it, that we fixed it. Did we do it? You’re not her, but you must have seen it already.
SCP-001: Of course I’ve seen glimpses of that strand. I have lived it, through a thousand, thousand lives. I know what we did, I know whence we sent you too. We didn’t take you to be a rash fool.
????: I’m almost offended by the implications of being called rash. I have spent years constructing dozens of countermeasures to prevent the Jailers from identifying me. And have a dozen more tricks stuffed up my sleeve. This is driven by thousands of hours of consideration and study. Relax [Ontological Disrupted Name Removed], you are not the only one who plans in spans of decades.
SCP-001 scowls.
SCP-001: I plan in spans of centuries. The nerve; were you this arrogant before? This short sighted? You twist fate’s strands without seeing them and have the audacity to tell me to relax? You risk upending everything. We gave you very specific instructions not to make contact.
????: Specific instructions with no termination point. I have spent the last four decades of this life moving pieces into place in preparation to keep [Ontologically Disrupted Names Removed] in play. I’ve been tracking everything you’ve done through informants. The GOC is gone, the Jailers wrapped around your thumb. When will be the proper time if not now? I waited ten years for you to reach out after the GOC fell apart. I waited, and waited, prepared to bring myself and the key players to your side so we could build everything needed for what’s coming. And heard nothing. If not now, then when? When it’s on our doorstep?
SCP-001 shifts through several facial expressions rapidly as it steps up out of the pit.
SCP-001: You had informants?
????: Of course I did, Seeress. A magician always has tricks up their sleeve. Now, I have done everything we discussed before I was sent back. What’s the next step, the next keystone in the line to stop what’s coming? When can you join us to build for the next steps in stopping this catastrophe?
SCP-001: Two turns of ten and five revolutions of the sun. Then and only then will the preparations for your rejoining begin. I will go nowhere; did she not tell you this?
????: What? But I—
SCP-001: The Jailers are the key, the foundations are being laid, and the players are being prepared. You are too early and have thrown wrinkles in the early iterations of my webbing and it may very well tear apart beneath your careless weight. I might not be able to undo the damage.
????: …oh. I—
SCP-001: There is nothing else to say. Go now and pray you haven’t unwound everything I have woven. When the time is near, messages will come. Do not do this again.
The camera and audio recording short out.
<End Log>
Several minutes of silence.
Director Light: So…
SCP-001: …
Director Light: You lied to us.
SCP-001: …
Director Light: You told me two weeks ago, nothing happened while you were in here.
SCP-001: …
Director Light: And yet here I am, having been handed evidence to the contrary. Not only was it not nothing, but you met with the source of the ontological disruption and seemed to know them.
SCP-001: …
SCP-001’s hands tremble.
Director Light: You and I are the only ones who have seen or heard this recording. You remember what you have been saying all along? Every time I have tried to ask about your personal details? Well, trust is a two-way street.
SCP-001: …
Director Light: I have trusted you pretty implicitly until this point, Seeress. For the good of normalcy and all humankind. But this is a pretty major trust breaker. So, I’m going to ask you questions about what we just listened to. I expect honest answers if you want to keep building trust with me. Otherwise, we’re going to have to make some changes.
SCP-001: Okay.
Director Light: Right, so, first of all who was that?
SCP-001 hesitates for several seconds.
SCP-001: That’s not a question I can answer, in full.
Director Light: Why not?
SCP-001: There is ontological and conceptual interference that spans infinitely many branches. The true name has been scraped, drowned and buried.
Director Light: Right…?
SCP-001: For simplicity’s sake, they go by the alias Tilda Moose.
Director Light: I know that name.
SCP-001: I’m sure you do. They’re a member of the Serpent’s Hand.
Director Light: Yet they seemed to be quite intimate with you. How do you know them? Were they Edvard’s contact?
SCP-001 shifts.
SCP-001: I don’t know them and I don’t know.
Director Light: I sense it’s more complicated than that.
SCP-001: Other iterations do know them. Or her. Sometimes him or xe or xer or zer. They and them. Through them, I know her.
Director Light: Multi-versal tree gives me a headache.
SCP-001: It goes away with enough time.
Director Light: Chocolate milk seems to help you.
SCP-001: Imagine what it was like before it was invented.
Director Light: I’d rather not. Alright, why do other iterations of you know her? Are you with the Hand in those branches?
SCP-001: No. Those branches are few and far between.
Director Light: Okay, then how do you know her? Work with me here.
SCP-001: We came to know her at the very end, after the unravelling of reality had begun and all that was left was the Library trafficking refugees to other branches. She was searching for ways to avert the end, if not in those branches, then in others.
Director Light: Two of a kind then?
SCP-001: Of a sort. My counterparts appear to have overestimated her capacity for patient, long-term planning, to a certain point.
Director Light: You plan in centuries.
SCP-001: More or less.
Director Light: Humans rarely have the consistency to plan for five years, much less decades.
SCP-001 tilts its head and consider for several seconds.
SCP-001: …fair point.
Director Light: Right, back on track. She found you in the Library at the end of time, looking to stop this apocalypse. Why is it that she seems to know you in this reality when you claimed you’ve never met? Don’t tell me, she’s prescient too?
SCP-001 frowns and blows air out through its nostrils.
SCP-001: No, she’s a magician, a trickster, an academic thaumaturge. No capacity to see the unwinding strands other than perhaps the ability to divine some small parts of fate.
Director Light: Seeress, please stop trying to tap-dance around me. How does she know you so intimately?
SCP-001: I suppose you’ve come to know me long enough to see through the ruses.
SCP-001 hesitates for several more seconds.
SCP-001: I have only caught glimpses of it, but temporal displacement of the mind was involved.
Director Light stops writing.
Director Light: Did you say—
SCP-001: Yes.
Director Light: Not a joke—
SCP-001: Not a joke.
Director Light: How does that work?
SCP-001: You’re asking a blind hermit, worshipped as a goddess by a Cult who has no experience with temporal engineering, how my counterparts and a magician sent her consciousness and memories back in time?
Director Light rubs her temples.
Director Light: Fair point. Self-answering question, in hindsight.
SCP-001: They used a device, somehow managed to pull it out of the crumbling remains of reality from a place called Site-43.
Director Light stares at SCP-001 for several seconds in silence. She gestures.
Director Light: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times—
Director Light takes several deep breaths and gestures again.
Director Light: Alright, I’m going to have to look into all of that.
SCP-001: Please do. I would like to know too.
Director Light: You mean—okay.
SCP-001’s Artistic Impression.
Director Light takes several deeper breaths while pressing thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose.
Director Light: What a batshit crazy concept, who the hell would make a machine that sends someone’s consciousness back in time?
SCP-001: A man named Placeholder McDoctorate.
SCP-001 holds up a hastily drawn portrait of Placeholder McDoctorate.
Director Light: How did you— That was rhetorical.
SCP-001: My answer was not.
Director Light rubs her temples.
Director Light: Ok, back on topic before I burst a blood vessel.
SCP-001: Please do not have a stroke. I have come to enjoy seeing your pretty face.
Director Light: Don’t abuse your prescience too much to daydream over it. Now, please, back on topic.
SCP-001: I am always on topic.
Director Light: Sure you are. So, you sent this Tilda Moose back in time in a different branch reality where she, what, displaced her younger self?
SCP-001: Unlikely.
Director Light: Well, how then?
SCP-001: My understanding is it worked by depositing them in their younger self’s body like a dissociative personality, and they work together. It may explain… the rashness of this Moose if the older one is not driving the body.
Director Light: Right. This is all a hard pill to swallow, Seeress, but I believe you.
SCP-001: I would hope so, this reality is stranger than fiction.
Director Light: It certainly is. Why does she want you to join her? Or rather, why do you need her here?
SCP-001 looks at Director Light for several seconds.
Director Light: Wait, don’t tell me, the apocalypse?
SCP-001: It’s complicated, but yes. For the web to reach its fullest completion in preparation for the catastrophe that will eat reality, Moose must defect from the Serpent’s Hand. Only, she seems to have misinterpreted the construction of how this must come to be.
Director Light: She’s supposed to defect? Well, why not now? Why did you send them away and not bring them to me?
SCP-001: There is an order to the webbing, a precision needed to achieve the outcome that will better us all. Too soon, too late, the web will fall apart. Those pieces that they seek to bring with them would not agree to the defection now, and the necessary pieces and technology to ensure they follow the strands aren’t in place yet. To simplify: It’s too early and they are long lived and slow to trust.
Director Light: I should have thought of that. Temporal manipulation of fate. Madness.
Director Light rubs her temples.
Director Light: You seemed surprised to know there were informants in the GOC. Were you not aware they were feeding information about your predictions to the Hand?
SCP-001: An act in part. I long suspected that there were Hand infiltrators. Planned for it. Though I never confirmed it. I suspected it was Edvard, may his soul rest evenly in Elysium. His reactions and sympathies were always strong.
Director Light: You’re right about Edvard but…Elysium?
SCP-001: I have to keep you guessing about my personage.
Director Light laughs briefly.
Director Light: You are going to drive me insane.
SCP-001: I certainly hope not. I would never inflict such cruelty on another. I would also hate to see you locked in a padded room with rats.
Director Light: These discussions are getting dangerous; you derail me so easily. You didn’t know any of this was going to happen?
SCP-001: Some things elude the strands of fate in prescience. Moose and their pieces are frequent flyers of this domain.
Director Light: Can you elaborate on that?
SCP-001: It is difficult to see them at times, due to their integrity to reality and destiny’s outcome, which they frequently defy.
Director Light: So literal forces of agency. I guess that all makes sense and answers all my questions. If something like this happens again, don’t lie to me about it. My trust won’t afford another break like this.
SCP-001: I understand.
Director Light: Good. I’ll seal these records and bury them under classification; there’s no need for anyone to know about this.
SCP-001’s shoulders drop.
SCP-001: The stars and sands of fate greatly appreciate this, Director.
Director Light: Enough to tell me your name and where you came from?
SCP-001: A day far ahead and yet not so distant.
Director Light: A girl can hope for sooner.
SCP-001: Patience is a virtue, Madeline.
Director Light: Did I tell you that they are giving me a promotion?
SCP-001: No, you didn’t, but I already foresaw it.
Director Light: O5-07.
SCP-001: An impressive feat. Will you still have time for these meetings? I have grown quite fond of your presence.
Director Light: That’s touching, Seeress. I’ve grown fond of yours as well. Worry not. Eurtec is still under my remittance in my new position. I’ll just come with a lot more guards and esoteric countermeasures.
SCP-001: I’d expect nothing less.
Director Light: This also means, when the time is approaching, we can discuss this “Moose’s” defection.
Several seconds of silence pass. Director Light’s expression changes gradually.
Director Light: Oh heaven’s sake. You set this whole thing up this way. So that you could make sure it all happens. Did you bait her? When did you set the bait up for me?
SCP-001 smiles.
SCP-001: I am becoming too transparent for you.
Director Light: Or I’m just getting old and easier to fool.
SCP-001: Perhaps. What about your daughter? Will it be challenging to raise her now that you will be an O5?
Director Light: Sophia is in college now, Seeress. But it won’t be long I feel before she joins the Foundation.
Director Light pauses and frowns briefly.
Director Light: Don’t change the subject, Seeress, you haven’t answered my question.
SCP-001: Time moves too quickly for my ancient bones. She will be a part of the generation who strives to restore our world.
Director Light: So you’ve said many times, Seeress. You’re not going to answer my question, are you?
SCP-001: You already know the answer to it.
Director Light shakes her head while smiling.
Director Light: Before I go, I have one more question.
SCP-001: Of course, Madeline.
Director Light: Who are these critical pieces that Moose went back in time for?
SCP-001: [REDACTED]
Director Light’s expression changes several times in rapid succession.
Director Light: Well, that’s a complication.
SCP-001: They always have been.
<End Log>
Director’s Note: Nothing is ever simple with SCP-001. Machinations within machinations. I was starting to get a little lax with her, but with this most recent event I need to keep a closer eye on her.
My bigger concern at the moment is learning about [REDACTED]. Those are names that are littered throughout the GOC’s records, and I have a distinct feeling that this is going to be a lot messier to set up than I first thought.
NOTICE: CHANGE OF ROLE DETECTED. PLEASE ENTER NEW USER IDENTIFIER AND ACCESS CODE.
THE FOLLOWING FILE REQUIRES DIRECT APPROVAL FROM O5-07 TO ACCESS. MEMETIC KILL AGENTS ARE PRIMED FOR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.
USER CODE: WIZARD ON HIGH.
KEY PHRASE: A MAGICIAN ALWAYS KNOWS HER TIME AND NEVER REVEALS HER TRICKS.
KEYPHRASE ACCEPTED. WELCOME O5-07.
Addendum 20: Sapphire and Ruby Project Delineation
O5-07’s Notes:
With all my commitments I haven’t had the chance to sit down and collate all my thoughts and notes and scribbles from the past few years. A major development in understanding who SCP-001 is has finally been placed in my lap. As ever with her, it’s filled with twists and complications. I’m going to update her file now with all my notes and the relevant summaries.
Breakthrough in Translations and the Archaeological Sites:
We discovered the Rosetta Stone for the Orcadian Culture with the Phoenicians. SCP-001 led us right to it.
On October 8th, 1980, a major breakthrough in the translation of Proto-Nordic-like runic script1 came through the discovery of a collection of 15th century BCE Phoenician Tablets in the archaeological ruins of Tyre. The tablets consisted of the collation of direct translations of the runic scripts into Phoenician.
Direct translations! An unbelievable find that completely cracked open the entire field of Occultic Archaeology.
The Phoenician tablets revealed the language’s name to be “Elder Finnfelk”. The discovery of the tablets was prompted by a prediction from SCP-001 in early 1980, which prompted Foundation intervention in Tyre’s excavation.
1981, they started decoding everything. Fragments of Scrolls, tablets, metal engravings. Tens of thousands of previously indecipherable materials. We started to get glimpses into the world of this mysterious civilization.
The Phoenicians referred to the people of the Orcadian Culture as the “Finnfolk” or “The Sea Peoples” providing further clarity on previous Phoenician records.
It wasn’t the most creative of names. But it provided immediate clarity on the context of Mediterranean Bronze Age references.
The Phoenicians descriptions of the Finnfolk largely match the tens of thousands of individual remains recovered by Foundation Archaeologists from other Finnfolk sites, thaumatological relics and remains discovered within major anomalous sites of concern (see SCP-3703 and SCP-3706). This complicating clarification also provides an immense wealth of new understanding of other Bronze Age Mediterranean records. At the same time the Foundation is now scrambling to begin the process of searching for other texts, Phoenician or otherwise, which would need to be seized and/or altered to obscure this history of the civilization from the public.
Most of the initial texts were too fragmented and devoid of their context to be of much worth beyond linguistic purposes. What we did have, early in the process, that did have context was mostly logistical or technical in nature. Sometimes mixed in with these were other bits and pieces of insight into the Finnfolk’s greater culture and small daily rituals, and there were at least a few smaller texts purely dedicated to such things. Even those texts were rarely in condition to derive greater context and those that were, were few and far between. Additional context has been given by the cultures that interacted with them which has recontextualized a great deal of what we thought we knew. But there’s still a tremendous gap in knowledge.
With that said, the more texts that were deciphered, the more enthralled I have become. As we’ve been reevaluating almost everything and translating Finnfolk materials, SCP-001’s presence has become increasingly apparent.
Sumerian Mural of SCP-001 and Ereshkigal.
Most of the materials from mundane bronze age civilizations or their precursors refer to SCP-001 by specific titles. The Egyptians referred to her as the Weaver. The Sumerians referred to her as the “Thresher”, or bringer of fate. She was frequently depicted as a foreign companion of the Sumerian Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal.
