Entrance to the cave system where SCP-4140 was discovered.

Item #: SCP-4140

Object Class: Euclid1

Special Containment Procedures: An exclusion zone should be maintained around the underwater entrance to the cave system containing SCP-4140. Members of MTF Omicron-2 "Skippers with Flippers"2 must be kept on standby to guide the transport of personnel into and out of the cave complex. Containment efforts inside the caves are to focus on preventing the further spread of SCP-4140-2. Existing volumes of SCP-4140-2 should be blocked off from the rest of the caves.

▷ Updated containment procedures: Auseuil protocol

▽ Updated containment procedures: Auseuil protocol

To prevent the manifestation of additional volumes of SCP-4140-2, music must be played in the central cave chamber at all times. The musicians must be seated in a circle surrounding SCP-4140. These musicians should be proficient with at least one string or woodwind instrument, but the specific melody played is not relevant to containment.

A provisional underground site with temporary living quarters for containment personnel should be maintained. A total of 15 musicians3 are to be kept on-site, with an additional set of musicians housed on the surface for bi-weekly rotation. This ensemble of musicians is designated Tau-8 "Zann's Violists". Additional Foundation staff must be present to monitor Tau-8's shifts and to watch for obsessive and irrational behaviour, indicative of SCP-4140-induced mania.

Deceased members of Tau-8 should be allowed to continue playing until the smell of decomposition becomes disruptive to other members.

Description: SCP-4140 is a topologically disconnected volume of space located in the central cave chamber of a partially flooded cave complex.4 No matter is capable of passing through the boundary to this volume of space. All forms of energy (kinetic, electromagnetic, etc.) are completely absorbed by the boundary upon contact and never re-emitted. Due to its nature, no information about the interior of SCP-4140 can be gleaned. Its exterior appears to the naked eye as a nonreflective hemisphere with a radius of approximately 6 meters.

Most of the surface area of the central cavern's walls is covered in living biological material, belonging to a single unidentified human male of Eastern European descent. Drilling has revealed that this substance is layered: The outer layer of fat, muscle tissue and blood vessels covers an underlying layer of sinew and cartilage which grows spontaneously from the rock walls. Samples of the walls themselves contain bone marrow and spinal fluid. In certain places, the surface of the outer layer has grown patches of various body parts and organs, such as skin, eyes and teeth. While this material is biologically alive and responds to basic stimuli, it is not believed to be sentient. The entirety of this material is designated SCP-4140-1.

A cave chamber where part of the wall has been displaced by SCP-4140-2.

If at any time there are no string or woodwind instruments being played in the central cavern, volumes of space similar in appearance to SCP-4140 will begin to manifest within the cave system.5 These volumes are collectively designated SCP-4140-2. While similar in appearance, they exhibit several deviations from the characteristics of SCP-4140: Their boundary is diffuse, and all forms of matter and energy can pass into them without resistance. All such matter and/or energy is to be considered irretrievably lost. Nothing has ever exited or been emitted from SCP-4140-2. Objects partially inserted into a volume of SCP-4140-2 and then removed behave as if the inserted portion has ceased to exist. It is hypothesised that SCP-4140-2 constitutes a form of localised reality failure.

The total volume covered by SCP-4140-2 will grow continuously as long as the Auseuil protocol is not resumed. There is no known upper limit to this expansion: The volume of space converted to SCP-4140-2 has never been observed to decrease. When any number of musicians resume the Auseuil protocol, the growth of SCP-4140-2 will begin to slow until it halts entirely. The time this takes is directly proportional to the amount of performing musicians.

It has also become clear that the insertion of living biological matter into volumes of SCP-4140-2 will temporarily halt its spread altogether. This effect lasts longer the more matter is lost, and is further amplified if the organic tissue belongs to a sapient lifeform. Nevertheless, this method of containment is extremely inefficient and may only be considered in emergencies.

