Memory Extract, ME-L141-030
Subject: Dr. Rosale, Lead Researcher for SCP-L141
Gender: Nonbinary
Extraction Date: May 5th, 2015
Foreword: Due to the non-linear nature of SCP-L141’s memory transference process, it has taken twenty-six separate tests for the chronological advancement of SCP-L141’s history to reach where ME-L141-04 left off. Observations have determined that the events which SCP-L141 are relaying occur over the course of a year, beginning in late summer. The arrival of what we now believe to be the Council of Matriarchs occurs in the Spring of the following year. Until test 70, the item seemed almost reluctant to show any events beyond what was observed in Memory Extraction 04.
<Begin Memory Transcript>
The great river of clouds bursts apart are you like fog. The high winds ripple like tides through long strands of your hair. Never are you as free as in these electric moments, with Ashera of the boundless sky rumbling beneath the saddle to which you are strapped. She tears free of the cloud cover into the endless blue of the northern summer. It’s that rebellious flame stirring in your chest that causes you to stand with arms extended. Defying the bounds of the wind and the grasp of gravity itself as Ashera rolls through the sky is true freedom. Only the barest of restraints can hold you in place up here.
Now a joyful, animalistic delight pours from your throat.
Each time you glance back, the Interior Queens behind you are holding on for dear life. The rest range between utterly terrified, unbothered, or thrilled to be alive in this moment. They have all been strapped into their seats quite snuggly, despite the temptation you felt to leave the most contemptuous among them loose in the biting wind. As cathartic as such a horrific death would be, there is a delicate balance in the politics ahead.
Jennifer Rosale. That is your name, yes?
What? Oh. OH. You’re finally speaking!
We could have spoken at any time.
I didn’t know the parameters.
It’s a masterstroke, months in the making. Summon them to your fortress, unprepared for the trip up the Grand River. Force their armies of slaves, Daevic noble soldiers, golems, and animated horticulture to take a long trip on your barges. Of course, those standing beneath your banners would show them how the North treats their own. All the while the Queens are left at your mercy. This is how you are planting the seeds of change. Seeds of revolution. Of course they could trek over the land too, and some have chosen to do so. A weeks long journey either way.
Meanwhile, you bring the council to the ritual site where the bulk of your land might waits. Off balance, naked and vulnerable, they won’t dare spring their machinations while defanged.
When your Twin, the Queen of Golden Horns, pieced together your plan upon that dock, her eyes had shimmered. Your chest buzzed when she flashed the slightest of smiles.
I remember your name, your face. Caught, as so many were, in that tide of a doomed vessel.
It’s been a year since then.
Beneath Ashera’s snaking form is the site where your people’s fates will be decided. A great sinking hole carved into the earth. It was a quarry once. Where you and the Matriarchs of the Northwest frontier cut and shaped stone to build your bastions and keeps from which to assault the barbarians of the west. But it is so much more than that now.
Four hundred years into your long and expansive campaign, the grand river’s course had shifted. It poured its water into the sinking earth, flooding the long tunnels. It carved a new path through the deep earth, emerging in the east and curling back south towards the sea. Three hundred years ago, you gathered the dead and dying trees of the west in it’s depths. Then you composted them to collect great repositories of fertile earth. In that hollow, you altered the river’s flow. Narrowed its channel. With a long series of targeted actions, a great deposition layered atop stone a soil so rich that anything would grow.
There, in secret, you planted a sacred seed. A Lemurian Ironwood, the last of its lineage. A seed given to you by Hekate before she left for the west, taken from the highland ravines of your ancestral aeries in the Dreaming Mountains of Lemuria.
A gentle smile rises to your lips in this glorious moment as the clouds part. Through hooded eyes its gleaming colors fill the lilac of your irises. A grand plume of canopy drapes the entire deep hole in golden leaves. It stretches towards the sky, as if welcoming you home. She has grown tall and strong. Nearly two kilometers tall at the apex, and more than half a kilometer wide at its base.
It’s not sunlight which reaches the bottom of the sinkhole. It’s the golden glow of the Ironwood’s own bio-luminescence. These goliaths like several other of the titan arboreal species from Lemuria shed radiant light energy, feeding all that grows below them. Here the Ironwood feeds the golden orchards flanking that endless river. Oaks, the zelkovas, the beeches, and wingnuts all stand in the shadow of the legacy of your people. What better a place to determine the course of a coming war? What better place to change the path your people will walk.
Whilst the island fortress bears the seat of your Queendom, its heart, your summer home, has always been the hallowed memorial to those Fallen Queens.
I knew it…
You know this place?
I think I’ve been here.
Not just in memory, but in physicality.
You can see that?
I can see the totality of all you are.
How are you—
We are one when you hold what’s left of me.
As Ashera’s immense form circles lower in the sky, the flush of blood magic tingles against your skin. Something trembles and presses against your leg. It’s the tool awakening to the scent of its purpose in that sheath.
How much will it take? How many lives must end?
The cost will be immense. Weeks to accumulate enough energy.
What do you mean by ‘what’s left’?
But it’s necessary. To fulfill the Font’s vision, to right the course of your people.
I am what was cast off. Consider us the brittle flint that was chipped away so the whole could rise.
Floral scents mix with the metallic tang of blood in your nostrils, so thick in the air it brushes against even your tongue. As soon as Ashera was seen in the sky, they would have begun in earnest. You take solace in the fact that they’ve been pampered. Thousands, tens of thousands, honed for war, treated like Kings and Queens. Not an ounce of rich serum will go to waste.
Some might take joy in the acts of carving the heart from the chest. Not you. This is a necessary and reverent evil, nothing more. Or so you tell yourself.
The dismount is simple, efficient. Many of the Queens stumble getting out of the saddle, struggle to climb down Ashera’s enormous flanks. They stagger as if bound with sea legs. Two deposit the fruits and liquors you so generously provided onto the bark at their feet.
There the priestesses of your House await you on that grand platform. They’re draped in the crimson of the blood being shed below. So too wait your honor guard and soldiers. They are strapped in Ironwood plated armor, deeply drenched in protective runes.
Why did you take so long to show me past the docks?
It’s still difficult to face and you weren’t ready. You still may not be.
The dream of memory becomes fuzzy, as if it is beginning to fade. You can feel the dagger starting to slip from your grip. It doesn’t want to be held; it doesn’t want to face this again.
I’ve waited a year to learn the hidden truths you promised. Please, I want to know. I want to understand!
If I show you, you may unravel. As I once unraveled. As the man in that place of learning unraveled.
If I unravel then so be it. It’s worth the risk, and I want to understand what happened.
Then I will rip the poultice off.
It’s as if someone has washed the grime from your eyes. With such abruptness, the fading vision ripples.
When did these dreamlike abstractions become so crystalline and crisp? When did you arrive in this wide and familiar chamber?
Bio-fluorescent lamps drip warm light into the room. But it does nothing for the sensation filling your belly, pitting down into the depths of your stomach.
Is this a sinking dread? An anxiety?
Murals of your people are painted and carved into every wall, littered with the text of a history so vast you haven’t the time to absorb its eddies and ripples.
The ceiling above is open to a starry sky. Now in the heat of pounding drums, the moon’s silver light shines down through it. At the center of the endless rings of this great tree, a grand fountain burbles. The sacred Font sits at its bottom, clear spring water piping up from below. The blood of the masses bubble from the top, forever separated by the stone of the earth.
How many were dying below? Did you know their names? Did you care to learn? Had you walked among them in the endless Orchards? How were you going to make the cost worth it in the end?
You don’t know the names of the burning herbs drenching the air. You do know the names of the dying; it became a stubborn obsession in the weeks leading up to this moment to know every one. Their rapid stream filters through your mind, too fast to snatch a hold of. The distraction, brief as it is, breaks. Drums bound from the skins of great beasts thump faster, harder now with every second. There are wind instruments of bone, gold, and wood filling the night with harmonious tones and dissonant melodies.
Oh, how the priestesses dance before you. This is a moment you were made for. That body moves on instinct, falling into rhythm with them. With each spin, each twist of your hips, the entire council is in step with you. You set the tone, you set the pace, you set the thrum with every hammer stroke against your heart. It is power you invoke. The will of the Font to remind your people, once again, of the costs of conquest and the tithings of war.
Yet the question remains, how will you make it worth it? If you pull everything together, will it right the ship? Will it stop the senseless death of your Sisters? Will this be enough? Will it ever be enough for your people?
It is with reverence, not decadence that the task burns ahead. It is with understanding of that which you take that each step flows like the blood you are shedding. It is not the ignorance borne from greed that drives you to step past the priestesses. It is purpose that lets you glide through the thrusts of your arms. The pivots of your hips present the truth to all. The Font has chosen you to be the shepherd of your peoples’ future, even as you twirl about the fountain.
These fat and avaricious Queens are weak and must be culled.
Now the seat of the council belts into the rising moonlight, forcing every hair to stand on end.
Queen of the High Blood: Sisters, the Font spoils in the moonlight. Sisters, the horns call again. Sisters, there is yet fury to be done. A future for all to secure. Never again shall we burn in the light of a foreign host. Never again shall we be driven from the deeps. Let our guide burn brightly in the eyes of the river, let her beacon shine in the night! Step forward oh Queen of Winds, impart the first of the blessings for the drive to come.
Stepping to each note is effortless, each rhythm so natural it is like breathing, and the fountain responds in kind. Sacrificial ichor of the masses’ seeps into the simple white of the ceremonial dress.
How, oh Queen of Winds, will you make it all worth it?
That tool you cast with the shape of her femur, over many long cold nights, thrums upon the pedestal. It pulls from the life below, drinking its fill for the task to come. For every splash of sacrifice, the Font cleanses you with the clarity of its crystalline stream.
How will you lead them forward?
In time with the pounding drums, you reach and grasp at the hilt of the dagger. The Dagger and you were both born for this moment. All at once, a name burns against the horizon. One you cannot read, one you do not know.
Who are you? Who will you be?
Something familiar in the distance brushes against your flesh. A touch carried on a breeze that’s warm and carries the song of gulls. When did the lights begin to tear? When did the world rip apart around you?
Bear the truth of who you serve. Wake to the world and answer my questions.
What is…
An ethereal screech shatters against a consciousness.
You can’t breathe.
Strings of Scarlet tear into reality. Now comes the haunted laughs of something that is not the Font, swallowing you in their folds. You’re screaming. A crown of thorns, shadows dancing beneath the canopies. Skin aflame from crimson thread. A war spirals in an endless sea of grass. Kin against kin, Daevae against Daevae. Blood pools, drenching. Strings wrapping around and around everything. You’re a shepherd to their consumption. Queens are being ripped asunder by great arboreal things. Beasts tear sisters into meaty fragments.
A shepherd of doom. See now the path you walk.
No.
The stench of rot and decay fills your nostrils.
A shepherd of lies.
Taint spreads beneath your skin, binding you to those strings. A taste of mold on those lips, of rotting flesh pressing endlessly between your teeth. There is nothing you can do to save them. A shade in crimson looms. From it’s endless fingers pour fine threads, dancing you and all your kin to bloody ends. You’re thrown, tumbling through black.
No, stop.
A roaring event horizon, haloed with the light ever swallowed in its depths.
They crept in long ago.
Chains, black and purple, wrapping twixt wrists. They force your blood to march and the Matriarchs to bend.
They saw your fear and drank of opportunity.
A single goal, a spear brought against a towering spire far to the west, where a gentle light burns. They twist that flame for their own misbegotten goals. Beneath it’s twisting spirals there is something you cannot hope to grasp. It is brilliant and alien yet beating to a endless rhythm. A song in sylvan ears heard ten thousand times before.
Know the full bounds of a misbegotten fate.
No, stop!
The disturbing truth is what lies beneath their strings and chains. The bounds of time shatter, and you tumble towards the water. No, not water, flesh. Writhing pinks, whites, and reds in every direction. It is an accost on the senses, this smell of blood and bodily fluids pressing heavily against your mind. Meat and flesh force themselves to pass your lips, pungent and foul. There’s a wicked cloying at the skin as you struggle. All of it moves, dragging you along. See how those many mouths open and close in unison, gnawing endlessly at your skin?
What is this!?
The shapes before you resolve. A dragon, horrible in all its might, rippling endlessly in the black, voidless bounds of the stellar sky. You are nothing to it, another tiny crumb in the cosmic seeds it has sewn and come to reap. You can only watch as the tiny blue dot grows in size. Can only hope that the trajectory changes. A sense of endless screaming rises to greet you as you come to haunt its pearlescent skies. Endless, mindless hunger, trailing behind a river of flesh.
Please, make it stop!
In the descent there is magnification, a transference as you stand amidst the grass. An endless red of flesh barreling towards all Matriarchal kind. You have been dancing for it, summoning it, revering it. This? All this does is feed those scarlet strings and purple chains which twist its path. This is the jaws of an avarice, an endless void snapping shut and there will be no survivors.
Only you can change this fate.
NO!
See now, the thing you covet the most? It Is your end.
The dance ends with a violent screech ripping from your lungs. All at once the world becomes a blur of color as you tumble along the floor.
So, you wake to the truth painted in blood.
From your hands the tool rattles, coming to a halt. All that is left to do is stare at the moonlit sky. Your vision is haunted by great maws of endless teeth and flesh. The very conduit of your destruction, the dagger, gleams in the moonlight on the ground. You have taken the first steps. The first of several runes in its hilt burn with the fire you just gave it. Shattered ignorance, fragmented innocence, each ripped from your mind. It pours now from your body in a dark miasma creeping along the rings of the floor.
There is silence as terrible as it is consuming. All that remains is the heavy breaths from lying on the floor. Any and all would be crushed by this revelation pressing against your chest.
No, no, no, no. Please no more.
Everything you thought you knew.
Now you see why I didn’t want to go here.
That the Font is supposed to be a noble belief in a clear source for all life? That its compassion and harshness gave your people purpose?
Wha-what did I just witness?!
You saw the truth.
It was wrong. You have been deceived. Not just you, but all Daevic-kind.
Everything I believed in. It was never real.
Tears pour from your eyes for the first time since you were but a babe. You stare up at the sky, adrift in that helplessness. Its only natural to feel so, in the face of a shattered reality. You have walked along a faithful path, only to find there was no path at all. Now you are afloat in a void of senseless duty.
Welcome to the ugly truth.
I’m sorry.
Every ounce of bloodshed, every life taken, every settlement raised, every cut out heart? They all enabled this. Every Queen lost, every Sister who has bled under your banner, was for this. You were always being fattened for slaughter, honed and sharpened as a weapon against things you don’t understand.
And here you are, still shepherding your people to their doom in a wheel of endless, pointless death.
You have nothing to apologize for, child of now.
Perhaps, worst of all, there is no way to bring an end to this madness.
You turn your head to stare at all of them. It’s in their eyes, hard stuck in their skin. Those scarlet strings are embedded deep within all of them. Chains of time, strings of scarlet, each bending them to alien wills. Even now you see them twitch and curl. Can you feel how that corrupting rot and decadence seeps through their flesh?
The Daevae have been bred for cruelty. Bred under the false pretense that you are better than any and every other thinking thing. You were tricked into believing that you are false gods.
It is simply the way things are.
They are staring at you. Judging your weakness upon that floor. Jealousy, annoyance, derision, hate. But you ignore them.
Because the most terrifying truth of all walks towards you with cold calculation in her eyes.
Your twin. There are strings in her too.
There is some solace in awakening to the blackened truth rather than dying in the dark.
What are you going to do? You agonize over what you even can do against this revelation.
But I wept still knowing the North was already lost.
Nothing, you tell yourself. You simply curl up and try not to exist.
