Text text text text.
Ampyrsand
SCP-7140: MYSTERIUM
By Ampyrsand.
There is a word, in the old Daeva tongue: Hzafya. Literally, it means the change resulting from something being destroyed. One might refer to the soil fertilized by the decay of a dead animal, for instance, or the scorched earth succeeding a wildfire. There is a distinct focus, I think — and this is far from an uncommon observation — on perpetuation and continuity in an altered form rather than annihilation in Daevite culture. On changing to adapt, rather than being dismantled. Just look at how contemporary writers describe the deaths of notable people or the razing of important cities in war. Hell, the Daevite verb for "kill" is only ever passive, and comes from an older antediluvian root literally meaning to be remade.
We recall the notorious quip from famed Daeva historian Ab-kaštaar Lisviḳ, recorded the day Grand Karcist Ion broke the siege of Daevon: "Again the immortality of the Timeless Empire is reassured by tragedy". Historians are astounded to this day at the indifference of the Daeva to death and devastation — all are merely setback. Even when the Army of Broken Chains battered down the citadel-walls of the capital, sacked the crown jewel of imperial hegemony and crucified the matriarchs, even as the city collapsed around her and the slaves rose up in open revolt, Lisviḳ did not take time to lament, or even for a moment consider the possibility of the collapse of the Daevite Empire. She only reaffirmed that immortality promised to the Daeva by the fading Scarlet Covenant, embracing not only her own death but that of every other imperial aristocrat in the city with unflinching trust. Most forebodingly of all, she may have been right — after all, the Covenant only fades in our world, in this current iteration of the Prime Timeline, in this current record of Daevite history. This sort of perspective on death is daunting to us, but it may make total sense to a culture who understands its perpetuity is sooner or later guaranteed by forces outside Time. As any Daevite revivalist today will surely tell you, the Covenant promised and the Chronicle will prove: all things dead are made reborn.
Another thing about the ancient Daevite language? Should be pretty easy to guess by now. They had no word for "end".
Dr. SAGAR SINGH, Foundation Daevitologist, Department of Archaeology;
In THE EMPIRE OUTSIDE TIME: A CHRONOLOGICALLY PRECARIOUS STUDY OF ANCIENT DAEVA CULTURE (FOR NOW)
Ⅰ
PREPARATION FOR THE FINAL MYSTERY
Item#: 7140
Level4
Containment Class:
keter
Secondary Class:
abaddon
Disruption Class:
amida
Risk Class:
warning
SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES
Containment of SCP-7140 is to be oriented toward preventing its completion in order to ensure a full performance remains impossible for as long as can be maintained. The basic policies surrounding SCP-7140 are not to be altered until and unless the object achieves 100% completion, at which point they will become irrelevant.
All precise details concerning the composition of or steps to carry out the thaumaturgic working known as Sacrament Aleph are to be universally suppressed. Sufficiently precise knowledge of the ritual has, according to the best knowledge of Foundation Misinformation & Disinformation authorities, been effectively purged from the general unVeiled population and isolated by Foundation authorities utilizing advanced Selective Expungement Intervention (SEI) tactics. Said instructions are to be stored on an encrypted drive in an antimemetically-safeguarded anti-scrying informational quarantine unit at an undisclosed Secure Facility. Authorized Foundation personnel assigned to SCP-7140 are to be permitted knowledge of Sacrament Aleph from this fault exclusively on a strict need-to-know basis. Once knowledge of Sacrament Aleph has been used by the authorized individual to accomplish the task for which it was required and is no longer necessary, they are to be administered a targeted class-B amnestic in order to expunge the details of the rite from memory.
Should the Mysterium ever reach 100% completion, the immediate prerogative of SCP-7140 containment is to shift toward K-class event prevention. At this point, informational obfuscation of Sacrament Aleph to the sub-Veil population is to be considered no longer necessary. K-class prevention procedures for SCP-7140 constitute a drastically increased security presence in the Himalayan mountain region, including the immediate and permanent stationing of extensive military and surveillance assets, as well as the crucial implementation of a far stricter ban barring the presence or activity of independent occultists in the area. Stationed Foundation assets are to have automatic kill-on-sight permission for any group or individual unauthorized by the Foundation or Global Occult Coalition encountered attempting to build ritual structures within a designated Himalayan area. The Foundation has already entered negotiations with the Global Occult Coalition as well as the national governments of India, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to develop a plan of action in the event that this phase of containment becomes necessary.
Certain elements of composer Aleksandr Scriabin's occult work, particularly relating to the composition known as the Mysterium, have been strategically permitted to the Veiled public in accordance with Project Pantheon disinformation protocols. Such doctored representations of the facts surrounding SCP-7140 presented to the public are to emphasize the permanently unfinished nature of the Mysterium so as to discourage by all possible means the discovery or implementation of Sacrament Aleph by any element of the civilian population.
DESCRIPTION
SCP-7140 is a Blavatsky-class hypersigil encompassing the ritual creation and performance of Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin's Mysterium, an unfinished musical composition in progress from 1903 until Scriabin's death in 1915. Deliberately occult in its themes and aesthetics and created with significant aid from anomalous methods, it is believed the Mysterium was intended to function as a massive eschatological working when performed. The hypothetical completion of SCP-7140 apparently represents an XK-Class End-of-the-World or universe-localized ZK-Class Reality Failure scenario.
SCP-7140 is considered complete upon the conclusion of an uninterrupted performance of the entire Mysterium, which is apparently to be seven full days and nights in length. For a performance to be considered valid, it supposedly must take place in a specially-constructed ritual and sanctuary complex which is to be built somewhere in the Himalayan mountains, and include a detailed regimen of specific sensory aides to the musical composition involving such elements as elaborate lightshows, dispensations of incense, and procession. The effects of an in-action SCP-7140 are not precisely known, as what little is certain about the object has been derived second-hand from extra-universal sources. However, it is apparent that all conscious life on Earth becomes somehow telepathically aware of SCP-7140 upon the initiation of a valid performance, indicating the immediate onset of at least a BK-Class "Broken Masquerade" scenario.
