The Phlegmfont - SCP Foundation

Item #: SCP-6248

Class: Thaumiel

Sacrae Causā Prōcēdendae: Holy Site-6248 has been established about SCP-6248. All Xerophyllan pilgrims to this site are to be welcomed and bade to consume SCP-6248-α…

Home.

I was but seven when my family made their fateful journey to the White Phlegmfont of Yvith, the only Holy Site within a year's travel of our home. I stood with my brothers and sisters, seven in all, I the youngest. Our parents were ruddy beneath the blood-red moon, for this was the greatest moment of our lives.

I still remember the scent, sour in the air like old sweat, as we approached that sacred spring upon the hill of Glastonbury Tor. I saw the flowing Phlegm of the goddess, spewing forth from two great gashes in the ground. It gleamed white, even in the pale red of the moon slipping in through a crenellation, even as the faint reflections of candlefire flickered in its pearlescence. I had never seen something so pure and so white before, and to me it seemed truly divine.

One by one, we knelt and we drank eagerly. We had spent most of our lives preparing for this pilgrimage. Her Phlegm was ever so slightly sweet, and thick upon my tongue. I had never tasted such a miraculous flavor before, and I drank heavily and heartily, supping upon the Lady's emissions with vigour. We had long dreamed of it, of becoming sanctified. I heard my siblings similarly throw themselves into the drinking, but I cared of them not; I thought only of myself.

I wish I had hesitated.

Once we had drank our fill, we retired to the dwellings provided by the Fundamentum for pilgrims, where we remained and went to sleep.

In the midst of the night, I woke, and noticed that my family laid not in their beds. I found myself wandering out of bed, eyes bleary, hunting for a lavatory, until I found myself before a Friar of the Fundamentum.

He looked at me stoically. "Piss or shit?" he said.

"Sir?" I asked.

"Do you need to piss or shit?" he said impatiently.

I had no real need to empty my bowels, merely my bladder; our rations had dwindled by the time we had arrived at the Phlegmfont, so I went to piss, and thought nothing more of the question.

When I woke, the red light of the moon still streaming into my chamber, my family had still not returned. I went and shit myself, my stool neither too soft nor too firm.

When I emerged from the lavatory, the Friar awaited me.

I asked after them, my parents and my siblings; the Friar looked at me with pity, and said that they had departed, leaving me as a DeClassus for the Fundamentum. They had been so overwhelmed by the embrace of Yvith, the Friar said, that they had gone to bring stories of the Holy Site to others in the second great leg of their pilgrimage.

I never saw them again.

I was inducted, then, into the Fundamentum's ranks. The Friar taught me himself, alone with a few other foundlings at the Phlegmfont. By my eighth year, I had learned to read and write; by my ninth, I could recite the Holy Bible of The Church; by my tenth, I could speak of the Forbidden Texts.

The Friar was, by all accounts, a wise man, though not too old himself. He was balding, as Friars tend to be, the red light of the moon always reflecting dimly against the grey flesh of his scalp. He spoke with a certain irreverent softness.

"What use have I of this language?" I had asked him my seventh year. "I am but a foundling, one whose parents had no need of. I have nothing in this world."

"You have my kindness," he had said. "You have the faith and duty that the Fundamentum have vested in you. Are those not enough?"

I had not found them enough, for I was a child; but the Friar had raised many a foundling in his day, many a lost soul abandoned by their families after a Pilgrimage to the Phlegmfont. He was endlessly patient.

In that first year, I would watch as other pilgrims came, their large broods in tow, from all across the countryside. I would watch jealously, as rich families, clad in mothsilk, would come with just one or two children and drink from the font — and then leave, intact, abandoning not a single child. I would watch in anguish as some other families, with children numbering greater than ten, would drink of the Phlegm and leave the next moonrise all together. Why had mine abandoned me?

The Friar would watch these families carefully, and he would point them out as they came.

"They have been drinking of the Phlegm for generations," he said. "I knew those—" he pointed at a stout man and his rotund wife — "I knew of them both when they were children. They came here and drank, like their parents and their parents' parents before them."

"How old are you?" I had asked, bewildered. He barely seemed twenty years old; it was hard to imagine that he might even be past forty.

He did not answer me at that time; it would be many years before I learned of the art of Arcana.

The saving grace of my abandonment at the Phlegmfont was that I never felt thirst or hunger. My family had not been wealthy; they had birthed seven of us children, in the hopes that one of us might have a Talent that could become a means to escape subsistence and attain wealth. I supposed at the time that they had abandoned me once because they saw glimmers of potential in one of my older siblings. But my parents had taken the risk of many progeny, and so they struggled to find enough food for all nine of us. We would have to forage mushrooms or eat rats in the roughest of seasons.