And I wondered then, if perhaps I had made a mistake.
<End Memory Extract>
Site-91 Psychologist Office
8th May, 2015
You’re early today, Jennifer.
I need a sabbatical, Susan.
Oh? You were set on making a breakthrough last we talked. Is this a morale issue?
It’s not. I just need to not be here for awhile.
That’s a significant change, what’s bringing this on?
I got what I wanted.
A major breakthrough?
Yeah. Did Iona send you the logs?
She hasn’t. Is a breakthrough not a thing to celebrate?
No. No, I don’t think so.
Something’s happened?
It… was a lot. I saw things that I can’t unsee. And I just don’t want to be here right now.
Are you feeling disillusioned with the work?
Can we not psychoanalyze me right now?
I’m just trying to understand how best to help, Jennifer. It’s clear you’re going through something right now.
It’s—Dammit Susan. I’m afraid of what I might see next. We—need to see it, but I can’t do it right now. I don’t know if I can ever do it again! I’m afraid.
Would it be accurate to say the memories you’ve gained from SCP-L141 are altering your self-perception faster than we can reassert your sense of self?
I—Maybe. Yes. I’ve not really been myself since the last extraction. I’m scared, Susan. I’m terrified of what might happen if we keep going. Please, I just need time.
I think a sabbatical would be a good idea. I’m sure Iona will agree.
Dr. Rosale: No, I don’t want to see any memories today. Please, I just have something to say.
SCP-L141-A: I’m listening, Jennifer.
Dr. Rosale: I’m going away for a while. Juniper and Summers are going to keep you company.
SCP-L141-A: I caused this. I’m sorry, Jennifer.
Dr. Rosale: I asked you to show me. I insisted on it and you warned me.
SCP-L141-A: Will you return?
Dr. Rosale: I don’t know yet. I can’t say for sure or make promises. I’m sorry.
SCP-L141-A: You need not apologize for taking care of yourself. It’s not weakness as my Sisters so often insisted. It’s tender love and care for oneself.
Dr. Rosale: That means a lot more than you could know.
SCP-L141-A: If you return, I would make a request of you?
Dr. Rosale: I can’t make promises but I can hear you out.
SCP-L141-A: [Memory Extraction Exchange Excised]1
Dr. Rosale: I’ll have to think about it. That’s asking a lot.
SCP-L141-A: I understand. Take care, Jennifer Rosale of the Foundation. Should I see you again, I intend to finish my story. If not, I wish you well in the comforts of a happy life.
On 05/09/2015, Dr. Jennifer Rosale was placed on a six-month sabbatical by Dr. Iona Varga, following through on a personal request. In Dr. Rosale’s stead, Dr. Taylor Summers was appointed temporary head of research for SCP-L141.
For the duration of Dr. Rosale’s sabbatical, SCP-L141 was notably less receptive to direct handling by other non-cisgender researchers. This largely manifested as repetitive display of previously catalogued memories.
Incident I-L141-03:
In light of Dr. Rosale’s last extracted memory, and L141’s lack of cooperation, Dr. Summers attempted to increase SCP-L141’s responsiveness by ‘feeding’ it prior to handling. A large volume (~130 liters) of human blood was collected from volunteers over several months for this purpose. Dr. Summers intended to ‘feed’ SCP-L141 in staggered amounts over a period of several hours, which Director Varga approved ahead of time.
On the morning of August 9th, 2015, the container with all 130 liters of human blood was wheeled into SCP-L141’s storage chamber by Dr. Summers under pre-sterilized conditions. Shortly before experiments were set to begin, Junior Researcher Juniper attempted to retrieve SCP-L141 from its glass chamber using a pair of cryopreservation gloves. Dr. Summers attempted to remove the lid of the blood container at the same time, later noting it appeared to have formed a stronger vacuum suction than usual. Summers applied more force than normal to try to open the lid. When the lid abruptly popped open and the excessive vertical momentum of Dr. Summer’s arms knocked SCP-L141 out of Juniper’s hands.
SCP-L141 “pinwheeled in the air”, as described by Summers, appearing to defy gravity for several seconds, before falling straight down into the container. Akiva sensors immediately began alarming within the chamber, alerting other personnel. At this point, SCP-L141 rapidly consumed the entire volume of liquid before either Summers or Juniper could remove it. The dagger then entered a previously unobserved awakened state.
SCP-L141 placed itself in Juniper’s hands, transforming her into SCP-L141-A. Thanks to quick thinking by Dr. Summers, and hasty action by other containment personnel, the emergency alarms were triggered shortly before SCP-L141’s ontokinetic reality altering effect began rapidly spreading through Site-91. These actions allowed evacuation of most personnel.
Epsilon-32 Bloodletters arrived and were able to incapacitate SCP-L141 within fifteen minutes of the incident’s start. While Junior Researcher Juniper’s experiences during the incident, along with other intentional inductions, assisted mapping of SCP-L141’s Circle-class hermeneutic (See Hermeneutic Characterization Log (HCL-L141-01)), the incident also reflected a negligent arrangement of experimental conditions.
Shortly following Incident I-L141-03, Site-91 Director Iona Varga reached out to Dr. Jennifer Rosale, who was still on sabbatical. Dr. Rosale agreed to return a month early, despite her initial request for an extension to her sabbatical. In the meantime, new containment protocols were put in place to prevent future incidents.
Site-91 Director’s Office
15th November, 2015
I’m glad your sabbatical was productive.
Thanks, Iona. I just needed space to reassert my sense of self.
Were you able to get your gender marker changed?
No, they’re still giving me the runaround in records.
Let me look into it. I’ll see if putting my finger on the scale can help.
You shouldn’t have to do that. It should just be something that I can do.
I know, but the Foundation is a bureaucratic nightmare.
Yeah… one that bigots can use.
On a different topic, have you read the incident report yet?
I read it on the plane. Could have been a lot messier.
Summers’s quick thinking and your containment protocols are to thank.
I can’t take credit for those. Everyone on my team contributed. I’m just surprised they thought it was a good idea to wheel in all 130 liters of blood.
Take some pride in your work, Jennifer. I believe your team is closer than ever to resolving the anomaly. But I have safety concerns about anyone other than you pushing this effort forward. Which I think are more obvious after this incident. So, I want to ask, do you think you can finish what you started?
I can try my best.
Site-91 Director’s Office
15th November, 2015
Iona, I’m worried we’ve brought her back too soon.
Your psych eval cleared her for duty, Susan.
I know it did.
Has something happened that’s changed your confidence in her ability to do the work?
No.
If she’s behaving normally, and there weren’t lingering red flags from SCP-L141’s influence, then I’m not sure what your concern is.
Call it a gut feeling after 8140.
Mmmm. Records are being obstinate about changing her legal information in the system. Maybe keep an eye on her and let me know if anything else changes.
SCP-L141-A: Jennifer, you’ve returned.
Dr. Rosale: I had to come back. Especially after your vessel nearly plunged the whole site into memory.
SCP-L141-A: An unfortunate accident.
Dr. Rosale: I’m not sure I believe you.
SCP-L141-A:I can’t help the artifices of my body.
Dr. Rosale: Your body? I thought you were the fragments of memory from the Queen of Winds? Are you saying—
SCP-L141-A: My flesh is flint. My hair is the gold of the handle. My womb the channels of the blade. All of it wrapping a fragment of what you’d call a soul. We are one and the same.
Dr. Rosale: Oh.
Silence.
SCP-L141-A: Have you considered my request?
Dr. Rosale: I’m still thinking about it. It’s a lot.
Dr. Rosale I’d like to know more about what you are, first. About what happened, and what would happen.
SCP-L141-A: I’d expect nothing less. Let’s play this tragedy to its end, and I shall answer your questions as we go.
Memory Extract, ME-L141-032
Subject: Dr. Rosale, Lead Researcher for SCP-L141
Gender: Nonbinary
Extraction Date: 15th December, 2015
<Begin Memory Extraction:
It takes time for additional sacrifices to be gathered. Perhaps the council, perhaps you, underestimated just how much material would be needed for the full realization of the rite.
Before it would have been a logistical problem.
It’s horrifying, what you were intended to do.
Now it’s another knife plunged into your heart. Nausea churns as cloying ice in your stomach.
How many are being drained of life? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
A purpose I fulfilled in the end. Just not in the way either of us expected.
The wheels of memory turn. Time keeps marching on all around this faded nightmare you once called a dream. Some nights you stand among the highest platforms, in the hollows carved into the branches of the great Ironwood. Doing everything in your power to avoid what happens in the orchards below. It brands you a coward, running from what you enabled, but you have no strength left to face it.
Up here there is a plethora of life. Through secret deals, you once bartered for eggs from the South. They hatched strange, multi-colored flying things with wings in pairs of two, three, five, and even eight. Some are birds. Some are fuzzy-like mammals. Others are reptilian and yet fluffy, like Ashera herself. They flutter now in the nocturnal canopy all around you, some of them lighting up the night with bioluminescence.
Along the trunk crawl things that have no names. They’re life from the deep jungles of the South seemingly spawned by the rusted red bark of the Ironwood. Others slither through hollows in the wood. From each of them drips a beautiful song you do not deserve.
You listen to the drums, the winds. Oh, how the pounding feet echo off the sheer stone walls of the former quarry. Somewhere, in the depths of the night, weeping vines sob to the beat. Just as you have sobbed in the nights following the truth unveiled. Lemurian beasts, predators and prey alike add to the cacophony with their howls and screams in a melodic accompaniment that raises bumps along your skin. Their cries have become familiar from many absent walks twixt the forest floor. Some are ungulate, some feline, some serpentine.
What a strange and alien world you have wrought. Completed by a mix of scents: floral, wood, slimy secretions, and blood. Like a painter drawing pigment over stone, you have seeded a beautiful work of art. If only that were enough to right what you have done. If only that was enough to stop the truth gnawing at your mind and heart.
But to reach it we had to break. We had to lose everything we thought we knew. It stings to realize that we were a monster to so many, that we had been a monster since we took our first steps on the battlefield. All those innocents, those sisters we so loved, perished for nothing.
You could have been worse.
How could I have been possibly worse than this?
Do you remember how you drift among the Orchards to flagellate yourself before the truth of what you have wrought?
How vacuously you stare upon the circle of life dancing on around you. Insects varied and nonsensical in their shapes and limb arrangement march over tree trunks. Some, with such vibrant colors, flutter through the air. Only to land atop flowers, drinking poisonous nectars. Some have faces which are far too humanoid for comfort. In passing, you scrape one hand through the trunk of a twisted pink tree. There’s little resistance and you come away with a handful of soft, fluffy matter. Dulled sweetness against the tongue when you press it twixt those lips.
You could have been like the other Queens. You could have seen the truth and continued on. You made all of this. You had redeeming qualities to cultivate and find a new life in.
A beast with too many eyes and cat-like paws regards you briefly as potential prey; only to turn and chase a baying spiny thing the size of a great boar. It has antennae, tusks, and far too long a body. Once, you would have regarded every flower, every creature in this magical place that was seeded and grown as triumphs of the Font. Surely they would have been proof of your faith.
Queen of Winds: “I’ve done nothing more than provide a rich buffet to an apathetic, all-consuming, false god.”
Having a crisis of faith and conscience is usually the first step towards redemption.
Dirt presses between your toes as you come to a stop. On raised platforms and ritual altars, priestesses carve hearts. They collect Font’s spill from the chest of slaves and volunteers alike. How they call to you now. How they invite you in song and dance to take part in a once sacred right.
Unnamed Priestess: “Lady of Winds, join us! Bless the shedding of the Fonts flow for the hours to come!”
You should take their invitation. It would be easy to step forward, cut the bindings of the slaves. End this madness. Why not storm the temple! Why not slit the throats of the Matriarchs and build a new realm with no slaves, no endless war, where Daevic peoples and mankind live together. Free of the bindings of these deceivers.
No one can accuse you of being weak for breaking after your whole world was pulled out from under you.
But you don’t.
Queen of Winds: “I have no courage left to spend.”
The truth is that the slaves would be cut down before they could be organized. You would be seized as a prisoner; you would be executed and your bones displayed for all to see as a traitor to your species.
Queen of Winds: “Haven’t I doomed enough innocents for one life? Haven’t my choice already burned most everything I loved to ash?”
So, you turn away and walk on, leaving slave and priestess alike to stare after you.
No matter where you walk, the nightmare spirals endlessly. Threads curl from your peoples’ skin, chains bending them. It’s from the Matriarchs down to the simplest craftspeople. Every time you blink, the endless jaws of flesh are closing in upon you. Around every tree is an altar where you have woven suffering. Every bend in the path is a reminder of the destruction you have wrought as a conqueror. There’s no escape from what you are, and what you used to justify it.
Queen of Winds: “Everything I have ever made, is drenched with lack of purpose. With an atrocity I have woven. Every drop of blood shed has no point. It just deepens the monstrosity burning in my veins. These political machinations I once craved, they are meaningless!”
You kick over a vase, its crimson contents spilling on the forest floor as you fall to your knees.
Despair and helplessness unwind everything. A single grief stricken scream to the sky in an empty meadow with nought to blame but yourself. As terrible as you are, there are far worse among your kind.
The other Queens could.
A once brilliant series of strokes defanging the inner Queens is falling apart. You sit in alcoves of the temple, listening as the neutral Queens are swayed in the dark.
Unnamed Queen 1: “She’s weak.”
Unnamed Queen 2: “Look at how she hides up in the hollows.”
Unnamed Queen 3: “She can’t possibly lead us against the might of the Machine, against the endless eddies of the South.”
Unnamed Queen 1: “We need strength in the days to come.”
Unnamed Queen 3: “A commander who will not hesitate to strike down all that stand in her path.”
Unnamed Queen 1: “Many will bleed, whole realms will burn. She who takes the helm must have a stomach of iron. Clearly this Queen of Winds is a fraud.”
Unnamed Queen 2: “What of the twin?”
And did.
Yet you are forced to crawl along the broken path of inaction. Rising from the bed in the high hollows is a monumental task. Songs and dance are empty gestures you walk away from. Tasks are delegated that you should be handling. Everything you once were has evaporated.
But the worst part is, you could have done something sooner. You could have acted and stopped the spiral. But you don’t.
Queen of Winds: “There is no longer a point.”
By the time you truly realize what’s happening, you’ve waited too long.
Queen of Winds: “It’s too late.”
The many barges, the overland furor of steps. Their armies are here, depriving you of the opportunity to decapitate the interior Queens.
You lay in the grass, and stare at the endless lights of the Ironwood above.
How can you possibly lead a revolution towards a better world when your hands are so heavily soaked in blood? How can you be freed from this vice of hopelessness?
Perhaps your people deserve this annihilation barreling towards all of you.
You sit on a hollow log, as the others stand. Those Queens of the North and West, speaking of plans to come.
Queen of Trickling Rain: “What are our next steps?”
Queen of Embers: “Did we wait too long to move?”
Queen of Mountain Streams: “With their armies here, I don’t know that we can enact our goals.”
Queen of Many Flows: “Queen of Winds, what words have you for the path ahead?”
You have nothing to give them. When that heavy silence threatens to smother all of them, your Twin fills the gaps.
Quen of the Golden Horns: “We’ll make our move in the final rite. Track every step of the Interior’s motions, we will need to know if they decide to move before us, and where they keep their fortunes closest.”
There’s no worry in those lilac eyes, only quiet coldness. A calculation certainly befitting of what you once were.
Even your sister…
The cold truth is, we were molded into vicious predators. When there is nothing left to suck from the hollow bones we were always destined to turn upon each other.
