laghima - The Topiary

laghima

[Ambrose's command com is bugged from the start. He was never communicating to anything]

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Ingress and egress.

Description: SCP-XXXX is the fortress of Tong Pass (Tongguan County, Shaanxi, China). It is trapped in a fixed position 560m above the mountain that it previously rested upon, and it is inverted on its x-axis, spanning 136m³, such that;

curved bilateral rooftops
10,567 bronze statues of Han soldiers
502 white marble tigers
rock ponds and the water therein.
jade-gold hydroelectric engines

occupying the anomalous topology are inverted. All foreign and native objects affected by SCP-XXXX's "altered" gravity have their downward pull bound towards SCP-XXXX's surfaces; the Four Forces of Flight apply therein - reserved only for nonorganic materials capable of aerial movement (see Operation: Lantern Festival).

Ten "dragon-mouthed" gates, each with 3.5m thick sliding doors comprised of copper, align SCP-XXXX's watchtowers and roofs. Each discharges 5,000 - 5,560 gallons of 28 °F - 199 °F liquid compositions, which anomalously move upward from the fortress' downward pull.

[KERALA scenarios and more on where these events were discovered transpiring.]

None who observe SCP-XXXX can divert their periphery away from the sky. Inevitably, affected subjects levitate with items on their person. Subjects ascend laterally with their feet aligned towards the direction of the fortress. Thus, subjects "land" on the fortress standing upright. Expedition teams and rovers achieving landfall are rendered imperceivable from contemporary optical, infrared, and scanning equipment, however, radio communication can still be maintained.

Parchments, eye-witness testimony, KERALA scenarios, and thaumcannons aligned on battlements suggest SCP-XXXX was once an equivalent to an "Eigenweapon" or wonder weapon utilized by the Tang Dynasty to suppress rebellions. It is one of several East Asian wonder weapons capable of kinetic bombardment.¹

[CODENAMED: Lantern Festival, sanctioned by the Department of Logistics' Honors Program for Detained Individuals]
[begin thebigloghere]
For brevity, D-class personnel are referred to by their initials.
[have people identified by their worldly possessions, scattered through the logs]

DXXXX01: SA (Sherwin Ambrose) -
DXXXX02: WW (Winston Wu) - dogtag.
DXXXX03: FM (Fionn Martinsen) - generic red tie
DXXXX04: CC (Constance Cheng) - cheap digital watch

COMMAND: Gravsuits indicate landfall has been made. All in attendance?

SA: Affirmative. So did the rest of the team.

WW: Well, my breakfast left me a ways back. Affirmative.

CC: Affirmative. Winston deserved it. Mission explicitly stated "airborne" in the title and he still wolfed down pancakes and milk.

WW: It's a ritual, alright! Don't question it.

FM: Affirmative.

SA: Besides Winston's involuntary hurling; no deleterious diseases, no mental health defects, and no Kafkian body deformities. We're all good on our end Command.

[include this in a retrieval]

Transcripts from, Early Manuscript: I Ching by Kong Yingda, Yi Xing

Mengde, the Warrior Poet. Once, Tong Pass sat, rooted in the Earth.

Through Spring and Autumn, rice and blood — the fortress remained vigil in grim silence. Hollowed. Embedded. Brazen winds weaved and slashed past every jagged cliff; enough to push a fully grown farmer off his feet, enough to pull the grass glade like an emerald tide. A Lion's roar. The Warrior Poet bestowed a gold-jade chamber, deep into the mountain, and squeezed yearning, animated ambition, and air into it. Tong Pass rose, boundless, and untethered.

The Voice of the Mountain was a cloud of arrows and a storm of canons.

An Lushan, the Forever Warlord. Thrice, he slaked the fields with petty noble pools.

Zhang Xun was one such noble. He failed to pay his loyal retinue, and their hunger dissipated like their purses. So the Marquis took his favorite concubine and crying pitifully, he began chopping ceaselessly. Demanding that men should fight on, they feasted on the women of small Suiyang - blood marinated the rice. The Forever Warlord could not break their defenses, and so he whispered to the winds of magic. The heavens themselves opened.

The Voice of the Mountain was a cauldron of molten blood and rushing floodwaters, consuming all.

An Lushan, the Aged Barbarian. Once, Tong Pass belonged to his horses and archers.

The stoic mountain opened its inlet windows and blinked. It could not abate its disgust at the tumult of man any longer. It spoke and rapid columns of wind tore the warlord's bannerman. It cried heated, amber, lacquer which drowned the stone and flooded the floors, leaking out from the ridges until the men in lamellar and bronze fell from the sky. It stole the air and collapsed their lungs. The Barbarian's men whimpered an agonized scream, and they were no more.

The Voice of the Mountain was a man praying for rain.

Journal Entry Ending:

Cinder and wood.

That's what remains. Sherwin, Constance, Fionn, even the Guru, they're all gone now. Here, I stand, feet firmly rooted on some derelict tea table. The remnants sprawled blue skies unevenly. Each refuses to come down. At the center is a chasm pouring out red rain. Reminds me of my unit's deployment in Pakistan when stray shrapnel hit a soldier's neck; nothing but endless egress.

Thaumcanons contorted backward. Dragon-doorways careened over clouds.

I— I wanted, no needed, for there to be closure. Something at the end of the tunnel. A bright moon, Carrie loved moons; and stars and planets and rockets and all manner of flying things. She wanted to be an astronomer, work for NASA, drew all these pictures with me and her in spacesuits, and God all-mighty I fucking miss her. When she spoke, everything faded away like white noise and I was human again. When she cried, the world cried with her.

That voice. The Voice of the Mountain delved, dug hard, as it did with Fionn perhaps, singing sweet nothings no man has a right to. In her voice, it sang ceaseless comedies and fraught falsehoods, so much so, I believed its lies and mistook it for being enlightened. All so it too could be gone, away from this world. I do not believe this was suicide, rather, reduction. Making oneself so small as to almost be nothing, a weightless and formless non-self.

It didn't promise me Carrie swimming out of the

Cinder and wood.

special thanks