As the Mysterium is an unfinished piece and its composer only ever produced music for a small fraction of its total duration, performance of SCP-7140 to full completion is presently impossible. Developing the Mysterium to the point of completion is therefore the main objective of SCP-7140's self-perpetuation.
SCP-7140 primarily furthers itself through the dissemination of TW-722146, hereafter referred to as Sacrament Aleph. Sacrament Aleph is a thaumaturgic working which can be performed by an individual or a group of individuals using a printed sheet music copy of Scriabin's Mysterium. After the application of Sacrament Aleph, the text is considered "charged" or "enhanced" by it. The precise nature of the ritual and this "enhancement" are unimportant, and left unspecified as to prevent unnecessary awareness of the minutia of Sacrament Aleph.
When an unfinished copy of the Mysterium enhanced with Sacrament Aleph comes into contact with any fluid suitable for writing, particularly human blood, its contents typically expand to include additional sheet music beyond what was previously included in the piece. Once all available fluid is used, all other SCP-7140-A instances will be retroactively altered to match the updated contents of the expanded copy, and the effects of Sacrament Aleph will expire on the original. Foundation occultists have determined that Sacrament Aleph shares occultural origin markers known as Ahriman-type thaumotifs, rare ritual components found in some temporal workings which allow for these retroactive reality alterations, with other Foundation-contained objects including SCP-140 and SCP-2140.
Since the discovery of SCP-7140 by the Foundation in 1921, a series of containment breaches ranging in scale from negligible to major have assembled the most up-to-date sheet music copy of the Mysterium known to an estimated 42% completion. Since implementation of the present policy of strict informational curfew around Sacrament Aleph in 1987, SCP-7140's rate of approaching completion has been cut substantially, to nearly two-fifths the original rate by most estimates.
HISTORY
According to personal sketches and notes belonging to Aleksandr Scriabin, the original intended effect of the Mysterium was to hasten or otherwise incur the natural destruction of the universe to allow for the subsequent rebirth of an ostensibly more spiritually pure one accompanied by a new cosmological epoch. This was apparently to be achieved by ritual means involved in the performance of the piece: PoI-7140 and his contemporaries often described a seven-day "synesthetic" festival of music, lights, and other material and spiritual ecstasies immediately followed by a full-scale eschaton which would result in the replacement of human beings by a more spiritually sophisticated species. Millennarian beliefs resembling these were common in late 19th and early 20th-century occultism which synthesized the extant canon of Western esotericism with the dharmic faiths of Asia, most famously including theosophy, which was an apparent influence on PoI-7140's work. While planning the performance of the piece, Scriabin had this to say of artistic and esoteric intent of the Mysterium:
"There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours."
In the April of 1915, PoI-7140 died of sepsis in a Moscow apartment with the Mysterium left incomplete, having completed only 72 pages of the piece's prelude, a symphony entitled Prefatory Action. SCP-7140 in its current form began shortly thereafter, although the precise time cannot be verified. It is believed that the origin of SCP-7140 lies with anomalous components of the piece which already existed in some form during its composition; specifically, most contemporary occultists believe it most likely represents the will of one or more of the extradimensional entities PoI-7140 contacted to provide him with the necessary resources and abilities to create the composition. Many have deduced that PoI-7140 at some point entered into a Type-IX "Faustian" interplanar contract permitting the lending party to take the completion of the Mysterium into its own hands should he perish before the composition was completed. It is credibly theorized that an extra-universal entity with the ability to synthesize Ahriman-type thaumotifs could have induced the Mysterium to “complete itself” in the fashion permitted per SCP-7140, thus ensuring its eventual implementation and upholding the bargain according to the entity’s vested interest.
It is unclear whether the Mysterium has, in nature, retained its original anartistic intent following the takeover of SCP-7140 to complete the piece: PoI-7140 appeared to believe in his writings that the transition from one universe to another was a natural process to be embraced rather than a painful or devastating event to be dreaded, a distinctly humanistic view unlikely to be shared by alien paranatural forces. However, according to postmorterm information acquired from Multi-Foundation Coalition Signatory Universe 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140, it appears versions of the Mysterium completed by the influence of SCP-7140 definitely do retain the intended occult capability to incur and fully realize an ultimate eschatological event.
As 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140 lost all contact with the Metafoundation immediately following its destruction, it remains unknown whether the universe was, in fact, "rebirthed" into a distinct reconstituted form subsequent to the climax of the Mysterium eschaton. For lack of this information, 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140 currently remains classified as a defunct reality.
ⅠⅠ
CATHEDRAL OF THE METAMORPHOSIS
Here’s a little secret: independent of any prospective K-class scenario, universes are technically supposed to have lifespans. Yes, finite ones. And I’m not talking about the Big Crunch or the Big Rip or heat death or any other theoretically-possible universe-wide cosmic disintegration: I mean incarnating and reincarnating lifespans like those of mortal men, one cosmic life after another. Multiple iterations of the same universe cyclically re-occurring in the same continuous timestream, even. Δt possesses nowhere near the capability for it to be a regular problem for us, of course, being as new as we are in existential terms. But according to all the best models we have, it's true nonetheless.
Now, technically it isn’t considered proper practice to still teach Cosmic Egg theory — maybe I’ve been spending too much time in the fourteenth century — but there really is no better way to explain it simply. The totality of each cosmos emerging from just one single point each, every variation the result of innumerable branching possibilities out from essentially the same base. When one's time is up, its moribund remains collapse into the Egg once again, this time bound to hatch a different world. Sometimes, the most skillful or dangerous time-criminals will try to reboot a universe still in its natural prime on their own terms. There are mechanisms for such a thing, certainly. But I wouldn't worry. Even after the worst storm, we always wash up ashore. That is the lifeblood of Δt, our raison d'être: we always pick up the pieces. We always find ourselves, all the way on the other side of Time.