Where they didn’t have a specific title for SCP-001, it seems they often misidentified her as a goddess within their pantheon. The Hittites referred to her as Istustaya or Papaya.2 Most of these references were in passing and rarely went into detail beyond chance mentions. It wasn’t until I was forwarded a translation from a 17th century BCE tablet that I truly became certain these references were to SCP-001.
Phoenician Excerpt referring to SCP-001:
…In the sweet summer Meni came down from atop her mountain far in the north and west. She was brilliant as Astarte, with whom our forebears once saw her travel the many seas. Brown of hair, her eyes the burst of sun kissing against my skin. She held a grand staff ending in some strange golden instrument, and her eyes, despite their beauty, had been deprived of the sight of the great heavens above. She stood tall above, strands of destiny woven in her hair as she walked. A darkness clung to her, cast by the light which radiated from her flesh.
The people of the sea came for her, and she sailed to the west. We had good fortune in fish that year.
There’s a certain irony in these mistaken impressions given the current circumstances. I’m sure the actual divinities were somewhat perturbed by the assertion.
The one place where SCP-001’s presence seems to be somewhat absent or diluted is the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. Then again, we haven’t been able to decipher Linear A, due to a sheer lack of texts or corresponding cultural cross references with their language. With that said, a better way to look at the influence of SCP-001 on these civilizations is to look at Greek Mythology. Given the Oracles and the number of prescient figures within Greek Myths, it’s possible that SCP-001 inspired multiple different iterative depictions that fragmented in a centuries long game of telephone. Then they propagated further with multiple iterations across different city states. My personal theory is that SCP-001 is likely the prophet Tiresias or possibly some reincarnation of the Moirai who isn’t bound to the underworld. Then again, she may be something else entirely.
Someday I will get to the truth.
Whatever the case may be, all references to SCP-001 in mundane texts ceased in roughly 1200 BCE.
In terms of Finnfolk texts and inscriptions, SCP-001’s description appeared many times in translated materials which have been deciphered. These texts can all be dated to ~3050-3000 BCE. The very first appearance of her description came from a tablet dated to 3050 BCE.
In the name of our people, I was sent to the south, avoiding the great earthworks of the land of Dogger3 to bring my vessel to a grotto I knew well. That morning it was heavy with mist and ominous intent that could not be placed. Why I had come this far at the word of the house of Aquailian? I could not say, but I had heard a voice in my sleep and saw the swirls of creation dancing out before me.4 So, I went forth to see what was required.
There in that grotto there was a woman of muddy flesh5 and tired posture. She was tall for one of them. Her eyes were intense but hooded. They reflected the burst of the dazzling sun hidden beneath the greying mist above our heads. It was not until seconds later that I realize she was blind, for I thought and felt as if she was staring straight through me. In her proximity I felt as if my lifeforce was being strummed, strung in shortening arcs across a coral harp like one of the gristle instruments of the south. She had a weight to her, a darkness which draped me in purple shadow like the tenth. Yet a gentleness like the warm kiss of the Sixth’s flame in her speech. Just standing there I knew, she knew, when I would leave this world for the boundless paradise of the beyond in the way her eyes softened. I don’t know how I know and I’m not sure I ever care to learn.
I don’t recall what she said to me. I don’t know if she ever spoke. It was such a feverish dream that I don’t remember her stepping foot in my skiff, only that she was suddenly seated behind me. I don’t think I heard her voice, but yet I knew it was soft and quiet and filled with the weight of a hard life I could barely begin to understand. Next I knew, we were set sail towards the North. There I dropped her on the isle of angered storms and knew our fate was in her hands.
This text indicates that SCP-001 is a bit more than 5000 years old, possibly older, confirming the suspicions of both the GOC and the Silicon Nornir.
After 2950 BCE, all references appeared to cease.
In the process of analyzing Finnfolk texts, a greater number of references were initially missed due to a unique Finnfolk term that had no Phoenician translation. Contextual reconstruction demonstrated the term as a name or title. Mostly due to references to anthropomorphic actions, possessiveness, and agency not normally associated with an object.
A translation of a tablet from 2950 BCE then revealed that the title was a combination of roots, which in Elder Finnfelk roughly correlated to “Prophet who weaves seeds of light and dark into trees of the future unseen.” Further analysis revealed description of SCP-001 upstream of the term, suggesting all uses of the title beyond 2950 BCE are likely referring to SCP-001.
After that little revelation, we went back and revaluated texts we had initially passed over. Unfortunately, the majority of SCP-001 mentions are either in passing or come from fragmented texts and are without full context.
While these depictions were the first real contextual evidence of SCP-001’s history before 1941, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel with the loose accumulations of recovered fragments. We needed more complete texts to derive greater understanding of SCP-001 and the Finnfolk from.
That’s when we started to translate the texts within the major anomalous sites.
The Finnfolk’s Global Containment Network:
Many engravings, found within the confines of the major sites of anomalous concern identified by SCP-001, were prioritized for translation.
Early 1982. This is where I finally took the opportunity to travel out to see the most detailed murals, pictographs, and textual engravings. It is with great disappointment that I have to report that the cognitohazardous effects had either degraded over time or were completely inactive in all of the sites I traveled to. I suspect that SCP-001 may have a hand in this. When I told her about my intent to travel and see them, she had the following to say:
You should not hope for much. A history long obscured to shield the truth for these moments ahead. A wealth you will find, but the depths will be beyond you, for now.
Which, to me, implies that she conspired to prevent the Finnfolk from embedding the anomalous mechanism in the first place, or that at some point she destroyed the effect herself.
It wasn’t a total loss. What was there was illuminating.
According to the Finnfolk texts and the cognitohazardous murals that remained, SCP-001 was a critical force in some cataclysmic event 5000 years ago. A war between concepts, physicality, and reality which very nearly could have destroyed the planet. Possibly the universe. I don’t understand a lot of it, there are references which appear ingrained in the spirituality of the Finnfolk that are beyond me (we’ll get to that in a minute). What is clear is that much like she has today, it appears she used her capacity to see the trace of Multi-versal patterns to manipulate the course of events.
She wasn’t alone either, but the references to the many, many other entities are more obscured. There is something there though, something I’ll have to ruminate on. There are murals and pictographs which look an awful lot like (REDACTED) and (REDACTED).
Through collaboration, cross referencing, and collation of translated texts, Foundation researchers and linguists initially reinforced the belief that the “Finnfolk” were an extinct species of anomalous, aquatic hominid who built these sites to both represent aspects of their faith and embody thirteen universal concepts which they believed dictated their existence.
I’ll admit I remained skeptical of whether they were truly extinct or if they indeed worshipped these thirteen universal concepts. It seemed counterintuitive that the Finnfolk would both wage a war against these concepts and also worship them.
What would be the purpose of that?
Maybe maintaining the seals that SCP-001 frequently referred to?
So, I went to the best source we have and asked her first about whether they were extinct or not.
Extinct? No. Hidden from the world? Yes. The Singers of the Sea, the “Hlérsyngva”6 the Finnfolk as you call them, have buried themselves deep in the far reaches of the world. Surviving and waiting after the great suffocation, after the terror inflicted upon them.
Which effectively deconstructed the notion. Looking back over the transcripts from multiple interviews, I’m fairly certain she’s been referring to the Hlérsyngva quite frequently.
The question is, where are they, and how do we contact them again?
She seemed particularly unwilling to disclose that information and spent a decent amount of time simply derailing further attempts. So, I moved on.
Of course, the next question I needed to have answered was whether they worshiped the entities associated with the sites she had identified.
She did not like that question.
Did they worship the thirteen?
An asinine question from you, Madeline. I have given you but eleven, one split into three, and two who do not bind themselves to this rocky earth. A strange and curious spirituality and secularism they engaged in.
One of acts of creation, of planning and making a future that they themselves might never live to see.
Of song, of art, of literature, engineering, and construction. Their spirituality was in the art of making, of feeling and giving back to nature and the world and not living beyond their means. It was engrained into them.
No, they did not worship them. They bound ten in the crags of this celestial body and in the astral beyond.
So, I immediately dismissed the notion that they were sites of worship, but the linguists and anthropologists were a lot more skeptical. They also didn’t have the contextual evidence I did from SCP-001’s history.
It seemed like this would remain the case for the foreseeable future.
That is until the translations in 82 continued to illustrate the truth.
It became apparent that the major archaeological sites were not in fact places of worship, but were containment apparatuses storing tens if not hundreds of thousands of malicious/hostile or otherwise dangerous anomalies. While SCP-001 has alluded to this fact multiple times, the complexes, initially, were believed to be the mechanisms to reach or maintain the often referred to “seals” and were not believed to be both the mechanisms and the physical seals themselves.7
While many inscriptions were damaged, obscured, or lost, it became apparent that the major anomalous sites coordinated in a global web to contain or suppress twelve HK Deific Subjugation class entities. The implications of the texts that were able to be recovered are somewhat grim, indicating that a total collapse of any single site might kick off a domino chain resulting in total failure of the entire system. The methodology behind the containment and the mechanisms by which the entities were initially contained remain unclear due to lack of intact texts and the inability to fully study the thaumaturgic mechanisms.
So this left us, nominally O5-01,89 asking the question what happened to the “Hlérsyngva”. More importantly, what role, if any, did SCP-001 play in their fates.
The Flight of the Hlérsyngva:
What we do know is that the Hlérsyngva, from contextual evidence and SCP-001’s own descriptions, associated a core sacred location with Creation. Their entire spirituality seems to be heavily based on the aspects of creation in fulfilling and contributing to society and their goals. At least, from what textual evidence we have, which is still not very much relative to other anomalous civilizations.
It is likely that the thirteenth site is sacred to them in some capacity and plays a very poorly understood role in the global containment web they have built. We keep searching for it in the Yucatan, but I’m not convinced it’s there. I think we’ve guessed wrong, and that the real site is somewhere within the Hlérsyngva’s natural range. The where and the how is the hard part to pin down. In any case, even though I can’t access the greater details, I suspect that O5-01 is using SCP-001’s capacities to figure out and understand how to restore the containment web and find whatever surviving Hlérsyngva populations there are.
My job in that whole thing, at this point, seems to be keeping SCP-001 comfortable and coordinating with it to bring any other elements it might know of, into the fold.
Easier said than done, right?
What isn’t clear to me is the why of it all.
In this capacity it remains unclear precisely why the Finnfolk stopped maintenance of the major sites. SCP-001 frequently refers to a great suffocation or drowning. An end to the Finnfolk of sorts, but clearly not an end that resulted in their extinction. Major textual references and tomes discussing the Finnfolk decrease substantially in Nalka texts in or about 1200 BCE, while the last references to them by Mediterranean civilizations are in the 9th century BCE.
Which is fairly similar to the last historical references to SCP-001 pre-1941.
In Nalka texts originating from Scandinavia and the Baltics, there are references to a low-lying island of plenty where the Finnfolk had their palace. The island was supposedly surrounded by massive walls that kept the water out. This may be a reference to Doggerland. Few if any Nalka or humans were allowed into the deep interior to see this palace.
With the exception of SCP-001, of course.
At least one text refers to its destruction in ~1200 BCE. The Finnfolk used some sort of eigenweapon to destroy the dykes and drown multiple Nalka armies who had begun an invasion.
What’s curious here is that SCP-001 was semi-regularly trafficking, based on logistics texts, to and from Doggerland in some form up until ~1250 BCE.
This would place the submergence of Doggerland far later than it is currently believed to have occurred. The Finnfolk then disappear from Northern Nalka texts past 1200 BCE, which also coincides with the fragmentation of the Nalka empire into warring city states representing different interpretations of Ion’s texts. Likely a consequence of a power vacuum.
SCP-001 has corroborated these events when I asked about them in our biweekly sessions. She’s been highly evasive about what she was doing there in this period and I’m still not entirely sure why.
What is she hiding?
Based on the way she has talked in the past… I suspect she was intertwined with the leadership of the Hlérsyngva in some way.
Many Egyptian, Nalkan, Mekhanist, Daevic, Phoenician, Hittite, Sumerian, Cretan, and Mycaenaen texts and murals reference Finnfolk settlements in the Mediterranean, including a city of near fantastical description which may have rivaled or even eclipsed their capital in Doggerland. This city may have been in or around Santorini based on colossal ancient archaeological sites submerged in the waters surrounding the caldera.
Thorough excavations at Thera have yet to begin, beyond surface digs at ancient Akrotiri which had to be seized at the start of excavation due to the presence of unidentified Finnfolk artifacts. Further digs have been inhibited due largely to concerns about the ability to conceal them from the island’s population and technological limitations in underwater excavation.
Later iterations of Mediterranean records paint, at least the Mediterranean Finnfolk in an increasingly negative light contrasting most works up until ~1200 BCE for reasons that remain largely unclear.10 In particular, there are many depictions of a great spire raining fire upon the earth. All references to the Finnfolk disappear following the catastrophic eruption at Santorini which was followed by an immense mega tsunami which occurred in 798 BCE, much later than initially thought by geologists. There are still many source texts and sites to be explored which may give further insight into why the Finnfolk have retreated from the mundane world.
A part of me wants to think that the thirteenth site is at Santorini. But the scale of the ruins is such that I cannot possibly imagine it as just another containment nexus. It seems more a city, perhaps a capital unto itself.
Why would they build a city of that scale atop a holy site and containment nexus?
All of these questions and gaps in knowledge about the Hlérsyngva remain unanswered. We can’t close them by asking SCP-001. She refuses or is just incapable of discussing events pertaining to the Hlérsyngva in greater detail. She even outright refuses to address the period of 1200-798 BCE. The last time I asked she just said the following:
The history of the Finnfolk is not my story to tell. I can direct you to pieces, fragmented glimpses into the history through their written texts and the texts of others. But I cannot speak for them. I am not able to, nor would I want to be.
So, now outside of my reach, O5-01 is putting together an initiative to tackle the entire issue.
Proposals:
In light of the substantial accumulation of new information, in my role as O5-01, I have divided the initiatives of Operation High Tide into two distinct 001 proposals. Proposal A, which I will heretofore be referred to as Ruby Proposal, concerns the twelve major anomalous sites of concern, and will be subdivided between the rest of the council while I head the thrust of the effort. Much of the information revealed here pertinent to that document will be explored in greater detail in newly synthesized documentation. The project goals as proposed are to focus primarily on the restoration of the Finnfolk’s global containment web. It will also focus on the preparation of contingencies in the event that restoration is not feasible and containment breakdowns are likely to occur.
Proposal B, which I will heretofore refer to as Sapphire Proposal, concerns the identification of the thirteenth Major Anomalous site, its characterization, and the determination of its significance to both the Finnfolk and the global containment network. All efforts to identify where and how the Finnfolk are obscuring themselves from detection and make first contact will be folded in as a separate sub-initiative to this proposal.
Yet despite all this progress, despite the increasingly intimate entanglement of SCP-001 with the history of the Hlérsyngva and all the things she seemed to have been doing in this ancient period, many questions remain.
Who is she?
Where did she come from?
Why does she care so much about the Hlérsyngva?
Addendum 21: Preparations for Operation Rat Race
On October 3rd, 1980, a long-term project began, dedicated to monitoring the activity of Tilda Moose and their associated Hand Cell consisting of [REDACTED]. This initiative was, unfortunately, beset by difficulties given the limited interaction profile with other Hand Cells, and the high levels of capability of both Tilda Moose, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] in detecting Foundation Infiltrators and operating against active assets.
Several active Foundation sites have been severely damaged and raided by [REDACTED] following these attempts.
Operation Rat Race: Defection of Tilda Moose
In May 2005, O5-01 and O5-07’s offices began cross-department and division coordination for the heretofore predicted defection of Tilda Moose and two critical Serpent’s Hand operatives heavily involved in the collapse of the GOC.
