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

Hecatoncheires Cycle Hub

Iona held a cup of tea, staring at the closed file sitting on her desk. Her free hand on the Manila folder’s clasp. On the front of the folder the words “SCP File Review and Classification Committee” were stamped in red. She sipped the tea, grimacing as she noticed it had cooled. The Director stood from her desk and looked out the window onto Site-91’s courtyard lit by weak autumn sunlight.

A knock sounded from her door, then another. The door opened. Iona continued looking at the hedge maze across the courtyard.

“Sorry, Director. Dr. Rossi is on the line again, wants to know if you’ve had a chance to review the file?”

“No, Julie, I haven’t.”

“What should I tell her?”

“To stop calling.”

Her assistant stared for a moment before recollecting herself and closing the door quietly. Iona turned and looked back at the file. She could use a drink.

Special Containment Procedures:

SCP-6520 is neutralized and does not require further containment efforts.

► Archived Containment Procedures ◄

►Close File◄

The city of Târgoviște is to be evacuated. Containment forces are to be stationed within the city to reduce the expansion effect of the anomaly.

Description:

SCP-6520-A was an extradimensional space located outside baseline temporal reality which intersected with the northeastern portion of Târgoviște. The anomaly consisted of approximately 200,000 square meters centered around Parcul Chindia1, depicted in the image below.

SCP-6520-B.

Physical objects – including individuals – that attempted to cross the boundary of SCP-6520-A degraded at an exponentially elevated rate due to increased entropic decay. This boundary was found to be expanding by approximately one meter per hour at all points except SCP-6520-B.

SCP-6520-B was a portal from baseline to SCP-6520-A, housed in the Turnul Chindiei2 and was the only known safe entrance to the interior of SCP-6520-A. Entering the tower shifted a subject from baseline reality to the extradimensional space of SCP-6520. While within the anomaly, agents reported a heightened sense of generalized anxiety. No lasting anomalous effects have been observed after an individual exited SCP-6520-B.

Above the crown of the entrance arch was a message painted in human blood, in Daevite script, roughly translated to “Do not fear the bloodletting, fear those holding the athame.”3 The blood showed no signs of putrescence or dehydration, despite the time having passed since placement.

The interior of SCP-6520-A contained more space than the dimensions of the anomaly would allow and housed numerous stone structures theorized to be a temple complex. These structures were built with stone block and simple mortar, the most recent of which were carbon dated to +/- 300 years prior to the present.4 The structures showed significant degradation inconsistently across the complex – some of the buildings appeared to be freshly constructed, while others were in ruins.

Given the nature of the message written above the door in SCP-6520-B and the architectural style of those structures, it is theorized that SCP-6520-A represented a timeline in which the fall of the Daevite Empire never occurred.

The anomaly was discovered on 19 September, 1993, when a resident of Târgoviște accidentally drove a small sedan through the boundary, leading to the vehicle’s partial dissolution. The driver was not found. Foundation forces were alerted and Director Varga authorized operations in the area, locking down the city and evacuating an area one mile in diameter around SCP-6520-A.

Project Hecatoncheires Briefing – Site-91

19 September, 1993 – three hours after discovery

Director Varga: Senior Researcher Jocasta Rossi will have ultimate command on the ground but Captain Rashid al Hasin will have tactical command over MTF and security personnel. Initial reports indicate a new city is overwriting the reality of that portion of Târgoviște, and represents an alternate reality. Mr. Euboea and his forces will cordon off the area and prevent the anomalous bubble from expanding and further impacting the city. Security forces have already begun evacuation of the city, under cover story of biological weapons.

Varga: Let’s make this clear. We have no indication what the source of this anomaly is, but if it is an action by the Daevite matriarch5 then we will capture and take her into containment.

Agent Rebekah Douglas: And that’s enough for you? This is the second attempt to rewrite reality in two weeks.

Varga: Neutralization is not an option unless I give the green light. She is a resource of untold historical and biological data. We are the Secure Contain Protect Foundation. We are not in the business of justice or vengeance. That’s an order, Agent.