Dr. THADDEUS XYNAK, Director, Temporal Anomalies Department (TAD);
In CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE (ALWAYS) BEEN PROMOTED! — LECTURE TO ADVANCED TEMPORAL AGENTS, T-SITE-01
⁂
When we talk about K-Class reversal, we are not usually talking about going back in time to stop every single apocalypse before it happens. Doing so would be reckless, and in the vast majority of cases, counterproductive. Some timelines of the infinity we manage are going to spiral downwards, sooner or later. In fact, that they do so is paramount to the coherence of the greater timestream of our canonical bundle — it is cosmic survival of the fittest, essentially. So we are not talking about preventing timelines from becoming Doomed when this is their predestined fate, but about providing advance warning to the Foundation in every world not already predestined to collapse so that they can be as well-informed as possible. This is usually the greatest extent of our retrotemporal intervention: it might not be glamorous, but it's the most we can or should do. You, as a temporal agent, are essentially a servant of fate. As a general rule, you should not go against it; should not risk the stability of everything to save a world destined in its own perception to "end", since in our business both the benefit and compromise made in terms of human life are definitionally infinite anyhow.
However, we should not confuse timelines which fade into instability with universes which reiterate and reincarnate themselves. Perhaps it should be important to note, particularly as you are in the business of upholding the Prime Timestream, that no universe ever permanently ceases to exist at the end of its natural line. No matter the apocalypse faced, so long as temporal continuity is preserved, it is only ever reconfigured, remade into something else. Never is it destroyed; full retcons are for retrotemporal cascade and Swann fiat only. Timelines may fade or go Doomed into the dark night of temporal void, but worlds never do. They only develop and redevelop themselves, forever.
Dr. ALICE FORTH, Director, Department of Temporal Anomalies (DoTA);
In PICKING UP THE PIECES: K-CLASS SCENARIO PREVENTION AND REVERSAL
What you need to understand about the occultists of the late 19th and early 20th century is that they were incredibly gullible geniuses. What you need to know about their history, accordingly, is that it was fundamentally driven by this tragedy. Twice they wronged themselves, for all of their ingenuity and groundbreaking progress; twice their foolishness spelled their own doom. First they were fooled by the rapacious urge of conquest — of global expansion, of Empire. Second they were fooled by the vain, wishful thought — or hope — that there would never come another time in history as imperiled as theirs: that there would never be another effusion of blood greater or more terrible than the Great Occult War.
For all the talk of the mage-war in Europe which pervaded the public consciousness, the formative era of normalcy in Asia was hardly less chaotic. With British mismanagement at its cluttered, defective zenith, a Theosophical Society ascendant rose to find itself almost solely in command of institutional occultism in colonial India. The theosophists were, to their credit, remarkably egalitarian for a contemporary occultist movement; even opposed ideologically to the root of Empire's domination over nature, and many times literally to the colonial authorities. But with the occultists of the West beginning to look East, carrying the old sectarian squabbles of Europe with them, India’s new class of wizards were far from perfect. With their time in the sun, they made many strides toward esoteric progress: Karmon Theory has its roots in this time period, for example, as do our first explorations of the Akiva Field. And although the concept of the “root races” is archaic and unsavory to say the least, the advances made in channeling and ancestral magic cannot be refuted. But this era also saw grave steps be taken which would not be undone even after the rise of Unified Thaumatology in the tradition. The mass exodus of practicing Western Tradition occultists to the East to take part in any of a thousand pseudo-dharmic spinoff sects of varied intentions and degrees of honesty created a wild-west environment in an "unexplored" culture, where malpractice and misreplicated rites were allowed to run wild. It laid down a legacy of orientalism that would persist in the field of esoteric anthropology for a century at least, and opened the floodgates to hucksters and frauds of all stripes.
Not everyone who came sought out genuine enlightenment. Many were content to use the rising interest and excitement to enrich themselves, charging expat westerners their bottom dollar for shoddy magic dressed up in superficial mystery and advertised as the "secrets of the Orient". In 1876, for example, a shady mage going by the name of "Master Yttoric" — sound familiar? — set up shop in Calcutta. He was a quack, of course; a liar, mostly, and a fraud, definitely. But he also served forces more malicious than his own bottom line. With a combination of charisma and psychic control he amassed a fanatical cult of personality. By 1900, over six hundred of Yttoric's pupils had let their blood on the Throne of the Seven Thorned Branches, a powerful Daevite artifact around which he had mobilized his cult: their genetic material was instrumental in the creation of phytomantic entities he would unleash in a 1901 bioterrorist attack which killed almost a hundred in the Arakan region of Burma.
Now, in the New Age our oracles so long prepared us for, we still see the allure of the exotic and the occult used on both sides of the Veil to take advantage of the desperate masses looking for a miracle. The king in those lavish robes doesn't always wear crimson horns, but he is always insidious and manipulative. A time-honored tradition says, beware the mage who offers the whole world and promises nothing. I would know: the wizard who taught me that old proverb happened to be one.
