Talking to Someone Else - SCP Foundation

Hainan Island, South China Sea, March 1943

My feet were swollen from the climb down the mountain. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes as they strained the thin fabric of my well-worn socks. It was a thready beat, hammering against the molded leather of my boots like the skin of a old drum, joined by a chorus of blisters and lacerations that sang in throbbing harmony across my body, amplified by the chill. Even as painful as it was, it was still better to concentrate on that present pain than to linger on the plume of ash and dust from the mountain behind us, and the missing figure in our marching order.

We reached a switchback, and the head of column looped met my gaze as he turned, his mouth set in a grim line of fatigue and disgust. Matthews — the leather-skinned, hard-worn American cowboy — stared at me with dead eyes. Keep up, the eyes seem to say. Don't dare straggle, or you'll get more of us killed. Like you killed Rebekah.

Rebekah Ainsley, holy knight and bare-knuckle boxer, had saved me from the jaws of an undead dragon, just to be killed by it herself, lost in the stone jaws of the immortal beast and a collapsing mountain. If I had been quicker, if I had been stronger-

You cannot allow yourself to think like that, the knife at my side needled.

Why not?

We are at war. Against armies of sorcerers and devils and man. You cannot let yourself falter because of just one death.

The mountain scrub gave way to stunted trees as we headed towards the shelter of the forest below. I kicked a loose bit of shale off the ridge to hear its shatter down-slope. Just one death? She saved me and was killed for it!

And you will in turn go to save others, making her sacrifice worthwhile. I couldn't see it, but I knew the ruby in the knife's pommel pulsed in time with my beating heart. The devil in the blade and I were bound by blood, in more ways than one.

And where does that leave us, if we take it farther? If I were to sacrifice all of the children of my village, to save more of the adults-

Her answer was curt. Then that would be a just sacrifice.

And what about losing your soul, Pramaada? Does your calculus of war factor that in as well?

I felt rather than heard the sneer in her thoughts. You think of war like a child.

And you think of it like a tax collector with an abacus. These are people. Not objects or materiel or money. You can't spend them so easily.

The harsh light of the moon flickered and died as we reached the tree-cover, hiding us from its pale glow. Pramaada was slow to respond. When you see as many deaths as I, their individual worth becomes meaningless. Their sacrifices blend together like a river of red mud.

And when I die, will I become one in the mud?

In an instant, her thoughts turned sweet and warm. My vision blurred and breath quickened as she extended her being into my own to caress my mind in a tender embrace. Of course not. You mean so much to me, Kiran.

The rifle slung across my back rattled as I stumbled over a log, my vision snapping back into focus. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. Thank you, Pramaada.

Pramaada withdrew back to the knife, coiling and curdling. You'll believe me soon enough, one way or another. I'm helping you as best I can. Teaching you as best I can.

I nodded numbly to myself. No one else could hear the conversation play out in my own mind. Thank you, Pramaada.

I tried not to think for the rest of the hike down the mountain side, for fear of another one of her lessons.

We broke for camp near midnight, a few kilometers away from the mountain, many more away from the camp where the majority of the Japanese presence in the region was bivouaced. There was a short argument between al Fine and Matthews about a fire, but early spring chill brooked no argument. There was plenty of dry timber nearby, even with the crust of snow and ice that seemed to cover everything at this altitude. Matthews left to fetch water from the nearby creek, while Fine went who-knows-where and Alstrand stared at their stone runes.

Santo wordlessly started on the fire in the lee of a large boulder, seemingly summoning the sparks with little effort from his flint. He coddled the embers within a small cone of curled bark stuffed with shrubbery, gently blowing air to nurse and let it grow, gnawing and blackening its meal of dead grass and browned leaves, spitting and squalling like a hungry baby.

He shielded newborn embers from the light wind in the air, continuing to feed it puffs of air as it started eating away at the bark cone. His face softened, developing a far-away look and coloring orange and red from the flame as it grew too big for its cradle. Finally, he laid the cone in a square frame of twigs and tinder, setting it ablaze. We stared into its licking, hungry tongues for a while, feeding it twigs, then branches, then logs until it became a roaring fire.

