Without another word, her friends led the way into the mansion, 
somehow fitting through a door which was far too small for them. 
The halls were far colder than one would expect even for an 
abandoned house, and there was a suspicious lack of a dusty smell. 
The deeper they went, the more Quarseta felt that there was 
something vaguely... ancient in this place, which was saying 
something given the age of the place itself. Eventually, when 
Quarseta was just beginning to think that they should have reached 
the back of the house by now, the turned a corner into a very 
strange room with a very strange occupant, which would have 
surprised Quarseta very much if she had not been traveling 
alongside a giant lizard and a sparkling cloud of bio-matter. 


The large room looked at first like a very natural part of the building, 
but about half way into the room, the wall seemed to shimmer and 


glowing inside the hole. I'm moving closer to investigate. 

A30: Be careful, watch the radiation. 

A27: At normal background levels back here. Still, that does look like 
Cherenkov radiation. 

A26: Beta emitter? A hunk of thorium or something? 

Yamal control: A29, your neutron counter's beginning to register 
something. Forty, fifty counts per second, not much, but it's 
neutrons. 

Unknown voice: Vasily, Yevgeny, can you hear me? 

A29: What the flying hell is that? A30, are you seeing this? 

A30: Oh my God... 

A26: Is that a person? Not possible, just not damned possible! 
A27: Everybody, check nitrogen levels, this must be nitrogen 
narcosis. 

A29: All of us? 

Unknown voice: Help me, it's getting hard to breathe. 

A29: It's gone? This doesn't make any sense... 

Yamal control: What was that? Who else is talking here? 

A27: | can't explain it, we just saw, well, something here. 

A26: | guess that's why they call it Euclid. Some things you just can't 
get used to. 


Addendum: Previous dives have recorded unintelligible mumbling 
and strange lights, but this was the first time any intelligible speech 
has been recorded. 


Log resumes, / / @0959 

A30: Guys, we've got a visitor... 

A29: Squid! 

A26: Huh. Weird. Keep your distance. 

A27: That's a bloody big one. He must be what, five, almost six 
meters? 

A26: Near to that, yeah. Still, never heard of one attacking 
somebody. 

A27: Noted. Continue investigation. A29, check out that weird husk 
down there, A30, look at that shell, see if you can get me some 
closer photos. It's familiar, somehow. 

A26: I'm going to swim up forward and check out the torpedo tubes. 
A27: Roger. 

Yamal control: How big is that shell? From the photos you beamed 


shift, eventually becoming a room that looked very much like Atanti's 
old room at the Foundation. Standing in the corner of the room was 
a rather short, bony man with reddish-brown skin, a large lump of a 
nose, and a smile that seemed far too wide for his face. The man 
was hunched over a large tube which was attached to several 
electrical cables and poured cold, white smoke out of a couple of 
vents. Smells of metals and old books and cleaning fluid all fought to 
control her nose at once. A coarse, whistling, wheezing sound filled 
the room, and it took her a moment to notice it was coming from the 
man. 


"Greetings, rru-Kirg!" Atanti bellowed. 


"Ah, Atanti. It's been a while," the strange man wheezed out through 
his teeth. "And Edrisek too. Can't say | know the human though. 
Strange, most of them would be running in terror by now." 


"Look deeper, Evuruct," Atanti replied. 


The man squinted at Quarseta for a moment. "Hm. Most 
remarkable. Can't quite say I've read of anything like it before. Well, 
come in, see if you can find a comfortable spot along the clutter." 


The three travelers began to navigate through the piles of equipment 
and books, tsa-Fanu and Atanti seemed to be very focused on not 
crossing into the second half of the room. 


Quarseta decided that the best greating she could give was a 
compliment. "It's a very nice house, Mr... uhh..." 


"Hm? Oh, where are my manners? Evuruct-rru-Kirg, at your service. 
And yes it is rather nice, isn't it. From what I've learned, this 
particular kind of house was used to represent wealth and power. Of 
course, it didn't come with the laboratory, had to add that in myself 
with an interesting phenomenon known as a Way. Fascinating, the 
things there are to learn in this world." 


Atanti grunted. "Hmf. Still nothing compared to the old meeting halls 
of Etcopis." At Atanti’s statement, tsa-Fanu took on a noticeably 
more nostalgic curvature. 


"Perhaps that's true," Evuruct replied,"but when in Rome, do as the 
Romans do. That's another piece of knowledge that this place has to 
offer. Anyway, | presume that you came to inquire what | knew about 
this child's condition. If that's the case, then I'm afraid that | haven't 
the slightest clue how her concept of being was able to pass over 
without physical form." 


"That's not why we came, Evuruct,” Atanti replied gravely. 
"Why then?" 


"Simply put, we are going to return home, we were hoping that you 
might have some idea of where we should begin." 


Evuruct's smile shrank by a few inches. "I'm afraid that it's not that 
simple, Atanti." 


"Oh? Why not? Surely if there was a gateway leading to this world, 
there's one leading to ours as well." 