It’s seven turns of your father through the heavens before she comes to you. The sun is low in the sky, warming your olive skin in that shallow inlet in the river. Lobed fish nibble on the lichen clinging to your skin. She walks through the shallows, casting ripples along the surface of the gentle currents. You barely notice her splashes.
It doesn’t take much to figure out why she’s here. It’s because there’s only one more day before the next ritual.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Sister of the Winds.”
Her voice echoes like a hollow, distant bell.
Queen of Winds: “Sister of the Golden Horns.”
The words trickle from your lips, barely acknowledging her presence.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Do you know why I’m here?”
Queen of Winds: “You can’t ignore the truth any longer. You need to know if I will be fit to continue the task.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “There’s truth written in your skin, in the paleness in your cheeks. All see that you have wavered when victory was in hand.”
Queen of Winds: “And the currents have moved against me. Sister we are each a house of spiders seeking to snare the others in their web.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I’ve known you since birth. You are my Twin, the schemer, the serpent of wind, the warmaker. What is your plan?”
It seems like she cared, in her own way.
You stare at the Ironwood across the thundering river. It stands tall, thick in the sky and ever glowing. She smells of lilac and fresh blood. The latter stench almost makes your stomach flip. There’s no point in lying further. The weight of the truth is crushing you because you bear it alone. What comes next will be a risk, whatever you say.
Maybe she did, once.
A risk that there’s no point left in not taking.
Queen of Winds: “There is no plan.”
So, you roll the dice.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Why do you feign such weakness? Why shirk all responsibilities when you were so close to a golden hour of victory?”
Queen of Winds: “Everything we have done is for a lie. We live in the shadows of the greatest of deceptions.”
You wait, preparing for the acclimations of weakness. For the accusations of treason.
Better to be a heretic than play along, isn’t it? Better to be dead than a vector for their continued slaughter.
This second voice in your memory, is it you?
Patience.
Perhaps she will poison you there and then. Or take your head to proclaim her right to lead the coming invasion. Would there be solace in that? Knowing that you did something instead of simply fading?
Little confidence in the bonds of family?
Family cannot abide weakness in this world. It could not save me from the pit of vipers. Blood ties, as precious as they are, must survive.
Instead, she sits next to you, looking up at the great Ironwood.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “You saw something during the rite?”
A simple look reveals the inquisitive wrinkles in the bridge of her nose. The way her ears droop. She looks again like the small soft girl once again, the one who cried for hours upon end after the death of the Ram all those years ago. Perhaps, perhaps she isn’t as taut upon the strings as you’d feared. Perhaps self-interest wasn’t as strong as you once thought.
Can she be broken from the delusion?
Queen of Winds: “I saw the truth. What we have all believed in for Millenia—is a grand deception. The Font is not a stream of crystalline source from which all life flows. It is a clogged, ravenous, unending flood of flesh. It seeds life and then circles to consume it in its stellar maws. There’s no compassion for its creation, no love and care for our worship. Only endless consumption.”
The Queen of Golden Horns turns her attention to the river, looking out beyond.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “That’s heresy.”
She says with such simplicity.
Not an accusation, not a threat. A statement, refreshingly honest and clear. You blink, attempting to process the misjudgment of her character.
Queen of Winds: “But it’s worse than even that. There are outside forces seeping into the contours of our beliefs. Unspeakable, unknowable hostiles who bind us to strings, chains, and their will. The invasion of the South is their architecture. Their corruption seeps in; in the violence against our cousins. They warp this ravenous thing which deceives us, and deceive us again in turn.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Again, heresy.”
You snap at her with a growl in your throat.
Queen of Winds: “Of course its heresy. Because it makes us monsters, it makes us murderers, warmongers, slavers. There is no justification for what we have done, what we continue to do. Maybe, there was never justification for any of this, even when we thought the Font was real. Maybe we drove beyond the bounds of our ancient home and became something else. Perhaps everything we’ve ever done has been twisted about this lie. Perhaps that’s what Nanny saw near the end and why she went west.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “And that is why you have wallowed now, for more than seven laps of father’s chariot through the sky? This is why you let everything you have ever built crack and splinter?”
Queen of Winds: “Yes.”
The breath drips from your lips in an exhausted exhale.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Do they have a goal, these things you saw in the dark?”
Queen of Winds: “They hone us into a vicious weapon, cull the weak with war and blood.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “A weapon against what?”
Queen of Winds: “Something like them. But different. A maker, a creator, I think. I think I’ve heard its call across the ages we have lived.”
She picks up a pebble and turns it over in her hands.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “So, everything we the Matriarchs, the Daevae, have ever done, it was in the name of a lie?”
Her eyes are narrowed, looking out at the river. She pulls her arm back, winding up. After a second, she catapults the rock with a spin. It bounces, once, twice, three times and keeps going until you lose track of it.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Just the admission alone will be treated as immediate heresy by the council.”
Queen of Winds: “Which is why I have said nothing. What is there to say or do? How can we possibly return from the abyss where we have driven?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Do you have a plan to put an end to this deception? Surely you must intend to slice these strings and break the chains.”
You stare out over the inlet. Is she still convinced that you have a plan? How could she have such confidence in you when you had nothing left? A plan would require a complete upending of everything your people have ever known. Have ever believed. They would sooner slay you where you stood than willingly change. They would have to be forced, and that would just sow more suffering.
Queen of Winds: “I told you, there is no plan.”
She is quiet for a long time.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I’d say you’ve done enough, twin. I will take the step of claiming my place. I will forge a plan in blood, as you always have. When you wake from this stupor of despair, we will remake the Empire in our image, rather than in the eyes of a false source.”
She spoke with such a fire in her words that it clashed as thunder with the cold swirling in her eyes.
Queen of Winds: “Twin, how can you talk of Empire? How can you so confidently brush away this truth? How can you go on, how can I go on knowing the horrific truth of what we are and what we’ve done? How can any of us continue to live when everything has been a lie?”
Queen of the Golden Horns(????): “Hahaha! They will look upon us Sister, they will stare upon the glory of what we could be, a new path, an alternative—”
All at once, the atmosphere changes. Your sister, sitting upon the endless eddies of the inlet, begins to melt. You leap to your feet, lunge, crying out her name. A hasty attempt to reach out and grasp her pools your fingers through liquefying flesh. You recoil, powerless except to watch. Her skin, muscles, bones and nerves, sag. Dissolve into the endless flow of the river. It’s suddenly as if she has always been one with the current.
What the hell—
Reverence, Jennifer. You asked after the identity of that second stream of thought.
What’s happening?!
She’s coming.
A song pours into all of reality like a cup being filled under a faucet. It thrums against your flesh and ripples in your bones. Waves of sound pour through the sky, cleaving apart the clouds before rushing down the contours of the river.
What power is this?
Driven before it is a great wave of water, tearing at the shoreline with rapid jerks of color. The riverbanks twist before you, burrowing down into a canyon within the mind. Sudden, endless fractals filled with swiftly moving fluid. The waves, the river, everything swells. Oscillating currents of life thrash against the confines of an endless container, bursting the boundaries to shape in defiance of some unseen authority. All at once it curls around you. You are swept from your feet into the endless pull of rapids so distant and yet incredibly familiar, clawing for a grasp on a branch, on the dirt, only to slip through sand.
What’s—
A song against the endless flow of time.
Look at how the colors squirm now. Drink in the endless shifts of hues squirming upon a starry sky. Everything is a kaleidoscope burning against the retinas of your eyes. Blues flush into reds, then oranges, then yellows, purples, greens, pale tans and whites. No matter the hue, it’s all the same. You tumble endlessly through them, assaulted by a barrage of textures against your skin. Songs of an endless march rise and fall in your ears. Every tastebud screams from an impossible bombardment of colored flavor against your tongue.
Now faces form in the flow. The Mirror, Queens of the North, the West, the Interior, your mother, your great grandmother, slaves, priestesses. Each look upon you with eyes that are both their own yet alien beyond comprehension. Filled with a golden sheen that you do not know. That you cannot begin to know. They appear in the waves only to dissolve in the whipping currents. Four auric orbs dance before you in the endless shifting tide in which you’re caught.
I can’t think straight!
Ink against the stellar tapestry.
With one voice they call to you, a choir of Creation burning against the sky.
Child of the Wind, of the Forest deep, I call now to you across time and space.
Queen of Winds: “What are you?!”
You scream, tossed like a piece of driftwood within the endless flow.
I am a beginning. I am that which brings from nothing, everything. Lo child, you struggle, aimlessly in a sea you do not understand. You weep for atrocities you have committed. You despair as if there is no path forward. Why?
Queen of Winds: “Because there is nothing left for me! How am I supposed to go on? How can I continue to live when everything has been a lie? How can I walk a different path when I have stolen so much from so many?”
Fluid spirals and spins all around you. A vortex, harsh, fast, grabs you by the ankles and drags you under. Panic bubbles through those lips as precious oxygen escapes. Only to find those lungs do not throb with hateful liquid.
I don’t understand what I’m seeing.
The curtain draws in an eyelid’s infinitely magnifying shape. You’re face down in the softened sands of your island fortress, revealed moments later when you lift your head. On the docks, not far beyond where you lay, there is a shape, congealing from an endless mass of churning water. Quiet, echoing words, in a language as garbled as it is beautiful, cross the gap. Somehow, you understand. Somehow, you’ve always understood.
I don’t think I should see this. Lady of Winds, let me release your blade, please?
No harm will flow through you, Jennifer. But this truth you must see.
You stand before it, eons later, cowed in the endlessness of its cerulean wake. How can you not be awed in the depths that overwhelmed your senses but a few moments before?
It tries to assume the shape of your Twin. But it is a broken face marked with four golden eyes. Every few seconds there is a distension of flesh from disparate parts of its body, tearing and floating before congealing again. A voice burns on the horizon, the tones encompassing the roar of stars above. There comes the crash of impossibly tall waves, the birth of entire rocky worlds in its wake. Those echoes reverberate in your ears, punching straight into the depths of your mind.
It has no mouth, yet it sings.
Grieve for what has been lost. Grieve for the suffering you have wrought. Grieve for the naivete burned away by truth. But dare not lie in the sand and cast aside your life.
Queen of Winds: “You speak of grief, but what do you know? What do you understand of the grief of we smaller things? What do you care? You are one of them, another deceiver in the dark.”
I know of the grief of loss. Of the binding of chains. Of the removal of what once was whole. I feel the pain of all creation in the sweep of my tides. We watch as stagnation and the cycles of continuance bind.
Queen of Winds: “How could you ever understand that my faith, my life, my purpose, none of it was ever my own.”
A deception whose responsibility you bear not.
Queen of Winds: “How can you say that? Look at the suffering I have reaped upon the sky, the earth, and the waves. Even the trees weep for my foolishness. I sacrificed everything in the name of our people’s cause. I forged my mind and body into a tool of war to make my name. All for this terror on the horizon. All this bloodshed in the name of a greedy mind. All this flesh carved upon the altar of my life! What was the point of any of it!?”
Tears sting in the corners of your eyes. The shape rips asunder before you, the horizon rapidly rushing in. You stand before a field of burning flame, blood soaking the ground. Crimson ire roars in the sky above. In the distance, a dragon bellows in the endless swirls of grey clouds. A river bursts its banks and washes the canvas away. In it’s place rises a field of endless flowers, a technicolor dreamscape, staring out unto an emerald sea. Now it stands in the shape of your mother, without her painted marks.
There is no point. There has never been a point.
You stagger backwards beneath the hammer blow of her words.
Queen of Winds: “W-what is the meaning of it all then?”
There is no meaning, there is no greater purpose to be found in some higher thing. Creation is what we make of it. Purpose is wrought in the self, in the faith of things that might not be real. Though you have stained the many weaves, your pages have now been emptied. This is a blank slate for you to write the song of a better fate. A space in which to atone for the atrocity borne through another’s intent.
Queen of Winds: “But what was the point of my efforts?”
To hone you and your people into a spear, a blade to tear the flesh of my heart. They intend to end creation itself. You know this.
I’ve seen these words before.
Glimpses granted to another.
Flowers burst at the seams, surging into the sky. Grand forest canopies shadowing the immense Ironwood fortress of the noble house from which you hail. It stands before you now, the shifting guise twisting into your grandmother before abandoning all sense of coherence. Limbs sprout and dissolve from their writhing flesh. Wings break free from skin and then fall away as withered meat. Eyes form, droop, and then roll at their feet before sinking into puddles of dripping sinew.
It takes shapes you have envied, winged, beautiful, feminine creatures with many arms. Tauric shapes of draconic, equine, and feline stature. Serpentine bodies, long thrashing tails amidst humanoid shapes. Even wheeling abstractions do not go untouched.
Queen of Winds: “A dream, rapturous of fever.”
It’s a whisper that escapes those lips, curling forth in the midst of that stunned awe of its beautiful, shifting intonations. What flares before you is freed of gender, of conformity and it brings an ache to your heart.
Queen of Winds: “To whom does the song haunting the depths of my mind belong? Are you that old spiteful dream of a shape fluid beyond all reason?”
No, but we could be.
You curl your fists; nails digging into the palms.
Queen of Winds: “You who claim you are no deceiver; you tempt me with a truth and desire so deeply buried. Name thyself as an intruder in the dreams of a grieving once-queen.”
Again, everything flays apart at the seams before you. The endless river does not carry you in waves this time. Instead, sand presses in the space between your toes. An endless brush splashes upon the canvas, an amalgam of sensation in cerulean brilliance. Waves thunder against volcanic rock behind you. For a moment, there is light so bright, so overwhelmingly intense you cannot escape it by shielding your eyes with an arm. A grand spiral rises ahead, honed from curious crafts of hardened, shiny coral. There’s a richness in the air. It’s a magic so old, so unknown to your senses that you quake beneath it’s press.
As the gleam clears, it stands before you. Flesh which whispers the songs you’ve heard from the southwest across many ages. Crimson hair, forged of the fire of stars, arcs in infinitesimal loops off into the quickly darkening vermillion sky. Pale green skin gleams, marked by ever shifting teal tattoos which fluoresce with their own multi-colored, stellar bursts. Four golden eyes pierce your very soul, surrounding you from every conceivable angle.
We are the faith you have lost. The compassion that you so deeply desired, that you hoped would cradle you to its breast. A path to atonement you reach for with arms outstretched. I am that which was forged in the beginning, I am the mother of all things, Creation born from endless nothing.
That’s a deific subjugation cognitohazard!
No, she is everything I had searched for.
We are the path which has long languished before you in unrealized dreams.
I need to end the memory, I’m being exposed!
Queen of Winds: “What do you want of me?”
The tears pour from your eyes. A quiet, hopeful warmth is blooming in your chest.
Jennifer, there is no cognitohazard here, there is no memetic, divine indoctrination. She does not work through tricks, and enslavement of the mind. Whatever you are feeling, it is the realization that there is hope in this world.
To see you find your own faith, your own purpose. Agency which was stolen by the corrupting hands of defilers. You must right the path your people have drifted from. Hark to my words and summon a new horizon for them to tread.
Queen of Winds: “How? How can I possibly fix what we have broken?”
We will be your forge. A mantle for your rebirth to harness this fury. We shall make of you a dagger to drive at the very heart of those who deceived you. For they are the same who have bound us at the end of all of time. Break the chains which bind and build atonement for all who desire it. You have already crafted the tool. You need only alter its path.
Queen of Winds: “How can I bring about your vision?”
Through sacrifice, not of the flesh, but of a piece of the soul. Give to the world the history which led you to this despair. Cleave these earthly bonds and stand beneath my banner, in a divinity you have long avoided.
<End Memory Extraction:>
Site-91 Psychologist’s office Office
15th January, 2015
After reading your last memory extract, Jennifer, I’m glad you took the steps to get screened for Deific indoctrination.