The smoke bent away from the sky and was drawn off into Santo's tobacco pipe, inscribed with Latin and secret Gormogon ciphers. Santo took an impossibly deep breath of the smoke, and exhaled cold mountain air.

He startled me when next he spoke. "Do you know the recipe for gunpowder, Kiran?"

"Ah, no."

"Mm, shame." He took another puff of the campfire smoke. "Six parts sulfur, six parts saltpeter, one part pipevine. The original recipe, anyways. Sure it was refined over the years, using base chemicals instead of herbs and what-have-you, but still. The original. The Chinese invented it, some thousand years ago, eh." He gestured vaguely around us, to the island itself.

"Do you know what pipevine is, Kiran?"

"It's a, ah, medicinal herb, isn't it?"

"Yes. Greeks, Babylonians, Chinese, they were all using it for some remedy or another. Childbirth, arthritis, the plague. Hell, the reason it was used in the recipe was for an attempted elixir of life. Isn't that funny?"

"How so?"

Santo exhaled O-rings of flickering blue haze. His face turned sour. "That this miracle cure, this tiny little flower, could be turned from a life-giver to this." He patted the pistol at his hip, and pointed to my rifle. "And that."

"More potent as death-dealers than ever as medicine, I thinks," came Alstrand from the top of the boulder, where they had been casting their runes.

"Just the way the world is, Ingmar." Santo stared into the flames, his pipe dangling from his lips.

"I would say not." Alstrand crawled down from their perch to meet us by the fire. Their movement was jerky and erratic, twitchy in the way that insects are. Perhaps avoiding the maybe-sos of the future, the accidents, the falls, the one-in-a-millions and once-in-a-hundred-yearses that happen to the unlucky, their vision helping to divine a path down the rock free from any harm. Or maybe after looking into the pool of eternity, the mind is too scarred to function properly in the real world.

They were not any less unnerving up close, even after the many months in their company. Their body was thin and lanky, unhealthily so from many missed meals. Their wispy hair had prematurely turned white, jarring with their face that was at once so young and so very, very old. And their eyes. One a brilliant blue, and the other a glittering stone. The price to pay to see the future, one must cripple their ability to see the present. But even missing an eye, their gaze was piercing in a way that made one feel as though Alstrand already knew the inscription on their tombstone.

Not many people could stand to be near Alstrand for long.

They squatted next to us, the streaks of gold in their lapis eye catching the firelight. From their bag they withdrew a rune, þ, carved into a misshapen piece of chert. "This is thurs. Danger, harshness, suffering." Alstrand placed the rune on a piece of slate. It almost seemed to glow in the night.

They drew a second rune from the bag, ƿ. "This is wynn. Joy. Relief. Good tidings. Such similar symbols, and yet one small change could mean such different things."

Alstrand pointed at my kukri. "Death." Their finger wavered and lanced towards me, stabbing me in the chest. "Life.

"The cycle it goes, the Wheel that grinds down us all. The plow turning soil fertile, the sickle tearing crops to the ground. Ever churning, ever turning. Even the end of days will herald the birth of a new age." Alstrand's face turned to the sky. "Ragnarök. It is near."

Santo cleared his throat. "The witch is right, my boy. Mostly, anyways. Explosives can be used to level battlefields and bring death, or dig a mine and bring wealth to your people. The same substances used to make nitroglycerin can make fertilizer. It's a matter of… perspective. Good can come of war." His face tightened. "In small doses."

I looked back at Alstrand. "And what good will come of this war, Alstrand?"

Alstrand twitched and grimaced. "Progress."

It wasn't Alstrand's voice, but Matthews, a dark figure looming out of the woods, his feet a whisper on crunching snow. He was stooped with a yoke across his shoulders, carrying large buckets of fresh glacier water. He dropped the buckets to the ground, sloshing water making the fire spit and sizzle. "War means progress, Pal." The way his American accent twisted my name made me grit my teeth.

"Seems like it just makes a whole lot of death."

