- Tension.jpg was created by me. I release it under CC BY-SA 3.0 as per the terms of the SCP Wiki.
A sun the color of iron oozed over the ridge to the east, tinging the far cliffs of the gorge with a lethargic, pewter light. The fringes of the valley stood shrouded in a fog so dense that the world itself seemed not to persist beyond them at all. The jagged heads of lodgepoles rising from the haze were the only indication to the contrary, their tips towering like the myriad ships of an evergreen fleet above a wispy sea. Far below, movement flickered along the valley floor.
The girl's small hand tightened around Mother's fingers as the two of them pressed on silently beneath the haze. The pines above them groaned quietly as a cool breeze swept past. Mother's gaze was pulled from the charcoal sky overhead as a sullen glint shone within the glade ahead. She slowed to a halt and knelt, placing a hand on the girl's head and gingerly stroked the child's hair. It fell like a veil of obsidian around her head.
"It's not safe ahead," she whispered, casting a glimpse at the light. "I need you to wait here for now, okay?"
The girl sat against the tree, tucking her knees to her chest and cast a sideways glance at the clearing. "It's here. I can feel it." She stared, then opened her mouth to speak, but the name caught in her throat like slag. She swallowed hard. The barest suggestion of a bitter taste lingered.
Mother smiled, her lip trembling. She leaned forward and embraced the child with a shaky breath. She held her a moment longer, and kissed her on the head.
"No matter what happens, Nahimana, remember that we love you."
Mother's demeanor suddenly hardened. She rose and produced a bow from her pack. She silently nocked an arrow, eyeing the sharp, glassy contour of its head. With one last look backward at her child, she began toward the clearing.
Gray sunlight dappled the ground. The glade was empty save for scattered grass shoots and an ancient mound of weathered granite rising at its center. Mother tensed as she met the eyeless gaze of the thing that reclined upon the rock.
Emaciated, thin, and covered in short, brown fur, the thing almost appeared humanoid in shape, overlooking its bowed legs that diverged into additional taloned limbs at the knees. The creature lay casually on the rock with its feet outstretched and something round in what passed as its left hand. A skinless bear skull floated in place of its head.
"This really is rather unacceptable," it muttered exasperatedly. Its voice was hoarse and grinding, yet still possessed of an almost indescribable delicateness, like the sound of falling leaves or a sweeping breeze. "I did give you very specific instructions."
Mother caught her breath and straightened up. "Sprit!" she yelled.
The being sighed. "You were told to bring the Medium, and yet you not only come without it, but with the frankly ridiculous intent to do me harm," it scoffed, gesturing to the weapon clutched in her hand.
"I can offer you this instead." Mother reached hesitantly into her pocket and produced a slender wooden stake, barely longer than her hand, and colored with the barest hint of purple. She held it upright before the being, the carved skull at its top clearly visible. The thing's head floated forward in curiosity, the rest of its body remaining reclined. Mother caught a glimpse of the item clutched in its hand, a watery sphere with something dark suspended inside.
"You would lay before me my own warding piece?" the creature inquired. Thunder sounded in the distance.
"In return you will release him to me. Unharmed." Mother said with nearly gridded teeth. She cast an uneasy glance at the sky. The rising sun has been stifled beneath a sudden blanket of heavy, darkening clouds.
The creature's jaws clacked together noisily. Possibly a chuckle. "While even I am surprised to find someone as proud as yourself laying down a warding piece, even this offering remains insufficient. The man's crimes command a greater debt," it droned, its voice like splintering wood.
Mother looked at the being with narrowed eyes, unclenching her jaw. "In addition to the ward, I would offer you half of all my remaining years in this world."
The thing's head tilted in the air before flipping backwards with the rest of its body in a convulsion of grinding laughter. "We spirits are immortal, woman. I have lived a thousand, thousand of your lifetimes. What good a would a fragment of your fleeting existence do for me?" it spat. It shook its skeletal head. "When you suddenly offered an alternative for this man's bounty I was interested to see what you would present. But that…" It gestured to her, assuming its laid back posture again. "That is the best you could come up with?"