The second shortcoming of our thaumic forefathers was the apocalyptic outlook so much of the occult community seemed to have on their world, both during and after the Sixth Occult War. Its roots lie in the first cause: in expansion, in Empire, in a world too small and too fragile for so many growing so aggressively. If we too had lived through it, the experience must have seemed apocalyptic: the ultimate test of every ritual developed in the preceding centuries or more, all of them turned by human hands against their fellow men. Harrowing, no doubt. And absolutely enough to traumatize any one of the embattled mages for life ten times over, especially if you include the devastating aftermath of the War. But the anxieties of a traumatized generation are not in fact the will of the world, despite the desperate attempts of the early visionaries of normalcy to make it so by bending nature to their vision. Of course, we know more about the world now than they did then. Now we can look back to the ruins of a hundred human and pre-human civilizations stretching epochs back in time and rest assured that no final blow ever brings the Earth to a cataclysmic end, only shifts its balance. But then? When the last corners of the Earth were finally being explored and the frontier receded more and more each day? It seemed the End could have been at hand any day. A mass hysteria of this sort, at least in some form, should not be surprising for this most tumultuous era of occult history: few should be shocked, for instance, that the “Great Occult War” had the most confirmed end-of-the-world prophecies of any historical event before or since. That beats out the Seventh, the Baktun, the Impasse, Y2K, anything Nostradamus ever said, all of it. So they let their imaginations run wild with that apocalyptic fear, and all too often let it influence them as they constructed the magical architecture which still underpins our modern world.
And yet still every portent of doom, every prophet of apocalypse, was wrong. They always will be; the world keeps spinning. Because, as the Great Occult War and every other catastrophe in a line of millions proved, no event is so destructive as to preclude it from being transformative. There is one lesson from all of this that the Foundation's K-Class contingency teams could learn, in my opinion. The world never ends — it only evolves.
Dr. BATHSHEBA CROWLEY, Chair, Department of Applied Esotericism;
In TURN OF THE AEON: AN ESOTERIC HISTORY OF THE GREAT OCCULT WAR GENERATION
ⅠⅠⅠ
THREE SHORT DREAMS ABOUT DEATH
A PARABLE OF THE ELDEST
Dear Diary,
Today was Yorun-leusan's day. We woke up early to get ready for the feast at the temple all the way on the other side of town. It felt like the whole village was there! Father Raymond, Father Aengrox, Elder Yemna, the Sitora sisters, Old Man Qhet…
It was nice to be in one place, but to be honest I'm not sure if they ever really gotten used to me. It's just the sort of looks I get. I don't really blame them, I mean, I must be the only human they've ever seen! Most Ortothans couldn't name a human with a pistol to their head, except maybe Saint Barlowe and a few other Church figures. Especially not around these parts. We're a small town, on an asteroid hardly sixty miles across, so we don't get much news from the outside world — especially not from Earth, under that stodgy old Iron Veil. We also don't get many visitors. Which is actually a nice segue for my next topic…
A visitor came to town today, from who knows where. A preacher. He certainly said he was True Faith, and maybe he was Ortothan after all, but a weird sect of Ortothan I'd never heard of before. Said their numbers were on the up-and-up, though. He kept trying to tell us about some new god I'd never heard of, garbled in some awful pagan chant. "Telag yag-apzu althuth tsag-rlor shup-nel K'thanid"; translates to something about an Outsider joining the Holy Seven in their crusade, Father Raymond told me. He said the preacher was speaking an eldritch tongue we can't pronounce, and the god whose word he spread was a cursed one sworn off by Ortothans, told me to avoid him and strangers like him. The people didn't like him. There was some shouting, and some harsh gesturing and some curses, and eventually he left.
Ortothans and Lovecraftians don't get along, father tells me: a long history of religious warfare and strife, communities across Orion's Arm torn apart by theological debates over the nature of the Voru, or where the Eitoth is. The True Faith is very clear about what our personhood means, we never give up fighting for it, and we do not tolerate nihilism or doubt about the worth of the soul. So you can understand why the elders wouldn't take kindly to a stranger spewing fhtagnspeak in an Ortothan town, whatever his intentions or affiliations actually were.
Old Man Qhet said the thing that stuck with me most, though. He was trying to get the preacher man to go away. "If a Third Hytoth comes, it won't be no seven-tongued Scarlet lullaby that sing the end of the world", he talked the man down, almost shouting. "It'll be your treachery, your foolishness."
I almost couldn't imagine it: A Third Hytoth? It's difficult to imagine there could really be another, that we could all be gone or somehow transformed beyond recognition. Like the Faith teaches us about the sons of the Old World, we would be strange, banished visitors in another. Despite all that talk about our world and the Old World in church, I had never even considered a third. All the work of the Holy Seven to save the cosmos from those gnawing teeth of void, set back to square one again? And if that's ever so, who would be left to protect us?
⁂
Tonight, once everyone was asleep, I snuck out and went to the temple again, all the way on the other side of town. Jupiter was high in the sky; almost blindingly in view. I crept into the temple, eyed the great bloody-red banner, still hanging high on the wall, knelt down before the etched Heptaginet Star, and prayed. I don't know how long. Almost an hour, maybe.
I don't know if I feel any better, to be honest.
A PARABLE OF THE MIDDLE
[OPEN SCENE. An old LORDS' LIBRARY in the PHLEGMATIC QUARTER.]
[Enter ARLECCHINO, wearer of the HAPLESS MASK.]
[Enter PETRUCHIO, wearer of the HYSTERICAL MASK.]
PETRUCHIO: Can we retire at last? I fear it grows late, nevertheless the fixed stars doth torture us and withhold the time by their stillness.
[ARLECCHINO, his back turned to Petruchio, produces a CARMINE TOME from the shelf to his left and descends the ladder.]
ARLECCHINO: But what spellcraft doth this one contain, O brother?
PETRUCHIO: Why dost thou vex me with these endless questions, youngest brother Arlecchino? How am I to know?
ARLECCHINO: Surely you can deduce something, wise scholar-brother, to satiate my curiosity.
[ARLECCHINO hands over the tome. PETRUCHIO props it open with a gloved tendril.]
PETRUCHIO: It speaketh here of the pruning of worlds, methinks. That they are all become entangled in an Endless Song, as many scholars have come to believe, whose verses are finite but repeated. And that if one realm grows reticent to fill its purpose, it may be eased to the final bed and back to the natal crib.
ARLECCHINO: For whom?
PETRUCHIO: The gods of inky dark above and below, no doubt. For this would be the first and most primal spark of magyck, remanifest, wearing new ceremonial livery in preparation for the Final Mystery.