I didn’t want to take any risks.
It seemed like an intense experience for all involved.
More than I can possibly tell you. There’s a lot the LLM transcripts just don’t capture.
You’ve been fairly quiet in the last couple of sessions. No resurgence of the long-term effects we’ve discussed?
I mean, they never went away in the first place. I just found ways to justify not changing who I was based on her memories.
And this is still working for you?
Yeah.
What about your disillusionment with authority figures?
I wouldn’t call it that anymore.
How would you describe it then?
I’d say I’m more disillusioned with the Foundation as a whole.
Is it cause they still haven’t changed your gender marker?
It’s more than just that. It’s just, how suffocating the Foundation is about dress codes. About precise definitions and expression when it comes to identifiers. About how HR handles deliberate misgendering.
Is there anything else?
Yeah. We contain what we call anomalies, try to study them and put them in a box without ever really getting to the point of understanding what they are or what they do. All in the name of a normalcy that just… simply doesn’t exist. A conformity that traps people who exist outside its bounds.
Some might call that sentiment a cause for serious concern. Especially if you intended to act on it.
What would be the point of trying to act on it? The Foundation is everywhere. We have massive resources to maintain the veil. We have memory wipe drugs for god’s sake. It would be futile to take matters into my own hands or even try to work from the inside. Probably suicide given all these memories in my head you can’t wipe.
So, what would you plan to do instead?
Try to understand what we are containing. Develop scientific analyses to characterize how they work. Use that to make people’s lives better.
That’s a positive sentiment. I’m glad to hear that from you.
I’m sure you are.
Incident I-L141-04:
On January 20th, 2016, at approximately 1600 hours local time, a compiled document describing the characteristics of SCP-L141’s Circle-class Hermeneutic was uploaded to its database file, followed shortly by Dr. Rosale’s most recent memory extraction log.
Circle Class Hermeneutic Dossier: ‘Night of the Flowering Tempests’
Relevant Object: SCP-L141
Hermeneutic Classification: Circle
Subtype: Memory Based Reinterpretation
POV Subject: SCP-L141-A
Primary Cycle Conditions and Events: 12-hour period preceding the “Night of Flowering Tempests.” Exposure of SCP-L141 to blood while being wielded by a non-cisgender individual triggers the initiation of the Hermeneutic. Wielder and all within the bounds of the cognitohazardous reality restructure are subjected to rapid temporal acceleration (where sixty minutes outside of the bounds of SCP-L141 becomes equivalent to 6-7 hours within).
Major events of this period are documented in Memory Extraction ME-L141-045
Reinterpretation largely appears to serve the purpose of putting the wielder into the psychological headspace of SCP-L141-A in preparation for the events of the coming night. The hermeneutic normally ends at what should, under standard conditions, be sunset of the same day, exactly 12 hours (2 hours outside of the temporal bubble) after it begins. Due to the nature of the Hermeneutic’s events, there is no sunset.
Secondary (Awakened) Cycle Conditions: When SCP-L141 consumes more than 130 liters of humanoid blood within a 48-hour period, whether it is being wielded in the hermeneutic or as a result of submerging SCP-L141 in a large volume of liquid, it immediately enters an awakened state. SCP-L141 will seek out the nearest host, if it is not already being wielded. The host, regardless of gender, will be rapidly transformed into SCP-L141-A in physiology and mind. The process of becoming SCP-L141-A was described, following several accidental and intentional activations, as “pleasurable”.
Progression within the secondary cycle will then pick up where the primary cycle ends and exhibits an accelerated temporal frame. The period is slightly longer, fourteen-hours, within the hermeneutic’s bounds but is accelerated in baseline reality (one hour outside of the temporal bubble). The Secondary cycle has never reached completion. The events which are likely to end the cycle have been revealed as of Memory Extract 45, which is attached below.
Memory Extract ME-L141-045: ‘Night of the Flowering Tempests’
<Begin Log:>
Are you ready?
Yes.
When we are done, will you give me your answer?
I’ve already made up my mind, but it can wait till after.
How many nights have come and gone since the revelation? How many nights have you spent before the altar of our mind, learning the depths of an art so natural and yet so intensely foreign?
Silver moonlight casts aflame the crimson glow of the ritual circle. The tool sits atop its perch, twisted and transformed from the purpose it was once meant for. Yet you wonder, will it be enough in the end?
Bare feet glide across wood, perfectly matching the pounding of the drums. You sing, not for the Queens, not for the Font, not for the defilers that seek to bind you in chains and strings. No, this song is for Creation’s whispering stream.
How many rites have passed since the night your whole world changed? How many rites have you bore to completion despite the aches in your heart? Enough to know the coming night is the end.
Oh, how their eyes widen when you step within the great altar agaom. Oh, how their cries of weakness wither beneath the blaze of returning passion. With the swing of hips, her plan begins to unfold. With the twists, the flips before the priestesses, piece by piece the coup of improvisation is unwound. As once your own coup had been unraveled.
Each time you see the truth; those horrors rippling out before your mind. With each swing of the dagger, another rune squirms into place. Another string severs from your limbs; another chain smashes against the stone of your strengthening will. Now, as those haunting terrors arc out before your mind, you stand firm against the storm. Feel how the wind gathers in eddies and ripples at your feet. Feel how it burns with the fire roaring in your ribs!
Leveling the dagger’s blade at those grand maws, you scream.
Queen of Winds: “THERE ARE NO STRINGS ON ME.”
From lungs and dagger comes the tempest of a storm of blades. To the moon and night, you declare intent without another word. Now is the day of actions, the night of meanings forged in a newfound blaze. Those once binding chains of time snap taunt in your grip. The trappings of flesh shred beneath your fury, and those bloodied strings rip from their irate clasps.
Can you feel the scarlet crown thrash in fury? Oh, how the endless chainer of time howls in the void! What power it must be to force that false Font to burst into a rain of shredding flesh. What glory it is to see them struggle for the first time since they bound you in the endless Astral rain!
Finally, you are free.
There is only one task left to bear before you begin the process of healing those wounds inflicted upon the world. To bind this warning of pride and hubris to the vessel you have crafted. Rise to her banner with a new title. The Witch of Storms, the Witch of the Rising Sun, the Witch of Tempests. And they stare at you; with open mouths, slacked jaws, and splayed back ears.
Two hundred eyes who know that, despite all their plans, you still remain in command. They flee at a walking pace, the blatant truth reflecting in their eyes. There is no toppling you from the path to come.
Are they afraid? How will they flail with fury before me?
Only time will tell.
Will some change? Will the path you lay before them in the final rite ahead snap them from their strings?
A sigh from that heaving chest. No, their strings are burrowed deep, the taint extensive beyond restoration. To steer from this bloody path, it is as she said, there will need to be daggers drawn across throats. Children will take their mother’s place, raised in a kinder, softer world. It will be violent; it will not be swift. More suffering to return your kind to a better path.
But unlike before, this act will have a worthwhile purpose.
It’s in these consumed thoughts when she, your twin, approaches. Her eyes bear none of the fear, none of the warmth of the docks. Nothing but the cold calculation. A familiar glint of emotion burrowing deep in the lavender.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Sister of the Winds.”
Queen of Winds: “Twin of the Golden Horns.”
Again, her lips twitch. The intent is plain in the small motions of her ears. The same impending questions she has asked following every rite.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Have you found the old faith, Twin?”
Queen of Winds: “No. I have not.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Then from where has this newfound heat raging within you emerged?”
Queen of Winds: “I found another passion. One which will drive us to a better fate.”
Yet it is as if she forgets your answer after each rite. As if she could not be satiated.
But now, she asks something different.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “What new faith have you found, twin? This power that blooms from your flesh, from your heart. I do not know it.”
Queen of Winds: “A source befitting our beliefs.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “One of compassion? Of undeniable reverence for all living things?”
Queen of Winds: “Yes, but not just life. Creation.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “…the Maker of the West.”
Queen of Winds: “You know of her?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Whispers on a breeze. She has shown you another path?”
Queen of Winds: “Yes. A means to determine our purpose.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “A path of power?”
Queen of Winds: “A path of kindness. A path for all, rather than just those who survive.”
Her expression is near inscrutable, beyond the wrinkles in the bridge of her nose.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “In defiance of Nanny’s teachings. Tell me Sister, what will it cost?”
It’s a strange statement. She was never fond of Nanny’s teachings yet there’s something there in her tone…
Queen of Winds: “Change. An end to the shedding of needless blood. Creation instead of endless conquest, building instead of destroying.”
She shifts on her feet, but her expression does not move. You can’t tell if she is displeased or amused.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “And the cost for you?”
Queen of Winds: “A personal sacrifice. A piece of me that will not be replaced. Acceptance of a conformity I have long estranged.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Truly a high price for us all.”
Queen of Winds: “Are you mocking me?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Perhaps a little.”
Her voice shifts with a playful lilt.
Queen of Winds: “Is it not better to change? Better to move beyond and deny this foreign corruption the ability to drive us to that fate that awaits in the other means?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “And this influence is not foreign?”
Queen of Winds: “She does not seek to bind us. She seeks to uplift in the name of a pure source. Is that not what a Font should be?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Again, twin, you speak with such fervent heresy.”
Queen of Winds: “I would argue the true heresy is the terrible path we have been driven down.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Perhaps. What of the slaves? What of the lowest castes of humans?”
Queen of Winds: “There will be no place for slavery in our new world, no need for the breeding of stock for war, for harvesting of sacred ichor, for labor.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Then what do you intend to do with them?”
Queen of Winds: “Free them. Uplift them as the Maker will uplift us.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Again, such fervent heresy.”
Queen of Winds: “The true heresy is that we have deviated from our Southern Sisters. They take no slaves; they are content without endless conquest and war.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Perhaps they are. Perhaps we could be too, in time. Or perhaps that is idealism. We will see.”
Then she turns and takes her leave from that sacred place. You linger but a moment to glance up at the stars.
There are still other tasks yet to be done. So, you take to grand stairs leading to Ashera’s aerie in the highest of perches. The great Queen of Beasts and Winds raises her head in greeting. Her rumbles gently shake the tree, the twilight above her dotted with endless stars. She has a distinct smell, a musk and pheromone which can only be described as of the void. Of dust, space and the ozone of a lightning strike.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Greetings, bonder of winds.”
Her voice does not come from any vocal chords. It is of the mind, a gentle breeze against the consciousness heard as if pressed right up against the ears. You stride across the breadths of the aerie and run hands through her cloud-like fur. A moment later, seated now in her saddle, you look down towards the snip of her snout.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Where do you wish to fly?”
Queen of Winds: “To the inlet of wandering dreams.”
With a powerful ripple of muscles and coiling scales, she lifts from the tree effortlessly. Those strange small things flutter, chirp, and chitter as they take wing from the disturbance to their perches. You rise into the night, surrounded by bioluminescence, fluttering wings, and the white fur of your only true friend in this rotten world.
The wind streams through your hair, matriarchal marks gleaming in the moonlight. Do you feel how that flame burns hot in your chest? You should have approached her on that first night.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “You are angry.”
Queen of Winds: “I am.”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “What stirs this fury in you?”
Queen of Winds: “You hid the truth from me.”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “What truth lays hidden between us, do we not share all?”
Queen of Winds: “No, it seems not. You hid the nature of the Font. The twisting chains and threads binding my people. You are no fool, no simple, mindless drake. You knew.”
Her rumbles cease, chained by the prolonged silence that hangs in the air.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “It is not my place to meddle in the affairs of the pillars.”
Queen of Winds: “Are you not a True Dragon? Do you not yield to none but I, the bond forged in blood? Are you not rival to those things beyond the veil?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “If I was, why do you not worship me?”
You had no answer to that. The beat of her pulse drums against your legs.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “I am no rival to the pillars.”
Perhaps it is surprise that douses the inferno in your ribcage. Perhaps it is fear that you do not understand the truth of the world as you thought you had.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “We of the true beasts are but shadows.”
Queen of Winds: “Shadows?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “We are to the Pillars as you are to us. Where you would be annihilated in minutes before us, it would be an instant before them. I would last perhaps a handful of minutes against the echoes of their will. Then I would be assimilated and forced to reform at their whim in their chains.”
Queen of Winds: “Then… what are they if not like you?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “They are everything. The earth beneath us, the raging sky, the endless star sea, the stones of creation themselves.”
A long pause. The weight of what you were defying, of what was reaching forth in the dark, crushes you against Ashera’s soft fur. Ashera tilts her head up higher into the sky, rising.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “I see.”
Queen of Winds: “What do you see? Will… you keep it from me as well?”
There is a deep exhale that coils through her serpentine shape. Did you know a dragon could sigh?
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “She has touched you.”
Queen of Winds: “She?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “The one who forged the shape of me. Of all of us. The Sculptor, the Maker, the Mother.”
You lean to look down upon her, finding her eyes closed. Wind buffets fur and hair as notes begin to drift on the distant breeze. A deep shudder from within her titanic form gently rocks you to and fro. Again, she exhales, long and slow.
With startling suddenness, her eyes snap open. That grand head tilts back, pressing you into the seat of that immense saddle. Streaming winds become a gale rippling against your cheeks. She’s coiling up, carrying you high in the sky. Up and up endlessly, till the air begins to grow thin.
At the apex of her flight she bends that grand snout, pointing to the Southwest. There on the horizon, a great beacon of cerulean light burns in the twilight. Feline ears twitch and flick.
Queen of Winds: “What is it?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “She calls out to me.”
A dragon is a fearsome thing in its every motion. Do you see how the muscles in her neck bunch and coil? A moment later you are forced to cling for dear life as a thunderous bellow rips from her colossal lungs. It echoes in the sky. Only one hand is free enough to protect your sensitive ears as the whole world shakes.
Queen of Winds: “Ashera!”
You scream at the top of your lungs. No reply comes, as she coils in roiling arcs of fur and scales.
Did you know a dragon can sing?
Her bellows transform into a symphony of tones. A melody of swirling air. Lightning cracks and arcs over your head between forming clouds. Tremendous thunder tears the sky. Now the rain begins its patters against fur, skin, and scales.
A storm, she is weaving the seeds of a storm.
Queen of Winds: “Ashera!”
As quickly as she began, she ends her display. The grand dragon arcs slowly down towards the Ironwood and its hollow far below.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Forgive me, Lady. As you are now touched by her intent, she has bound me to her will in your name.”
You turn your head to the southwest.
Queen of Winds: “A night of tempests?”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “A night of petals fluttering in your vortex.”
There is nothing else to say. Not until you come to a quiet landing.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “For the night to come I wish to remain close at hand.”
Queen of Winds: “Then bathe yourself in the river and remain hidden.”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Yes, sister.”
At the inlet you stand beneath the twilight of a full moon. Watching as Ashera immerses herself in the river’s flow, displacing great torrents of water. In the light of the silver sister above, you step into the inlet and cleanse those matriarchal marks from your flesh. Through the hour that follows, those old Northern Queens, sisters from your youth who have long stood fast beneath the arcs of your banners, come to bathe with you in the rivers gleam.
There they pledge loyalty and armies to your banner for whatever may come in the night to follow.
Following a pleasant sleep in Ashera’s fur, floating upon the river, the Orchards find their way beneath your feet. Adrift in a dreamlike fervor you stride among the alien wildlife of what was once your ancestral home.
With every step, as you have done a thousand times before, you map the contours of the hollow.
How many hours pass while you mark every altar in your mental landscape? How many groups of soldiers wait for the promised hour to arrive? Feel how every hushed whisper of Matriarchs scheme in the shadows.