Mother pocketed the stake and placed a hand on her bowstring. In the span of a breath, she drew the string and fired at her target. The arrow met its mark dead-on, colliding with the boney exterior of the creature's head. The creature didn't so much as flinch as the arrowhead chipped and shattered, the wooden shaft clattering to the ground at its feet. It looked at the arrow, then her, shaking its head.
"Oh please, you should know better than that," it muttered.
It opened its hand, allowing the sphere in its grasp to fall to the ground and roll towards Mother. The spirit snapped its thin fingers as it reached her. The shimmering sphere quickly expanded to several feet in diameter before bursting in a shower of icy water. Father lurched forward, coughing.
"Mankato!" Mother exclaimed, quickly rushing to his side. Father looked around confusedly before his eyes met hers.
"Macha…" he sputtered between coughs. "Wh- what hap…" he trailed off as his gaze fell upon the spirit. "You!"
The creature rose to its feet and tilted its head down at the two. "If you will not deliver what was promised then our pact is void. I have no further use for either of you," it rumbled.
Mother gridded her teeth. "This was never about Mankato, was it?!"
The spirit's jaw grinded again in a chuckle. "Did you actually think I cared about the actions of some mortal man?" it spat. "Intentional or not, his sins are grave, but such things are hardly of my concern. That the man should be in possession of such an exquisite Medium, however…"
The sky grew dark over the clearing as more clouds coalesced in a slow, pale spiral, the rock directly beneath it's center. A low peal of thunder sounded, now closer than the last. A taste of metal filled their mouths.
Father clawed frantically at his legs. "I-I can't move! Get out of here, please!" he begged.
"The Medium is doubtless not far. Even you wouldn't be foolish enough to risk the safety of someone so precious, but no matter, if you will not deliver, then we are done here." The spirit rose and lifted a thin hand towards the sky. "I can pry all the information I'll need from your corpse."
As the creature brought its fingers together, a blur shot out from the trees, striking it in the head with a pronounced and echoing crack. The spirit stumbled backwards, blindly flinging its arm out in the direction of the projectile's source. In the span of an instant, miniscule threads of electricity flickered down from the clouds, converged on the rock, and leapt forward into the brush as a blinding flash of light and a deafening boom.
Mother and Father shook the ringing from their ears as another blur shot out from the trees, this time connecting squarely with one of the creature's arms. It recoiled, stunned from the strikes and its own sudden exertion. Mother was suddenly aware of a figure standing beside the clearing, its presence almost seamlessly blending into the surroundings. It held a bow, another arrow already nocked and trained on the target.
"Hotah!" Mother yelled.
Uncle stepped through the trees to the edge of the clearing. "Are you two alright?" he shouted to Mother and Father, his eyes not straying from the reeling creature.
The spirit steadied itself, groaning and gingerly feeling the the newly formed cracks in its skull and arm. A sickly, purple light oozed from the wounds. Its head snapped towards Uncle, immense fury visible even in its empty eyes.
"What is this? Primitive tools can't—" it began.
Uncle loosed another arrow at the creature, whose skull floated out of the way in response. "Ah. You would weaponize something so sacred," the spirit growled. "I really did expect too much of your kind after all." It mumbled something like the sound of falling rocks and distant thunder, then stood up straight. "Irritating, yet frail all the same," it spat, fixing its gaze on Uncle as it brought its fingers to a curl.
Father looked on, wide-eyed. The quiver at Hotah's hip was lined with unusually decorative fletches. Only six arrows remained. The nocked arrow seemed composed of roughly-hewn wood, tinged with the barest touch of lilac. Father gasped.
"You carved apart a warding piece?!" Father shouted.
Uncle was about to prepare another arrow when his hairs stood on end. A taste of metal filled his mouth. Around the clearing, thin filaments of electricity danced erratically, channeling into the spirit and scattering off of the boulder. Uncle instinctively melted into the foliage and vanished. In nearly the same instant, a fresh bolt of lightning obliterated the trees where he had stood.