His deep-set eyes were cloaked in shadow, the whites glittering like coins at the bottom of a well. "My people conquered the American Midwest on horses brought to the New World. The Mongols built their empire from the creation of the stirrup. The Civil War was won with steam power, trains used for troop and weapon transport. Gunpowder, flight, diesel engines. Innovations gets us new ways to blow each other up, and war gives us new ways to innovate. Medicine, the wristwatch, stainless steel, those explosives that Santo loves so much, all have their roots in war."

Pramaada purred in the back of my mind. Oh, I like him.

Be quiet.

"The Japanese and the Germans are trying to hit back with magic, because they know we have the technological edge. The American logistics, the British Empire's resources, Russian stubbornness and Chinese muscle. We have that edge because, putting it nice, we are just that much better at war than they are."

He grinned, yellow teeth set in a dark face. "The Axis is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. Trying to use witchcraft to fight basic economics and gravity. That's what our job is, Pal. To remind them of the laws of science and which way is down."

I stared into the fire for a long while. The coals flickered and embers twirled, spinning dancers in lurid saffron on a black stage. "And was it all worth it?"

He set his jaw, and squatted across the fire from me. "How do you mean?"

The village. Their faces. Their guts on the floor. "And at the end of it all, all the fighting and all the death, was it worth it? For the progress?"

The flames spat.

"I am a part of the greatest country in the world. The largest democracy. The healthiest, wealthiest, happiest country in the world."

"I'm sure your murdered ancestors are very proud of you for supporting their conquerors."

I could see a flicker of pain — just for a brief moment — cross his features. "They handed me over to a boarding school. I never knew them, forgot their language and lost my culture. Whatever connection I had to them is long gone." His face hardened again. "But you know yours, and you are disappointing them right now."

"They didn't believe in violence. They were better than me in that regard."

"And so they let the Wheel roll over them. Like father, like son."

I repeated myself. "Was it worth the mountain of corpses to get there?"

His gaze bored into me. "I would be disrespecting those who died to say no."

"And it would be an insult to them to say yes."

He bared his teeth, grin changing to a snarl. "Careful, Pal. Those are some fighting words."

The dragon-bite on my side oozed and burned. They hadn't been attended to yet. They would need to be. "Before I was conscripted, four men were killed by the monarchy. They were not soldiers, they were not rebels, they just wanted to be free from the king's grasp, and they were killed for it. What innovation came from their death?"

The coals glowed. "Democracy. Their deaths will light a fire in the hearts of your people, and they will overthrow your fat kings and pompous lords and ladies and build a democracy in the Himalayas."

"And when the Ranas burn monasteries and beat the monks in the streets, what cause does that serve?"

He set his jaw, eyes gleaming with fire. "Revolution. Enough of this."

I pushed forwards heedless of his warning. "And when villages starve of famine and children's bellies grow round from hunger and the old wither and die like autumn's leaves, what engine does their pain fuel?"

Matthews jumped to his feet and roared, his voice shaking the snow from bare branches. "Progress, Pal, Progress! Their rage and anger and spite and fury and flaming spitting WRATH will power the pistons of progress and their blood will grease the wheels and they will wipe the slate clean and rip the king from his throne and build a shining city upon a hill for the rest of Asia to see! They will take it and they will eat it and they will suffer from the pain and the brutality and the sickness of the powerful until they vomit from the pain and they will vomit until they can't vomit anymore and they will rise to kill your masters, kill your kings and your gods and break that damned Wheel until there is nothing to oppress them."

His knuckles were white, his breath heavy, his eyes manic. "And if you refuse to get your hands bloody and help them climb that better path, you might as well just hand that knife to me."

I stood and drew the kukri, the heavy, bent, ivory blade painted lurid dark colors and looked almost dripping with blood already. "Come and take it, cowboy."

A jackal's smile. Two. One on him, and one on me. "Maybe I will."

Alstrand's reedy voice interrupted us. "There is no breaking the Wheel. It turns and turns, and we are all a part of it, and there is no breaking it."

Matthews spat. "Watch me."

Santo forcefully chuckled. "I don't know about you all, but I am putting a bullet through my leader's skull the second I step foot on the motherland. It may not break the Wheel, but it will give it a good turning." His eyes glittered gold. "The fascista deserves it."