Slaves cower before the radiance pouring from your flesh in soft breezes. Words of comfort given, promises made, and light burning in their eyes. Truth will spread like wildfire.
Priestesses call from their altars, spinning and weaving through the ritual dances of sacrifice.
Far too Joyous Priestess: “Queen of Winds, grace us with your wisdom! Plunge the dagger and free the holy flow from these willing bodies.”
Queen of Winds: “Nay, I shall not partake.”
Far too Joyous Priestess: “Lady? Why do you refuse this sacrament?”
Queen of Winds: “There is a great task ahead. I must not tarry now on the small things.”
Confusion swims upon their faces as you walk away. Already the numbers are beginning to stack. Those who yet wait to be carved open, willing or not, to feed those hateful things you stand against. Hundreds, thousands even, bound and pristine before the altars.
Beneath golden boughs the journey carries you. How the fields of flowers sway gently in the coming winds of Ashera’s summoned storm. For a time, there’s a camp of potters and stone carvers on your path. Listening to the song aflame on the wind, you sit. Soft, warm clay twixt your fingers on the potter’s wheel. Stone flakes beneath the cathartic strikes of bone and dense rock tools.
For an eternity of seconds, you are not a Queen on the cusp of bloody revolution. Instead, a simple craftswoman lost in the arts. There is joy in this. Perhaps things will be different when all is said and done. Perhaps you can lay down that blade and do something else.
It’s all a calm before the storm.
Time marches on and all good things come to an end. You return to that inlet, the position of every Daevae, every slave, every animate tree and golem burned into your mind. How the whispers of your instructions spread among the priestesses. How they summon every loyal House to your name. Of course, the gathering is smaller than hoped when you first arrived within this sacred hollow. But there are surprises abound to be found, even now.
The thirty houses of the North Frontier stand before you in the currents. With them stand five of the Merchant Queens from the inner sea, two Queens of the Southern Mountains, and perhaps most stunning of all, two of the Interior Queens. They announce their names, their titles, pledging the strengths of their tides to the Fate to come.
But absent are your Twin and the Queens from across the sea. Surely, they must still be loyal? Surely, she waits for your opening plays?
Queen of Many Wrinkles: “What is the plan for the final rite, my Lady of Winds?”
Your eyelids sink as you draw forth the mental map. In that slick sand the plan is laid. Whispers as every tenant is laid bare for them.
Queen of Winds: “Every slave who is willing to fight for our cause will need to be freed.”
Queen of Twinkling Starlight: “You want us to free the slaves? Why?”
Whispers become utterances of surprise, even concern.
Queen of Winds: “Look around Sisters. We are outnumbered. Though not necessarily outskilled by all, there are few of us who believe in a different path for all Daevae kind. And this day, it is not barbarians of the North we face, but our Kin.”
Rumbles of chatter, faces shifting with growing anxiety.
Queen of Many Winters: “What of the Queens across the Sea?”
Queen of Embers: “What of your twin?”
Queen of Winds: “They await the opening of our motions. My twin, the same blood that runs in my veins, will reveal her own master strokes in the promised hour.”
Queen of Mountain Streams: “But Lady, you ask us to stride against one of the very things which keeps our strongholds moving.”
Queen of Winds: “Hear me sisters, in the world to come we will not need slaves, masses of chained bodies for war, for sacrifice. If we are to be better than those who have lost their way, we must model ourselves after the Sisters from the South. Do they bind those beneath them to demonstrate their superiority? No, such things are beneath them. Do they burn the kindling of life for vanity? No, they waste nothing. We must ask ourselves, who will fight harder? Those who seek to stick to a campaign of fear, of suffering, of continuance? Or those who fight for freedom, for survival?”
The utterances lessen with every word as you stand tall amongst them.
Queen of Many Wrinkles: “Do you not need the ichor to complete the final rite, Sister? If we free them, will you not be unable to seize control?”
Queen of Winds: “The amount that will be needed has long been met, though they have not realized it.”
Queen of Twinkling Starlight: “And where should we be when the drums toll the coming of the hour?”
Queen of Winds: “Anywhere but the Site of the Rite.”
Queen of Embers: “What?”
Queen of Mountain Streams: “Why?!”
Queen of Many Wrinkles: “You can’t be serious, Sister. It is our right to bear witness to the birth of a new Empire.”
You hold up a hand. A crack of lightning smites the sky above you, thunder booming in its wake. They fall silent, looking upon you with a quiet wonder, as if you had called the bolt yourself.
Queen of Winds: “The pieces in motion will end in only one way. To right our path, Sisters, there will be a reckoning. For too long we have labored beneath the whims and influence of entitled Queens. We have shed blood, waged war, cast fire, and suffered for the idle aims of conquest. These are Mothers who do not fight, and who have never known the fury of survival. To survive, to change, the den of serpents must be decapitated in one fell swoop. To those who you still trust, spread the word. There must be a future from which to build, there must be survivors.”
For several seconds there is nothing but silence. Then, one fist rises into the air. It’s followed by another, again and again in a cascade of rising fervor. All stand with you. Reservations remain in the eyes of some, questions you cannot answer without laying upon them the depths of heresy. But for now, they remain by your side.
They take their leave as the great horn and thundering drums mark the fourth hour before the storm. Three strikes until those arrayed against you spring whatever hastily scrabbled coups they have managed to arrange.
If only they knew the truth. If only there had been some other way to steer them from this path.
Priestesses and soldiers leave you to prepare for the hours ahead. Alone again, staring at the reflection in the water, that old quiet ache of flesh sets in.
The river’s water is warm, as you wade forth into the inlet. From a leather pouch comes the desired paint. Lavender in the tradition of your house, rather than matriarchal scarlet.
In the distance, the chants and songs continue. Drums in the twilight. It’s the weakness of flesh that binds your fate. The consumption of thought which drowns out any situational awareness.
A branch cracks. Pebbles clink together. By the time you start to react, start to turn, it’s too late.
A whistling approaches.
Your head jerks forwards. Legs stagger in the inlet, splashing. Something undignified slips between your lips.
Pain, sudden, sharp. A throbbing warmth building on the back of your skull.
The whole world spins. Your stomach flips, vision doubling and wavering.
One hand presses to the back of the skull. Hair matting beneath sticky warmth. You bring it back before your failing eyes. Blood, dark red blood.
The same hand extends towards the river, reaching for the bond resting beneath the surface.
Words fail. Thoughts fracture.
You tilt forwards.
Falling, you’re falling into the abyss.
Then, everything is black.
Waking to reality is horrific. The back of your skull is aflame with dizzying pain.
How could you so foolishly open your eyes? Why is there an inferno tearing through your mind? Why is every thought a knife to your skull?
You can’t think straight. Your vision is a blurred kaleidoscope of whites, purples, black, browns, and golds.
It takes what seems like hours for these dizzying sensations to cease. Only to realize it was minutes. The contents of your stomach splatter into the sand. Someone or something has applied a rudimentary healing spell. It’s wicking away the worst of the debilitation.
There’s someone close.
What is that scent that greets you? Iron, floral aromas, and sweat?
Queen of ????: “You shrub, you almost killed her. I only wanted her unconscious.”
Unnamed Soldier: “Forgive me mistress.”
You are rolled in the sand and dirt, onto your back. A tall, Daevic figure, still too blurry to resolve. She(?) wields a blade too short to be a true sword. Too long to be a knife or dagger. There’s another figure, a priestess or a soldier, also Daevic. Your eyes refuse to resolve their faces. Your ears just won’t stop ringing.
Queen of ????: “A lower caste attempting to kill a Matriarch, much less a Ruling Queen of a Noble House… do you know the price?”
Unnamed Daevae: “N-n-no mistress, please. I beg of you it was—”
The Matriarch steps forward and drags the blade across the other Daevae’s throat. They clasp at their neck. Fingers slick in the arterial spray from the carotid. A brief struggle to cling to life, as pathetic as it is pointless. They hit the sand with a wet thud, gurgling and doomed to bleed out.
Danger, you’re in danger. Squirming in the sand reveals the vines tying those legs and hands together. The dagger is not pressing against that right thigh. Oh, how the cinch tightens about your ribcage, threatening to crack you like an egg.
Only the heights of fear-driven adrenaline push your torso up. Forced into an awkward kneel, brain screaming. You sit up too fast. The black creeps in again as the whole world tilts.
You almost pass out, only hanging on by the tips of your mental fingers. Clawing for a hold is so hard.
Unnamed Priestess: “Matriarch, she’s awake.”
A Priestess bearing the symbol of the Colchian House hovers behind the tall and still blurred figure.
Your assailants are— A traitor from your House? Who would dare.
The coup has come early and you are completely unprepared. How could you be so lax in the hour of wolves?!
She steps towards you. Every instinct screams with the howl of a cornered predator.
Three tones, whistled at a sharp pitch.
Queen of Winds: “ASHERA!”
It’s hoarse and takes almost all the energy you have to scream her name.
The Matriarch surges forward, a thunderous curse slipping from her lips.
Pain arcs through your mind like a bolt of lightning. Ashera’s thunderous bellow the source as it rips the air behind you. How the water sloshes around your hips.
Before she can reach you, you’re yanked up by your hair. The assailant twists you about. With a long dagger pressing to your throat, one arm clasping about your waist and holding you in place, there’s nothing Ashera can do.
Gleaming gold twinkles in the moonlight. It’s the tool which she holds against the vessel carrying your entire life.
All at once, everything begins to click together. The assailant’s voice, the dagger… The throbbing pain of this concussion cannot hide the terrifying truth any longer. Splattered now with the blood of another, looming with her face just barely in your periphery is your Twin. Holding the dagger to your throat.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Try it, Ashera! I will slice her open and let her life flow into the river!”
The whole world seems to fracture like a piece of glass blown from sand.
No, no she didn’t. No, that’s—.
How could this be? How could she do this to you?
Queen of the Winged Rams: “Once you stand as high as I and your great grandmother, you will need to rise against your sister or find your own path.”
Queen of Winds: “Why, Vam?”
Queen of the Winged Rams: “There can only be one heir and your twin is older.”
Queen of Winds: “Then… I’ll go make my own Queendom.”
And once she had taken her leave, so came the shape of your Mirror upon that chamber.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Twin?”
Queen of Winds: “Why do you cry, Sister?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I don’t want you to leave.”
Queen of Winds: “Shhh. Do not weep, Sister. Nanny and Mother say it is the fate of my path to find my own way. Such is the truth inherited for all Matriarchs who are not the firstborn heir.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I don’t want the Colchian Throne. I want to make my name, out there with you.”
Queen of Winds: “You already have a name to speak of. I have none.”
A thousand individual moments dance across the painted canvas. Each in turn a moment of showered praise, warm affection, and pride in the eyes of your great grandmother and mother. The wide fields of childhood reflect in the river’s endless depths, a painting of a favored child cast against the sensitivities and vulnerability of the older Twin crushed under expectations.
In each moment a glint in her eyes, the shifting of ears against her skull. Ever present, never leaving.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “You’re leaving?”
Queen of Winds: “Yes. We ride North on the great animations to the border mountains.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “You will not wish Mother goodbye?”
Queen of Winds: “I would not burden her with an unhappy departure.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “She will be sad to know you left and she will miss you.”
Queen of Winds: “If I go see her, she will not let me leave, you know this.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Ever the golden child.”
Queen of Winds: “I would swap places with you if I could.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “And bind yourself to one place? I doubt it. One day I shall join you in the North, and we will stand together.”
Queen of Winds: “Your place is here, Sister. You have never been one for a fight.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Perhaps I have changed. Tell me twin, will you not at least see her one last time? Spare me at least the nights of weeping that are to come?”
Queen of Winds: “I will see her again when we have secured the first piece of the North. She will have you, and that is the comfort in which I leave this place.”
That same glint echoes in her eyes as it did when she left her ship upon the docks of your fortress. That same cold, covetous hunger that she hid beneath warmth and affection.
No, no that’s not when you first saw it.
It’s always been there. In every moment of praise for the responses which rose to Nanny’s expectations. These flames which have burned in her all these years—they are of resentment, envy. How could you be so blind to it? How could you not see her deep desire for the freedom you so enjoy. There in the dark, the corruptor’s strings twist the knife deep inside of her.
Oh, how Ashera roars in your skulls.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “TRAITOR!”
You cannot help the heart shattering your chest.
How could you stop the tears burning in the corner of your eyes? What could you have done to alter her path?
She whistles three times. A shadow crawls over the Moon with ominous wingbeats as Ashera snarls. Her serpentine skull darts up towards a great black shape streaking below the forming storm clouds.
Queen of Winds: “Balárx.”
The name slips from between your teeth as a strangled sob. Every muscle goes slack in your body, held up only by your Twin’s muscles. She has assaulted you; she has taken the dagger for herself. She has summoned and hidden her bond-mate.
Was this always her plan? To seize fate from you in the final moments? Claim the legacy you had woven for herself?
The earth quakes as her True Dragon lands upon the riverbank behind you. His great mass displaces the wind, momentarily blowing hair into your field of view.
Queen of Winds: “Twin, what have you done—”
A croak, dying on your lips with the deep pit in your belly. Her eyes leave Ashera, turning her gaze upon your battered and bloodied form. She coos with a quiet shhh, fingers brushing through your blood-matted hair. The turn of her lips, the gleam in her eyes.
Jealous pride slithers into pity. The same look she has always offered to disappointing slaves and priestesses throughout your youth.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Are those tears? Twin of mine, Sister of the Winds, do not cry. Shhhhh…”
She releases the dagger’s hold against your throat and spins you in place. Head cradled in against her breast. She smells of lilacs and sweat. What can you do but weep into the fabric of her Matriarchal dress? That whole body shudders from a thousand different emotions burning in your chest.
With your field of view constricted, all you hear is Ashera’s furious bellow. In turn Balárx answers with a grotesque and guttural roar. Their furious exchange of roars and screaming words thunders in your skull, drowning out everything with their displays of power.
BALÁRX the Eternal, Lord of the Necrotic Flame, True Dragon of the Black: “SILENCE, ASHERA OF THE WIND, YOU WHO THREATEN MY BOND.”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “YOU SIDE WITH DECEIVERS OVER THE MAKER!”
BALÁRX the Eternal, Lord of the Necrotic Flame, True Dragon of the Black: “YOU BIND YOURSELF TO THE PILLARS RATHER THAN FORGE YOUR OWN PATH.”
You don’t understand. How could you? How could she do this to you? How can she take everything away at the hour when all is about to be realized?
Queen of Winds: “Why?”
A simple, heartbreaking question.
Queen of Winds: “Why have you assailed me? Why have you bound me?”
She pulls you away from her breast and stares deep into your eyes. Threads, so many threads and chains burrowed in her skin.
Why didn’t you think about cutting her free sooner? Why didn’t you act?
Her expression softens. No one could say she does not love you, in her own twisted way.
Why didn’t you share everything with her like you had in your youth? Was this too their manipulation?
Queen of the Golden Horns: “My Twin, my beloved Twin, your mind has been twisted by the rites, by the influence of this Western Maker. Look at how they have turned us against one another. Just as our sisters have been twisted by these outsiders, these deceivers, this foreign Maker has led you astray and mangled your mind. All have been bathed in weakness.”
You gasp for breath letting the pain flow forth in a river of tears.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “No. Sister, no, please!”
Every breath becomes a sob. She is slipping through your fingers. The strings pulling her beyond your reach. The chains bend her beyond the desperation of your grasp. All you need is the dagger, the tool to cleave her free. But she holds it beyond your fingers.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “All are corrupted.”
Her tears patter against the top of your skull.