Captain al Hasin: Excuse me, Director, but can we trust the anomaly?

Varga: You mean Euboea?6 No, you can’t. But we’ve reached an agreement with his organization and for the moment, we want the same thing. The Matriarch is an active threat to his existence. This is a trial run, we evaluate his effectiveness in the field. Any other questions?

[No other members of the meeting raise their hand.]

Varga: Right. Get out there, and let’s contain this anomaly. I grew up in Târgoviște, and I’ll be damned if it’s erased from the face of the Earth.

Initial reconnaissance of the area within SCP-6520-A revealed signs of recent habitation: meals abandoned in course of consumption, writing instruments left atop vellum mid-sentence, etc. No living entities were observed within the anomalous space.

After MTF Beta-777 (“Hecate's Spear”) secured the area and performed a structure-by-structure sweep, Euboea and his acolytes attempted to utilize thaumaturgy to reverse the expansion of the anomalous boundary. Their attempts were only partially successful, resulting in a slowing of expansion but not complete remission.

Investigation of SCP-6520-A

Date: 19/09/1993 @ 11:00 local time.

Personnel present: Dr. Jocasta Rossi, Agent Rebekah Douglas, MTF Beta-777 Sergeant Maria Waltham

[Rossi, Douglas and Waltham enter the tower containing SCP-6520-B. Douglas stares up at the message written above the doorway. She drags a chair over and stands atop it, placing her hand on the message.]

Rossi: Get down from there!

Douglas: Give me a second.

Rossi: We don’t know what countermeasures or anomalous effects were used in that message.

[Douglas closes her eyes for a moment and then pulls her hand away, wiping the blood from her palm on the wall.]7

Douglas: She did this.

Waltham: The Matriarch?

Douglas: Yes. Within the day at most.

Rossi: Then that’s confirmation of her involvement, good. But you’re on thin ice, Agent. From here on out, you listen to orders, or I will send you home.

Douglas: Understood.

[The three pass through the tower and emerge into SCP-6520-A proper. The sunlight is a different tone from outside the dome, roughly consistent with sunset. The tower exits onto a small plaza surrounded by various temple buildings made of stone. There is a small ziggurat and a domed building, with several other nondescript structures. In the center of the plaza is a fountain ringed by fig trees. The fountain’s statue is made in the likeness of a woman in flowing robes holding a stone knife to the sky.]

[Rossi walks to the ziggurat and begins climbing the steps. The others follow. The structure rises fifteen meters from the ground and is topped with a stone sacrificial table, with furrows carved in its surface. An obsidian athame, intricately dressed in gold and silver at the hilt and wrapped in leather lies on the surface of the table. Fresh blood covers the knife and table, but no cadaver is present.]

Waltham: Where is everyone?

Rossi: No idea, this all feels unfinished.

Douglas: What do you mean?

Rossi: Some of the buildings are rotting, some are brand new. There’s evidence of people everywhere, but no actual people present.

Waltham: What are you suggesting?

Rossi: This is a ontokinetic anomaly, right? It’s rewriting reality and trying to establish an alternative timeline like SCP-140 does. But it’s crumbling.

Waltham: Like with the other ritual?

Rossi: Right. Something interfered. Or the ritual failed somehow. Maybe.

[Douglas approaches the stone table.]

Douglas: [To Waltham] Do you feel that?

Rossi: Reports are consistent with heightened anxiety.

Douglas: Not that.

Waltham: What are you feeling?

Douglas: A pressure. Getting worse the further in we go. She left this for us.

Waltham: Why?

[Douglas shakes her head. She reaches down and touches the blood.]

Rossi: Goddamnit, Douglas.

[Douglas recoils almost immediately, and retches. Waltham catches her and supports her weight.]

Douglas: It’s nothing.

Rossi: What do you mean?

Douglas: No one is holding the knife, no one is being cut on. But there’s still blood.

Rossi: Unfinished.

Douglas: She’s here somewhere.

Rossi: Let’s move on.

[Douglas moves to follow the other two down the steps but then turns and picks up the athame, slipping it into her back pocket.]