Their interruptions were enough to ease the tension. Not fully, but it was no longer ready to snap. Matthews and I hesitated for a moment, but couldn't find the will to keep arguing. Matthews turned away from me, and holstered the pistol I didn't know he had drawn. He cast a glance at me, and I knew the thought he directed at me. Coward.

al Fine had snuck into the camp at some point and had finished setting up the tents, not bothering to interrupt our argument. Santo reheated half-eaten rations, made poultices and boiled bandages to wrap across my torso and treat my wounds. Alstrand spent much of the time giving me odd looks, a strange expression darkening their face. Matthews sat apart from us as we ate, refusing to say a word the rest of the night.

Pramaada felt distant, even within the confines of my own mind. I thought I disappointed her somehow.

I didn't know why that disturbed me so, or filled me with such sadness.

It was several hours later, and I was still not able to sleep. The forest made noises outside of my tent, creaking branches and cooing owls. It disturbed me.

I rolled over. In my brain I heard a feminine Tch.

I sighed. What, another lecture from you? That I'm not bloodthirsty enough for your liking?

Silence. You have a duty to uphold, Kiran.

Duty to king, duty to country, duty to al Fine and Sergeant Chand and others. What duty are you talking about?

The oath you swore to me in the jungle. The duty of vengeance and bloodshed.

Another comrade died today, Pramaada. Can oaths and death be forgotten for just one night? Please?

There was silence from the knife. Suddenly, Pramaada appeared at my side in a puff of spice and petrichor. Her face was twisted in a show of concern. What's wrong?

One set of muscular arms pillowed her head, and the other set caressed my torso and thighs. I stared through her to the canvas wall and twitched. Stop.

Her hands paused and backed away. I'm sorry.

I… I need to rest. Four months of this, and the end nowhere in sight. When can I stop fighting, Pramaada?

I do not know. For some, the war never ends. That is how it has always been.

That's unfair.

Pramaada pulled me into her chest in a tight hug. She played with my hair and murmured. It never is. But there is no running, my love. There is nothing to do but face it with your head held high.

What if I can't?

You must. She pulled me away and locked eyes with me. For the both of us.

I'll fail.

Oh, my sweet, sweet champion. My brave warrior. Her eyes softened. Never forget, if you fail, if you desert or flee or falter, I will eat your soul, condemn you to a thousand years of Kudmala, and mark you as a sinner for the rest of your lives. And neither of us want that, do we?

No, Pramaada.

Her fingers tightened around my arm, burning like hellfire. Such a good boy. Now, wake up.

"Wake up. Kiran, wake up." Pramaada's face was replaced by Alstrand's, her fingers for theirs, squeezing the blood out of my arm.

"What?"

Their voice was hushed — trying not to wake the others — but still filled with urgency. "Listen to me, Kiran. You must listen to me because you are the only one who can."

I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. Pramaada stirred in the blade. "Alright, I'm coming."

As I made motions to stand, Alstrand put a halting hand on my shoulder. "Just you."

"Just me?"

Alstrand glanced down at the kukri and nodded. I slowly, silently unsheathed it and placed it on my bedroll, Pramaada's protestations fading from ear-shot. Alstrand nodded again. "Good. Follow me."

They slipped out of the tent and I was soon to follow. The fire had dimmed to a lulling flame on a bed of embers, and the air was harsh and chill. Alstrand didn't seemed to be bothered, walking barefoot on the snow with only their undergarments as protection from the elements. We went a ways from camp until we came to a widowmaker — a large tree drunkenly leaning on a small copse — waiting for the right time to fall and cripple the unlucky traveller walking underneath.

"What are we out here for, Ingmar?" I tucked my hands into my armpits and tried not to let my teeth chatter.

Alstrand muttered under their breath, playing with their runes. "The Norns, they speak to me. The runes are their teeth and the stone their lips and where they fall mark their words. They talk of weapons. Light. Power and more. The Germans, they want it but do not understand it. The Japanese as well. The Americans want and understand, and it would be a terrible thing…"

"What do you mean?"