But at the Phlegmfont, the Friar let me drink freely with the other Foundlings. I could drink of the spewing of Yvith every day, under his watchful eye. And every time, in the hours of sleeping, he would ask us the same question:

"Piss or shit?"

And in the hours of sleeping I would only ever piss.

There was one night I thought was but a dream for the longest time.

There was another foundling, two years older than I, by the name of Edmond Tarry. We would drink together, spar together, learn together. Yet one night, after we drank of the Phlegm, he seemed rather ill or green. I thought nothing of it until I woke in the night, shaken by his stirrings.

He made his way to the crossroad where the Friar stood, as always, playing somber tunes on his ukelele. He was shuddering and shaking something fierce. I watched him curiously — though my bladder was full, I followed in silence as best I could, my instincts telling me that I should not be seen.

"Sir," he said, nervously.

"Piss or shit?" the Friar asked.

"Shit," Edmond said.

The Friar's normal features of boredom gave way to an emotion I had never seen before upon that grave visage. "Edmond. Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"Can it not wait until moonrise?" the Friar said, a note of harshness creeping into his modulated voice. "Can you not settle your stomach, let the churning abate, perhaps deal with a hardening of the stool?"

"I am quite certain that I cannot," Edmond said, hopping from one leg to the other.

"Ed. Please," the Friar said in a whisper. "Try."

"Sir—" Edmond said — but then there was a great bursting sound, and a sudden rot upon the air, followed by a thick, wet plop as a brown splotch dumped down from Edmond's frock.

The smell, as putrid as it was, was yet also sickly sweet and oddly familiar, and it took me a moment to realize why. In the Holy Site, the Phlegmscent pervaded the air, and I had long since stopped noticing it except when I knelt to drink of Yvith — but now, it was that same scent of her Phlegm yet made wrong, as if left for the flies, the scent of toxic mushrooms torn mingling with the sweetness.

I thought it a dream, for at that moment, I saw a tear drip from the Friar's eye.

"Come with me, Edmond," he said. "We're to get you out of those soiled garments."

I relieved my bladder once they had gone, and returned to our resting chambers.

At moonrise, Edmond was nowhere to be seen. The Friar said that he had been deemed a prodigy, and that he would be attending the Arcana Institute. Never mind that the Arcana Institute only took adults, those who had reached eleven years of age; I was young enough then to dismiss that possibility, and hoped instead to be chosen myself, that I might go at the age of nine or ten instead of eleven.

I would not see Edmond again for a very long time.

On the second anniversary of my new life, the Friar ushered me into his chambers. There, he pressed upon his candelabra and opened a passage to beneath his room, and bade me enter.

It was a private library, lit solely by candlelight. I wondered at first why he had invited me there. I had long since memorized the only book worth knowing, the Holy Bible of The Church. But he pulled a book from his shelf and allowed me to read it.

It was a forbidden text, compiled a thousand years ago, containing stories that contradicted the orthodoxy of the Fundamentum. Stories that could have been the Foundation of a church, in another world. Stories that were similar to the Holy Bible of The Church I knew, yet different.

Stories of a demigod named Jesus Christ.

I asked him which of the stories were true. Whether the Fundamentum's teachings were true, or whether the truth was in the tome before me.

He looked me in the eye.

"If you can't tell, it doesn't matter."

It was not a matter of whether one story was true over the other. It was that there were multiple stories at all. If I were to fight for the Fundamentum, I ought to know that fact. That I would be told a story to goad me to war and glorious battle, but that story might be a fiction. That there were stories hidden in the past, and that they might even be true.

I asked if I could take this forbidden tome with me, and he looked at me with exasperation. Of course I could not. The Phlegmfont was an active pilgrimage site, and if I were to be caught with Heresy, I would be put to the sword. But he told me I could ask to speak with him at any time, and that I was welcome to his library.

I asked if he feared being put to the sword himself.

He smiled. "If I had reason to fear mortality, I would not be Friar Alto Clef."

By my tenth year, I had memorized half of this Forbidden Bible, learned the teachings of this Christ. Though the shape of the teachings and their art was similar to the Fundamentum's, the kindness and mercy were different.

"I come not to bring peace, but a sword," the Christ had said. He had torn down the moneychangers in the temple, cursed a fig tree not to bear fruit. I could only marvel at such power over Life and Death, an art of true majesty.