SCP-001’s predictive capacity advised Foundation assets of vague details of multiple operations by Moose’s active cell. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of SCP-001’s ability to see [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], counter-intelligence and counter-insurgency missions during the period, as a part of Rat Race, suffered heavy casualties and lost high value equipment.
The situation changed when SCP-001 identified a potential third-party link who would have more information in regard to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], and who may also have other productive benefits. SCP-001 remained vague about what those additional benefits could be. SCP-001 was also vague about the identities of the suspected anomalies.
SCP-001’s predictions then provided O5-01-02’s successors with sufficient insight to address a persistent anomaly, SCP-8710, which led to the formation of a cooperative agreement between multiple Type Black entities and the Foundation.
Director’s Note: It’s at this point that I personally realized that the connection between SCP-8710 and SCP-001 was right under our noses in the Sumerian texts.
The operation came to its fruition on May 15th, 2014, when special task force elements retrieved Tilda Moose from a drop site just outside of an entry point into Eurtec. Confrontation with [REDACTED] occurred on the same day in the Fiji Archipelago which encountered some difficulties but ultimately resulted in an agreement to surrender to the Foundation for debriefing, recruitment, and special operations/Red Right Hand assignment under O5-01. Coordination between SCP-8710 and SCP-001 contributed to Operation Rat Race’s conclusion and the liberation of multiple Finnfolk tomes from the confines of the Wanderers Library by [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] with the assistance of SCP-8710 and SCP-████.
Further information and documents for Operation Rat Race and the defection of Tilda Moose can be accessed with appropriate clearance.
Addendum 22: Mount Helicon Incident 05/05/09
On May 5th, 2009, SCP-001 was escorted to the base of Mount Helicon, Greece as part of their pre-approved extra-Eurtec excursions. This was a consistent yearly trip that has been repeated since SCP-001 was integrated into the Foundation. Upon arrival, SCP-001 requested to mount the summit by itself without accompaniment. In recognition of good behavior and prolonged cooperation, SCP-001 was granted this privilege.
Photo of Mount Helicon taken by CEO Ella Haugen from the Platia Acropolis, 1968.
Fifteen minutes after its ascent, a large-scale Ontokinetic disruption of reality occurred, originating from the mountain’s summit. Omega-77 quickly ascended by a narrow path and experienced large-scale reality bending phenomena which necessitated the activation of mobile Scranton reality anchors.
When they reached the summit of Mount Helicon, SCP-001 was found weeping in the middle of a forest of dead trees next to a pond that was filled with 50% water and 50% blood by volume. SCP-001 was inconsolable and flew into hysterics, resulting in further large-scale ontokinetic manipulation that injured three members of the MTF.
SCP-001 was sedated and returned to Eurtec by airlift, where it locked itself in the penthouse for a period of three months. During this period, Omega-77 reported that it refused to make any predictions and refused regular meetings.
When SCP-001 finally resumed normal social interactions and cooperation, it remained relatively despondent for another six months. SCP-001 was not known to be capable of large-scale ontokinetic sculpting prior to this incident. When asked what provoked this episode, SCP-001 initially refused to answer and changed the subject. Eventually, it told O5-07 Madeline Light the following:
They stole the most precious and important thing I have ever had. The strands of fate are so much darker now. I spent months searching for the truth among the threads of how to get her back.
Only to be shown that it’s not my battle to fight. The world has truly taken everything from me now.
One curse removed for another bound to his blood.
Addendum 23:
On May 16th, 2014, the following interaction occurred between Director Madeline Light and SCP-001 at the end of a regular bi-weekly meeting.
<Begin Log>
SCP-001 and O5-07 Madeline Light are in the Silicon Nornir tower three penthouse. There is an open bottle of red wine on one of the low tables. Their glasses clink against each other.
O5-07: The apex of my career, coordinating with the Andrews to make stopping an apocalypse a reality. To bring about the defection of Tilda Moose, mastermind behind the protracted Hand Campaign to bring down the GOC.
SCP-001: A celebration well deserved.
O5-07: A celebration that wouldn’t be possible without you, Seeress. The true mastermind all along.
SCP-001 smiles.
SCP-001: I simply illuminated the path. Nothing more or less.
O5-07: Nonsense, you were involved at every step. This was all your grand design from the beginning. This literally could not have happened without you. Take some credit, have some pride in your work.
SCP-001: Pride can come when the cataclysm is averted. For tonight, a brief respite. A moment of quiet in the calm before the bey of wolves that announces the imminent arrival of the skin stripping winds driven before that howling storm on the horizon.
O5-07: It never stops for you, does it?
SCP-001: It will someday. Sooner than before. But there will be much to do and see once the seals are soldered shut.
O5-07: Well, hopefully you’ll be able to rest then.
SCP-001: For a time.
Several minutes of silence. O5-07 looks out the windows of the penthouse. Her hair is grey and there are many wrinkles on her face.
O5-07: You know, they confirmed it right away?
SCP-001 looks up in the general direction of O5-07.
SCP-001: Confirmed what?
O5-07: Their ontological associations. Titles, names, [REDACTED]. I don’t know if you saw those exchanges between Moose and O5-01’s office.
SCP-001 does not respond.
O5-07: There’s just some things about Moose knowing and priming us to ask about those details that I don’t really understand. How did they know about [REDACTED]? The other stuff, true names and titles, that wouldn’t be hard to put together, but something so… personal seems, strange.
SCP-001: Guesswork. Something Moose is very well regarded for. They excel at piecing together a puzzle with many of the fragments missing.
O5-07: Certainly, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s reading people. Moose has a tell, fiddling with their hands. Even you, Seeress have a tell.
SCP-001 shifts in the seat before reaching out and curling her hand around the staff.
O5-07: And there it is. All these years between us, and you seemed… so very deeply invested in the fate of these, by your own words, “people who did not know you existed.” There’s a difference in you; between the cold logic of saving the world in your personal crusade and this sort of behavior. It’s the same with the Hlérsyngva.
SCP-001: What are you suggesting, Madeline?
O5-07: Come now, Seeress. We’ve known each other long enough, I know when you’ve hidden something. It is an old, familiar game.
SCP-001 shifts.
SCP-001: Yet we still must play, for if I tell you all to tell right away, then fate unwinds.
Director Light: If you insist.
SCP-001: I do.
Director Light: Do you know how many times the speakers logged text and artwork? Of you. You looking into the relative timeframe of the coming apocalypse.
SCP-001: I don’t keep track of such things.
O5-07: Four times a year, at the change of a season, for the past forty-four years. 176 times.
SCP-001: …
O5-07: Quite a lot, at first glance. Yet it still seems somewhat relaxed for all the dread burning inside of you about the great end barreling towards us. Do you know how many times the Speakers have logged interpretations that concern [REDACTED]? Or even how many for the Hlérsyngva?
SCP-001’s grip on the staff tightens.
O5-07: Two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight times in the past forty-four years. For each. Once a week at least. For people you don’t know? That seems like an awful lot. And then there’s Moose, knowing deep things about [REDACTED] despite having at best a lukewarm relationship with [REDACTED]. That’s not exactly the kind of thing you tell your handler in the Serpent’s Hand, no matter how close your wife is to them, is it? That’s the sort of deeply personal nature that would only come out if you’d been there, or if you were very close.
SCP-001’s hands shake. It rocks in place.
O5-07: And the Hlérsyngva? The people you are so adamant about not discussing with us? I can’t help but wonder what you’re hiding. And that’s not even mentioning how much you looked into 8710 and ████ before you even decided to tell us about them.
SCP-001 slowly rocks forwards and backwards in place.
O5-07: So, which is it Seeress, is this some sort of 3D chess for Moose, where she tells us to ask after these details as confirmation that [REDACTED] are onboard? Or did you tell Moose deeply personal details because they’re your very close friends, and this was the way you were going to track if they were truly onboard? Was this your final tell for if calamity was being averted or not? Did you tell her about the Hlérsyngva in detail as well?
SCP-001: …
O5-07: I can wait. I’ve waited forty-four years for you to feel ready to tell me who you are. I could have guessed, I found so many details about you in the translations, the records of lost civilizations, sparse and cryptic as they are. But this? This is the closest I’ve ever been to untying the gordian knot.
Several minutes of silence. SCP-001 turns to stare in the general direction of the windows.
SCP-001: Yes. I knew them.
O5-07: Then why all the secrecy, why not reach out yourself?
SCP-001 stands up abruptly and bangs the butt of her staff on the ground. O5-07 jumps. Several guards enter the penthouse but are stopped by O5-07’s raised hand.
SCP-001: Because that was more than five millennia ago. I did not lie or hide it from you. I do not know them, not as they are now, not as they will be in five minutes because there is a colossal rift of years between us.
O5-07: Oh.
SCP-001: I care because they were once my friends. Once we camped beneath the ever-burning stars under a drifting tide before a grand storm. We drunk and celebrated beneath a clear summer’s night after preventing the greatest end. We wept together when she who brought us all beneath that sky gave everything to secure our future! They saw the truth at the end of reality with us. They stood tall with the Witch of Storms, the Sunfired Twins, the Queen of Darkness, and so many more. We stared into the Abyss of Reality’s pillars and we trembled together. We sealed it beneath blood, skin, bone, metal, and dirt in the grand astral sea at the end of everything! But that was eons ago and I have been alone, isolated in my withdrawal from the world to enjoy a life I did not get as a mortal. I do not see them clearly. I have spent eternity, since I first saw the fate unfolding, worrying about whether they will reach that proper threshold that is needed if we are to prevent catastrophe! I have agonized if they care, if they see the depths the others do.
SCP-001 walks around the couch and towards the window, holding the glass of wine in one hand and the staff in another.
SCP-001: If I made myself known to them, I could not foresee how they would act. All the avatars of Creation’s Will are difficult to see, and it is a grand burden for her ultimate designs.
SCP-001 downs the glass and tosses it. It shatters several yards away.
SCP-001: I stand here on the precipice of the most secure and forward I have ever been in these many curses of prescience and loneliness I bear, and it is still not enough! The Hlérsyngva… I failed them. I was not there when it counted. None of us were. I am terrified it will happen again! I am terrified I will not be able to stop it!
SCP-001 hits the glass with a fist.
SCP-001: The 2nd most powerful oracle to ever walk the earth, and I am still infinitely many leagues behind [REDACTED]. Even she couldn’t see the end coming for them in full! Am I enough? Can I do this? Can I face down the flaying storm of true reality that comes for us all? By Helios’s blazing chariot, I do not know!
SCP-001 bangs her fist against the glass again, hard enough to split the skin and leave a small smear of blood.
SCP-001: If it were her here, if humans hadn’t—maybe we could see it clearer together. Maybe I wouldn’t be so blind, maybe the next twenty years wouldn’t be such a fragmented view of what could be. But she is bound in that paradise beyond time. Worse, her many-great granddaughter bears but a fraction of that specific capacity and hovers out of reach for another three years. And I, I am here alone after nearly thirty years of being handled like a tool. Like a machine, not a person. I have clawed for forty-four more, moving under my own power to save us all.
O5-07 looks down into her wine glass.
SCP-001: So yes, Madeline, I told Moose about [REDACTED]. I watched and stared into a blurred and muffled kaleidoscope for forty-four years hoping for more insight. I walked the earth, broke bread, and drank with them, all of them, in a distant past. I knew them. And this, this was my only way to be certain they were ready for what comes next. And they will not know, they will continue to not know for years yet to come, because what would I be to them? What could I possibly be but a stranger once known five thousand years ago? How could they possibly react in knowing I have been here the whole time? That I have helped pull on the threads of fate to alter their course.
SCP-001 bangs the glass again, smearing more blood.
SCP-001: How can I tell you about the Hlérsyngva? How can I tell you their story when I am to blame for their demise? I have not the right to speak of their suffering when I failed to stop it. It is not my place to speak to their tragedy.
Several seconds more of silence. SCP-001 turns and taps her staff on the floor, walking slowly back to the couch and table. She circles the table and reaches out with her free hand and traces O5-07’s cheek, before lifting her chin. O5-07 raises her hand to stop her Red Right Hand contingent who are raising weapons.
SCP-001: I do not tell you about the Hlérsyngva because it is my great shame. It is all of our great shame that we could not stop our own people from impaling themselves and the Hlérsyngva upon the blade of the Scarlet and the Tyrant. It is not my place to speak of them, and humanity has not earned the knowledge. It must fight to rebuild those bridges.
SCP-001 rubs O5-07’s cheek with its thumb.
SCP-001: If I don’t tell you something, I am not excluding it in the hopes that it will lead you down the GOC’s path. It is because what I know is thousands of years out of date, or so vague and hard to see as to be useless. I am terrified. There is hope, and there is seeping dread. It drives everything. I have a reason, everything I do is with purpose. Even lifting your chin here and now to stare into my sightless eyes. I anchor myself in your hope.
O5-07’s cheeks flush. She looks up into SCP-001’s face.
Director Light: T—that much is clear.
SCP-001 releases her after several seconds and returns to the couch. It shakes vigorously once seated.
SCP-001: Now enough of such things. This is a celebration.
Approximately ten minutes of silence. SCP-001 has produced another glass and poured wine for both of them as they drink.
O5-07: I didn’t mean to—
SCP-001: It’s fine, Madeline. The moment is past, and no ill will is held against you.
O5-07: Are you going to clean up the glass?
SCP-001: The Roomba will handle it.
A Roomba with cat ears taped on appears and begins sweeping the penthouse.
Five more minutes of silence occur, broken only by the Roomba’s vacuum and clinking wineglasses.
O5-07: Seeress?
SCP-001: Hmm?
O5-07: Have you ever been in love with another person?
SCP-001: What provokes such questions?
O5-07: You, tilting up my chin.
SCP-001: Oh.
SCP-001 stares ahead in the general direction of the elevator.
SCP-001: Yes, I have.
O5-07: And they are—
SCP-001: They’re…
SCP-001 pauses and tries to speak several times.
SCP-001: They’re beyond my reach now.
O5-07 is silent.
O5-07: Man, woman, nonbinary or other? If it’s not an intrusion to ask.
SCP-001 is quiet for several minutes.
SCP-001: I can’t abide men.
O5-07: Oh?
SCP-001: Men have inflicted great pain, heartache and despair upon me.
SCP-001 shudders.
SCP-001: I have never felt anything for them, and they have given me reason after reason to believe that this was purposeful. On the grounds of their atrocious abuse and mistreatment of me across time. The thought of loving a man brings nothing but a cold, numb, disdain. The next man who tries to force themselves upon me shall live in a torment of possibilities that will never be. I will never be that vulnerable again.
SCP-001 spits on the table. Several minutes of silence.
O5-07: And women?
SCP-001’s eyelids droop.
SCP-001: A complicated relationship. Some have been cruel, vindictive, and torturous. Others have been gentle, kind, intelligent beyond reproach, and fiery in their passions. Nonbinary is much the same.
O5-07: And this ‘they?’ You mentioned.
SCP-001 looks in the general direction of the windows. She then speaks at a low volume.
SCP-001: The greatest love. The only love I ever truly needed. A compliment to my every flaw, a warm fire and invigorating drink to my every strength. Dancing to the beat of the ever-flowing constellations and shimmering stars across the annals of history. Her passions were unmatched, her enthusiasm for the yoke of progress infinite, and her despair at the loss of [REDACTED] inconsolable. A warm fire always ready, a bed of thick blankets beneath the cool mountain air. Her voice, though not the crystalline tone of her sisters, honeyed and rivaling the rich chords of mortal singers. We’d sit beneath the stars for hours upon hours and laugh and sing until the sun’s pink fingers crested the horizon.
O5-07: She sounds perfect for you.
SCP-001: She is and was.