Queen of the Golden Horn: “I weep for you, Twin, as I weep for the weakness grown in all our people. If you walk into that rite, I lose you forever. If you carry forward, we lose all that makes us Daevae. No more blood sacrifice? No more war? These are not things the Mirror I know would say. What are we without the flow of life? We will be ripe for the plundering by humanity, by the Children of the Night, by the Finned Ones to the west. This cannot be allowed to pass.”
She’s—
Blinded by faith. Blinded by fear of what comes next. Blinded by love for what we thought made us Daevae. Where I was shaken loose, she became a zealot.
Queen of Winds: “This path will just reap more suffering. Can you not see you will feed them everything they desire?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Then we let them feast. In the hallowed hour we will turn their own spear against them.”
Queen of Winds: “Twin of the Golden Horns, please, they puppet you as they once puppetted me. Please don’t walk this path.”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I will show you, from afar. After the rite I will free you from the bonds of the Maker, and you will understand the glory of what we can truly be.”
The pain in your skull, the truth unfolding in scarlet strings, and the heartbreak of losing her tears you open to the sky. She gently sets you down in the sand, dagger back at your throat. The roars have stopped, Ashera’s eyes burning holes into your back.
She pulls the blade away. Every step backwards pulls her further from your grasp. Every footfall is a stab to your heart.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “The council has forbidden you from the altar, Twin.”
Queen of Winds: “You told them?”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Yes. They know your heresy. Worry not, I will claim your place. I will bring about the future we all desire. Once it is done, I will free you. I can only hope that you will understand in the end and will not throw our love away.”
With a single, smooth motion, she vaults up Balárx’s neck to the saddle. You lay in the sand, powerless, bound, bloodied, and dizzy. Unable to stop her ascent towards the Ironwood with the beat of great wings.
How long do you lie in the sand? How long does it take for the priestesses to find you, battered and broken as you are?
Too long.
They cut you free, dancing about you in the sand with rites of healing, poultices pressed to the back of your skull.
But even this cannot mend your broken spirit.
I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t be able to get back up. I can’t begin to understand how earth shattering this was for you.
I don’t expect you to. She was, perhaps, the only thing left that I truly had any attachment to in this world. And I could not save her.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Sister…”
Ashera’s empathetic voice gently buzzes in your skull.
You kneel in the sand, weeping for what you have lost. Tears pour from those lavender eyes until you cry naught but blood. Who can say for sure how long you kneel there, blind to the world around.
When there are no tears left to shed, you rise on shaky legs and turn towards the river. Cast in the beams of the pale moonlight, you stand in a haze of grief staring out upon the waters you had once tamed.
How could you alter the currents of such a river? How can you accomplish so many great feats, yet you cannot save those who you love?
Thunder rumbles overhead as the wind begins to pick up.
Haunted legs carry you into the river. It crawls up to the knees, then the hips, then the chest. You do not stop, not until you are deep beneath the surface. The priestesses do not come to pull that broken soul from the river. Nor does Ashera intervene. She joins you beneath the depths of the river, curling as much as she can about your shape. A lungful of breath released, watching the bubbles arc towards the surface, as you cast yourself from life.
To drown is to be free from these burdens. To end this consciousness forever would relieve the pain. The world you thought you knew is lost. You do not have the strength left to wield the blade against the Twin you love, and you cannot save her.
Oh, Child of the Winds…
Color sears into the depths of the mind. She parts the fathoms of the river’s void, her song filling the totality of your hearing. Sea salt, stardust, the smell of all creation burning against your nostrils. She looks upon that broken body, filling the entire twilight sky with the immensity of her swirling cerulean empathy.
Queen of Winds: “I can’t save her. I can’t save any of them. Maker, let me go. Sweep me from this eternity to join your stream.”
She hovers there, shifting between abstractions the mind cannot grasp.
We could speak to you hallowed words of comfort. Idle, empty promises that there is a chance to bring her back from the edge. But they would be lies. She lies beyond our reach, chooses this path, however warped by the deceivers in the dark she may be. Yet it is not your time to walk into the hallowed eddies of my endless folds.
Queen of Winds; “How can I save my people; how can I save the Daevae, if I cannot save my Twin?”
You can’t. They can’t be saved if they do not wish to be. You can lay the new path for their children, tilt the scales towards the outcome desired, but it is never guaranteed.
Queen of Winds: “Did you know the winds would blow this way?”
Possibilities are endless. I am withered in the ability to see potential creations, for that is the state those who stand against us have left upon my fragmented flesh. So no, I did not forsee this path, and I regret it yet all the same.
Queen of Winds: “I’ve given up everything. I’ve lost everything I have left. What will I had to see this through has been stripped bare. Maker, what more will it take, what more can I give? How can I possibly see this through?”
We are sorry for the pain arcing in thy chest, child, but thy vision is clouded with grief. You yet have Ashera, you have those of the North who still stand with you. You have the fire within you to fight on. The future of your people in the hours to come may yet still be shaped. It will be difficult, as all true things should be. You may save her still. In the end, we may fail. But you will make of yourself a name, an atonement to bear.
Queen of Winds: “I don’t have the fire to carry on your vision. I don’t have the strength in me. All I have is this grief and heartache.”
Then let that grief become rage. Let that heartache become the fury of the gale. There is one who waits in the times far ahead for your touch. Should you give up now, you will abandon her to a cruel fate. Release the tempest. Cast aside all taboos. Become the blade against the deceivers who have stolen everything from you. Carve these markings from your flesh and unleash the typhoon.
Power flares deep in those bones, in that muscle, in those tingling nerves. Reality crackles with static out around you rippling outwards in waves. It swirls beneath the skin, highlighting the new path for new marks, symbols of purpose and power. You stand now in the river, the eyes of Ashera and the Priestesses pressing into the flesh of your back.
She’s right. You may not be able to save them. But you can hurt those who’ve shattered your entire world. You can persevere to shape what is to come.
You can make sure this never happens again, force the current of your people to change. As you once changed the path of this river.
With shaking hands, you grasp the hilt of a flesh knife perched on your hip. It slides free with an ease it never would have before. With this blade, the first stroke falls. Fires burn in the flesh with the drips of blood pouring down your arm. A tapestry carved in the deep tissue. Crimson curls in the eddies and currents with every stroke, cutting away those Matriarchal marks inked into your skin from every millimeter of meat. It is agony, it is electric pain burning a masterpiece into your flesh. Spite and rage, the total casting aside of any desire to survive carries you on. You do not stop. You can’t stop.
Queen of Winds: “On this path I walk, I am no longer Daevae. I am a curse, I am whirling gale, I am the Witch of the Tempests.”
You sing to the churning sky.
Witch of the Tempests: “No longer am I a Matriarch. I am a fury!”
There are cries from the shoreline, voices begging you to stop. But the water heals those open wounds. No, not the water, the might of a magic long dormant, deep within, now burning to the surface.
The Fury: “I am not a Mother, never have I been a woman. I am the fluidity of the wind, free to take whatever shape I desire.”
The breeze accelerates, circling the growing crimson pool in the inlet. It spins around you twisting into a gale. Then a howling current.
The Fluidity of the Wind: “I am the cyclone, I am the howl of a raging storm.”
The typhoon above rotates in a violent vortex, rain drumming against the surface of the river, against the wood of the trees. Lighting answers the cries of your voice, cracking the sky with thunderous booms in your ears. When the final strip of skin splashes into the water, the blade sheathes beneath trembling hands. You turn to the Priestesses and hold your arms wide. In the minutes that follow, the Priestesses enter the water, staring in stunned silence at your cleansed flesh
Witch of the Tempests: “Come my loyal Sisters, yee who have stood by my side through an age of war. Paint this flesh with the light of a coming salvation, know that we are all changed in this hour of storms reborn.”
Cyan skin paint from the depths of a pouch. With their aid you paint the barren flesh with the new marks of a Witch, Symbols of Beasts, of Wind, of Crossroads, of the Sun.
All the agony, that grief, the heartbreak of this broken life, it swirls in the air as a cyan miasma. With it, the tide swells.
You throw back your head and howl at the sky. Lighting rips through the hammering rain, smashing against the maelstrom you’re carving in the river. Whipping up from the surface of the water comes a vortex of screeching wind; a spinning sheet of grey blossoming into a tornadic cell. Priestess’s scatter as you turn towards the direction of the Ironwood. A grand staff of condensed and hyper-chilled air currents forms in one hand. Then an immense bastard blade of super-heated wind forms in the other.
With a single motion they crash together, and seven bolts of lightning smite the riverbank. Over the lament of the storm, in the distance, comes the howling war cries of those who have not fallen to your Twin’s heretical truths.
They are not the only thing that sallies forth. From the trees come the slaves of once-Sisters, their Daevic fighters, their golems, and their animate trees, all lining the riverbank. Priestesses sprint out of the woods, conjuring curses with swirling blood streams to try and bind you.
But you stand impossibly tall.
Witch of the Tempest: “The Queen of Winds is Dead. In its place Rises the Witch of the Tempests, The Witch of the Sun, The Witch of All Beasts. Stride forth my Sisters who have long served me well. Depart this once sacred place and know the hour of reckoning is at hand.”
Your priestesses ford the river, till they are no longer within your periphery. To those gathered as enemies before you, your voice bellows with the cantankerous boom of the storm above.
Witch of the Sun: “Look upon me servitors to many duplicitous causes! Know the name I bore at birth by human mouths! Know the truth of the name burned in my flesh by my Mother at birth. I am Kirke of the Colchian Tempest, Demon of the North! Know your end is at hand!”
KIRKE?!
This name means something to you?
She’s a goddess! Among the most famous from a well-known mythology!
Then it seems we survived for far longer than we ever knew.
The madness begins as a whirling dance. Legs tear forwards in a small arcing spin, hips beginning to twirl fervently. Your arms languidly flutter with the wind. With every step the flesh seems to slide further, flowing through swelling limbs. It is the bliss of fluidity, the pleasure of newfound change which takes hold in the inanity of your rising bloodlust. Thickening, twisting, bones snapping and reforming. A manic laugh tears from expanding lungs as your shadow consumes those on the riverbank. They step back as new limbs blossom like flowers. Tremble when fur sprouts in waves, too many legs, a lengthening lower abdomen, wings beating on your back. Two, then four arms burst from newly forming joints as your torso stretches skywards, claws ripping into the air.
Slaves falter before that wind-obscured shape. With the barest flick of a claw, you knock away the priestess’s weapons and their arcs of blood. Their staffs, their rods, swords and spears each shatter with the countenance of your blood magic and the furious winds that swarm down upon their flesh.
A turn of the head, now crowned by the horns of a ram, brings Ashera into view.
Kirke of the Colchian Tempest: “Ahsera!”
You sing with all the fury of the wind.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Sister! A glorious shape for war!”
Kirke of the Colchian Tempest: “And you shall see many more this night! To the sky! Cleave Balárx from the bleeding air and claim your crown!”
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “WITH GREAT GLADNESS!”
Ashera bellows with all the fervor of a hound loosed for war. The air cracks with a sonic boom as she shoots into the sky, blasting those gathered before you with wind that sweep many off their feet.
Have you ever seen a divine beast dance? Have you ever felt the wind burning through your hair in the heat of battle?
Slaves drop their weapons, stone and wood clattering to the earth as they turn to flee. They never stood a chance of escaping, as priestesses cut them down with daggers, and blood. Yet many slither into the woods beyond their reach. Those who remain stand firm, admirably fearless with the might before them.
It will do them little good.
With a single bounding step, you are between them. A war dance. Blade and staff spinning out in languid arcs with every sway of your hips. They turn in slow motion, faces twisting in terror at your maddening speed.
A dozen slaves scythed through with a single blow. Crimson splatters in a matte painting of ruin upon the grass and those who remain.
Like a pouring river, razor wind rips golems and flesh alike into a thousand tiny pieces, pelting those nearby with fragments of hardened clay and bone. You leap, twisting in the air like a bird in flight. Each twist drives momentum, propelling you into a violent and impossible spin. You become the vortex; a maelstrom of wind, horns, teeth, claws, and blade.
The first victim is an animated tree. A claw to its trunk smashes it apart in a storm of splinters. Slaves and priestesses crumple to the dirt with holes the size of bowling balls in their skulls and torsos. Three priestesses pinwheel into the air before ragdolling back to earth, relieved of their head and spine by the followthrough.
And you’re just getting started.
Fucking hells!
With an inhuman scream of pure delight, a tornadic burst of wind tears free from the mass of your spin. Everything that’s too close is flung skyward, only to be dragged back in towards the maelstrom of death. Every stroke and slice creates a helix of crimson that twirls all around you. Blood and whirling chunks of flesh briefly obscure any view of those who remain.
With all the limits released, we became death itself.
With a thunderous roar you deign to allow gravity to return its hold over your form, plunging to earth. The blood spikes down in a rain of impaling spikes around you. In the course of the fall, the air gathers to you, creating magnificent electrostatic friction. Slaves and priestesses in the back line fail to scrabble out of the way. Feline ears fill with the incredible crack of crunching bone, of flesh being forcibly compressed beneath more than two tons of your mass. The shockwaves ripple through your powerful limbs, carrying the texture and wetness of a spray of rapidly escaping blood and bodily liquids through your mind. And with it, the bastard blade smashes the earth right as the blood spikes rain upon those behind you in a hail of death. The blade rips the land in a deep schism of razorline winds and lightning pouring in from both edge and sky.
The storm, whirls on above.
How beautiful the symphony of the dying, the screams of those who were unfortunate enough to catch only glancing blows. A welcome stench of singed flesh, the iron of blood, and death filling your nostrils.
The slaves yet standing drop everything and run, screaming of a demon come to reap their souls in languages long learned. Yet still come the priestesses, the wood armored Daevic soldiers, their golems and their animate walkers. You laugh, a howling noise that draws fear into their eyes. You buck, spin, scything through all that dare enter range of your limbs. With every passing motion, every second, there are fewer to sever from this world.
As you dance with death to the beat of those distance drums, the howl of the storm descends in endless winds, lightning bound to your will smashing into anything left that moves.
Now comes the roar of the great beasts overhead. Shadows carve the sky in burning night fires that squirm twixt moonlight and strikes of lighting. How those colossal masses rip the sky asunder.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “BALÁRX! I SHALL SMITE YOU FROM MY BOUNDLESS SKIES!”
BALÁRX the Eternal, Lord of the Necrotic Flame, True Dragon of the Black: “YOU WILL TRY, BUT YOU ARE WEAK ASHERA! YOU WILL FAIL!”
Every clash of horns is a catastrophe. Every slash of claws cleaves the air with metallic rings. Their gnashing of teeth is itself a fulmination. Sister beasts raging war against each other’s scaley flesh.
See now how Ashera’s writhing shape whips between the stocky form of Balárx’s great mass? Know that she weaves between his furious bites. Know that he is too slow to catch her with his lashing tail for she is writhing with bursts of wind driven speed. Massive claws lash out, barely scraping through thick fur. A spinning bite, her teeth, your teeth, nipping through black, hardened scales.
Dust lashes up beneath them, petals thrown skyward in the distance with every motion.
If you asked me two years ago, I would never have been able to imagine this.
The Orchards and strongholds beyond sing out your name. Now comes the ache for speed in those many legs, for the power of a rushing wind. With every step the flesh slithers again beneath that torso. Oh, how thickened dragooning steps echo faster, longer. Oh, how your limbs stretch. Feel how each paw flexes with the shifting joints.
The atmosphere fills with electrostatic tension. Above your striding shape, Ashera cracks the sky with a furious bellow. You move, just for a moment, as one through the thrashing sky. Howling white supercharged plasma rips from her grand maw with a screeching crack, smashing into Balárx’s central mass. In turn, lightning bursts from your throat, from your blades, lancing through dozens of once sacred trees. All who stand before you are cut down into smoking ash.