Personnel that are assigned to the Auseuil protocol for extended periods (in the order of several weeks) will start to display symptoms of declining mental health and, eventually, anomalous physical alteration. Affected personnel undergo a progression of symptoms, which can be roughly divided into three stages:

First stage:

Onset of irrational and obsessive behaviour, accompanied by an overall drop in compliance with Foundation personnel

Reluctance to cease performance as part of the Auseuil protocol, to the point of ignoring basic needs

Reacting aggressively when removed from the proximity of SCP-4140

Second stage:

Claiming that the music performed as part of the Auseuil protocol sounds "unnatural" or otherwise distorted, as well as insisting that the music can be heard throughout the entire cave system

Vivid hallucinations involving SCP-4140

Personification of SCP-4140-1

Deification of SCP-4140

Third stage:

Displaying controlled alteration of their physique, including but not limited to: contortion of the skin, musculature and skeletal structure as well as rearrangement of internal organs6

Anomalous levels of physical resilience, allowing them to survive the morphological alterations mentioned above

Open hostility towards anyone attempting to disrupt their participation in the Auseuil protocol

In most cases where the affected person is removed from the cave complex while in the first stage, these effects have been observed to fade over time. If they do not fade, the use of amnestics is authorized. All personnel in the second stage are to be redesignated E-class and should be considered permanently unfit for containment duties outside the Auseuil protocol. All personnel that have reached the third stage should be considered lost.

Since it is highly inadvisable to interrupt their musical performance, persons in the third stage will eventually expire due to dehydration, starvation or sleep deprivation. Affected personnel that expire in this fashion have been observed to keep playing, although their bodies will still decompose.

Addendum — Recovered documents: The following journal was recovered from an obstructed section of the central cave, presumably damaged during seismic activity. This side-chamber contained a set of scrolls in the Old Adytite7 language, as well as a withered portion of SCP-4140-1. The scrolls serve as a record of the author's efforts to spread Sarkicism by freeing settlements from the Daevite empire. This makes it one of the only known Sarkic texts recorded before 1200 BCE.

▷ Display translated journal entries

▽ Display translated journal entries

Personal writings of Karcist8 Otrava

What I previously thought to be a mere seaside village has left me quite puzzled. Not only is it ferociously protected by an unusually large force of Daevite soldiers, I have also spied at least half a dozen carts this month alone, which provide the settlement with a steady supply of slaves. Does it perhaps hide some ore mine, where slaves are made to work until they die? We will soon find out. Unbeknownst to the rest, one of the guards has already been made part of my Halkost9. I shall strike from within and without at the same time.

After dispatching all guards in the otherwise abandoned village, I found that the slaves were indeed being brought below ground, into a vast cavernous maze. However, it quickly became clear that these were no mines; Instead, we found a blasphemous subterranean temple where the slaves are forced to be part of an elaborate sacrificial ritual! On my foray into the caves, I observed Daevite priestesses as they cast slaves into an intangible void unlike anything I have ever seen. When I arrived at the heart of the caves, I found that it contained a far larger, immovable nothingness, surrounded on all sides by malnourished slaves who were made to play the flute without pause. When one of the flutists inevitably collapsed from sheer exhaustion, they were immediately dragged away and replaced by another unfortunate soul. I could not allow this travesty to continue, and so after a brief struggle, I imprisoned the Daevite priestesses in the slave holding pens. Most of the newly liberated slaves have fled, while some of them have declared loyalty to me.

I am loathe to admit it, but it appears that the ritual I interrupted was not as senseless as I thought. This morning, I noticed that the intangible blackness outside the main cave had started to spread, almost cutting off our way out of here! One of my advisors did not move in time as the darkness lurched towards her, and the next moment she was gone. This amused the Daevite priestesses to no end, but it also seemed to halt the spread of that emptiness, if only for a while. The mad laughter of the priestesses came to a halt when I started casting them one by one into that all-devouring nothingness. Impulsive though it may have been, it has bought me time to come up with a solution.

I stare at this thing, still surrounded by Daevite symbols written in the blood of slaves, and I see only a gnawing, hungering void, yearning to truly exist. I harbour genuine fear at the fact that it may be more than just another minor god. I talked to one of the more lucid slaves we freed, and they claim that the only necessary part of the ritual is the music. If we can surround this thing, at all times, with the cacophonous piping of the Daeva, it should remain blinded and slumbering. I am glad that I need not feed it more lives, but am I truly forced to return these flutists to slavery? Their duties leave them delirious, malnourished and exhausted; Surely they will not survive this for much longer, especially if we must have them playing at all times. Perhaps my aptitude for Lihakut'ak10 presents me with another solution.