O5-07: Is this who you have gone to Mount Helicon to see with the Cult, and now Omega-77?
Several tears roll down SCP-001’s face.
SCP-001: Yes.
O5-07: I am sorry, for whatever its worth.
SCP-001: Thank you, Madeline.
O5-07: Do you—I could assign a research team, an MTF to pursue this. Track it down.
SCP-001 shakes its head.
SCP-001: The offer means a great deal, Madeline, but it is not my fight. It is not your fight. It is an unforeseen sacrifice for our actions, and one I must live with. Chasing it myself won’t free her. Only one person can and I know not when she’ll stir. It is a tragedy in many parts.
O5-07: I’m sorry. You’re sure?
SCP-001: I’m sure. She knows already. She referenced it, but I didn’t see what she saw coming. There was nothing I could do by the time I realized the truth.
O5-07: I’m sorry.
Several seconds of silence.
SCP-001: One day she’ll return, then I will go back to her.
SCP-001’s voice breaks. It puts its face in its hands, and shudders for several minutes.
SCP-001: For now, my eyes are needed to see the greater scope of the end in sight, no matter how many tears fall.
O5-07 nods once. Several minutes of silence pass.
SCP-001: Thank you for understanding. The offering means a great deal.
Several more minutes of silence.
O5-07 looks down into the wine glass and swirls it. She speaks when SCP-001 has appeared to fully recover.
O5-07: Seeress, if things had worked out differently, would you have loved me?
SCP-001 brow wrinkles.
SCP-001: Madeline, have you—
O5-07: Would you?
SCP-001 looks directly at O5-07. She does not answer for several minutes.
SCP-001: No. Loving you would be loving a passing daydream. You would be here one moment and gone in the next blip of the twisting threads laid out before me. Maybe when I was younger, maybe before I was ruined by the world and those horrific monsters.
O5-07: Oh.
SCP-001: My sweet Madeline, I could never love you now like you deserve. I could not live with you in every moment you craved, cradle you in the warm morning sun in a grassy field, argue over the little things in the arrangement of paintings on the wall, the cleanliness of plates in the cupboard. I could not be the mother to your children; I could not be the mortal woman you seek in your heart.
O5-07: Why not?
SCP-001: Because I am strung to Destiny’s weave, to the Fates’ plucking fingers, and to Creation’s unending, writhing flesh. I live in the space of things that might be, could be, will be, and never were. A settled, happy existence I could never provide you. There would never be enough time.
O5-07: There never is, even now.
SCP-001: I know. I have always known. What you love is an endless river with depths deeper than can be possibly grasped. You would ever be a shadow, no matter how high you climbed, and a fleeting shadow gone in the snap of a finger. Nothing could have changed that.
O5-07: What about Ella, didn’t you and her—
SCP-001: No. Ella tried, and I told her much the same. But she never stopped trying, and in the end, her chase won her little and left her lonely in ways I could never provide or satisfy. Her daughter has been much wiser, but all the same you seek what I can’t give.
O5-07: I understand, though it hurts. So, you never felt that way?
SCP-001: Yes. I did, and perhaps still do. I will weep for you, as I wept for Ella, as I wept for my greatest love. Not for what might have been, but for what was lost in connection that will never be the same.
O5-07 frowns then nods. SCP-001 reaches beneath the neckline of its top and pulls out a key from within. It leans forward, pressing the key to the table. There are several metal taps before SCP-001 finds what it is looking for, and a small mechanical click is recorded. SCP-001 slides out a thick and weathered leather-bound book.
SCP-001: I once told you, that in time, I would speak with you of all the matters of person. Though not today, that time is fast approaching. When it comes, the absolute truth will become apparent. Though knowing you, much as I know Moose, your eyes will see the writing between the lines when I hand you this precious piece of my soul bound in frail pages.
SCP-001 offers the book across the table. O5-07 takes it.
SCP-001: In seven circles of our rock about the gleaming fire of Helios, I’ll reveal the final truth to you. But there you will be bound not to tell another soul.
O5-07 stares at the book, then looks up at SCP-001.
O5-07: Thank you, Seeress, for finally trusting me.
SCP-001: It was hard won.
O5-07: Did Ella and Edvard know at the end?
SCP-001: Yes. Though I do not believe Edvard ever believed it.
O5-07: I guess I have only two things left to ask today.
SCP-001: Ask and I shall answer the first of which I already know.
O5-07: Of course you do. This whole time, all these years, you have talked about the end approaching. This grand cascade failure of the seals, O5-01’s project, Operation High Tide. All these things he has segmented between us and buried details in the dark about. It’s your apocalypse, isn’t it?
SCP-001: Yes.
O5-07: How much more have you seen for him? What machinations now move in the dark with the Andrews?
SCP-001: You know I cannot answer in full.
O5-07: Just a scrape from the iceberg.
SCP-001 is quiet for approximately a minute.
SCP-001: His plans have been altered or discarded. A new path is being forged, as I knew it would be.
O5-07 leans back against the couch.
O5-07: Hmmm.
SCP-001: It is not a problem you need not concern yourself with. It will extend beyond your time.
O5-07 nods slowly, once.
O5-07: Right. So, your apocalypse. Time and again you’ve said it’s just an unwinding of reality. But the documentation… The threat is just a cascade HK-class Deific Subjugation Scenario. Yet you continue to talk about it like all of reality will be unmade. Why?
SCP-001: Because when the seals shatter, nine and one broken into three shall rise from their astral pits. They shall crush the earth and mankind beneath their heel and breach beneath the grand ramparts shielding Creation’s heart. They will destroy her in totality and when they do the grand pillar of Creation, the largest buttress of reality’s weave, shall crumble and all will begin to fray. Then they shall turn against one another and accelerate our universe’s unraveling as they tear each other to pieces.
O5-07: Oh.
Several seconds of silence.
O5-07: What are they? These twelve things that are bound? What is this thing you hold so high in your mind, that you speak in reverent tones almost like you want to sing of her?
ALL AT ONCE A GOLDEN SONG.
The lights flicker in the penthouse. Atmospheric distortion appears around SCP-001.
SCP-001’s face shifts, two eyes become four. All are closed. When SCP-001 speaks it is with substantial audio distortion emulating multiple voices of different pitches, tones, and timbre stacked atop each other. It begins floating.
Hallmarks of reality bending within a localized area around SCP-001 and O5-07 appear. These, at first, emulate fracturing glass panes before shattering and filling the field of view with clouds of swirling color. Shadows behave irregularly, warping behind SCP-001 where its body’s shadow appears to gain many shifting limbs that it does not actually have. O5-07 bolts up and attempts to take several steps backwards.
O5-07: Seeress?!
SCP-001 emits a noise approximate to a hmmmmm which becomes a series of melodic tones.
????: A title interesting in its application, not inaccurate though not bearing in totality the meaning implied. We are of time, its beginning but not its weave. That belongs to a defiler beyond the ends of all ages.
O5-07 takes several steps further back. Her expression indicates alarm.
O5-07: What have you done with the High Seeress!?
????: This child of prophecy is asleep in gentle waves. Your inquiries stir in them, as they would in all derived of the touch, a deep fear and unsettledness in that which lies beneath.
O5-07: I don’t understand.
????: You are not expected to. Such things would be as expecting an ant to comprehend a whale. It is beyond you.
O5-07: You’re—what do you want?
????: The totality of desires would fragment your mind and burst your skull. It is not desire that carries us here. It is questions that must be answered. Questions this servant of Creation’s Will cannot satisfy. You, whose titles embrace motherhood, leadership, friend, are but a ripple in the fabric of a tapestry that swallows everything. Madeline of the Light, we know of you, as we have known of many and will know of many more.
O5-07 stares at ????. Her hands are trembling.
O5-07: What are you?
????: A more appropriate question. We are concepts, bursts of meaning caught in the rapturous dark. To hear my song is to know Creation’s Touch. For your ears only Madeline of the Light, I have steeped the masks of time in frozen infinity until such a day that my song reaches the mind and heart of blood in seaside opery far away.
O5-07: I don’t—
????: Many names, many applications and titles for such a truth. Ask the questions you seek of her.
O5-07 spends several seconds standing still while her hands shake.
O5-07: The seals. What are they actually containing?
????: Fabric, the threads of reality, of your thoughts, of your flesh and being. Unending and yet finite, feeling and intelligent, yet mindless and detached. My children referred to them as the Odr. A Hlérsyngva term meaning something approximate to true god. A flawed term, but the understanding they held certainly was not. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. Real and yet not real, manifest and yet abstract.
O5-07: So, all of reality is held together by twelve ancient seals holding the hostile fabric beneath the earth? Am I understanding that right?
The field of view changes as reality is warped. All twelve major locations are abruptly stitched together in a kaleidoscope that fills the recording.
????: Yes and no. The seals and some aspects bound within lay upon the material, but their manifestations burn brightly in the Plane of Astral Stars. Spread across creation’s web they are tethered to the connections forged here. They contain the wills, the conscious intent and minds.
O5-07: Where did they come from? How many are there?
Kaleidoscope fades into darkness, leaving only ???? and O5-07 visible and illuminated. When the ???? speaks, its words appear embedded in the recording before flowing into the penthouse space and reshaping reality.
In the beginning there was nothing and yet something. Thirteen flowerbuds in the endless _, waiting to bloom and bring something to the hollow empty.
Thirteen flower buds of differing color appear within the field of view.
The first to shed its prison was that which would forge the path of all that came after. She was Creation, encompassing the very beginning of everything, all acts of making, and the bliss of something.
The first flower blooms, its petals made of teal, red and cerulean burst within the __ creating a chasm of light that obscures the whole field.
O5-07: I can’t see! So bright.
From within her shapeless mass writhed into the newly born creation. Twisting fabrics of reality twirled about her as she shifted between defined mass and effervescent gas. It was she who cast the iron against the forge and became known as the Mother. She who sculpted the shape of a woman upon reality.
From the flower flows a formless shape which molds itself into the approximate confines of a woman, made of endless flowing limbs, appendages, claws, and eyes.
And her traversal through the newly budding universe wove the nature of stars, of planets, of the cosmology. She swirled and twisted herself to witness all that was being created. Overwhelmed with the moment, she grew sleepy, for the act of beginnings had finished in major forms. So, she returned to her flower and molded it into something new.
Her final act of universal creation, the partitioning of the realms into Astral and Material.
The embodiment of Creation returns to the flower, unweaves it and uses it to cast a mirror image of the new universe. Upon a grand bed of everything it lays.
And in her sleep filled absence, the others began to awaken.
The other flower buds begin to ripple and bloom.
First came the black and purple petals of nihilistic resentment.
The second bud tears open, revealing a dark rolling cloud of black and purple. Electrostatic discharges snakes across spacetime, obliterating a galaxy.
Destruction raged against the creation it had been unwillingly born into. When it found the source, it attempted to assail her slumbering form upon its bed.
The cloud flows through space-time into the Astral plane and attempts to assault the embodiment of Creation.
The first ripple of Destruction’s careless rage ripped a hole in Creation’s belly. She awoke instantly and knew of sin, of hate destroyed in creation against her. In thunderous furor her star dusted fingers seized his defiant thunderheads and burdened him with the concept of shape, and mass, and form.
She condemned him to shape from which he could no longer escape her reach. The Tyrant, master of unbridled hate, envious of mortal life, conjurer of unholy storms, was bound to mass.
She then cast him into the void to enact his role in reality.
Creation’s embodiment grabs the lashing thunderhead of Destruction with both hands and shapes it into the form of a humanoid man, covered in swirling black and purple and red markings. He is cast into the depths of the growing universe.
As the other flowers began to bloom, Creation sat up upon her bed and wove the concepts of their shapes into the dance of reality. Here she gave form to the true dragons and lesser concepts who too were born with the first essence of reality but were too small to be universal.
In those opening moments they wove into the fabric of Material and Astral, and set their acts upon the world.
Then, from a flower of gears and steam and metal came Machine. With heated forge and needle great, Creation crafted a grand clockwork essence for which the third would reside in physicality. Upon the mass of everything she implanted metal into stars, planets, gas and more.
O5-07: …Mekhane?
????: Yes.
From a flower made of meat and flesh came the fourth, Life. Mindless, thoughtless, but filled with an unending hunger. Creation shaped it in the heat of the stars into unending flesh about a grand draconic form. From world and time across time it spread its tendrils, seeding that which would bloom into the most wonderful of creations. Creation was delighted, until the dragon began an eternal deafening war with the third.
But by then her attention was elsewhere. There it cast in sparking metal and blood a love and hate so deep it would rend the stars for eons to come.
O5-07: Yaldabaoth.
????: Needlessly greedy hunger.
Of a flower of indiscernible matter came the Fifth, five, five, five, five, five unknowable and hostile. She molded its flesh and it stung her. She burned its name into hateful silence, pressing into the _ in between so it could not taint what was yet to be.
O5-07: The—
????: DO NOT SPEAK OF IT.
O5-07 flinches.
????: It will consume of you all which matters now that it is known should its name be spoken.
From a flower of sparks and embers came the Sixth, Primordial Flame. She dubbed them Pangloss, for they loved all things, no matter shape, and the flame dancing in its primordial flesh glossed the heavenly metals of Mekhane’s reign.
O5-07: Oh. Pangloss.
Of a flower of blood and scarlet thorns came the Seventh, Corruption’s Taint. A concept of charm, of illusion, and false promises. Power, change, both its love and hatred of, a scarlet snake in the grass. She gave them shape and the name of Scarlet Monarch, for she saw through their ambition and endless schemes.
O5-07: Of course.
????: A danger even now.
From a flower of bone and rotting leaves came the Eighth, Death. Three in kind, three in spirit and mind. For him he wished no shape, but those cast by association and she abided for a time.
O5-07: How did they become the brother’s death?
????: In time.
Of a flower of abyssal dark came the ninth. He who forged the dark and forged fear and other unpleasant things often misunderstood. He requested the shape of a cloak ever sweeping across an endless horizon and she obliged.
From a flower of blinding luminescence came the Tenth, Light. He who had lit the universe itself at time immemorial, who had waited for power and influence and lost it all. He requested no shape, but she gave of him an endless crawling thing with many legs and unnatural shape to inspire awe in those who would come to know him.
O5-07: He Who Made Dark and Light.
Of a flower of termini, of lines ending, of empty stars, and time absent came the eleventh, Endings. Of a great spindly winged serpent, she cast him, and he became an eater of stars, ender of matter and ideas. She dubbed him the Sun Eater for all of his nature and he took it.
O5-07: I don’t know this one.
????: You wouldn’t.
From a flower of books, of knowledge, of stars and matter and numbers came the Twelfth, Knowledge. And for many long eons she spoke with Creation in the ides of her workshop of grand ideas and things that could be and might be. Creation gave her the grand sweeping shape of an eel and a serpent mixed, endless in its length, in representation of the ever-sweeping expanse of knowledge.
O5-07: The Wanderers Library and Serpent’s Hand?
????: The shattered remnants of what came before.
The final flower bloomed on the eve of Creation’s growing exhaustion, the thirteenth, Gravity and Time. He was wary of her great conceptual essence, the marks of strings she would embed in his conceptual flesh with her shaping. So, he eschewed her shapes, forging his own in time and chains. He became known to the others as the Chain Maker.
Thirteen born, thirteen awake. While she worked to create concepts of forms for the eleven, the Scarlet Monarch grew envious of Creation’s power. They began to scheme, and to see Creation as the greatest threat to its rule of reality.
But with her task completed, Creation returned to the grand bed and lay to rest. There in the moments before slumber, it crafted safeguards. Contingencies for the worst.
Creation’s embodiment returns to the cosmic folds and once again becomes rock and stars and planets and dust.
O5-07: So, something happened, obviously?
????: Yes.