ARLECCHINO: Dead worlds? But the Ambassador teaches us all that dreams in Alagadda is not dead. Is this not so?
PETRUCHIO: Ah, but the refuse-worlds beyond our walls. The backwaters, outside the City. They are many.
PETRUCHIO: And if the harmony of the spheres doth so permit, one dreadful lullaby shall be the final whisper of her own grand story. It has happened many times, so do the libraries of our Four-Humored Lords teach, to many a world.
ARLECCHINO: Why so? Doth a judge with this magyck purge the worlds of the impure and the unworthy, or doth some farmsman harvest the fruits of the cosmic Tree whenst-soever they might ripen? Or a woodsman cull the forest?
PETRUCHIO: Those reddened deeds of which you speak are belong to Harach the Worm, and do not concern us. That scoundrel conqueror has bound the governors of the realms to service, to sing a swan's song to their dooms.
ARLECCHINO: I see. It is dreadful, eldest brother of mine, I must say.
PETRUCHIO: Indeed. But we are the watchers only, and those who rejoice. For while mortals live and die for the harmony of the spheres, the antecedent are we, stagnant in thy constitution, the mockery of their divine motion. Theirs is the sun and the moon; ours is Neverwhere and Neverwhen. Writhe and revel we shall, in the consummate filth of the Perfect Masquerade, for now and for ever.
ARLECCHINO: Will not in Black Alagadda the days of the worldly come to such an end, O brother?
PETRUCHIO: Never in Alagadda, brother. For with vital breath we do not breathe, nor with free animus live, and need not die to be dead.
[PETRUCHIO gestures up to the OBSERVATORY WINDOW which crowns the library's main hall.]
PETRUCHIO: Look above you, and see; ours are stillborn stars, in a deathly sky.
[ARLECCHINO and PETRUCHIO exit stage left. Exeunt.]
[END SCENE.]
A PARABLE OF THE YOUNGEST
One telling by the devout imperial servant Tazhi ab-Hakhal recounts a common story in which a Daeva girl in apprenticeship to become a priestess, once told by her master that the Covenant between the Daeva and the King ensures perpetuity and immortality for the Empire, challenges the senior priestess to predict the future in order to prove her claims. The priestess replies that she lacks a portent (usually the entrails of a slain enemy), and that the Covenant only guarantees but does not tell the King's secrets, reminding her that to doubt the Covenant is heresy in the imperial cult. The apprentice is expectably unsatisfied by this answer, and is dismissed for her day's studies. The following night, ironically, the priestess receives an actual revelation in her dreams. This vision, which ab-Hakhal agrees represents real future events in some form, is transcribed as such:
⁂
There is a congregation of angelic swans in a pond at the base of a great Tree. Each wears a crown holding a number of facets corresponding to the realms over which they hold the title. Their seraph wings are likewise: some have tens, some hundreds. They are lords and marquis proud beyond their station: fickle lesser gods, each holds sway over the precious myth of his or her own fiefdom-world, painting its truths, hoarding its stories. The angels converse in various alien tongues, quacks and trumpets interspersed with haunting celestial song.
There is a trembling from the exposed ends of the Tree's roots, then the opening of a Way from one of them. A full earthquake resounds from under the nothing, shaking the serene pond. A clawed appendage feels its surroundings from the other side of the aperture; the fetid, distendid limb of a lowly and depraved scavenger god. It emerges, fixes its cyclopean eye on the angels, all seven pupils dilating and scintillating and revolving as if to communicate some alien signal. There is a brief silence, and then another quake. A horde of Leviathans prop open the Way and rush out; beasts forgotten whose ire makes sailors lost to the depths, profanities of many limb and maddening in visage, warlords astride ghastly, thunder-legged orcanoid steeds, their sharpened blades emblazoned hezhum — Desolation. The whole legion has not even finished their march out by the time the first angel is captured.
In the darkest court, in the deepest pit of some abyssal hell, the Leviathans present their bound prizes of war. Their return is greeted with the triumphal cacophony of blood-clotted flutes and gnashing mouth-harps, swarms of sycophantic trashgods looking down opportunistically on the ceremonial welcome with the expectation of carnage. The birds are caged; they are derided, ridiculed. Fools, all believers in stories. But they are not, in fact, to be slaughtered. One by one, the enthroned King breaks their wings and pins them to jagged boards with his spear; binds each angel to crucifixion. He has a deal to uphold. A mortal. But, more importantly, He has found a way to bring all those stories to an end at last.
He has not the sway over how each fable ends, holds not the deed to each little world. But between them, they do. He will make them write one last song, their swan’s song, all of them, to rebirth their precious worlds in his own image. And once they have done the work, and once He has duly facilitated, in all those worlds, the mortal will sing it.
ⅠⅤ
WHAT FAUST MADE
In accordance to the Metafoundation Supertemporal Coalition Pact, Statement 3, Section 1, you, Synod-sanctioned representative of Central Normalcy Authority Iteration 67239de923g91h173206sd34672x357d, "SCP Foundation", are hereby authorized to access the following documentation regarding Doomed signatory reality 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140 of Canonical Bundle DW16, temporal substrate Tellum-Metro-Tango-Rubella-Delta-Gold. This memorandum has been localized to the dialect and organizational terminology of your indigenous reality.
Let it be recorded that the above message was transmitted automatically from: O9 to: 67239de923g91h173206sd34672x357d. At time of transmission, 4929470018736408971203230898000234889 Intercosmological Standard Aeons remain in the Mahakalpa.
HYPERDIMENSIONAL PRECATORY MEMORANDUM
As of present, Central Normalcy Authority Iteration 7d8823nfd8fgb9675521mhd99201746c of timestream Tellum-Metro-Tango-Rubella-Delta-Gold has declared solvency of its indigenous reality (9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140) to the Metafoundation. RCT-Δt has conducted an independent inquiry and verified that this specific universe-localized ZK-class event represents an authorized development determined to DW16's Prime Timestream and is required to prevent destabilizing deviation from its ordained sequence of events. Consequently, any attempt at reconstitution by Goldbaker & Associates has been refused.