I would follow these teachings in secret. They were exotic, alien. Divorced from the Fundamentum Bible. In my heart, Christ grew, a spore propagating into a cap. Yet I felt so dirty. Even as this forbidden savior bloomed in my heart, I drank heavily of Yvith's Phlegm, devoured it, and grew strong on the captured divinity of the Fundamentum.

I honed myself in that year, both in body and mind. I memorized the cantrip-mantras of the Fundamentum, and learned its Fighting Forms, both of the Sword and Unarmed. I was destined to become a Phlegm Trooper, to fight the hordes of Evropa and keep Xerophylla safe; but to become truly the best of the best, the elite of the elite, I would have to be at the top of my classes at the Arcana Institute.

In those days, I romanticized the Arcana Institute. I always had, from my childhood in abject poverty. The Arcana Institute was the proving ground for the Pale Kings, where children transformed into Artificers capable of rivaling the natural power of Witches. It was whispered in the hometown those who studied at the Arcana Institute learned to stop disease, reverse the decaying of the mind, even resurrect the dead. They became miracle workers, capable of shifting the fate of the world.

I know that now to be a lie, of course — if Arcana was so powerful, the world would not be as dire as it is. But then, I wished to become strong, powerful enough to master everything the Arcana institute had to offer.

There were four Classes at the Arcana Institute. As a Phlegm Drinker, I was naturally destined for the Phlegm Class, where I would focus on strengthening my body, embodying Cold Reservation. The other three classes were the Blood Class, masters of the Social Fire; the Choler Class, those who were Burning Hollow; and the Bile Class, who brought the Sorrow Fall. But my course had been set ever since I was seven years old, and I did not think to fight it.

And yet it bothered me. I would go to the Arcana Institute, study the ways of the Alchemist, Arcanist, Artificer, and Alterer, learn the Four Humors and Four Schools of Mysticism — yet in my heart I did not believe. My heart belonged to another. To Jesus the Annointed, Born in Bethlehem, in a desert long since sunken beneath the waves. I wondered if I could truly harness the Reserved Chill, if I believed in something else.

Jesus, it seemed to me, was powerful in a way that the Arcana Institute was not. The Social Fire could abate disease; the Burning Hollow could allow the mind to function even if memory was missing; the Sorrow Fall could animate corpses and let them shamble mindlessly; but this was not true healing, nor true resurrection. That power alone was reserved for Christ. To me, Christ seemed like a far more powerful Arcanist and Alterer than anything the Arcana Institute could offer.

It got so bad that I even considered recusing myself, refusing to attend the Arcana Institute. But I knew I could confide in Friar Clef. I came to him, the fortnight I expected to receive my acceptance, as he drank from the Phlegmfont.

"Sir," I said. "Are you well acquainted with the teachings of Jesus?"

He stood up and wiped his mouth, a misty and distant look in his eye. "Ah, Jesus… a man who would turn down all the kingdoms of the world. Such strength of will. I truly admire it, truly."

I did not recall that story, but paid it no mind.

"I'm beginning to think, sir," I said, "that I cannot continue as I am. These teachings of Christ and my draughts at the Phlegmfont — they tear me apart, pull me in two different ways. How can I follow both?"

He mulled it over, falling deeper and deeper into thought.

"Tell me," he said. "Do you know of how Christ met his first end?"

"He was impaled upon a crucifix after betrayal," I said. The words meant little to me; I had no point of reference.

"A crucifixion," he said, "is among the worst ways the ancients knew to execute someone. Reserved for the lowest of the low. A gruesome, excruciating, public death, meant to discourage others from following the path. The victim would be rendered naked and humiliated before the eyes of the public, beneath the moon. A punishment for slaves and traitors. A slow death, left to bleed out before them all, or perhaps suffocate under their own weight."

"But what is it?" I asked. "How is such a punishment inflicted?"

The Friar had spoken of suffering, of how one would die, but not of how one would kill.

"Well, that is the most curious part," the Friar said. "They would be nailed by the hands and the feet to a cross."

And he raised his hand, slowly, and my eyes followed to where he was pointing.

Beneath the ruddy moon, I saw the Phlegmfont of Yvith for what it truly was for perhaps the first time:

One long gash upon the ground, and another that crossed it. Just the size upon which to slay a man.

And we knelt and drank of Christ.

On the morrow, when we left for the Arcana Institute, I carried Christ in my heart, my blood, and my bones.

SCP-6248

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