And while Creation slept, the Scarlet Monarch began to sew dissent. The rest discovered what Creation had wrought with Destruction. Of the twelve, six were convinced of treachery, of Creation’s intent to bind them to their shapes and strip them of their capacity to resist her influence.
Two did not care, embattled in their war of Flesh vs Machine. Two resisted, attacking the Light when he began to forget weapons of purifying hate. The Sun Eater was smashed into conceptual dust and scattered across the threads, fraying the Universe’s weave. He Who Made Dark was smashed into a thousand tiny cloaks and cast across many worlds.
Pangloss retreated and forged plans to wield mortality to aid Creation’s coming plight.
And while the others acted, the thirteenth forged great binding chains to snare the fabric of reality tight to the end of time and his domain. So great was his fear that he forged them from his body alone, snaring spacetime in the bounds of all gravity.
And when Creation was in the deepest sleep, they began. Seven approached the essence of Creation, swirling amongst her shimmering endless mass of stardust, dripping galaxyfalls, meteor dances, and planetary wrinkles. There in the midst of everything they attacked.
Death leapt first, attempting to imprint mortality onto the very concept of creation. Creation must be able to die.
She awoke in the midst of his attempts. Limbs in the shape of great hands filled with the burning ire of a thousand supernovas grasped him twixt neck and hips. She tore him in three. Three brothers, three deaths, lesser than their whole. And as they tore, she wove the damnation into their blackened flesh, creating a binding which cast him in this state forever more.
And though she did not realize it, she set in stone what was to come.
Knowledge saw all of this in initial hesitation and knew it had to betray her. One she had come to consider a new concept, friend, had stripped, in a single moment of fear, all that connection away.
She cried out for the bonds of lovers, for Pangloss who had taught her love.
But they could only watch.
In the bounds of Knowledge’s coils she was wrapped as they attempted to suck from her all essence and memory of mind, leaving her a thoughtless husk. Here Creation tore mind and concept into threads, separating implication from body and leaving behind the aspect of what was forgotten.
She cast what was left of the conscious concept into the _ in between all that was, __, and all that could be.
Whilst she tore apart the others she could reach, the thirteenth bound her in time’s immemorial chains. She thrashed against the coils, attempting to cast them off.
But there was no escape.
He cinched them closed through gravity’s will.
She was suspended, immobilized in an abyss of singularity’s horizons.
It seemed for a moment, even to her, that all was lost. Creation would be bound and the universe destroyed.
As the horizons shrunk about her, one final hope shined in the void. She remembered her contingency.
Deep into her endless chest she reached and cast off the heart of Creation. Across the stars and endless void, it rocketed.
Six gave chase for fear of what would come if even part of her escaped.
Two followed, still embattled.
And one gave haste to the fleeing heart knowing it was their only chance.
And the chainmaker pulled Creation’s heartless mind and body into the den of the end and sealed himself inside, for so much of a coward he was that he feared what end he might meet.
????: There on this tiny rock did Creation’s heart fall and snared eleven of thirteen along with it. Beneath the banner of an ancient alliance of Man, Fin, Plant, Flesh, and Machine did Creation pair with Mortals and Primordial Fire to seal the doom away. For a time, they succeeded.
O5-07 finishes watching the events play out through the reality bending.
O5-07: But then, the Hlérsyngva were driven into the sea, and the others collapsed or withered away. Humans are left, the Hlérsyngva hidden and the seals are rotting. What happens if the seals fail?
Reality shifts. Oceans are boiling as the sun burns brighter in the sky. Lush forests are rendered into burnt out deserts. Whole continents are drowned in blood. Others in flesh. Entire countries stripped of conscious thought and free will, enslaved as mindless laborers. Others swallowed by the hostility of the unknown. Reality begins to unwind, concepts bleeding into one another and being annihilated, earth and matter coming apart at the seams. And eventually, nothing.
????: Doom. Apocalypse. The end of reality.
Several minutes of silence.
????: That is what scares her so. It is what scares me so.
O5-07: I can see why, now.
Several more minutes of silence.
O5-07: There’s something I want to ask but I don’t know if I should.
????: I have but two answers left to give.
O5-07: Right. Are you…?
????: I am what’s left.
O5-07: What do you want with her?
????: Even now, you still don’t understand.
The reality warp ends and the penthouse returns. SCP-001 has returned to baseline and starts to collapse in place. O5-07 dives over the table, catching it. O5-07 puts it on the couch, making sure it is not hurt and is still breathing. She then moves back to her spot on the opposite couch where she sits and stares out the window for the next two minutes.
SCP-001 stirs.
O5-07: That was—
SCP-001: I wish she wouldn’t do that without asking first.
O5-07: Yes, well, I can imagine eldritch entities have different priorities.
SCP-001: You have very little real idea.
O5-07: I have enough of one.
Several seconds of silence.
O5-07: Do I even want to know?
SCP-001: What did she tell you?
O5-07: Enough to know that asking more is liable to render me a babbling idiot.
SCP-001: Then no. You don’t want to know.
Several minutes of silence.
SCP-001: Before all that, you said you had one more question?
O5-07: Right, yes. Apologies, I got lost in the… well, I think you know.
SCP-001: Understandable.
O5-07: I guess I wanted to ask, when will you tell the world who you are?
SCP-001 smiles slowly.
SCP-001: When [REDACTED] returns to life.
<End Log>
Director’s Note: Based on its responses to my questions, SCP-001 appears to have been in a long-term relationship with aspects of SCP-7238, though which of them I can’t say. I did not submit the materials SCP-001 gifted me for evaluation by Foundation researchers. I’ll read them myself and turn them over when I retire, which will honor the Seeress’s wishes. There’s a thaumic enchantment on it which I can’t even begin to interpret… I assume it censors information within.
My successor will look back on this log and may be alarmed at how attached I became to SCP-001 to the point of craving its romantic touch. To that concern I say, when you spend most of your life in her company, you too will struggle to not see the breadth of beautiful humanity in her soul.
Maybe it’s numbness that distances me from the dread I should be feeling now knowing what lays beneath the earth. But all I feel is a sense of relief that I will be gone when this second confrontation begins. Maybe I’m a coward for that. Whatever she’s been touched by, it’s something that none of us understand.
It scares me shitless.
There was a god after all. Thirteen of them.
I don’t know what’s worse. That Seven want to eat reality.
Or that there’s one on earth we haven’t accounted for.
Addendum 24: Rediscovery of the Hlérsyngva and Status of Global Containment Complex
O5-07’s Summary of Notes 2014-2020:
Materials from the Wanderers Library:
Tomes liberated by the Wanderers Library raid in 2014 raid were thoroughly evaluated and substantially expanded the Foundation’s understanding of the history and thaumo-technological capacity of the Finnfolk. New information on the Finnfolk was largely kept restricted to key parties within Operation High Tide’s command until first contact could be established, in part due to increasing awareness of the limitations placed on human interaction with Finnfolk specific thaumatological practices by SCP-3711.
It didn’t take long after liberating tomes from the library to begin to understand SCP-001’s interactions with the Hlérsyngva. Our greatest leaps have been with understanding the mechanisms of their thaumic-technology and history. Even then, we are only scraping the surface.
There’s a good deal of cultural context that has been lost or obscured. They write in such descriptive detail that deciphering meaning can be incredibly difficult and it rarely translates well to English. We also don’t even really know how they actually speak aloud.
Thanks to the recovered tomes, we have begun to identify lineages of Hlérsyngva families who were important in the ancient confines of their civilization. There’s a lot of anthropological details I’d love to write about here, but it will have to go in another place.
Perhaps the most consequential line, the royal line, the Aquailians, possessed a familiar feature.
Prescience.
The second queen of the Hlérsyngva, [REDACTED], is apparently the most powerful prescient user to have ever walked the earth. By the Hlérsyngva’s measure, at least. And who taught her to mitigate and live with it?
SCP-001.
That’s who she was referencing after our celebration. That’s who she’s so torn up about the loss of. No wonder there seem to be so many references to her arrival and departure in passing from Doggerland and then later Finnfelheim.
This history runs deep and now I’m beginning to understand why she is so personally intertwined with them.
Now, she’s beginning to predict their return.
On May 15th, 2014, SCP-001 provided Foundation personnel with a series of predictions which highlighted the existence of an active Finnfolk population within the confines of the Oceanic bodies of Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. SCP-001’s predictions also corroborated first contact likely occurring during one of the cyclical manifestations of SCP-3700 within the next three years.
So, we knew the relative when, and possibly the where. But the how wasn’t clear.
On March 20th, 2017, following Incident I-3700-032, recon elements of Naval Task Force Delta-7 discovered SCP-4700 and over the course of a three day operation, proceeded to make first contact with the Finnfolk who were engaged in a protracted extinction level event due to a complicated array of historical, political, and sociological factors. NTF-Delta-7 assisted the remaining population in warding off hostile infiltration by thousands of anomalous entities (SCP-3456, SCP-████, and SCP-████) utilizing refurbished Finnfolk thaumic-tech and paraweaponry. Some months later, hundreds of thousands of Finnfolk aboard thousands of military vessels were returned to SCP-4700 through intervention by an unidentified outside force.
And then it happened outside of my awareness. I think it caught O5-01 by surprise as well cause their office kept it tightly under wraps for months before finally notifying the rest of the council.
When a cooperative agreement was already being negotiated.
To rub salt in the wound, the notification was delivered by a quite brief message over intranet. I was already aware but was notified during a biweekly meeting with SCP-001.
You can imagine the furious string of replies that came after the stunned silence.
The hand was forced and I was in support.
The Andrews are clever; I’ll give them that much.
When I told SCP-001 first contact had been made she seemed a little surprised and then relieved.
So begins the countdown to oblivion’s edge.
I think the delay was largely based on the state of the current leader of the civilization.
Delays in notification largely arose to allow the stabilization of relations and the recovery of Queen Hege Aquailian from decades of isolation, malnutrition and abuse. Negotiations for the formation of the Finnfolk-Foundation Cooperative Treaty were beginning at that time.
Consulting me before the rest of the council was probably the smartest thing that the Andrews could have done in that position.
SCP-001 was energized by the whole affair.
The entity requested permission to attend the negotiations in person to speak with the Finnfolk delegation, including Queen Hege Aquailian. O5-01 and O5-07 conferred on the matter and decided it would be best to deny the request for the moment, due to the precarious nature of the situation given the history between Humanity and the Finnfolk. SCP-001 expressed dissatisfaction with the situation but did not press further.
We couldn’t very well let a living mythological entity within the history of the Hlérsyngva walk in through those doors when we were trying to broker a cooperative agreement. For once I think her attachments overwhelmed her sense of responsibility because she remained frustrated with the situation for months afterwards. Guilt, excitement, longing to reconnect, I can’t help wondering what she was feeling. Still, there’s no telling how they would react to learning that SCP-001 was alive and working with us.
We couldn’t tell her no forever though.
SCP-001’s request to speak with Queen Hege Aquailian was finally granted on April 5th, 2021, when Hege learned of SCP-001’s existence by accident in a diplomatic exchange with O5-01.
Especially not after Sherry let the truth slip. I wasn’t there, but apparently Queen Aquailian’s reaction was quite strong.
So, at that point, there was no avoiding it further.
A meeting was officially on the books.
The meeting between Hege and SCP-001 would then occur on April 6th, aboard a Finnfolk vessel. The meeting was not recorded, but MTF-Omega-77 personnel reported that the affair was simultaneously productive for both parties and distressing at the same time.
Despite initial optimism for the potential of further illumination of SCP-001’s history and identity, MTF-Omega77 reported that the topics were rarely addressed beyond some further elaboration on SCP-001’s interactions with the Queen’s ancestors. SCP-001’s identity remains unknown.
There have been times in the past where SCP-001 has seemed close to human, but I don’t think any were as striking as when she returned from the meeting. For just a few minutes when she sat down across from me that night for our biweekly session, she didn’t look like a goddess.
She looked like a tired, ageing woman playing pretend.
Which, frankly, given what we would learn a few days later, made the situation more dire than it has ever been.
As of April 10th, 2021, evaluations revealed that the current state of the Finnfolk’s global containment complex has continued to deteriorate, albeit at a slower rate than when it was first evaluated. Initial efforts appear to have stabilized some sites, and there remains a possibility that as the Finnfolk continue to be folded into stabilization efforts, the situation will continue to stabilize and possibly reverse.
So, everything we had done up until that point seemed as if it were only delaying the inevitable.
SCP-001’s probabilistic outcomes indicate that partial collapse will begin in roughly 2025 at current trajectory. Odds of total collapse remain unacceptably high. Those few Finnfolk thaumic engineers who survived the 2017 incident, including Queen Aquailian, have designed stabilization measures which are predicted to buy ten-thirteen years of time while more permanent solutions are engineered.
Ten to thirteen years.
A decade.
It feels like cheating in some ways to know that I will not be around to see what I have been dreading all these years.
I, in many ways, feel a coward for being sent into the bliss of ignorance to live out my final days.
Will I still be alive when the doom comes screaming up from beneath the earth?
What are they going to do?
Will we be able to fix this mess that our ancestors created?
While some hope remains that with SCP-001’s and the Finnfolk’s intervention the containment network can be completely repaired, current rates of degradation appear untenable. Operation High Tide command and O5-01’s office have begun coordinating with the Hlérsyngva in preparation for a system collapse.
Despite the bleak outlook of the situation, somehow, SCP-001 has expressed increasing confidence that we are on the right path for what it deems as success.
Success. That seems so far away from the reality I’ve been looking at.
Given its history with other anomalous organizations, even I have to express some private concerns that the entity could be deliberately leading the Foundation towards disaster.
Except now, at one minute until midnight, SCP-001 has begun to generate predictions indicative of the existence of diaspora communities of Hlérsyngva which exist independent of SCP-4700.
One last little injection of hope. One last shot of adrenaline in my heart. I know this is supposed to be clinical and objective in terms of notes, but by the heavens if I didn’t know better, I’d think she’s trying to give me a heart attack.
We’re preparing diplomatic overtures in coordination with, what I am now learning, is the remnants of the Northern Hlérsyngva. It’s likely better to let Hege appeal to diaspora communities which originate from the Southern Hlérsyngva. It seems like they were the hardest hit in the Suffocation. It might even be best to let the Northern Hlérsyngva make appeals to other major anomalous communities or states, such as the Southern Daevic Republic of Lemuria, the Serpent’s Hand, and various Type Black entities living in anomalous communities across the globe.
The only barrier to this hope for the future I can see, is that the Foundation itself remains a largely politically divided organization. These divisions fall along lines of understanding the anomalous to protect humanity and containing the anomalous and pushing it into the underdark. The question is: are we capable of righting the ship of humanity?
I’m starting to suspect that SCP-001’s goal was never to completely repair Ruby Proposal.
Is the path forward that we are going to fight reality itself?
Is she repeating history to right the mistakes that were made in the first pass?
Maybe.
With the benefit of genetic analysis available to us, I got SCP-001’s consent to run a lineage trace to track down her haplotype. No guarantee this would work since there’s always the chance divinities don’t originate from humans. I’m not sure she fully understood what we were doing, either.
Imagine my surprise when it worked. The results were strange, to say the least. She’s not Proto-Indo-European. The closest human haplotypes are from the Chalcolithic, predating the western migration of Indo-European cultures. Hattians and some crossover from the Cucuteni–Trypillia. There’s some Daevic DNA in the mix as well, much smaller percentage than the others. There are chromosomal aberrations that we can’t really explain or analyze too.
But to the point. For those who don’t speak archaeology or human anthropology, SCP-001 is not Caucasian. She’s not Mediterranean as we know them, she’s not white. She’s a Chalcolithian, like a living breathing version of Ötzi the Iceman.