[The three progress through the complex, moving north away from the domed structure and approaching a wide open plaza with hundreds of wooden poles with a horizontal bar attached at each skyward point. Each cross bar has a human cadaver strapped to it by the wrists. The cadavers are in various stages of decay.]

Douglas: Guess we found the residents.

Rossi: No, I don’t think so. Some of these are recent, but most have been hanging for a while. But I don’t understand the significance.

Waltham: They’re like sky burials.

[Rossi nods. Douglas looks around at the bodies.]

Douglas: Sorry? Help me out here.

Rossi: Sky burial is a Western colloquial term for a form of excarnation, where the deceased is left out in the elements to decompose and be eaten by scavenging animals. Some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism practice this, as the body is nothing to be preserved – because the physical existence is transitory. But this, feels wrong.

Waltham: Why?

Rossi: The Daevite religion is almost completely oppositional to the tenets of Buddhism. The Daevites revered the physical plane. Life was everything to them. We’ve never found any conceptual evidence of an afterlife in their religion. Everything was about the now, the life on Earth. It's where the blood and the horticulture overlap.

Douglas: Right, I was reading about this, they worship something called the Font.

Rossi: The source of life. But that’s what I mean, why do this to the bodies if they don’t even believe in the spirit? Life was anything but transitory to the Daeva.

Waltham: Maybe these aren’t Daevites.

[Douglas leans in close to one of the corpses.]

Douglas: Is it just me, or are some of these in MTF tactical gear?

[Waltham and Rossi look around. Waltham nods.]

Waltham: Heavily degraded but definitely tactical gear.

Douglas: Fuck.

Rossi: What?

Douglas: For a second, I thought…

[Douglas is staring at a female corpse, only partially decomposed.]

Waltham: It almost looks like Captain Zadeh.

Rossi: It can’t be.

Waltham: It isn’t. This place is just messing with us.

Douglas: This place or someone?

Dr. Rossi: Let’s keep moving.

[Douglas stares at the hanging corpse for a few minutes, then turns to follow the other two.]

[Dr. Rossi approaches the domed temple building visible across the square from the ziggurat, stopping on the threshold to look up at the arched doorway. Waltham slips past to clear the area within the temple.]

Douglas: So, if the pyramid is for sacrifices, what’s this for?

[Rossi shrugs and walks into the temple. Inside is a large chamber housing a fountain built into one wall. The fountain is six meters tall and features a woman holding a knife and a sapling.]

[Douglas runs a hand under the water pouring from a spout at the woman’s feet, flowing into a large basin forming the base.]

Douglas: You’d think they’d use blood.

Rossi: They worshipped life. Blood and water both represent life.

[Waltham walks back into the chamber, slipping her carbine’s strap over her shoulder.]

Waltham: Structure’s clear.

[Both Rossi and Douglas still look towards the fountain. Waltham circles the room and stops suddenly.]

Waltham What the fuck?

Rossi: What is it?

[Waltham points at the curved walls circling the chamber. Frescos adorn the wall. A tower surrounded by mist with hundreds of humanoid entities made of plants and mud, massed to attack. A battlefield with a ruined temple in a desert. A ruin on a grass plane. A warehouse surrounded by the same humanoid entities.]

Douglas: Wait…is this?

[Waltham nods. She begins taking pictures of the frescos.]

Rossi: These are all missions Beta-777 has been involved in.

Waltham: [Pointing at the humanoids.] Missions we ran against the Daeva. Even if we didn’t know it at first.

Rossi: What is this?

Douglas: It’s a honey trap.

Rossi: Then what’s th–

[An explosion to the west interrupts Rossi. The radio begins transmitting.]

Captain al Hasin: [Transmitting] This is a mandatory evacuation order for all Foundation personnel within the anomaly. This means you, Dr. Rossi.

Rossi: What’s happening?

al Hasin: We’re being attacked. Now move!

[All three rush back towards the entrance of the anomaly, where Captain al Hasin and a squad of MTF Beta-777 are defending the tower against a wave of humanoid entities carrying stone knives and axes. The entities are naked but clearly anomalous, made of fibrous material and mud.]