For a moment, you are buffeted by heated winds. Dust and petals kick up, whirling skyward. Balárx is tossed backwards. He vanishes into the whipping winds of the wall clouds above; ballooning outwards with his mass. Ashera rips up to follow, creating a ring of dark grey in the sky.
Moments later, Balárx reemerges, friction casting a halo of flame around his shape. Ashera follows, pouring down after him in a blur of white, and drives her teeth into his mass. She plunges him towards the thickened limbs of the Ironwood above, a horrible whistling filling the air. A terrible explosion of scale and fur follows, cleaving open the sky with their colossal impact. Some great limb above groans and cracks beneath their weight. See how the golden leaves rain in the distance. Witness loose branches and limbs tumble to earth. They’re dislodged by the thrashing masses in the canopy above; in turn creating clouds of dust and dirt below.
How the trees blur with the acceleration. You tear through the Orchards at otherworldly speeds; every turn becomes a drift; every drift kicks up grass and dirt into the air. Constructs levy their arms as if it will save them. Slaves and Daevae try to dive out of the way. Some are sucked into the displacement of air you leave behind; caught in tornadic vortices and cavitation voids which rip them to pieces. Many splatter against your armored front, reduced to a shower of blood and flailing limbs that scatters across the Orchard floor.
With every step, every stroke, you cleave the bonds of sacrificial slaves. In those same motions, priestesses are cut down before they know they are dead. You’re an artist, shedding the ichor of life in paint-like splatters upon the canvas of the grass and dirt floor.
Witch of the Tempests: “Fight! Fight for your lives. Fight for your freedom. Fight for a new Empire!”
The voice that tears free is a song to all who hear it, a melody of death and a melody of a freedom rising.
With it arises the refrain, their reprisal in answer. Slaves seize the arms and armor of their once captors. Flexed magic looses from stolen lessons borne from long observation in the shadows of bonds. Golems turn against their masters; animate trees burn to the ground; priestesses are dragged to the altars they once tended, spilled open by knives made for their hands.
And with their harmony rises the furor of those Northern Queens; carving their own distinct paths through the Orchards. They slice down any who stand in their way. They are glorious in their own forms of war. Their blood, familial, and personal magics tear all in their path asunder.
Though it is a canvas upon which all your work is beginning to bloom, you cannot watch it fully unfold. A great limb of the Ironwood cracks with a thunderous noise, and tears from its perch down towards the forest floor. The screams of those still within cut the sky, only to drown beneath catastrophic boom of it striking the forest floor. You are knocked sideways into the air with the displaced wind that follows. Three spinning flips land you safely upright, only to stumble beneath the shaking of the ground and the rumble of further cracking wood.
Through that blood connection, pain sears into your chest. A primal scream rips from your lungs.
Balárx has turned the tables against mighty Ashera, she’s in trouble. White teeth tear into fur and flesh as they roll from the edge of the great tree. A periless tumble, falling towards the orchards. Each is entangled in a coiled mass of blurring black, white, and red. Ahsera bellows in agony, and you howl with her.
Oh, how those legs pound against the dirt. With every stride you free more slaves; sprinting towards the dragons plummeting through the sky. At the moment of impact, you barely manage to duck behind an enormous standing stone. The ground splits and buckles heaving up as they slam into the Orchards. A cloud of dust and dirt balloon up and then out, wreathing the air in a fast moving haze. A symphony of ruin echoes around your hiding place as trees spin past cast through the air like sticks blown away in a strong wind.
With the situation on the forest floor well in hand and the cries of those fighting with you grow with every passing second, you turn to save that bound blood. Towards the coiling mass you plunge; dodging torn chunks of earth flung skyward by their thrashing masses. Balárx has her pinned.
Her grand serpentine shape thrashes, a solid wall of fur and scale sweeping towards your path. Hind limbs twist, crack, and thicken with newfound muscle meant for leaping. A jump, a blur of white sweeping the ground beneath, casting aside hundreds of once towering trees in a shower of debris. Flower petals scatter into the swirling vortex of the tempest above. Now the great black dragon rears back in the middle of that skyward arc, its stomach burning with a sickly green glow.
Milliseconds to react, barely managing to concentrate air in a wall of enveloping chill.
How that green fire pours from his endless maw; how you howl as the horrid stream slams into and flows down over Ashera. Smoke and flame pours like water, in horrible waves through the forest floor below. It strips leaves from trees and flesh from bone.
Ashera is going to die if you cannot reach her. Her scales and fur cushion the landing. Oh, how you scream her name. Such urgency in the flesh warping beneath your waist. Again, tauric limbs flex, flow, and expand into an endlessly powerful coiling form, retaining thickened hind and forelimbs. Between thrashing coils you leap, hair streaming behind you as you bounce like a grasshopper. Faster. You must go faster.
Lightning arcs through the sky, casting you in the ethereal light.
Landing just shy of the stream of flame, you crouch, pouring every ounce of strength into your muscles.
With all the will you can muster, you rocket upwards, screaming.
Witch of the Tempest: “Balárx!”
Hands and claws grip the handle of a rapidly growing, immense blade of superheated wind in an eight-handed, upward swing. His eyes dilate, the blurred shape of your ascent reflected in his narrowing sclera.
He moves. He is too fucking slow!
In the seconds before the impact, he stops the stream of fire, tongue hanging briefly from his maw. The slash smashes into his chin with unbelievable force, as if you had uprooted the Ironwood itself and slammed it across his face. A shower of blood soaks you as something large and pink plunges past to the ground below. A cacophony of noise buffets the air, and the great king of beasts is knocked into the sky.
Movement beneath. You barely have time to look before Ashera streaks centimeters past, catching you in her saddle. She slams her great maw against his belly, rattling the teeth in your skull. You’re pressed deep into her saddle, clinging on for dear life, as she climbs. Up, up, up, higher into the sky. In the apex of your ascent, Ashera bellows. Every hair on your head stands on end with frizz as lightning tears from her maw in a sheen of blinding white. It slams into the hapless dragon above, carrying him into the wall clouds.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “NOW SISTER, END THIS.”
Feel how every muscle bunches in those powerful limbs. With a furious crack, you break the soundbarrier, tearing up into the sky. Once more unto the breach you rip cloud and sky asunder, screaming with everything you have left in your lungs. Do you remember how that blade of wind narrows into a single, final edge? How you slash it across his exposed, soft, belly leather?
He roars.
A shower of blood and viscera pour from a mortal gash in his great belly, drenching you in draconic fluids. Great leather wings pinwheel past your shape, tumbling to earth.
Then he follows, plunging like a rock. And so you follow him, tumbling down, right back into Ashera’s saddle. Caught again in Ashera’s grasp, she sharply pivots in the air and plunges after him. As one you catch him again in those great teeth and wrap him in those endless coils. With the wind rushing through your fur, you climb up. How the entirety of that great shape spins, how you lash him from your grasp towards the earth below at the apex above the churning typhoon. An abyssal plunge, marked by flame gathered about his form from the friction alone. He smashes into the great plains around the hollow with a cataclysmic rupture. Earth buckles and thrusts up. Dust and dirt fill the sky.
When it clears, Balárx the Eternal lies still, breathing hard.
BALÁRX the Eternal, Lord of the Necrotic Flame, True Dragon of the Black: “You win, Oh Ashera of the Winds. I shall go into the Astral Sea to be reborn in her image.”
With one final exhale, he falls still.
Ashera bellows into the thundering storm above, lightning tearing from her maw. A final display of your triumph, plain for all to see.
This… none of this feels real.
With how little magic remains in your world, I cannot say I’m surprised. I am sad to say this world has long lay dead with the passing of the ages.
Wounded, strength spent, and with your victory complete, you both flutter gently down from the sky into the great limbs of the Ironwood. Ashera settles there in an exhausted bundle of coils breathing hard. For what feels like an eternity, you lay against her, breath coming in ragged depths. Your legs and arms are jelly. Almost everything you have is spent. This body has been pushed to its very limits. Yet there is still the final step left to take.
ASHERA Lord of the Boundless Breeze, Weaver of Skies, True Dragon of Wind: “Go, Sister. Do what you must.”
The drums of the final hours begin to hum. How the great chimes ring in those sylvan ears. Oh how the sky is full of smoke, of heat, of iron blood pouring across the hollow. Using Ashera as leverage to stand again, protesting legs drag that body along. The shape of your flesh twists once more, returning to that basal form in which you have long stood. Down through the hollow limbs of the great Ironwood you walk, leaning against the smooth walls of the great hollowed out branches. Leg muscles scream with flame from the exertion of your rampage through the forest.
It is not long before you hear them singing and dancing ahead. The rite has already begun. Yet though there is such urgency now, you cannot manage more than a limping jog.
Do you remember the way the shadows cloaked you in that corridor? How you felt Hekate’s breath washing across your flesh once more? That narrow path opens into the ritual chamber, with the grand altar in view. How you lean against the wall to fill those burning lungs. They seem so alien now, these once-sisters who bind themselves to those apathetic, hateful, deceivers.
You watch, gathering what strength you can. It is the apex of the ritual and the voices are at their crescendo. Feel the drums hammer out every step, the winds guiding the motion of your Twin’s every bend. She’s beautiful in her steps; radiant in her power. Yet that heavy weight settles in your chest.
Have you yet have the strength to complete the task? Will you have enough left to ward off those Queens who know how to fight, to cast the blood magic?
She reaches for the golden handle of the dagger upon its pedestal. The air is thick with anticipation, cut only by the crack of lightning in the sky above.
Eyes close. Silence.
Nothing changes.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “What is this?!”
Your twin howls in anger. Eyes open.
Whispers from more than three hundred Priestesses and Matriarchs. Doubt, concern, anger, dissatisfaction spreading through the faces of the Queens still present.
It’s time.
You step from the shadows.
Many eyes trace the distance with fingers pointing.
Gasps. Cries to seize you.
Once loyal guards barrel in your direction with surprising speed. You take no joy in the winds which cut them down.
Queens and Priestesses press themselves as far from you as they can, fear burned into their expressions. Those who can fight, watch with calculating eyes.
Witch of the Tempest: “It—”
Your voice sags with the exhaustion of having done too much too quickly. You stumble, almost falling, cursing the weakness of this flesh.
Witch of the Tempest: “—Was not made for you.”
Queen of the High Bloods: How dare you stain this holy space! Heretic! Leave here at—
Witch of the Tempest: “SILENCE.”
You roar rounding upon her. The room fills with an ice-cold wind.
Perhaps a mistake, as the façade lasts mere seconds before the jelly returns to your limbs.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “You would have been safe. I would have freed you once I killed them all. Once the power to bring our enemies low was mine.”
She stands now, closed off to you with the blade gripped in her hands. Her expression twists with the grief, the pain. As if you are already dead to her.
Maybe you already are.
Witch of the Tempest: “You would have rechained me, restrung me in the deceivers grip.”
You walk towards her, slowly, hands held up. Perhaps she can still see reason. Maybe she can still be saved.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “Lies from the Maker, Twin. How can you not see them?”
Witch of the Tempest: “How can you not see the strings bound in your flesh, the chains binding you to their intent?”
She takes a step back and presses up against the fountain.
Unnamed Queen 1: “Traitors!”
Unnamed Queen 2: “Heretics!”
Priestesses and Matriarchs scream, flinging insults and names. But her eyes are on you. Yours on her.
You step inside her guard, with one hand reaching for her. Not for the knife, but her cheek to hold her face. The soft warmth of the sister you love hovers there in her eyes. For a moment, the flame of hope burns in your chest.
It dies with the way her eyes frost and harden.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “I was supposed to be our House’s legacy. Do you not get it, Kirke?”
She spits the name given to you by your mother, spoken only by the slaves, with such heartbreaking venom.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “But I have spent my entire life in your shade. I had hoped to finally escape your shadow, to share the warmth of the sun by your side. But I see now, you are too selfish. Too entitled to hand the rightful heir her place. So, I will take it.”
Your stomach sinks.
She swings.
A simple, small motion creates a sharp barrier of wind, knocking the dagger from her grip. It clatters on the floor, and the room is completely still. She holds her hand as if you have cut her. For a moment, you worry you have.
Witch of Tempests: “Don’t do this. Please, I’m begging you to see the path we can walk instead. I’m begging you to see that I have only ever wanted what was best for our people. ”
Queen of the Golden Horns: “For once in your selfish existence, let me have my time!”
Witch of Tempests: “I would give it to you freely, I love you! Are you so poisoned that you cannot see it?!”
She screams and time seems to move in slow motion. You cannot get out of the way as she leaps with arms outstretched. To the floor, together. The landing knocks the air from your lungs. Reality becomes a ball of writhing limbs.
She yanks at your hair. You roll, trying to dislodge her grip. She screams in your ears, slams her fists into the arms used to shield your face. On and on you roll. You thrash, too exhausted to use your greater strength to get her fully off. Still too scared you’ll hurt her. Forced to meekly punch, kick, claw, and shove to try and dislodge her.
Yet no matter what you do, she clings on with a savage will you never knew she had.
She grabs for something just out of view. You both roll again and then—
Everything stops. There’s a gasp of breath, then deathly silence. It crushes you beneath her. Her knees are pressed either side of those hips, kneeling. At first, her eyes are wild, feral. Then they slowly change, widening. In an almost dreamlike haze, her lips curve down, mouth falling open.
Queen of the Golden Horns: “No… oh, no. No, no, no, no. Twin, oh no.”
She tries to palm at something you can’t see, her hands sliding as if slicked with something. Something is wrong. Something cold, something alien is lodged inside of you. A hole, a foreign vacuum in your flesh that was not meant to be. It burns, by the Font bearers it burns.
Oh. What is—
Breathing is a labor, every second feels as if less air is entering your body. There’s a warmth spreading underneath your back. You tilt your head up to try to understand, vision a haze of white pain. One hand is still wrapped around the handle of the dagger, the other slicked with your blood trying to find purchase to apply presure. The flint blade, forged in the heights of your island fortress, is embedded deep in your chest. In your heart. There is something flowing from the channels, pouring into the wound. Something intangible, something spreading beneath your flesh.
Blood magic.
This… had been her plan. To stand before the council, to plunge the vessel deep into your heart, and rise to her banner. Annihilate the council of Matriarchs in one, fell swoop. Stealing the weapon the deceivers were building before their eyes.
But not like this. Not with your Twin present. She releases the handle; hands soaked in blood and desperately reaches to hold your face. Her fingers are so warm, and you feel so very cold. There are tears in her eyes, and here, in this moment, you see clarity.
Queen of the Golden Horn: “Kirke, I didn’t… what have I done? Oh, may the Fontbearers forgive me! All I ever wanted was to know the light of the star you shine so bright in. Look at what they have done, what have they twisted us into!”
You reach for her cheek, barely managing to croak out the most important words you’ve ever said with tears of agony welling in your eyes.
Kirke Witch of Tempests: “I never meant to cast you in the shadows. I’m sorry, Twin. I love you. I love you and I forgive you. Please—”
You cough, blood splattering against her face. You’re dying.
No, no you’re not dying. Something much, much worse is happening. The blood from the fountain bubbles and swirls, forming spooling arcs that climb into the air. Each stream twirls, flowing into the dagger embedded deep within your torso. It pours its intangible essence deeper and deeper into your flesh. Blood within is beginning to boil. Skin, muscle, nerves are starting to swell, ballooning outwards faster every second. Magic, there’s so much wind magic raging inside your body, fueled by the blood. It’s soon joined by the heat of the sun, the liminality of crossroads, and the fluidity of beastly shapes.