The following report has been compiled as to the causes of K-class event realization which led to 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140's solvency.
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The ultimate cause for K-class event realization appears to be standard escalation of an anomaly roughly fitting archetypal MSCP-ფ␢╔🜢ᕟ (timeline-adjusted: "SCP-7140"). At around T-3:30 hours, indigenous Foundation elements reported becoming aware of extensive ritual activity on or around Mt. Annapurna I which could not be decisively stopped before the full onset of the catastrophe due to some form of thaumic detection shielding. Upon the initiation of the anomaly, a ritual complex resembling a temple or sanctuary inside the mountain was revealed, previously unknown to normalcy authorities likely due to this Central Normalcy Authority Iteration's comparative lack of divination-based surveillance capability. It is believed this complex was built to precise specifications by occult groups motivated to the enaction of "SCP-7140". At T-00:00 hours, a stationed RCT-Δt agent placed among the crowds of attending occultists to verify the ritual transpired to the conclusion mandated by the Prime Timestream reported hearing an Old Daevite incantation consistent with a lullaby for young children, immediately followed by the effusion of blood onto a written copy of the ritual upon an altar. A uniform eschatological escalation sequence began immediately thereafter.
The initial onset of the ritual associated with object "SCP-7140" was apparently associated with a global telepathic signal, whereupon the entire world population became simultaneously both anomalously aware of the details of the ongoing eschatological event and anomalously convinced of its general beneficence and necessity:
WITHIN T+1:00 HOURS: A mass psionic transmission, apparently global in scale, is detected by PANOPTICON global surveillance assets worldwide. Foundation command in the Himalayas determines the recently-discovered ritual as the origin point for the mass transmission. Hereafter, anomalous psychic compulsion TRUTH UNVEILED apparently leads a substantive sector of the global population to embark on immediate "pilgrimages" to the mountain ritual site, which have persisted across several days of ritual.
This mind-affecting anomaly, against which CNAI-7d8823nfd8fgb9675521mhd99201746c apparently could mount no lasting resistance, means much of the documentation indigenous to their universe regarding object "SCP-7140" has either been deleted or deliberately corrupted by psychically-compromised individuals or was written by compromised individuals in the first place. Although relevant documentation was automatically disseminated to the Metafoundation and member organizations successfully, as per stipulation 3.1, this compromising effect unfortunately renders most of it useless.
Although the indigenous Foundation initially attempted military action to force the increasing mass of practicing eschatologists to desist K-class initiation, mass anomalous compulsion likewise eventually prevented their agents from enacting any serious resistance.
~T+1:40 HOURS: O5 Command authorizes immediate aerial bombardment of the ritual site by MTF and formal military assets.
~T+2:20 HOURS: Attempted aerial bombardment of Himalayan ritual site begins. Upon approaching within 100 km of the site, anomalous compulsion becomes overwhelming and selected assets refuse to complete the attack, returning to their stations. It is beautiful. It is not the end. We try in vain to stop the inexorable tide of nature, fearing it may be. But it is not. Nothing will ever be the end.
~T+3:40 HOURS: A second team is assembled of exclusively ultra-high CRV pilots for aerial bombardment.
~T+4:30 HOURS: No substantive difference in result. Upon approaching ritual site, all military assets desist attack. Radius beyond which compulsion becomes overwhelming has apparently grown from 100 to around 120 km. You must embrace it. Mother Earth beckons; Father Time calls. It is time for all of us, together as children under the Sun.
The pattern of failed attempts at resistance continues intermittently according to surviving documentation. Within the first 24 hours, it is believed that CNAI-7d8823nfd8fgb9675521mhd99201746c is effectively neutralized. In the ensuing days, a number of increasingly dramatic events consistent with symptoms of Type-V or Type-VI eschaton occur. Note the consistent increase in textual corruption.
~T+24:00 HOURS: Continuous increase in average marginal Hume coefficient far beyond natural limits the ascent toward our grandest aspirations begins, centered around the ritual site and eventually taking effect globally. We will see you among the Stars, for now we become them.
~T+35:00 HOURS: The first angel of the new world is here. It is dark and sharp-scaled, its fins a shiny black, its tail long and and barbed with a talon like a mighty anchor at its tip. Attacks on Foundation facilities lead to masive casualties more rage and desperation, more lashing out in vain. Our imperious playwrights, our makers, of heavy halo and many feather, no longer make our destiny from their palace-nests. Do we?
Of note, it is believed that the continuum of 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140 crossed the threshold into completely Doomed timeline within the first 48 hours of eschaton. The total loss of narrative potential inherent to Doomed realities, as the compromised author(s) of this documentation appear to suggest, is in fact correlated to surrender of control by 001-SWN entities native to the Doomed reality.
Past 48 hours, the vast majority of surviving documentation is compromised to the point of practical incomprehensibility. Much as with the reference to the "angelic" entity above, it is unclear whether the events described are literal or symbolic.
~T+48:00 HOURS: Our angel takes his seat as the archon of the new age. For a moment, the earth trembles. The seas do likewise. Things we have forgotten wash up ashore.
~T+72:00 HOURS: The other angels new descend in hosts of seven and fourteen. They join in the celebration, but only to show us their dominion. Majestic are their crowns and vast lay their works. They can destroy us, for now our world is unto them. But they do not. We are inspired by terror and awe.
~T+96:00 HOURS: The last shackles of the old world begin to melt away. Now, we may see clearly the bloodied sea of gnashing teeth who awaits us with starved hunger on the other side of the final verse. But we also see opportunity; potential, undiluted, undeterred. It must go on. In the old world we were sold falsehoods of meaning in meaningless lives. At least under the Law of Blood there is no deception: we are free to despair, and to die.