Mother called out, but noticed her brother moving swiftly through the remaining wood. The spirit swiveled its head aside as a fourth arrow shot out from the green, missing its mark by a hair's breadth. It was answered in kind with a deafening, blinding crack. The spirit roared, the sound like unto that of thunder or a raging fire. An incandescent filigree wove itself around the spirit as it swept the clearing for signs of the assailant.
Mother struggled to move Father as the fifth arrow shot outward from the opposite side of the clearing. The spirit did not waver, staring the projectile head-on. As it raced toward its mark, the filigree swelled to meet it. The arrow stopped mid-air, luminesced, and burst into flames. With a swipe of a hand at the treeline, accented with an almost melodic chant, a shining arc burst forth from the clouds and crashed into a vast segment of the woods. A spray of wooden shrapnel and soil scattered, leaving the singed form of Uncle among the wreckage. He landed roughly in the clearing with a dull thud and a cry of pain, then lay still.
A sound of grinding stone, a laugh perhaps, emanated from the spirit as it shed its filigree. It gently felt the cracks along its body, which now oozed a substance that called to Mother's mind something like tree sap.
"This all could have so easily been avoided," the it droned, tilting its head toward Mother. "I would have upheld my end of the bargain, yet you have intentionally refused and broken this agreement. I won't regale you with what the consequences of such behavior entail." It turned back toward Uncle. "Now, shall we begin with the iconoclast?"
Uncle's head swam. Then sank. He felt as though he were drowning in the soup of his own scattered thoughts. A warm darkness encroached at the edge of his mind, inviting, insisting in the respite of unconsciousness. Everything was hot. Electric. Of course, he had just been struck by lightning. He was lying on his side, eyes closed. Blazing pain stabbed his body. At least a few ribs were broken, and shard of wood had embedded itself in his leg. Above the deafening ring in his ears, he could hear some facsimile of speech nearby. It was his sister's voice, and another, ancient one.
He cracked an eyelid just barely enough to make out the scene. The spirit was facing him, its hand glittering with sickening, purple light. His sister was yelling, pleading something. He figured that neither of them could tell if he was still conscious— or alive at all, for that matter. He could feel his bow at his side. Hardly daring to move more than a finger, he felt the weapon carefully. It was damaged but still intact. As his narrowed vision gradually sharpened, he could also make out his surrounds in greater detail. Someone moved by the treeline.
As Mother pleaded with the spirit, her words froze in her throat. The stout form of a child crouched just outside the clearing, peering from behind a narrow pine. The spirit's hand fell, and the sparks abated. It had taken notice, turning its back to Uncle.
"Medium," the spirit murmured.
Uncle raised his head, scanning the rubble around him for his arrows, rocks, anything he could use. Only a field of seared wood and blackened dirt lie before him. His eyes darted around, searching for something, even just a single fragment of the warding wood. His gaze locked onto a splinter jutting from the soil just a few yards to his right. It was burnt and dirtied, but colored with that unmistakable lilac. Mother caught Uncle's movement, suppressing an expression of relief. She looked past the spirit and met his eyes, exchanging an look of understanding.
"Wait!" Mother pleaded again, reaching for the spirit.
The being's head snapped toward her with a sickening click of bone. "The chain of fate is taut. I will have what I came for." A slender hand rose, seeming almost to grip the spiraling clouds themselves, as though the entire sky were about to come crashing down on their heads. "What a shame to have to sully such a young mind as hers with the image of your corpse. But this you have brought upon yourself."
The boulder glowed as the clouds descended. Thunder rumbled, lightning cracked, and the spirit's emaciated fingers curled to a snap. Time slowed.