The thing awakened again, sooner than I had anticipated, while I was still engrossed in my meditation. It caught me off guard, and spilled a terrible vision directly into my mind's eye! As I was granted a glimpse beyond its immovable, black veil, I tried to look away, but found that I could not: The more I struggled, the more translucent the boundary became. At first, it looked like a portal to the vast expanses of the cosmos, populated only by the light of distant stars. As I looked closer, however, the stars blossomed into alert, predatory eyes and the vast, undulating darkness surrounding them gnashed wildly with countless misshapen mouths, each lined with razor-sharp teeth. I realised immediately that I was indeed mistaken: This thing, driven by instinct as it may be, was no mindless lesser god. No, in that instant, I saw it for what it truly was: one of the six Archons!

How can our prophet Ion ever hope to commune with such a vast, primordial chaos? Can there truly be any hope of overthrowing the twisted cosmic order?

Just as I thought I had reached the depth of despair, the innumerable eyes of the thing focused on me and it let out an incomprehensible snarl: As I could see it, it too could see me. Its gaze forcibly plunged me deeper into the vision, and before my eyes unfolded a representation of the Archon's terrifying machinations. At the centre of the void, there laid an enormous, half-formed amalgamation of flesh and bone, a serpentlike carcass devoid of all life. As I perceived time to speed up, I saw the nothingness in the cave spreading ever faster, and as it consumed the flesh of our world, the surrogate body grew closer and closer to completion. In the end, the patchwork body sprung to life as it became possessed by the very life-force of our uncaring progenitor, and she strode forth from the cosmic void, freed from her inescapable prison!

When I finally came to my senses, my advisors had already taken up the Daevite flutes to lull the thing back to its slumber. I realise now more than ever that this is hardly a permanent solution. I absolutely must find a way to seal this thing away, from now until the end of time.

It is improper for a Karcist to do this, but I have little choice: I have only my own flesh at my disposal. With my knowledge of Lihakut'ak, it should be possible to contain the Archon without further sacrifices. I will make a Kiraak11 of myself, to ensure there will always be someone keeping this thing at bay. I shall put my Halkost to work on sealing all entrances that I know of. From that moment on, those who stay in this cave shall share in my carnal blessing as we take up our eternal vigil.

The words recorded here will be my last coherent memories. I reject the Daeva's sacrifice of the many for the few, just as I reject the inherent cruelty of life. The true nature of the demiurge lives within us all; Defiance of this nature has always been the only road to kindness. If I must live forever in the dark so that all others may see the glorious light of Ikunaan12, so be it.

Of note is the fact that the dead portion of SCP-4140-1 in the collapsed chamber appeared to have been growing fully developed human bodies on its surface, rather than individual organs. This function was likely interrupted by the cave-in, causing the severed portion of SCP-4140-1 to atrophy.

Footnotes

1. Previously Keter, SCP-4140's object class was adjusted upon implementation of the Auseuil protocol, which drastically increased the reliability of containment.

2. A mobile task force of experienced technical divers, who specialise in traversing complex overhead environments.

3. Three groups of five, with each player expected to perform 8 hours per day in four shifts.

4. The only known entrance to this complex is located under the shoreline of [REDACTED], at ██° ██′ ██.██″ N, ██° ██′ ██.██″ E.

5. The precise locations of manifestation seem to be distributed uniformly throughout the caves.

6. This is generally used for offensive purposes, when the subject is agitated.

7. The spoken and written language of Proto-Sarkites.

8. A spiritual and secular leader among adherents to Sarkicism.

9. Sarkic organisms of varying morphology under the direct control of a Karcist.

10. The Sarkic practice of corporeal augmentation and modification.

11. A living temple fashioned from the heavily modified body of a Sarkite.

12. The Proto-Sarkic paradise, which they believe will be brought about by their prophet, Grand Karcist Ion.