~T+120:00 HOURS: There is nothing left to fear here, at the end of the long river, and nothing left to mourn. Today it will run with blood for the first and the last time. Today it will run for the first and the last time. Tomorrow the river will run elsewhere.
~T+137:00 HOURS: Swansong and whalesong collude in a final confrontation at the edge of the Earth. It is creation and negation. Open any of your seven eyes and see the grandeur of the lights. Open any of your seven mouths and sing along.
~T+144:00 HOURS: They all bloom. Every last one. We weep for the beauty. It has happened before, but never as unto this: the First and Final Day of Flowers.
Beyond T+144 hours from the onset of eschaton, there was no further communication made from universe 9789E7DWD908-D-ZK-7140.
The following document was decoded and translated by joint effort of the SCP Foundation Department of Applied Esotericism and the International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology. Ask a superior about Protocol Alexandria to see if you can contribute to the effort at an ICSUT campus near you. Channelings of any claimed or actual Akashic Record are not acceptable as genuine translations of historical or scientific material.
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Faust once made a deal with the Devil. In exchange for his immortal soul, the mage-doctor Faust attained all worldly knowledge and ability which could possibly be imagined. Faust would become the most talented magician of his time, and the most talented alchemist of his time, and Fortune would always look upon him favorably in the world of men. But none of this mattered, for in the kingdom of God, Faust was utterly corrupted. His soul always belonged truly to Mephistopheles, and was so destined for that abominable court of angels fallen. For he was always a weak man.
When I began my work on the Mystery, it was to me purely a gift and a blessing. The work I hoped to perform was the final mystery of our age, and its aim to instantiate the new, the natural, the more perfect order on Earth. The Ascended Masters teach of many ages in the history of this world before our own, and the promise of many after. Future times of sunrise with cities of gold and meadows of life which make pitiful our own. It was my object as an inhabitant of the world, and as a servant of the unity of all faith, for there is no religion higher than truth, to use my talents so man could wave goodbye to the Yuga of death and destruction and embrace the next with open arms. I could do this in music, I knew. But in ritual, I would require aid from without myself. And so I welcomed into my home, which I called the House of the Aeon, any outsider or archon which would pity my cause. Custodians of the cosmos appeared in droves and offered to become my patrons, given the right price.
One such patron was an ink amorphous and unwritten, which called itself Eternal-Texts and said it was the living history of its people. Its own were the Devas, blood-bound souls more ancient than the Vedas which told of them, and their old crownlands. In service to their King, who resided in a faraway land on the other side of a great sea, it chronicled their deeds with fluid life-blood. The Eternal-Texts promised me the magic of automatic inspiration, of creation outside Time, which would guarantee the completion of my work even if I could not live to see it. Fool as I was, I took the contract, and I signed my name to that inky emissary's entombed King. I was blinded by the majesty of my own work; so blinded that I could not see it was being taken away from me.
This was years ago, when knowledge of the Devas was sparse in Europe. Archaeological findings of that people only truly began to come to light after the occurrences in Tashkent in 1909. I did not know much of them, beside that they represented profound change, a unified global order. What little historical information I did have informed me that the empire of the Devas was a motherhood, matriarchal of nature: that they venerated the Earth-mother and the roots from which we all came. Regrettably, I did not see that ancient black magic which made the Covenant which I myself bought into. After all, to the Hindus, the Devas were benevolent spirits. The Ascended Masters teach us that there is truth in all religion, everywhere in the world; the Masters and the Christian mystics both teach us of All-Unity, that all is one, that good and evil are a dichotomy of falsehood. I suspected along these lines that they couldn't have been all so bad.
A friend of mine was stationed in Vladivostok during the war with Japan. When he returned, I was already working on the Mystery. He is an orientalist by trade, and he would often interact with the locals and document their ways of life while at his station. He was ultimately captured by the Japanese; a miracle that he managed to escape alive. When he recalled the story to me, he made clear his astonishment that his interrogators did not press him on the deployment of troops or naval forces, or of any other plans relating to the military, but instead on his knowledge of a folktale held by the natives of the Far East. The Evenkis and Nivkhs, and apparently the Japanese Ainu as well, have long held a prophecy in their oral tradition that a vicious empire headed by a Crimson Khan would begin one day to encroach ceaselessly from the west, until eventually the whole world was under his grasp and all his subjects would be made to sing the final hymn of the Earth. When fur-trappers and merchants arrived, the story was altered to mention instead the imposition of a Cerise Tsar: to them, the myth had already begun to come true. The Japanese officers questioned my associate about this very prophecy, and pressured him to confirm its veracity and provide specific details about it which there could have been no possible way for him to know. They genuinely believed that Russia was the rebirth of the Devas, and that the tsar was the Scarlet King, destined to end the world.
It was then that I began to suspect overtly what subconsciously I had feared all along. You see, my friend tells me, on his further inquiry he discovered that beliefs similar to those he encountered in the Far East are held by many of the natives of Central Asia — apparently, they never changed the story when Russia arrived, and still fear the literal return of the Devas. Nowadays, modern anthropology seems to discover more and more similar stories each day, passed down for generations from the backcountry villages of Europe to the furthest tribes of Asia. So, the world around, the magic of the Devas was no liberatory force. Every culture feared them: they were brutal, and their ruler not a wise one but a Scarlet King, a Khan, a conqueror. Could I really use their rites for any good? Could I possibly best the devil on the terms of his own bargain, and use that power without falling to its temptation?
Last night, in a dream and a prophecy of vision, my patron of life-blood did not visit me as he usually does. Instead, his King did. I awoke under a crimson sky, my dream's self hanging precariously from the last intact of seven dark rust chains, and mine was the weight which broke it. As I walked through the streets of the old kingdom, through the ruins of every building, the thrice-damned whispers of the Worm creeped into my mind to thank me for my services. And all the way, the imprisoned angels and archons of the realms hung in jagged birds' cages, pallid and translucent from emaciated hunger, their halos dimmed, their wings clipped through with spears black and bloody. Each was appalled by my presence as they saw me embark upon that long walk of shame.