Uncle rolled toward the fragment that lay before him, nocking it into his bow and aiming it in a single, fluid motion. Father rose to a kneel tried to spring forward. Mother stood and charged the spirit with a snarl of defiance etched upon her face, her warding piece clutched like a knife. There was a deafening crash of thunder as blinding light filled the clearing, faintly mingled with a pale tinge of lilac.
The world blurred, the girl's vision wavered, and the dream collapsed.
As the light faded from her eyes, Nahimana awoke for the first time in a century to find herself falling from the sky.
The diffuse light pervading this wing of the Library seemed to highlight the thin veil of dust that hung in the air.
…
drop harry and eric at the noodle shop
explain sightstones (rocks that impart knowledge or memories when touched)
taz and graham check out americana esoterica
…
The shelves in this section called to Graham's mind an image of geological layers; slanted, uneven, and crushed together by immeasurable pressure and time. Their contents contained a dense crowding old books and more obscure forms of literary media. Despite the tight press of the books against one another, empty, mishappen pockets filled the shelves at random intervals. The shelf the four of them stood next to now had a large gap in its books wider than Harry was tall. Within the gaps, singular books floated, unmoving. In the far upper reached of the aisle, the stonelike layers of books gave way to empty shelves.
…
"That's clever," Graham said, approaching the wall. "Look at this." He trailed a finger from the large gap on the shelves in one row to the empty space on the next. They lined up almost exactly. A few odd books jutted out of place. Graham's eyes focused on the rows extending outward from each of these shelves. More gaps, expanding the void between the books.
"It's a cross section," Graham said, intrigued.
Taz swept her gaze around. "Artistic installations like this are commonplace throughout the Library."
"It's more than that. There's a definite shape, but…" he trailed off, tilting his head as he studied it. He ran to the end of the aisle, moving back and forth to get a better idea of the structure's overall shape. He looked puzzledly at it. "I know this shape."
She glanced at him. "I thought you'd never been inside the Library before now."
Graham's expression changed as he continued to study the shape of the void. "This isn't something exclusive to the Library." He looked toward her, a glint of enthusiasm in his eye. "It's Yellowstone! Or a part of it at least. Look at the shape of the gap, the Library recreated the caldera's magma chamber!"
Taz raised an eyebrow, turning around the rows of books. "I suppose that makes sense. Americana Esoterica, after all. The geology would play no small part in the history of a region as mythologically dense as this."
"If we're standing in a lower section, then the higher reaches of this wing possibly detail a topographical map of the surface as well! And this place is massive, if we keep going relative east or west could we reach other bodies of interest, I wonder?"
"Don't get carried away, we still need to locate the Way around here. Why do you recognize the shape of a magma chamber, of all things, anyway?"
Graham straightened. "I work for th–" he paused. "Worked for the Foundation's Geological Division. We've been studying an anomaly in the area for years. It was my primary assignment, so I'm intimately familiar with the whole region. And if this model is as accurate as I think it is…"
Graham gestured for Taz to follow, threading his way across more rows of shelving, eventually coming to rest near the middle of the cross-section. Off-center in the gap hovered a gnarled chunk of basalt barely the size of Graham's fist. Etched runes crawled over the item's surface as though alive, alight with a faint crimson.
"Since I'm officially no longer with the Foundation, I can dispense with secrecy protocols at this point. With the leaks you Serpent's Hand people have gotten of the SCP Database, I'm sure you know what we're looking at."
Taz eyed the stone. "scp-4997," she said in a low tone.
Graham nodded solemnly. He stared, tilting his head. "I'm sorry, I have to nitpick for a second. The diagram has its location above the chamber floor, but its actually lying dormant on the floor of the cavern itself. A tiny detail, I know, but this has been my life's work for the last decade, so give me some leeway."
"Graham."
Taz leaned toward the stone, hesitant to approach even documentation of the beast.
"I mean, it is moving," she said after a long moment.
Graham felt his heart skip a beat. Then another. He forced himself to breathe.
"It's what?"
"The sightstone is moving."
…
"Some major shit is about to hit the fan."
"What is this?"