[Euboea wades into the stream of entities, ripping an axe from one of the humanoids and beginning to swing in wide arcs. Within moments, dozens of the humanoids are cut in two or sent flying. But for every figure that is downed, ten more fill the space. One of Euboea’s acolytes moves the crowd back with a wall of force, his palms stretched outward and his arms shaking.]

Euboea: Too many! Get back!

[A stream of entities cuts off Rossi’s group from the tower. Waltham and Douglas begin firing their firearms into the crowd.]

[Euboea raises his hand and those entities near Rossi, Douglas and Waltham ignite. The flames flow around the three, staying a few feet away from them, but the heat makes them cringe back.]

[Another of Euboea’s acolytes holds out their hands and creates a barrier to either side of Rossi’s group, allowing Rossi and Waltham to rejoin the Foundation forces defending the tower. al Hasin fires his carbine into an entity that approaches the line of MTF agents, then lowers his rifle.]

al Hasin: Time to go doctor!

Rossi: We’ve barely started cataloguing the anomaly!

al Hasin: Doesn’t matter, we can’t hold here.

[Rossi turns towards the approaching entities. Several hundred are visible rushing towards the tower.]

Waltham: Where’s Douglas?

[Rossi scans her eyes over the square flooding with entities.]

Rossi: I can’t see her.

al Hasin: She’s either down or off doing her own thing like she always does. Time to go!

Waltham: No, we need to find her.

al Hasin: Sergeant, Agent Douglas is unreliable. This wouldn’t even be the first time she has gone off mission during an assault! We’re leaving.

[Rossi continues to stare at the approaching crowd of entities.]

al Hasin: Okay, through the tower, now!

[al Hasin starts dragging Rossi into the tower. MTF forces continue firing into the crowd while retreating. Euboea’s acolytes bring up the rear, creating a dome of shimmering energy holding the masses of entities back as the Foundation personnel retreat.]

SCP-6520-A’s anomalous field faltered and then faded away within moments of the Foundation personnel retreating through the tower. Over the next fifteen minutes, the structures within the anomaly faded and were overwritten by baseline reality revealing the park as it existed prior to the anomaly’s discovery.

Agent Douglas’ body camera was discovered on the roof of Turnul Chindiei during mop up operations.

► File restricted to Alpha-4 level clearance – Director’s Eyes Only ◄

▼ Security Verified ▼

Recovered Footage dated 19/09/1993

[The view from the camera is partially obscured but shows Douglas being carried roughly 1.5 meters above the ground, ascending a circular stone stair for approximately two minutes. Explosions and live fire can be heard, muffled as if through walls. The view upturns and then rights itself as a pair of humanoid hands covered in moss and mud straighten Douglas’ shoulders as she leans against something. The camera does not move for nearly a minute, while further explosions and gunfire can be heard louder than before. The camera is pointed at the parapet of the roof of the Turnul Chindiei. Smoke is visibly rising from the ground as the conflict escalates below.]

[A desiccated human female figure appears on camera, dressed in a red robe and wearing a bronze crown. The figure leans over the parapet, looking down, scoffs, and then turns back towards the camera and Douglas.]

Daeva Matriarch: You’re the one who shot me in Mongolia, right? I thought I recognized you.

[Another explosion roars below and the Matriarch glances back over the parapet.]

Matriarch: You weren’t really who I was looking to reel in. But, I know you’re his favorite little mouse.

[She approaches Douglas and bends down to look at her face to face. Her skin is pulled tight against her skull – graying, emaciated and cracked.]

[Another explosion goes off, followed by more gunfire.]

Matriarch: What did you think you were walking into, mouse? Did you think I drew up a forgotten homeland, and so poorly as to not bring any souls with it?

[The Matriarch slaps Douglas across the face, jostling the camera a little. She turns and leans over the parapet.]

Matriarch: I know, you can’t move, it’s for the best. You’re the bait now. [Sighs] I have no one to talk to about any of this now, with Leonid gone. I was never much for military tactics, that’s what the Russian was for. But then you had to kill him. Your company of fools hounding me, and now you’ve joined with the slug-god’s minion. Mongolia, Greece, Russia. You’re like ants.