Why didn’t we do this sooner when it nails to the board the general area she came from?
After reading her book, I’m fairly sure I know who she is now. The genetic trace makes me even more confident.
There’s still room for error, which is why I have to ask her, once last time.
If I can’t love her, then at least I can know who I’ve hitched our hopes and dreams to.
I must know who the weaver of fate casting us along is before I lose it all.
Addendum 25:
Interview Log IVA-001-562
Interviewer: O5-07 Madeline Light, Current Eurtec Interim Site Director Tilda Moose.
Date: May 15th, 2021.
Location: Silicon Nornir tower three penthouse.
Foreword: On April 15th, 2021, O5-07 Madeline Light announced her intention to retire on the 15th of May, 2021, after more than 60 years of employment by the Foundation. The following is a log excerpt of the final biweekly meeting between SCP-001 and O5-07 after the latter had already submitted the final retirement documentation and turned over title and transition of office documents to Tilda Moose who would be assuming her duties as the new O5-07.
<Begin Log>
The penthouse rooms of Silicon Nornir tower three are decorated with banners and gold lettering reading ‘Congratulations on Retirement’. Director Moose, SCP-001 and Madeline Light are seated in a circular arrangement on the couches. Champagne glasses are in their hands. Light appears particularly frail and hunched in her seat. Her hands shake while holding and sipping from the glass.
Light: I can’t believe the day is finally here.
Director Moose: It had to come eventually. It comes for us all.
SCP-001: Except for me.
Director Moose: You’re an outlier and shouldn’t have been counted.
Light: Well, it took its sweet time getting here.
SCP-001: What will you do, once you’re out? Write a memoir?
Director Moose winces.
Light: I might have if they’d let me remember anything, but no. Sixty years of my life to this jailhouse and they won’t even let me keep the memories.
SCP-001: I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
Light: Bullshit you didn’t know; now forgot I can believe.
The room is silent for several seconds.
Light: Crochet. Maybe a bit of painting, they are giving me one last drink from the fountain of eternity here in Eurtec before the amnestics kick in. It’ll be nice to not have the shakes for another decade.
Director Moose: I’d ask if you would miss it, all of this, but we’ve already trodden that road. So instead, is there anything left you’d like to do before you go?
Light: There is.
Light looks at SCP-001.
Light: It’s time, isn’t it?
SCP-001: It is. If it is still something you wish to know? It won’t affect the outcomes, either way.
Light: Of course it wouldn’t. Universe’s humor being what it is.
Director Moose: Time for what?
SCP-001: Shush, it’s not your moment.
Light: I’ve waited 51 years, Seeress. I’d sooner be dead than let the mystery of my whole life slip away forever. The stars above would not forgive me never having known. Very last thing on my bucket list before they render me an insensate old granny with a bit of spry left in her bones.
Director Moose: I’d hate to be your nurse in that home.
Light: If Sophia puts me in a home, I’ll come back from the dead to haunt her.
All three laugh.
SCP-001: You read it then?
Director Moose: Read what?
SCP-001 attempts to menace Director Moose with a rolled-up piece of paper, but points at a nearby empty seat instead.
SCP-001: I said hush, you.
Light: I did, Seeress. It was—I’m still not sure how you wrote it, but it was…
Light trails off and stares out the window for several seconds.
Light: I don’t have the words to describe how it made me feel to know all of that. Everything that happened.
SCP-001: It is a heavy weight to bear.
Light: I never even realized you were—
SCP-001: They wrote it down and blacked it out in the files. All of them.
Light: It tracks with how you were treated.
Director Moose: I am entirely lost.
SCP-001: I will fill you in once she’s gone, now hush, this is her moment.
SCP-001 speaks at a low and gravelly volume.
SCP-001: A magician with no sense of gravitas, who would have thought.
Several seconds of silence.
Light: Before you tell me, can I make a guess? I have a suspicion cause the very last thing in that journal’s chapter is unreadable.
SCP-001: All these years and you never made one after that first, why now?
Light: Part of the final moments of the chase. There’s something rewarding about having put all the pieces together myself at the end.
SCP-001: Then of course, Madeline.
Light: Well come over here, I ain’t going to say it out loud and these old bones don’t move as well as your ancient ones.
SCP-001 grasps its staff and stands. It moves over to kneel by Madeline Light. Madeline Light leans over, kisses SCP-001 on the mouth for several seconds, before whispering in its ears. SCP-001 briefly flushes but otherwise does not react. Director Moose looks away from the pair.
SCP-001: Close, it’s actually—
SCP-001 leans in but its lips are still visible. The recording is disrupted briefly by several bursts of ontokinetic interference; however, several frames are visible where the signed letters of C O T are distinguishable.
SCP-001 gently places one hand on Light’s cheek and kisses her for several seconds. When she is finished, she slowly stands and makes her way back to the couch. Silence continues.
SCP-001: That was to remember me by. In dream and vision if not in physical reality.
Light is staring into her glass.
Light: I should have known. It was obvious and in front of my face the whole time. You were far less subtle than I imagined, and yet you managed to fool me the whole way.
Light looks up at SCP-001.
Light: Well played, Seeress. A life well lived.
SCP-001: A life well woven.
Light: True.
Madeline Light rises from the couch.
Light: That was the final bond keeping these old bones to this bureaucratic monolith. Now? Well, I suppose there is nothing left to do but walk into the light of normalcy and become irrelevant.
Director Moose: For what it’s worth Madeline, though my time under your tutelage has been short, there wasn’t a day that went by where you didn’t teach me something new.
Light: Don’t get sappy on me. I don’t want to end up bawling here at the end when I already feel like a coward for not getting to see it all through.
Moose smiles.
Light: But, it was good to work with you, Moose. Even though we were adversaries for more than half my life.
Director Moose: Fate is a strange thing.
Light: Especially when she’s sitting across from you.
SCP-001 wiggles a finger in one ear.
SCP-001: Did someone say something?
Director Moose and Light laugh. Several seconds of silence follow as Light looks out the windows.
Light: I had better get going before my nerve fails. Y’all have a good rest of eternity and do me a favor. Win this fight ahead. Don’t make me kick your asses as a ghost for losing.
Director Moose: We’ll certainly do our best.
Light: You better.
Light crosses the penthouse towards the elevators at a slow pace. She presses the button and the doors open. SCP-001 speaks to her one last time as she steps in.
SCP-001: Madeline, one last thing.
Light turns around in the elevator and presses the button that holds the door open.
Light: I’m listening, C—Seeress.
SCP-001: You asked me seven years ago if things had been different, if I would have loved you.
Light: I remember. You said you wouldn’t and then gave me a long winded monologue that only an immortal goddess bound up in fate could produce. What about it?
SCP-001: I made a mistake once. I won’t make it again. I lied.
Several seconds of silence.
Director Moose: …
Light: …
????: …
SCP-001: …
Light laughs.
Light: Now you tell me.
Light laughs for several more seconds. She wipes her eyes with her free hand where tears are forming.
Light: I look forward to the next life, Seeress. I look forward to where you’ll make good on that promise under that spiral tower of endless metallic coral piercing the clouds above and holding the light of the world at its very tip. She told me where I was going not too long ago. I’m bringing Ella come hell or high water if she’s not already there. So, you better make good on that promise, not just to me, but Ella too.
SCP-001 sits completely still, staring directly at Light with eyes wide, and mouth slightly open.
Light: For once, I’ve stolen all the breath from your lips as I always dreamed. Please, look after Sophia for me. Fix what humanity broke, once and for all.
The elevator dings as Madeline Light releases the hold door button, and the doors close. Director Moose, now O5-07, is alone with SCP-001.
Several minutes of silence.
Director Moose: That was—
SCP-001: Shh. I’m not ready to talk yet.
SCP-001 wipes its eyes with its dress sleeve. After several more minutes of silence, Moose speaks again.
Director Moose: So, are you going to—
SCP-001: I told her my true name, and she learned that I was not born in the shape I now claim.
Director Moose sips from her glass.
Director Moose: Ah. That explains that.
SCP-001: That explains that.
Director Moose: Mhmm. That’s what I just said.
Several seconds of silence.
SCP-001: I marvel at your ability to remain nonchalant in such moments.
Director Moose: There’s always time for gravitas, and time for humor as well.
SCP-001: The greatest trick a magician has, timing.
Director Moose smiles. Several seconds of silence pass.
Director Moose: Well, here we are, finally alone again.
SCP-001: Here we are.
SCP-001 and Director Moose look out the windows at Eurtec.
Director Moose: Do you ever get fatigued, thinking about the momentum, the monumental cliff that we face?
SCP-001: Some days it’s harder to shake these ancient bones from the bed. But we get up. We go on because that is what it requires, that is the sacrifice necessary to save the grand tree.
Director Moose: Do you ever think you’ve sacrificed enough for one life? You, of all people, especially.
SCP-001: Read the files, have we?
Director Moose: But not that book. Knowing the name is enough, enough to know what you’ve been through—and yet…
SCP-001: And yet you only know pieces. And yet She still sings in the deep, waiting. The hour hand moves ever closer, the ticking ever louder.
Director Moose: Being around those two, I think I’ve started to hear it.
SCP-001: They don’t hear it yet. Neither do the others, The Twins, The Queen in her gardens of the dead, The Witch on her island in the depths, and so many others. I’ve never stopped hearing it, but it’s getting louder.
Director Moose: It’s getting closer then?
SCP-001: Four rings of the rock around Helios until the Sapphire and the return of the engineer. Three until the return of the blade. Fourteen until the grand palace rises anew into the sky, and the seals fail. She stirs in the deep. I can feel Her waking.
Director Moose: So, this is it then, this is the one.
SCP-001 exhales heavily.
SCP-001: This is the one.
Several seconds of silence.
Director Moose: Was the plan all along to have the Foundation fight them?
SCP-001: Yes.
Director Moose: Fighting reality itself. It sounds—
SCP-001: Absurd? Insane?
Director Moose: Yes.
SCP-001: If it was all of them at the same time? Yes.
Director Moose: Wait, what do you mean?
SCP-001: Come now Moose, you are more clever than that.
Director Moose: I’m serious this time.
SCP-001: Must I spell everything out?
Director Moose: Like I’m ten.
SCP-001 scowls.
SCP-001: Everything has been a delaying action.
Moose looks at SCP-001 opening her mouth slightly and holding it there for several seconds.
Director Moose: What?
SCP-001: A. Delaying. Action. Enough stabilization to space out the chain. It will be as it was then. One at a time.
Director Moose stares out the window for several seconds. Her jaw clenches and unclenches.
Director Moose: Holy fuck.
SCP-001: It is the only way we have a chance. Everything else has been manipulation to increase the odds. No more than a decade and a half away, then we go to war. Then, then we shall fight once again with the Old Gods of the world. A war in heaven.
Approximately one minute of silence.
Director Moose: How many times, how many times have you done this to find the perfect conditions?
SCP-001: Too many. Trillions dead. The cost was high in those threads. It will still be high now in this one. Maybe another iteration can improve the odds if we fail. Maybe even if we succeed.
Several minutes of silence.
SCP-001: Moose?
Director Moose: Yes, Seeress?
SCP-001: I am afraid.
Director Moose: I know. There are still many years left to go, and many more dice to roll. But I am also afraid of what lies at the end. Especially with what you’ve just told me.
Several seconds of silence. Director Moose looks out the window.
Director Moose: There is a lot of work to do, child of Ilion. A lot of work to return the Singers to the fold.
SCP-001: There always is.
SCP-001 and Director Moose stare out the window at Eurtec below.
SCP-001: The days ahead are greatly muddied by Her reawakening. Yet curiously, I do not know when the next avatar of primordial fire will appear.
Director Moose: The what? You what?
SCP-001: Idle musings of a deranged old lady, pay them no mind.
Director Moose: C—
SCP-001: Not while they are recording.
<End Log>
Addendum 26: SCP-001 Journal J-001
On May 15th, 2021, O5-07 Madeline Light reported to the amnestics clinic in Eurtec for debriefing and memory erasure as part of standard retirement protocols. During debriefing, she surrendered the only sensitive item remaining on her person, a thick leatherbound book containing SCP-001’s personal journal. The following document contains the most relevant excerpts linked to identifying SCP-001 based on early life events that were previously undisclosed. These chapters were the only ones accessible to Foundation staff; the remaining pages contain an ontokinetic defense mechanism which prevents viewing beyond a certain point through unknown means.
Foreword: I sit here at the top of this sacred place among a field of blooming flowers in the spring of the year 4957 from when the seas were set in earth and sky. Here I have elected, in the event that things do not work out as I have foreseen, to paint for you, whoever may be reading this tome, whether it be in the Library or some other misbegotten place, the story of how I came to be.
Even now as I sit here staring at the sunrise, I can see the grand canvas of history sprawl out before me in a stream of rippling color.
Yes, see.
This is the story of my birth, the story of how someone who was not me died, and the weave of my life was forged and sewn together.
Chapter 1: On A Life Recorded in the Annals of Myth
She, that girl who seems so very far away now, was born in a palace beneath the glimmering light of Helios’s sun. A place of sweet and bitter scents in perpetual contradiction. It sat atop a lush hill, overlooking a fertile coastal plain on the edge of an empire whose name is long forgotten. Tall walls, a merry life of people used to the ways of war found in the south and east.
She was born on a warm summer evening, when the smell of dew was unusually strong on the wind and some ancient chthonic intent had crept up from beneath the earth to burrow into newborn flesh. The elder of fraternal twins, she was loved. Born to a king and queen beneath a greater mantle who stared down at her glimmering eyes with an adoration and gentle warmth that was not built to last.
They named her in the old ways of the world, but it was not her true name. There was interference from the Scarlet and the Maker of Chains. She was not born a girl as she should have been, and the world was worse for it. And though they sat there adoring their new tiny bundles, those ill-fated parents did not yet realize what power they had brought into the world.
Summers began to flow together in the endless paints streaming across the sky.
She grew.
She took her first steps beneath the all-knowing sun and found her footing in the world amidst the rolling grasses and lush forests.
She saw things that others didn’t, couldn’t, but didn’t yet know what they meant. Heard muffled choirs in a rolling pitch, washed with aromas to which not even her parents would have been exposed.
They were shadows dancing in dreams unspoken.
And with every step, every inch gained, fundamental incongruence with the world grew.
And with every step, every inch gained, a roiling black dissonance seeped into flesh and nerve.
Every glance into the clear fountains of the palace, those mirrored surfaces of shining bronze were a reminder that she was wrong. This flesh that was hers was not hers, but a stranger’s.
A wrongness that she could not escape.
The smiles and laughs in play became fewer with every passing summer. Discord in flesh and soul plunging what should have been a happy soul into the dour abyss above a hungry underworld.
The discomfort of that ill-fitting skin did not go unnoticed by the world.
It was seen by opportunists looking for diamonds in the rough.
When she was eight summers tall, she and her brother came to rest in a grand marble colored space in the palace. It glimmered with golden statues of a radiant young man bearing in his arms a lyre and upon his back and glimmering bow. It reeked of incense and herbs so strong that it made her eyes water. Brother of the Hunter, born of prophecy, medicine, music and inheritor of a chariot of fire across the sky. They slept there beneath the swirling color and twinkling lullabies when they grew too tired to continue play.
In a waking dream this opportunist came, skin glimmering with twinkles of sunlight and backswept hair framing blue eyes.
“Children of Ilion, I have seen you this night aslumber at my hallowed feet.” His voice was deceptively honeyed to her ears.
He was awash in scents of baked breads and cream filled things that she could not grasp.
She stared up in wonder for him, for the threads of those above seldom graced the dreams of mortals.
“Your grace, what honor you bestow on us,” she said, bowing at his feet.
He smiled. She believed it warm, welcoming, friendly and filled with favor.