Nahimana jolted upright and spun around. The woods were empty.
"Oh, what a marvelous development," sighed a wordless voice.
Communion, Nahimana recognized. It was not a voice of spoken word. Yet the voice was alien to her. Whatever spirit had happened upon her was unlike any other she'd encountered before. To further complicate matters, this one had seen fit to invite itself directly into her mind, no less. It hid itself from her vision. She focused. A crowding of limbs and an emaciated body bled into view like a blurry fog condensing over a still lake.
"Now, child," it hummed. "Please, do hold still for a moment."
White fire lanced through her temples. Nahimana collapsed as a scream ripped forth from her throat. It sounded distant and almost impersonal, as though it belonged to someone else. Purple flared across her vision and a taste of metal filled her mouth. Boney fingers seemed to be clawing out of her skull from behind her eyes. Time dilated, the moments dragged out impossibly.
Spasms of pain wracked her body. Instinct drove steaming water from her body as though trying to flush out the spirit. write more soon yup
She gridded her teeth, forcing the agony back down with a scream of defiance. Water erupted from Finally, the pain withdrew and her vision cleared. She forced down a wave of nausea as the spirit's offensive receded. As she sat panting, she could sense the spirit's exhaustion weighing within her.
"You're resilient, I will concede," it said, it's voice now weak.
….
Nahimana's attention was suddenly pulled to the sky by the sight of a bird. Rather, she wasn't sure what else it could have been. The body was rotund and smooth, lacking any apparent plumes or feathers; the wings were similarly bare, and glinted in the slowly reddening sun. It flew higher than the clouds, flittering between the pale whisps that drifted high above. And to be so clearly visible from such an incredible distance, the thing must be colossal! As she watched, thin streams of cloud trailed behind its unflapping wings. She was well-versed in the ecology of the land, and this creature was yet unlike anything— bird or otherwise— that she had ever seen or even heard of. Something about it was fundamentally alien. The sensation unsettled her.
….
Nahimana stumbled from the trees and onto a strange path of some sort. It was large, nearly a rod and a half in width by a quick guess, and stretched out in a straight line out of sight to her right, curving out of sight abruptly to her left. It was perfectly flat and coated in a type of hard, dark tar. Worn yellow and white lines decorated it at regular intervals. It was a road, though not one like any she'd seen before. It seemed unfit for travel by both wagon or horse, and the surface felt hot and rough against her bare feet. She clutched her shoulder, which still ached from the impact of her earlier landing.
….
"Tisk, tisk," the spirit chided. "Sixty in a forty-five. You would think people would be more careful."
Nahimana sat up, wiping away the pebbles that clung to her skin, her heart still hammering so hard it felt as though it might break from her chest. "What was that?!" she shouted. A smug chuckle sounded.
"The world has changed much and more while you were asleep," it chided. "I know for a fact that you aren't prepared to face it alone. So unless you'd prefer to end up as a corpse on the side of the road, you'll be needing my help."
"Enough!" she yelled, rising to her feet. "I don't need your help!"
"We both know that's as far from the truth as you can get right now."
"I just have to find the others. Hotah, Harry, any of them."
"You don't know what's happened, do you?
A thought began to cross Nahimana's mind, but she crushed it the instant it attempted to form. That was out of the question. That couldn't have been what had happened, she tried to convince herself. Yet she felt her mouth go dry as an unparalleled anxiety hovered just beyond what she would let herself accept as fact. Slowly but inevitably, however, a devastating path of logic unfurled. The thing in the sky, the strange roadway, the confounding machine all shared one horrible overlap.
"How long was I asleep?" Nahimana whispered.
A silence followed, charged with something approaching what she should only describe as pity. Her heart sank.
"You've been buried in that spring for nearly 150 years," it said, quieter this time.
The roar of rushing blood filled Nahimana's ears. The spirit said something, but she didn't hear. She struggled to her feet. The world was out of focus. She felt herself rambling denials.
code: [[span style="font-family:times new roman;"]]