Their eyes were alight with a terrible fire as they seized my arm. "A weapon. A weapon to surpass all weapons. It will tear down cities, ignite the world with fear and fire. The AOI talk of the Veil and of its importance, but this weapon will shatter both. The Americans will try to use it. You must not allow it."

"Ingmar, what is this weapon? Magic?"

Their fingers turned into a vise, their nails digging bloody tracts into my skin. They felt hot, feverish almost, as they continued to to rant. "I do not know its nature, my brothers and sisters in Europe do, but the Americans do not listen to them, cannot listen to them, their minds too filled with magic and science and war for diplomacy to work. Using this weapon…" Ingmar seized, the muscles in their neck bulging and pulsing. "They would bring about the end of days, and a new era of a dead world."

They collapsed to the ground, the snow steaming where they laid. I knelt down and felt for their heartbeat, thready but there. My mind was racing, but before I could decide whether to go back to go back to the camp and get help, Ingmar gasped and sat up.

"Are you alright, Ingmar?"

Ingmar ran their fingers over their face, tapping at their lapis eye. "I am… alive. Dreams of- no, visions of deadly rain and scorched earth and screaming shadows on the walls and…" they shook their head. "Things too terrible to tell."

"Do you want me to get help? Santo has-"

"No." Ingmar held my hand with a death grip. "I am fine. You must not tell a soul of what you heard," they saw my hesitant look. "Not even the blade."

Ingmar opened their bag of runes and selected one — ᛦ — to place in my palm. "Yr. The Yew that Wodin hung himself upon for knowledge. Take this and hold it, and no one will know what you know."

I held the stone. It was unseasonably warm. I tucked it into my breast pocket, over my heart. "Okay."

"Thank you, Kiran." Ingmar stood with effort, and began to limp back to camp.

"Wait, please. Allow me." I picked up Ingmar and cradled them, their body weighing almost nearly nothing. They tried to complain, but the way they shakily made a fist, they weren't up for the task. My wounds protested more, though a combination of the numbing winter air and the warmth of the rune-stone calmed them somewhat.

As I walked back to camp carrying Ingmar, I glanced down to the seer. "Why me? Why not tell Santo or al Fine?"

Ingmar pursed their lips before speaking. "al Fine is pragmatic, utilitarian. If it meant we win she would walk backwards into hell for us. Santo is her opposite. He is too entrenched in his beliefs, too backwards in his thinking. He is liable to agree with the Americans, I think. And Matthews…" Ingmar weakly chuckled. "We know why not him.

"But you…" They paused. "Only fools give power to those who want it."

"Is this because of me and Matthews?"

They studied me with that incrutable gaze. "Partly. Partly your youth, tempered by experience, quenched in fear. You have tasted power, and hate it. You drank deep from the fountain of blood and spat it up. No grand schemes, no loyalty to a higher power. Safe."

I cast my mind to the kukri nestled on my bedroll. "Not entirely safe."

"She only can act on so much, Kiran. Do not let her words fool you. She may be a god, but just a small one. There are more earthly powers to fear in this world than that of spirits and demons."

"Hm."

My feet crunched on rotten snow. "I don't know why you are here."

Their lips quirked. "Ah?"

"Well, Matthews is a patriot. Santo as well, though not quite in the same way. He wishes to free his country by fighting on our side. I imagine Rebekah and al Fine were similar, going to war over their shared sense of duty to their secret societies. But you?"

"Ah." Their good eye turned skyward. "The future is a darkling thing, my dearest. If I were just to gaze into the wyrd and watch the world die without action, what would I be? Collaborator? Traitor? Willful pawn and sycophant? No, I see myself acting, and so I must act. There is nothing else I can do." They looked back at me. "Am I sensical?"

I smiled. "Yes, that makes sense. Thank you."

I trudged on, and we neared camp. It was quiet for a while before Ingmar spoke again. "I was going to wait until morning, but I will tell you now. We head to Borneo next, and it is where I will die. Please take this month to mourn me, and no more after."

They smiled a beautiful, terrible smile. "We have a war to win, after all."

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