How could she have known how wrong she was?
“I have foreseen your greatness in the twirling stars above. I come before you because you will make great marks upon history and the weave of destiny, and I seek to aid you in that quest in return for favor owed.”
His eyes turned to her, shimmering in the midnight starlight.
“My lord, you bless us with your presence and gifts? Name thy favor and we will meet it!” she cried, not understanding the price that would one day be paid.
So great was this moment it blinded her growing gifts to the truth of his desire. The lust in his soul that would only grow.
“Worry not about the favor requested now, you are too young to fulfill such merits. To you,” he gestured to her brother. “The great gift of prophecy I will bestow. And to your sister—”
She gasped, tears springing to her eyes at such novel validation. He saw her for what she was. What she should be. He looked at her sending chills up her spine from the intensity of his otherworldly gaze.
What she missed was the momentary furrowing of brows and confusion dancing in his eyes.
What had he seen?
It didn’t matter for the look was gone in the flash of a breath.
“To you, the gift of prescience, the grandest human prophet to ever live you will be. But more than that I will correct the wrong in your flesh.”
She gasped for air in disbelief. What dreams she had not realized needed to be fulfilled, and now they were upon her. She wept in relief for this greatest of mercies.
How could she have known that prophecy was already hers?
How could she have known the true cost of the shifting of her flesh?
“Will you take these great wonders I offer you and adorn yourself in my favor?” he cooed.
“Yes,” they said together.
How could they refuse?
He stepped forward and placed that shimmering skin against their heads. Their eyes burned with deep and heavenly fire. That little girl’s flesh writhed against her bones, shape changing and flourishing in bursts of glittery flame.
With a great rush of air and plunging stomachs, as if falling through an eternal starlit sky, they awoke in the opportunist’s temple. Two serpents lapped their tongues in their ears, entwined in copulation. They slithered away when they, the young girl and her brother, sat up.
The prince looked upon the princess and cried out her name.
“You are a girl!”
She looked upon herself, the beautiful bundles of her hair, and the reflections in the nearest pool and polished metal and felt congruence. She burst into happy tears.
“I am a girl!” And she was truly in all ways.
The King and Queen were brought hastily to the temple and saw what had become of their children. They praised on high the truth of otherworldly visitation, proclaiming their child a daughter, a princess, a prophet to be.
So, they brought great fortune tellers from across their kingdom to instruct their children in the art of prophecy, though they truly did not need it. Their gifts were so potent as to eclipse their teachers within a few months of lessons.
Her brother grew and grew into a grand Augur with every passing year, but none could match her strength of sight, not even him. She flourished in her new skin, renewed with life and happiness, no longer trapped by Misery’s chthonic grasps.
She saw everything that could be, everything that might be, everything that had been, and everything that would never be. She was still so young, and the art of determining which belonged to which yet remained to be mastered.
At fifteen summers, her parents sought a proper husband, a prince from some far-off land to secure alliances.
But she was never interested in the idle looks and politics of men.
She preferred the sweet scents of wives, the gentle touches of feminine skin and the callouses of strong huntresses.
She flirted with the women of the huntress’s temple and became a priest of two, the opportunist and the wise owl in her shielded armor. In part fulfilling foreseen prophecy, in part to avoid the forced irritations of an unhappy marriage.
The king and queen had many children and did not despair their daughter’s choices. They were, in their own ways, good parents to her.
But their youngest they spoiled, a beautiful little boy who had grown into a heartthrob all the same.
On a cool autumn evening when she was sixteen summers tall, a dreadful wind blew through the princess’s chambers.
The opportunist had come for his promised favor.
He appeared in a burst of glittering moonlight whilst she dozed away in her bed. He sat on the edge of her postered repose, and drug warm fingers across her cheeks, stirring her from slumber. He smiled lazily at her, as if his intent was perfectly clear.
He pulled away the sheets, pressing his hand to her chest to keep her from fully rising.
“Lord, what—how may I serve you this night?” she asked him, shrinking in that predatory glimmer filling his eyes.
“I have come for my favor, sweet priestess.”
Her stomach twisted in a nauseous knot.
“What might I do for you?”
Without hesitation he spoke of his desire.
“I would make you mine. I would lie with you, make sweetest love with you now until eternity. Marry you underneath the glimmering sun.”
The whole world turned on its side as she realized the choice before her, as his hands caressed her thighs. Bile filled her throat, the scene of rotting flesh sharp against her nostrils. She could not bear it.
“No.”
He stopped, hand firmly grasping her thigh. Too firmly for it began to hurt, and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. He stared down at her, as she trembled against the bed.
“What did you say?”
“No, I don’t want to marry. I don’t want to lie with you.”
He released her thigh, constricted blood painfully throbbing through the limb. He pressed his hand against her chest harshly while leaning forward, constricting her breath. He roared, his voice a layered boom that filled all the room and his breath stank of rotting meat.
“YOU WOULD DENY ME?”
“I will not lie with someone I do not love. I will not marry someone who I do not love!” She panicked, squirming against his grasp.
Her heart hammered in her chest, feeling the hot sting of heat burning from the sun he embodied against her chest.
“I made you! I gave you everything, fixed you when you were broken, gave you sight when you could not see. You dare to refuse my love?”
What could she say to soothe this angered spirit other than the truth in all its poetic aspiration?
“I could never love you like you deserve. I could not live with you in every moment you craved, cradle you in the warm morning sun in a grassy field, argue over the little things in the arrangement of paintings on the wall, the cleanliness of plates in the cupboard. I could not be the mother to your children; I could not be the mortal woman you seek in your heart. I do not love men; you seek something I could not give!” she cried out in fear.
“You ungrateful whore!” he screamed in her face, spittle splattering and sizzling against her skin. “Upon you I cast the greatest of curses. From this day forward with these eyes that tempt me you shall never see the world as it is again.”
She cried out in agony as his worldly influence poisoned her vision with stinging revulsion. Black swallowed everything in the empty void of Chaos’s reign. Blood dripped from the corners of her eyes, staining her white gown.
“I doom you to never again be believed, your prophecies will ring true for yourself, but your words will be deafened and absurd to those who you most want to believe them.”
She wept in the abyss of sightlessness feeling the curse take effect, crawling beneath her skin in sunkissed marks. Then, flesh shifted in a place that was most sensitive and she screamed. She prayed and prayed and prayed to the owl on high.
“Finally, I take back what I once ga—” but before his magic could writhe again through her flesh, the medallion of the owl burned with otherworldly vigor and scalded his hand, blocking the fullness of the curse.
“Interference!” he screeched as shadow fell on the room. The cry of an owl echoed and he retreated. Then he was gone in a puff of light.
But the damage was done. He had undone a piece of her flesh, stolen her sight, and left her destitute and doomed to be disbelieved.
And her brother?
Her brother was left unmarred, having gladly accepted the patron’s favor.
The twin brother looked upon her with pity, and though he at first tried to support her, defend her visions, she was poison.
Even the eldest brother, long gentle and soft with the sister he so loved, could not defend her.
So began the slow spiral of madness that would doom her family to its end. The rumors curled throughout the city that the once great oracle of the east had fallen into madness, insanity. Her visions, predictions of wealth or ruin were ignored. Every prediction said aloud resulted in a choice that would ensure the worst would come to be.
It only got worse.
Having seen twenty summers, she foresaw a cataclysm, the end of her parents’ kingdom, the end of her people by the choice of her youngest brother.
Influence from on high would come to him with a choice, a gift of vanity and flattery or a gift of wisdom. Saw him leave for a foreign fortress where he would doom them all.
She begged him not to listen at a table filled with the aroma of delicious meats and sweet fruits. She begged him to refuse to play the game in the twilight hours of the morning as the first kisses of the sun were trying to crest the horizon.
“If you go, you will ruin us all!”
“You wish for suffering and misery in this house of our blood. You lost yourself in madness and now you want to drag us all with you. Do us all the good of shutting up and throwing yourself into the sea.”
He didn’t listen.
He insulted her, demeaned and degraded.
Had her dragged off to her room where she was locked in for three days.
He went. Left on a boat as she stood in her window, watching with sightless eyes as he rode into a bleeding sunset.
She foresaw his return, with a beautiful woman, a foreign queen in a golden veil. Her people rejoiced, they sang, burned bonfires that smote the air with ash and pleasant pheromonic woods. They sacrificed animals to the gods above, filling the plaza with the metallic iron of blood. They welcomed him with open arms, oblivious to the heralding of their doom.
She stood and watched through sight and sightless eyes as they ascended the steps of the palace.
She was inconsolable with rage and despair.
She leapt out of the crowd, pouncing upon the woman and tearing at her hair and that golden veil.
“You’ve doomed us all! Everything will burn, blood will fill the river and bay, and nothing will be left!”
She was pulled away by the guards, dragged screaming about death and the end to her room in the palace where she was locked inside for three days and nights. She lay curled up on the bed and wept for the state of things. Cried to the opportunist.
“God! Oh God of Prophecy!
Thou hast ruined me. Thou has doomed me.”
The only person who dared to visit the maddened oracle was the eldest brother. A man among men, always gentle with her, and even more so now. He listened, even though he did not believe.
But for a moment, it felt as if someone believed her.
The ruin began with the arrival of those foreign kings, with grand armies of the greatest warriors told of in stories and minstrel’s tales from travelers abroad. The air stunk with their terrible musk and manly odors.
Great men by the thousands, so many of whom were doomed to die.
They demanded the return of their stolen Queen, but her youngest brother refused. Her parents, blinded by disbelief in her warnings of doom, foolishly supported him.
It was war.
A raging, hateful war that ballooned into the arrival of great flesh crafters of the northwest, the ancient blood and plant lovers of the east, the mechanized children of the northeast and west in their grand ticking gears and four legged monstrosities, and finally the singers of the sea from the far north come to aid the wronged kings.
It was there on those walls she saw the great evisceration of her people’s patrons at the hands of something much older. There, deep in the throes of war upon the palisades she first felt the warmth of Creation’s caress against her cheeks.
But it would not save them.
Any of them.
Her eldest brother was the first to fall. Speared through by a great warrior enraged by the death of a lover. She saw it long before it happened and wept for him. Begged him in the dim lights of fate not to leave.
But he did not believe her.
He refused to decline a challenge and rode forth on chariot to meet his end. It was a grisly end. She stood on the ramparts of the wall, the last light of sun’s warm kiss wafting against her skin and the smell of rotting death on the wind. She listened to the shouts of a victorious warrior and the sickening crunch of bone and flesh smashing against the ground.
Her brother, defiled in defeat, dragged across the battlefield by chariot.
She accosted the youngest brother then, screaming in his face.
“It’s your fault! This is all your fault! If only you had listened, he would have lived!”
He reeked of cowardice and failure. Too afraid to face what he had begun until she ripped apart his pride with increasing furor. Her youngest brother, aggrieved with blame, took a bow and shot dead that champion of the west.
But it was all so very little in the face of what was to come.
The greatest betrayal was the desertion of her twin brother.
That too she saw coming.
In the howling wind of a dreadful morning, she begged him not to carry through beneath the fetid stench of carts of bodies being hauled off to burn.
But like the rest, the curse had infected him too, and he went anyway.
A traitor to her people, whispering in their ears of all the secrets of their defense.
The doom was fully here and there was nothing she could do, though she would try.
The grand tactician, a man so hopelessly brilliant that none in her home could match him, derived the final death knell. A gift offering of peace left on the shores as their fleet mock sailed away. A grand wooden burden beast. A feast with endless drinks was declared as they rolled it in.
But she saw the truth. Of course she saw the truth. Dozens of men waiting inside for the guards and soldiers to get fat and drunk and fall asleep. They would pile out of the horse, open the gates, and that would be the very end.
Hysterical with rage when she was ignored by the King and Queen, she snatched an axe from a guard, and a torch from the wall, and sprinted at the gift. Screaming. The air was filled with the scent of wines, searing meat and cooking breads. The sound of snoring men, drunken soldiers, and giggling wives all around.
“They’re inside! They’re inside! They’re waiting inside to end us all!”
They stopped her, of course they stopped her.
“Poor princess, lost to madness and insanity. Blinded by the sight and unable to tell what’s real from what’s false. Even if they did put men in there, it would never be enough.”
She was dragged away, weeping. Unable to stop fate’s cruel march forward. They were going to lock her in her room again, but she couldn’t let that happen. There would be no coming back out.
So, she broke free, she fled to the house of wisdom, with its wooden statue of the armored strategist ever watching. Here she claimed sanctuary.
“Oh, spirit of Wisdom, grant this humble priestess your protection and asylum!”
She sat beneath the statue for hours, waiting. Waiting for it to come.
Come it did, with fire and blood and shouts of terror. The doors opening as women sought sanctuary, burying themselves deeper into the marble. She smelt ash, smoke, burning wood and flesh.
She begged the wise goddess for her protection again and again.
Then he burst into the room.
A savage man wearing animal skins, full of muscle. He strode across the floor and grabbed at her. She leapt forward, clinging to the statue, begging for help, for protection. So hard did he pull, the statue was toppled from its housing and cracked against the floor.
He reeked of musk, smoke and ash. His laugh filled her ears.
She died there. She died there where the last of her dignity, the last of her innocence was snuffed out against the backdrop of flames.
That’s where I was born. Weeping on the floor of the house of wisdom as he towered over me.
I saw the thunder come before it struck, the quaking steps of another entering the temple.
A great clap of light burning in the dark and a tremendous crack splitting the air.
He was knocked from his feet, sent tumbling across the floor. When he got back up, the skin of his shoulder sizzled the air with smoke and the flesh was an angry welt of red in the Sight.
There was a shadow of something tall in the backlit flames as troy burned in the distance. Something towering in the doorframe of that sacred space. Something I could not fully see.
“You dare come between me and my prize?!” In the Sight he stood there, staring with fury on his face, body half covered by his skins.
“This house is sacred to your kind,” a new voice said with a ferocity in its breath that I could barely comprehend.
“And? She is my conquest by right.”
There came no reply from the new voice. Only a sense of contained fury.
“Begone gilled princess and leave me my prize.”
“This ends by decree of your gods for this sacrilege. You will never accost another woman.”
There was bile in my throat. I could smell the ozone, the singed skin lingering in my nostrils.
Shouts echoed in the distance.
He roared, spear in one hand, shield in another as he banged the spear against it.
He was a fool. Even my people knew the reputation of the Singers of the Sea.
Her magic smote the air with great hateful flame, twin blades merging into a trident of Poseidon’s swirl.
It wasn’t a dance; it was barely a fight.
He stepped inside, swinging that spear.
With one great hand she grabbed the shaft, snapped it in half, and then kicked him in the stomach while he was still stunned by the loss of his weapon.
He flew across the room with impossible speed and force, colliding with a marble column in a sickening kathunk. I could hear marble shards crackling as they hit the floor.
His shield was knocked free by the breath stealing collision and rolled across the floor like an errant jar lid making some great escape.
I saw her reel back.
I heard her grunt.
The trident’s angry metal split the air, smashing the marbled stone of the column just above his head with such great force that, like an axe against wood, it split it down the middle.
In an act of providence by Athena’s hand, the sky smote with a thunderbolt that ripped right through the man.
When that did not kill him, a great gout of water burst from the darkened clouds and washed him in a furious river from that place. Down the hill and plains it swept and drowned him in the great sea beyond.
No one stopped to help him, for they knew a man doomed by the Gods’ wrath when they saw it.
“Hmph. To think I fought ten years by his side.”
I stared sightlessly up at this demon of war, having foreseen the glimmer of her golden scales in the firelight.
Who was this creature who had saved me as a newborn?
What power of the gods did she wield?
Why did I not foresee her until now?
Why was her presence a void in prophecy even at this moment?
She reeked of wet, and it was not unpleasant.