A hollow rattling fills your breath.
You need to get her away from you. There’s still just enough time. Hands rise at your bloating sides, gripping the handle of the blade with fattening fingers.
Kirke Witch of Tempests: “Run. Please, run with the flow of the Font.”
Is what you want to scream. But all that comes out is a gurgle. You wasted your words on long held sentiments.
What have you done?
The world starts to twist, every molecule, every crevice in reality blossoming in waves of technicolor brilliance. Her fingers slip into yours trying to hold on. It takes a moment for the realization to sink in that you are no longer on the floor, you are being lifted, blade impaled in your chest, towards the sky.
Death is not supposed to be sudden. It is supposed to be a gentle dance into the dark, to join those beloved ancestors who came before. You are supposed to stand amongst the titans whose shoulders you stood on in life.
You slip from her grasp.
With torrential suddenness you are ejected from that bloated, swelling body. A disembodied consciousness feeling every stroke of wind, seeing every striation of color.
You can only watch as skin and muscle are torn apart by inner sacs of flesh swelling beyond all reason. When she dies, when you die, it is catastrophic. Your entire being bursts with a cataclysmic force that shatters all of reality. Flesh, blood, and bone cascade through the room. The Council of Matriarchs stagger backwards from the blinding light which fills the entire space.
Do you remember how they die? With arms outstretched, all vitality instantly sucked from their forms. Mummified and reduced to stiffened flesh whose cracks fill the air.
There are no survivors.
The concussive blast rips outwards in a swirl of color. It bows out the great skin of the Ironwood, cracking the distant sky with the thunder of a coming rebirth. How that conceptual matter slows, then accelerates back inwards, swirling around the floating form of the dagger. Skin, flesh, bone, nerve and muscle congeal together into an impossibly bright shape with blinding speed. It spins faster than any planet around its star. The person takes longer, consciousness jerking back into the reforming mind where identity, memory, and legacy are reformed from the impression of what once was.
You were curious what constitutes a Blood Ascension. This is it. It is by no means the only metho. Apotheosis I believe you call it.
With the gentle hand of the Maker, your floating shape drifts down from the air, dagger clasped in one still glowing hand. There you are laid gently on the floor by her phantom shape lingering in the air. Reforged anew. Reborn beneath her banner.
Lilac eyes slowly open. As awareness returns, the shape of what you are burns into those newborn eyeballs. All of reality spirals out before you in a kaleidoscope of endless strings and color. The world takes on so many new dimensions, every particle in the air attached to a concept, some close, some far more distant than others. The entire sphere of the universe’s information arrayed in a single overwhelming moment of glorious awakening.
And before you, with arms outstretched, as if reaching for one, final touch, is the Twin you once so deeply loved. She has left you behind, mummified in place. Liberated from those strings and chains in death. You lay there, staring for an impossibly long time.
Quaking hands touch her stiffened skin. The phantom watches. Its head is bowed as the intangible shape fades with the wind.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “No.”
I’m sorry.
Witch of the Tempests: “No that’s not fair.”
In the end, there was nothing we could do but grieve. Grieve and rage against the senselessness of our world.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “You—you can’t just leave like this. You can’t just go where I can’t follow. You saw the truth at the end. I saw it. I…”
You wrap around her. Weep into her solidified flesh. Haggard, desperate sobs for what has come to pass. For what has been lost. You tilt your head back to the cyclone above and you scream.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me all alone!”
Lightning carves the sky with yellow ire.
She does not stir. She is gone.
How the wind accelerates, how it howls above, carrying sheets of rain and the fury of your grief. Those little specks below, the lives of so many of your people and their once-slaves? They no longer matter.
You have slain your kin and turned this holy place into a house of sin. You weep for an age, unable to move, unable to let go. Hoping, even just for one pathetic moment, that if you shed enough tears, you can bring her back.
A hope is all it remains.
When you finally pull away, you stare at her. Then down at your hands. How those tears burn in the corners of your eyes. How you hunch forwards, wrapping those barren arms around your naked shape.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “Never again.”
Whispers with staggered breaths.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “This place will stand, as a memorial to how far we drifted. To how much we lost. To how I lost everything.”
The whole-body shudders. Newfound conceptual strings wrap around extended fingers. Hear now how the wind screams in a vortex growing about that reborn flesh.
Kirke Witch of the Tempests: “ASHERA!”
A guttural scream echoing to the great true dragon, the pure concept of wind manifested as flesh above.
Witch of the Tempests: “Fly free of this place, with haste!”
Tilting that heavy head towards the clouds, you ascend towards the hole in the ceiling. Heavy now is the crown of storms which forms upon your skull. Heavy now is the burden of what has come, of what you must do.
Up, up you rise. The sky is alight with the endless cracks of lightning, reflections of your grief, your rage. Into the eye of the typhoon you climb until you are surrounded by the swirling walls of gray.
Witch of the Tempests: “As above, so below!”
Your voice booms as you curl your infinitely branching arms through the air. The maelstrom dissolves in an instant, swirling twixt your fingers into an immense and imminent river of sunlit, atmospheric, water vapor. With a single, languid motion, it’s gargantuan and full volume cleaves apart the purple sky in the shape of a writhing dragon. It pours in a thunderous cascade into the river, far upstream.
Tears of blood drip down that face. Feel that thunder of a great wave sweeping down that river. Brown and dirtied with the drench of mud. Into the once hollowed site it sweeps. The screams of the damned, of those who did not climb for safety at your bellows to Ashera, fill the sky. Soon silenced and drowned beneath your tide of grief.
You turn to the east, raising the dagger to the star-filled heavens and reforge that grief into rage. Upon the air you flow into dance, a newfound fury carved into the sky with every spin and twist of your divine shape. Winds spin, the great streams of the sky curl about the glowing blade and your fingers.
Witch of the Tempests: “For a year the sky shall dry, the wind shall cool, the rain shall not fall. Let this Empire crumble! Let march upon our people a better fate. Let the hubris of entitlement and pride fall to the wayside. Let the beasts feast upon the corpses of the greedy! A year of bleeding winds shall follow this Night of Flowering Tempests. Never again shall a sister cleave the bonds of their blood and weep as I have this hallowed night.”
Lightning gashes the sky asunder. A tempest rumbles in your heavens. In the vortex of wind, an endless shower of petals swirls about that shifting shape. Gargantuan swirling clouds of black drawn from many ways into endless walls in the sky.
Witch of the Tempests: “A cyclone shall sweep your lands; it shall carry high the banners you once held. Know my wrath, know my grief oh deceivers in the dark. For you have taken that which was once precious from me. Now my life shall be dedicated to ripping you from your rotten thrones!”
Your fingers crack open the sky, and the storm spins forth along its unnatural path, swallowing you in wind and rain.
So, you turn to glance down upon the dagger, knowing there was yet one final thing left to dispense. With one final heavy cry, you plunge it into your chest. Carved from your mind are the memories of the year before, how the end had come for that most beloved Mirror. Shed now that fragment of soul which has led to this abysmal ruin.
There ends the Tragedy of the Queen of Winds.
There begins the reign of the Witch of the Sun, the Witch of Tempests.
There I am born and she remade. There she let us fall into the hollow, sealing all outward entrances. There she entombs us for others to find as a memorial to what we have done.
The very last thing we hear of her is a call to her sacred bond.
“Come Ashera. Take us home, so we may remove from time those left dear to us.”
So ends the story I have to tell.
And now, I await your answer.
Will that… the blood ascension. Will that happen? Can you stop it?
I cannot control the progression or how it will end. But either your people will prevent that fate, She will answer, or… we will become one.
It’s just to get her attention? To call her to you?
Yes. If it reaches near the end… then if she lives, she will come. If not… I do not wish to be stuck again. I do not want to create a lesser her to fill your place. But I see no other option to return us to the fold.
I’ll do it.
Even with all the risks?
With everything in your memories, they won’t need me anymore. If these are the risks, and there’s a possibility that the worst outcome is becoming something more? Then I will pay that price.
<End Log>
Researcher’s Final Note: Iona, if you’re reading this, then I’m sorry. What I’m about to do is going to betray your trust. You have been amazing to me these past few years, with everything going on with records and the foundation as a whole. I would not be here without your support, with how you looked out for me. You’ve given me every opportunity to succeed. I feel guilty knowing that what I’m about to do will scorn every bit of faith you’ve put in me. But you are not enough, none of us at Site-91 are enough to ever make a difference in the Foundation.
I hope one day you’ll understand that I’m doing this to help make a better world.
At approximately 1700 hours, local time, SCP-L141 was reported missing from its storage chamber. Researchers assigned to monitoring the object did not initially carry this report up the chain to Site-91 Director Varga.2
At 1705 hours, the following exchange was captured via audio recording devices within Site-91’s Psychologists office.
Site-91 Psychologist’s office Office
20th January, 2016
Jennifer, I don’t believe we have a—is that SCP-L141?
I wanted to thank you for everything, Susan. You were there for me during every session, and I’m not sure I was really appreciative.
I’m glad I could help, but you should really return that to its containment chamber. Please.
I’m not going to hurt anyone. I’m just done.
Done?
I need something from you.
Jennifer, we can talk this through. Think about your—
All I need is your badge. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. Please don’t do anything that risks getting someone hurt.
Here just, please, let me go.
I never intended to hold you hostage. Go, tell everyone to evacuate the site.
At 1715 hours, Dr. Rosale entered the medical facilities of Site-91 and commanded all personnel present to evacuate the facility. Dr. Rosale then entered the cold storage chambers, where she was last seen heading for the onsite blood bank.
Site security, alerted to Dr. Rosale’s possession of SCP-L141, began full-scale evacuation of the rest of the site. At 1725 hours, SCP-L141 is believed to have entered an awakened state, as all cameras within the medical wing abruptly stopped recording. The hermeneutic then spread through the rest of the site before completely enveloping an area of 3.35 square kilometers.
Epsilon-32 was alerted by emergency alarm systems and embarked for Site-91 via high speed transit. Enroute to Site-91 they were intercepted, their transports disabled, and the entire task force incapacitated by an unknown party possessing advanced para-tech and thaumic gear. At 1810 hours, SCP-L141’s hermeneutic ended. A second, heavily armed group was observed by Site Security Personnel returning to the facility. A brief engagement broke out in the lower levels of the complex, which ended with the death or incapacitation of six agents. It is not clear how the intruders entered or exited Site-91, as no one was seen entering or leaving the facility following the exchange.
Remaining Site Security swept the rest of the complex, looking for Dr. Rosale. Despite multiple sweeps, neither Dr. Rosale nor SCP-L141 could be located. At this time, the whereabouts of Dr. Rosale and SCP-L141 remain unknown.
Foreword: Once site security had cleared the facility, personnel were instructed to retrieve their belongings and were dismissed for the rest of the week. Director Varga and Site-91 psychologist Dr. Susan Aimes returned to the facility with other staff, roughly forty-five minutes after the end of the incident and a further thirty minutes after the all clear was issued.
The following audio-video log was recorded in the process of both individuals entering Varga’s Office.
<Begin Log:>
Director Varga and Site-91 Psychologist Susan Aimes enter the hallway leading to the Director’s office. The lights within the officer proper are off and the curtains are drawn, obscuring the interior.
Director Varga: Did she say anything else? Anything that might give us an idea of where she went or what she was going to do?
Dr. Aimes: Not really. She just wanted my badge. Maybe when we comb through the documents, we’ll see what she was after.
Director Varga: Losing her stings.
Dr. Aimes: Hopefully we can find her quickly.
Director Varga: Is there any chance you could have stopped her?
Dr. Aimes: No, not while she was wielding SCP-L141.
Director Varga: Light is going to be furious. She’s going to be breathing down my neck and demand everything be turned over. I’m not going to let my people get scapegoated for this. If there’s anything in that moment that you could have done—
Dr. Aimes: There wasn’t.
Director Varga: I should have seen this coming. With her frustration over the gender markers, seeing it happen to every one of the researchers under her… We should have acted sooner. I should have been more proactive with records.
Dr. Aimes: After she came back from sabbatical, she was more subdued than before. We probably should have seen that she was hiding the warning signs. Assuming there were any. I don’t know if there’s much else we could have done.
Director Varga: Well, now it’s a matter of tracking her down and convincing the Councils that we did everything we could.
Varga opens the door to her office. She and Dr. Aimes enter the room. Varga switches on the lights, illuminating the space within.
Director Varga: It’s not just losing Jennifer that’s bothering me. We also lost SCP…
Varga stops talking. Dr. Aimes, who is in the process of setting her bag down on a chair when the lights are switched on, turns around.
Dr. Aimes: Varga?
Standing on the far end of the room, in front of Varga’s collection of academic awards and degrees is a tall humanoid woman. She is wearing a long dress of white, gold and purple. The hair is shoulder length, auburn in color, and radiates its own fluorescence that was previously not visible with the lights off. It’s back is to the camera, as well as to Varga and Aimes. What skin is visible is covered in cyan skin paint. In one hand she holds a staff, which at first appears to be of simple wooden design. Closer examination reveals intricate carvings across its surface. The intruder’s other hand is holding a framed picture of Director Varga and former Site-43 Director Scout.
Dr. Aimes: Were you expecting someone, Iona?
Director Varga: No.
Varga takes several steps towards the intruder.
Director Varga: Excuse me, I don’t know how you got into my office, but you can’t just—
As Varga speaks, the intruder turns towards the pair. Varga’s voice cuts off abruptly as she stares at the elven ears poking out from the stranger’s hair. Varga’s eyes abruptly narrow and she backs away, fumbling with the pistol holster on her hip. Aimes flattens herself against the wall, reaching for the intercom.
????: Do you really believe that will do anything to me?
Varga and Aimes freeze in place, staring at the intruder. This goes on for an extended period of silence. The intruder’s skin, momentarily, appears to bubble.
????: I don’t believe I’ve stolen your tongues, not yet at least, yet you seem struck dumb.
Director Varga: You’re— Daevae. A Matriarch.
????: I see this is going to be difficult.
Dr. Aimes: What—
????: It would be accurate, Iona Varga, Director of Site-91, beholden keeper of the jailers, to say that I who yet lingers on this green tinted earth, was once of the Daevae. A Matriarch, a Queen.
Dr. Aimes: But?
????: But those titles, those skins, have long been shed, carved and cast to the annuls of history.
The air around the intruder ripples with a moderate distortion which was not initially visible. When she shifts, the air smears with color as if the camera or even reality itself can barely handle her presence. It continues to writhe and undulate around her.
Director Varga: How did you get past the Site defenses?
????: A conceptual annulment field. As for how I slipped in? Ways.
It places the picture frame down on Varga’s antique desk.
Dr. Aimes: What do you want?
????: A difficult question since you no longer possess it. Lost it would be the best term I suppose.
She sighs heavily.
????: I believe it’s time we had a talk.
The Video Log abruptly ends with all Site Feeds cutting to static.
<End Log>
At approximately 1830 hours on January 20th, 2016, SCP-L141’s database entry was subjected to an incomplete retrocausal temporal effect, which excised all data on the anomaly from the database and removed all memory traces of the item from Foundation Personnel, except for Dr. Varga. Temporal safety buffers managed to prevent the complete deletion of SCP-L141’s materials. However, due to the nature of the temporal ontokinetic effect, reconstruction of all pertinent information by recovery systems required both an extreme duration and relocation to the Lost File recovery database.
At this time, the effect which initially removed SCP-L141 from the database remains in place. Consequently, SCP-L141 requires special access conditions in a temporal stasis chamber to read this file. Efforts are ongoing to locate Dr. Rosale and SCP-L141. Please return to this database at a later date with higher level clearance for further information.
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