I regret with every essence of myself to say that work to which I have dedicated my life will not ease our acceptance of the end of times. Damned gods above and below, now it will cause it. Another world will rise from the ashes, of course. Nothing is ruined forever, only remade. But one of golden cities and fertile meadows it will not be.
Faust once stood at the gates of Hell in infamy. At that moment, the weight of his guilt crushed him. For he knew he had made a bargain, and it had to be upheld.
ALEKSANDR SCRIABIN, Composer and Occultist;
In a private journal entry
A PARABLE OF THE TREE AND THE HOUSE OF DEATH
Qarmhashta Parahatal IX, Grand Lord of Erikesh, rarely graced visitors to the palace with his personal presence. His time was far too valuable, and the Golden Arrow far too precious to risk putting in eyeshot of a potential thief under any ordinary circumstances. But today was not an ordinary day. For generations his kingdom had been brought to the brink of annihilation by the Crimson Khan of the north; the Red Shah, the Lāla Rājā. For generations they had just narrowly avoided raiding and pillaging by His hordes, the hosts of black Daevon, whose deceitful hive-queens had broken more treaties than could be counted. Now, at last, his guest had witnessed their treachery firsthand. The lowly vagabond before him, hunched over, wrapped head to toe in ragged robes, bowed a traditional greeting. The Lord reciprocated, performing a bow of full honor and submission.
Ysvil khar-Salel Sage-Crowned, last chieftainess of the last tribe of the White Shiga, was no vagabond. At least, she had not always been. Born in as much luxury as her embattled clan could afford, she early learned the burden of royalty in a nation gasping its desperate last breaths. Her people had hoped she was a demigod miracle-child, a sort of messiah, sent from the heavens above to save them. She was not. But royal or vagrant, she was a survivor. Now she would be forced to outlive the people she could not rescue.
Like their neighbors on the steppes, the Shiga had embodied that great paradox of occult civilization which was nomadic horticulturalism. Unlike them, though, the Shiga were neutral unless provoked: their alchemy healed, their magic soothed, and altogether was their herbomancy a tranquil and solitary practice. Far before the tribes of the Daeva had united under the Timeless Empire, before even the first brick of Daevon was laid, they had outbattled the Shiga to near extinction in a gruesome half-millennia struggle. In the time since, the Daeva had settled an empire on the remains of their brothers. And for century after blood-stained century, the matriarchs had hunted down the remaining tribes to finish the job. Now, it seems, they finally had.
"Great Erikesh welcomes you." The Grand Lord was stalwart but sympathetic, stoic yet obviously pained. "And I assure you, your highness, should I find any survivors among your people she will open her gates in refuge to them as well."
The deposed queen paused before thanking the gesture with a question. "Why does fate favor you? Now the Daevas have brought war again to the People of the Fallen Star, and nearby Erikesh still stands tall against invaders. I will contribute whatever I have to this arcane seal of yours, to see the standard of my people continued in yours."
At this, the Lord was just as bewildered as she. There laid no grand seal over Erikesh besides the works of the Erikeshans. No divine blessing, only their walls, their army, their magic. Those had by some miracle been enough to repel the hungering Crimson tide, for now.
He said as much as this, for it was all that could be said.
So did the vagabond respond: "I hoped this of my own country, but it was not so. We fought but were conquered, as the Daeva were more brutal and in greater numbers than we. It is a common tale among my clan, ages ago, that we once were allied tribes under the same banner. But the clans who would be called Daeva deceived us, so it was said, and landed the first strike of the thousand-year war in our backs."
"It be true, in my experience. We have tried many peaces with them, all broken." An old saying came to the Lord of Erikesh's mind: the Scarlet King comes in many forms, but none are true. "They have deceived us both to our dooms, I fear."
"How should I know what is to be the final doom and what not?" She had the defeated affect of having lost a faith and a conviction once mighty. "I will never know when the worst plague has swept the land, for with each passing season I see worse still. I know nothing: I would pray to my patrons, but now I pray for them instead, for they are lost."
There was a long and mournful silence, for he knew of what she spoke. The Opaline Quadragintet, the forty-strong chief gods of the Shiga, had all been enslaved or slaughtered by the Daeva and their own lord-demons.
"Is there anything that can be done?" Lord Parahatal broke the silence — perhaps he should not have. "You know many say their priestess-queens have won the favor of Time itself, that their immortality is living Covenant. If this is true of the demons, in time, even Erikesh will fall."
The same primal fear consumed them both: that one day, whatever setbacks might temporarily forestall its inexorable expansion, the howling throne of Daevon would either conquer the world itself or sing with seven tongues of razor-sharp poison the final rites which would destroy it.
"Perhaps", the vagabond said. "But through their works, yours have learned themselves to endure under the Crimson Khan's siege. May you or may you not be the victors of that struggle, but with that gilded spear of godbane-wrought, heavens-willing you and your grand mystics and demon-keepers will have the time to adapt, at the least."
"We must. The Golden Arrow is passed down to us and our progeny since the gods fled the Earth and assumed their seats in Heaven. It is forever."
"Nothing under heaven is forever, Lord of Erikesh Mighty. But so too is defeat, even the end of all, never so final." The vagabond turned her back and made a great gesture of surrender into the onward horizon. "The Great Egg of the World will always hatch again. This the wisdom of my people has taught me".
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Ysvil khar-Salel Sage-Crowned would not live in Erikesh for very many years. She was given a ritual bed of blessed soil, and one day she breathed her last vital breath upon it, as was the tradition of her native land, so that she could return to the earth. So she was buried, on that starless night.
The morning after, her body was gone from the ritual bed.
An infant sapling had burst through the soil.