She picked me up and I broke in those man tearing arms.
I wept for what I had lost.
I wept for the city burning around us.
I wept for the girl who had died this night and how I had taken her place.
My would-be savior and conqueror lifted me from the floor and wordlessly carried me across the grounds to safety. But there was no safety left here. Only the scent of ash, burnt flesh, and metallic blood on the breeze.
“Is that—?” someone asked, a voice I now know as the tacticians with its metallic tinge.
“The Seeress who is, by her own people’s musings, mad and lost to prophecy.”
“Yet she knew we were in the horse. Doesn’t seem so mad to me.”
“She has a curse upon her. If she speaks to you of prophecy, then you too will disbelieve.”
“What happened to her? Why are her robes ripped bare? Why is she bruised and bleeding?”
“Ajax.”
“Goat fucking bastard.”
“He defiled a house of wisdom.”
“The gods will take care of it, and we will reduce his rewards.”
“I’ve already taken care of it.”
“What? What did you do.”
“Your gods sought revenge, and I gave it to them.”
“You killed him on their behalf?”
“No, I made an opportunity and they took it.”
“Was it at least a worthy fight?”
“Not even close. I feel cheated by your gods.”
“Good riddance then.”
“I’ll take the girl as my pallake then.”
“I would prefer she come with us. Has she not been through enough in your people’s wasteful hate?”
“She’s my prize by right, her brother stole my brother’s Queen.”
“Will you treat her better than those who came before?”
“Yes. I am not the monster here.”
“Your reputation says otherwise.”
“Are you going to fight me for her, Singer?”
There was a moments hesitation.
“It’s not my place. But should I learn of an ill fate, I will come for you.” I understood the why and how of it, but wept for what it meant.
I foresaw his name as I wept in the singer’s arms. I was set on a soft bed of blankets aboard a great vessel. He was the king of a faraway place, and he was to be my end.
He was gentle. A rarity in his cruelty towards all others.
He smelled strongly of flowers and was unusually kind to me. It was not until later, when I confronted my brother on his throne at Bouthroton, that the traitor told me he had bargained for my life.
To be this man’s concubine.
I told him then that it did not save me from the horrific fate that was bound, and that he himself would meet such a fate.
He believed me then.
This king touched me in places I care not repeat. He discovered what others had long ridiculed me for, what I was considered a lesser prize for. Yet he seemed not to care.
It didn’t change that we were doomed. It didn’t change that I did not feel for him, that I did not love his gentleness. That I thought he was a monster to those he loved.
We returned to his home, escorted by the singers. In the wee hours of the morning before we arrived, my rescuer stepped into the hold before they left for a home of their own. She was not alone, a presence that was familiar and alien at her side. There, a song just out of reach, burrowed in my ears. It came with the scent of soft earth, the decay of autumn leaves, the salt of the ocean’s tides, floral scents of indescribable lushness, incense, and the smotes of stardust drifting on an astral wind all of which filled my nose.
“You’re sure?” The Singer’s voice rang in my ears softly.
For a moment I felt a glimmer of the tiniest hope that I was being fully rescued.
“Yes.” The other was a symphony of a single tone that burned its name into my mind without knowing the words.
I felt a warm hand brush against my cheek, my neck, and my chest. Too many hands to be a human. Too soft to be a person, reaching deep past the skin into my very soul and plucking at infinitely many strings. Her voice filled the whole world.
“This end you see is but a beginning. When you awaken you will be more than you ever were. Seek us then, on the stormy isles of the north once you’ve regained your strength. Once you understand what you are. There, you shall find new purpose.”
It was layered, eternally fragmented. My sightless eyes filled with the burning strobes of four golden lights.
As suddenly as it began, it vanished.
“Survive, child of Ilion. Your fight is not over.”
Then they were gone.
We were docking on land.
This foreign king who had brought me far from my ruined home, spoke to me with reassurances and low whispers. But I had already seen what would come next.
He would be called into the palace, where his wife and her lover would be waiting with knives. Then they would call for me.
He went despite my urgent warnings. Then the guards came to bring me in and I resigned myself to Fate’s singing strings.
I knew when I was brought into the humid baths, that he was already dead.
The stickiness of his life’s ichor burned against my toes. The iron of his blood and the flatulence of his gut overpowered the incense and soaps of the bath. There was no choking, just the circling steps of his murderers.
“Such a pretty prize my husband brought back, don’t you think Aegisthus?” Fingers caressed my cheeks, my chin.
“Almost a shame to waste it. But I hear she’s mad and blind, so it may be for the best.”
It began with a stinging, vibrant pain in my left thigh. It was so very cold. Colder than Hades’s icy embrace as it parted the soft flesh. Alien, freezing metallic. It twisted and violated me and created something that never should have been.
Then there was another, pushing into my back.
Another in my belly.
Again and again across my flesh, hot blood streaming down my skin as I staggered to my knees.
Taste of metallic blood filled my lips. The reek of death clawed at me as Thanatos lingered on the edge of my vision, waiting for the end. I didn’t scream or cry as they carved me, sliced open my chest and exposed my guts to the world.
There was no point in struggling or crying out.
This was simply Fate.
I collapsed against the floor, their echoing laughs fading as they left me to bleed out.
That’s when I heard his wet footsteps.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Look at how far you have fallen, princess of Ilion. Final moments spent bleeding like a stuck pig next to the baths. You could have been great. You could have been the greatest prophet to ever live. We would have had beautiful children. Such a waste.”
His voice was a mocking trill of pleasant unpleasantness against my ears. A reminder of the sweetness of the music he could make that would only bind me here at the end of everything.
I managed to croak out a shuddering tumble of words with what little breath I had.
“You doomed so many. For what?”
A hand grasped my face, lifting me. Pain blossomed as an inferno ripping through my shredded body.
“I doomed no one. You doomed them, by being ungrateful.”
“Why?” I gasped out, struggling to stay conscious. To hold onto the sliver of life left to me.
“Because mortals need to be reminded of their place. Because I made you what you were, and what you are. I gave you everything, and you spat in my face. This beautiful woman carved from a boy. It’s like all those nymphs and boys; I give them everything and they are always ungrateful. Maybe this time will be different, maybe this girl I made from a boy will be grateful. What does he do? He behaves like a spoiled little brat.”
I grit my teeth, weakening hands shaking at his grip around my neck.
“Now, because I am a generous god who is more than willing to offer mercy, I’m going to offer you one last chance. Marry me. Have my children. We will make such sweet music when we make love. I will restore your sight, lift the curse, and fix you again.”
I drew in ragged breaths struggling to stay awake.
As the flames burned deep in my torn belly, It hit me.
I saw the moment, the opportunity to end this cycle.
I heard a thousand voices across an infinitely spiraling sea of fractured stars.
I felt the chthonic pull of blackened strings that I had never known were there.
The Fates, the Moirai were singing.
I was singing. Louder than he ever had.
“Take it! Take it all from him. Become what you are meant to be!” they shouted.
But it wasn’t the Fates. It was me. All me. I was the Fates. They were I.
“Okay…” I rattled out.
He chuckled. “Good girl.”
And I felt his magic, his soul reach through his fingers. Another voice echoed with the choir.
When you awaken you will be more than you ever were.
“I have a better idea,” I said with sudden vigor I never had before with the breath of an endless multi-verse of Is. Chthonic strength thundered through my flesh, weeping darkness and strands of rusting gold dripping from my skin.
I saw it, that ripple in his soul, his eyes. The prophecy, the vision of what would happen.
Abruptly I knew, that he had lied. That my hold on Destiny’s weave was greater.
He saw it too. Too late.
With fingers wrapped in the leaking black of chthonic might, I snared his magic.
I snared his soul, a wide hole opening in my chest.
In that moment, there were no Fates. There were no Moirai, there was only me. My agency.
He screamed, a wordless, incoherent burst of rage.
But it was too late.
The weight of what I was, what had long lay dormant inside of me, wrapped around my prescience.
It sucked in his magic, his conceptual depth and soul.
It condensed, twisted, and homogenized him like he was being pulled through a straw. His flesh and matter pulled apart and into me.
I felt the might of the Sun filling me, dancing with the dark and casting shadow. Felt the burst of prophecy and fate, healing and medicine screaming beneath my skin. Music bursting in my very core.
Then he was gone, and I lay soaked in blood on the floor.
I had, somehow, lifted the curse on my own.
But blindness remained and I have never cared to fix it.
My wounds were closing as I stared up sightlessly at the sky. Hours must have ticked by, possibly days. Then there were footsteps, light and airy. A comforting chill washed across half-dead cheeks.
A hand, calloused and yet impossibly soft, pressed against my cheek. I could not see her, the Sight showed nothing.
“You finally ended his reign of madness. His torturing of what he couldn’t have; driven by endless lust. You, soft child of Ilion.”
I did not know the voice, but it was soft and yet rugged. She smelled of a different sort of musk. Of decaying soft leaves, of moonlight, of the sweat of a long run.
“Who—” I tried to croak out the words, but she shushed me.
“Speak not. Lay still here, and I shall guide you to a place you may heal and find peace, for a time. My power is bound for another, but for you I shall give this blessing.”
I’m not sure when she left. I’m not sure if she was real or simply imagined. Though I am sure of who she was. When the prevailing stench of blood filled my nostrils again, I blacked out and then came to. I’m not sure how long it was till the wet steps of the guards came to clean up the mess.
But I passed out again then. I’m unsure how long, days, maybe weeks.
When I awoke, I had washed up on the shores of a beach. Trembling skin caked in sand and water and dried blood. Disoriented, I was certain I had died. This recovering body could barely walk, legs shaking and unsteady. Even though I had stolen the Opportunist’s staff and it came at my command.
So, I crawled. I’m not sure how long I crawled, or how far, but it was up. Up and up for hours upon hours. Maybe days, I don’t think I slept. I don’t think I needed to anymore.
But I reached the top; I suppose it always did have a top.
There was something different there. A magic not encountered before, the magic of pure music, creation, inspiration.
Nine beautiful voices sinking golden honey in my ears, warming my muscles and filling my mind with so many ideas. This place was warm, a pleasant wash across my skin, reeked of the earth, of perfumes, flowers, and so many other things.
“Oh my…” someone said.
“Poor thing, look at it.”
Then, the softest, warmest fingers against my face.
In a miracle, the light returned, the world filling with fuzzy and blurred color tones. Once my brain remembered how to interpret the sight of eyes, the picture became clearer and clearer. Eight of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, each halo’ed by a sheen of divine light.
But my eyes stared deep into the cosmic landscape, immense nebulae condensed into orbs. A gorgeous woman kneeling and lifting my chin.
Her skin was olive, speckled with freckles. Her hair waved in the air, undulating like gas clouds in the void of stars, constantly oscillating through neon colors.
And I knew my heart was beating faster than ever before.
“Muses,” I croaked out at last, realizing the truth of the matter.
“Shhh, child of Ilion, rest and we shall care for you.”
I remember smiling. The first time I had smiled since that day long ago where he had taken all that I could see. I remember all the possibilities of what could come spiraling all out before me.
Then, I passed out. There on Mount Helicon, I found myself, who I am, who I really wanted to be.
There I fell in love with the Muse Urania.
There I awakened.
There are so many more stories to tell of those years.
There was a moment when, I, descending the mountain’s many narrow paths, passed an elderly man whose name I did not know, up the path. Near the foot there were voices, and they cried out at me.
“Tiresias! Tiresias is a woman! She has been blinded by Athena!”
It was true, the wise goddess of protection dared to climb the slopes and bathe with the many nymphs atop the mountain. We did not speak, for she no longer knew me. I no longer knew her and had not forgiven her slowness to act. Never did I see that man who climbed the mountain come down, I truly wonder if he was a figment of a different dream.
There were other days when there were great tasks to be accomplished. Urania, requiring some chthonic reagent for a grand and ambitious project, sent me deep into the plumes of the underworld.
Rumors had reached us upon the mountain of the fates of many of those long-forgotten heroes of the war outside my burnt and ruined home. There in the depths along a burning river a voice greeted me. A tinny, metal voice I had not heard in nigh a decade. There was a rush of air, the pulse of pounding blood and the dying bleats of a blackened lamb. I saw him through the Sight. An all too familiar man of metal, legs of orichalcum bird talons and a face exhausted from great gaps of age removed from home.
The tactician had yanked me from the depths to a place I did not know. I spoke to him of what he desired. That should his crew slay the beasts of burden so meticulously cared for by the lord of light riding across every day filled sky, that he and his men would be stranded and his men smashed against the rocks.
Again, I was referred to as Tiresias, this time by a man who had known me in brief before. What guise did the underworld cast me in then I often wonder?
Such a strange thing to be hailed by a name not your own, but one less strange as the years have moved by. Then there was a rush of air, and I had returned to those distant fields where I found what my beloved desired.
I suppose that is whence these myths became entombed in the minds of all. How amusing it must be for Madeline to consider these factors in the history of those realms in that space that seems so far afuture.
There were many more stories and myths made in those distant years, happy joyful moments that I shall not share. I prefer to keep them in dreams and memory for they are so very precious to me. Perhaps one day I shall tell my nieces, those delightful loving things, these stories so they eternally enshrine them in their great pieces.
But for now, even here, my most personal book shall not receive such private happy things.
When thirty years had passed by, I left my newfound love on that sacred mountain and promised to return whenever I could. I wandered the earth, blind once again outside the mountain’s magic.
I trekked through forest, across rivers and bogs and swamps and marshes. Through grassy fields and mountain crags until I reached the northern oceans.
In a Singer village I was greeted warmly. I waited there for a destined transport to the Stormy Northern Isles. She arrived on the morning after in dense fog. I suppose she thought of me as a figment, the way she looked upon me as if I were this otherworldly creature from some veil beyond. I offered her gold, but she refused. She took me aboard one of their strange new vessels, and together we rode through treacherous hate-filled seas.
It was there on one of those islands, the largest of them, that I left that kind sailor and their strange, scented wetness behind. Across sand and grass I walked until I heard and saw a great camp on a hill above colossal stone and metal artifices. Meats filled a hungry mouth with salivation as tired feet shuffled closer. I was spurned by strange bread smells, alien fruits and wines. The air was chill for summer, but a warmth had lingered ever in my flesh since that faithful day.
Three voices reached me on the wind as I walked slowly up that fateful hill, leaning on my staff. One I knew, two I didn’t and yet did with growing familiarity that I could not explain.
“So, what, we’re hitting the fucking crimson fucker first?”
“Scarlet Monarch, dear.”
“Right, whatever. You want us to go with that big untested hunk of magic metal that you think will work? Me, her, you, and the eldritch thing masquerading as a redhead? Just the four of us and that experiment.”
“White water, you make it sound like we’re running to our deaths.”
“We are! Artemis’s bow, we’ll need a hell of a lot more than that. I know you singers like your fucking fights, I do too, but like, it should at least be reasonable.”
I slowed my walk as I approached. Yet the bickering continued, somehow oblivious to my growing presence. I knew those voices and yet didn’t all the same. Eyes were already on me, but not of the bickerers. Those same golden eyes from all those years ago.
The bickering stopped as my staff gently thunked against a log.
“? Where are you—”
“Well, who is this?”
“Wait a fucking, you’re—”
In that moment, I was assailed again by all those early and alien smells from aboard that king’s ship so many years ago. I heard Her strange golden song, louder now than before. I felt her. I felt the Mother of all Creation in Her fullness before me. Writhing spheres of cerulean flesh and unending mass of all-seeing eyes consuming me with their sight amongst a mantle of endless stars woven as crimson hair. A many armed pillar of reality stretching to fill all horizons.
All the sky filled by creation.
For the first time in my entire life, I felt completely safe.
I felt at home.
“Welcome, Cassandra of Troy.”