Matriarch: Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch your whole society crumble? To watch some thing come down from the sky and vaporize all you’ve tried to build back up? The slaves revolted and we lost so much, but I was trying to hold what we had together. And then it came, with its “son.” Just two beings reduced my army to ashes. Ten thousand kubikir, another five thousand slave warriors, endless grass children. All gone. I think they must have thought me broken, leaving me alive that day. So I hid, down the centuries, constantly crawling towards you. Never waking until Leonid found me.

Matriarch: I’m the last, so far as I know. All I want is for my people to survive, not bound up in the dust. Is that so much to ask for? What would you do if your people were gone and you could bring them back? Would you let field mice scare you away, just because they invented guns and explosives in the time you slept?

[She shakes her head as she looks down on the skirmish below.]

Matriarch: Look at them. Hundreds of my grass children, and your soldiers haven’t had a single casualty. And where did he go? I swear I just saw him down there. All his little hybrids running around down there with your soldiers and he’s nowhere to be seen.

[The Matriarch approaches Douglas again, crouching down in front of her. The video footage begins to distort for a few seconds, leaving an oil slick effect on the footage from this point onwards.]

Matriarch: Time to cut my losses, this was never going to work. It was worth a try, but at least it’s not a complete waste.

[The Matriarch reaches for a stone dagger in a leather sheath on her belt. As she pulls the knife free, Douglas lurches forward and stabs the athame into the Matriarch’s side, just below the ribs. The blade comes away slick with viscous brown fluid. She quickly punches the blade into the Matriarch’s side four more times. The Matriarch screams and pushes away. Douglas slumps over, weakly trying to right herself.]

[The Matriarch holds a hand to the wounds in her torso, bent over with pain.]

Matriarch: You hurt me, mouse. How did you do that? How are you even moving?

Douglas: Rip your throat out…

[The Matriarch stops moving and stares at Douglas with narrowed eyes.]

Matriarch: What are you?

Douglas: Gonna eat your heart, you bitch.

[The Matriarch backs away from Douglas and slides the knife back into its sheath. Douglas is still trying to clamber to an upright position. She has not let go of the athame.]

[The Matriarch turns and walks off camera. The sound of footsteps receding is heard over Douglas’ tortured breathing.]

Douglas: Come back…

[Douglas slips and lands on her side, her breathing ragged. The oil slick effect to the footage dissolves, and for a few moments the camera is shaking with Douglas’ breathing. Distant gunfire is heard below as the dome of unreality begins to shrink against the sky and skyline of temples within SCP-6520. A figure steps into view and lifts Douglas to an upright position. She tries to stab with the athame, but her arms are quickly pinned to her side.]

Euboea: Relax, I’ve got you.

[He grasps the body camera and throws it to the ground. Euboea picks Agent Douglas up and puts her over his shoulder, sliding the wet athame into his belt, and walks off camera. The anomalous effect continues to shrink until the skyline vanishes and baseline reality is restored.]

End Log

At time of writing, Agent Douglas has not been recovered.

Iona closed the file and pushed it away from her across the desk. Julie popped her head into the office.

“You want another cup of tea, Director?”

“I’ll take some slivovitz, if you have some.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

Iona laughed, stood up and walked to a bookshelf next to the desk. She took down a bottle nestled in amongst the books, along with two shot glasses. She put them down on the desk and poured one for each of them. Julie picked hers up and held it to the light, letting the amber color shine.

“And what is it that I’m about to drink?”

“Plum brandy, from home. I had Dr. Rossi pick me up a bottle after the operation.”

They each held their glass up and clinked them together.

“So, what are you going to tell Rossi?”

Iona took the file up in her hands, binding it closed with a strap and a small combination lock. She opened her safe and slipped the file inside.

“To forget she was ever in Târgoviște.”

Julie sipped on her brandy.

“Noroc,” Iona said, and then downed the shot.

Hecatoncheires Cycle

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