Evuruct let out a deep, wheezing sigh. "Atanti, why do you think that 
I've gone to such lengths to recreate the life | once had here?" 
Everuct gestured to the cryotube. "Why do you think that I've 
become so settled into this world, instead of using my resources to 
get home? I've done the calculations, and we're in exactly the same 
spot that we would be if we were home. There is no gate, Atanti. 
The world's changed, and we are the leftover relics." 


"No. You must be wrong, Evuruct. This place cannot be home. Our 
world is still there, and we will find a way back, whether you help us 
or not." 


"You always were stubborn, Atanti. It made you a good protector 
and traveler, but a poor listener. Very well, go and find this gateway 
back home, I'll tell you now that it's an unreachable goal. If you need 
anything later on, you know where to find me." 


Atanti nodded his large snout and thanked Evuruct for his openness. 
For the next several hours, the three elders exchanged stories of the 
old days; victories, exotic lands, cherished memories. Every now 
and again, Quarseta would chime in with a story she had read or a 


piece of trivia that Evuruct found interesting. At the end of the night, 
the three travelers thanked their host for his hospitality and began to 
leave. 


"Quarseta, would you stay behind a moment? There's something | 
need to discuss with you personally," Evuruct called after her. 


Quarseta looked up at Atanti who, after a moment of deliberation, 
nodded his consent. 


"Yes, rru-Kirg?" 
"Quarseta... are you someone who can be trusted?" 
"Yes, | believe so." 


Evuruct nodded his bulbous head. "Good, good. Atanti can be a bit 
rash at times. Makes it difficult to talk sense into him. But... he 
listens to you. Will you at least try to talk some sense into him?" 


Quarseta took a moment to think. "No. He's made up his mind, 
anything | do will only make this trip harder, foolish or not." 


Evuruct nodded. "You are a good companion. Well, before you 
leave, there's one thing that | should still give you." 


The old scholar reached for a nearby desk and picked up what 
looked like a small clockwork egg. He placed it in Quarseta's hand 
and wrapped her fingers around it. It was cold as ice, but she could 
still feel small bits of mechanical life whirring and clicking inside it. 


"Regardless of the wisdom or lack thereof behind this journey, | can 
guarantee that it will not be safe. In your time of need, smash this 
device on the ground." 


"What will it do?" 


The small man's smile grew wider. "That will depend on the time of 
need. | will, however, ask that you not tell your new family about this. 
Now go, they're waiting." 


Quarseta hesitated a moment before slipping the Egg in her pocket 


and running off to join her companions. 
"What was that about?" 
"rru-Kirg wanted me to try to talk you out of this. | told him no." 
"Was that all?" 
"Yes." 
"Well, then," the dragon smiled, "let's be off!" 
A world found, also unknown. 


An Old Man with no more tears to cry. 
A door closing. 


« A World's Legacy | HUB | Pooling Our Resources » 


Pooling Our Resources 


Red pools at night, 
Travelers’ delight. 
Red pools at morning, 
Travelers take warning. 


Incident 053/682/1 129/354 - 1: 

On 12/9/20 , at 21:07 hours, escaped anomalies 
SCP-053, SCP-682, and SCP-1129 arrived at Area-354 
and breached containment of SCP-354. Escaped 
anomalies proceeded to enter SCP-354. Combined 
exposure to SCP-053 and SCP-1129 caused widespread 
panic among the staff of Area-354. 


Quarseta began to relax for the long trip as she felt the form of 
Atanti below her, stretching out to form a long neck and streamlined 
fins, and protected above by tsa-Fanu's twinkling lights. She still 
wasn't quite sure how Atanti had found this place, but she could still 
remember the joy on his face a few days back when he burst into 
the cavern they had turned into a house, saying something about 
singing with a star and having possibly found a way home. Whether 
or not they were headed home, the place below all this redness had 
a definite sense of unearthliness, even from this far off. 


Once they arrived, the first thing that Quarseta noticed were the 
differences. The sun here was huge and bright red, as if someone 
had set the pool they were standing in on fire and spread it across 
half of the sky. The land around her seemed perfectly flat, but the 
horizon still seemed too close. There was so little wind that she 
almost wondered if there was any air at all. The landscape wasn't 
the only thing that had changed; Quarseta herself felt like a child 
again, fragile and naive. Tsa-Fanu seemed closer together, like 


someone wearing elaborate robes rather than a twirling cloud. 
Atanti, giant as he was, seemed dwarfed by the vastness of this 
place. 


Quarseta climbed on Atanti's back as their group waded onto the 
green padded shore. After traveling for a few hours, they left the 
mossy ground behind and began walking on a rocky area, followed 
shortly by a large plain of short grass. Quarseta tried to hop off and 
walk while the lush, cool grass was underfoot, but hopped back on 
Atanti very quickly after the grass began to cut through her shoes 
and feet. The scratches healed quickly, but they stung just the 
same. 


After a few more hours of traveling, they stopped to rest near a 
grove of what looked like trees where the grass was drier and not as 
sharp. Quarseta drifted off quickly in the shade while tsa-Fanu kept 
watch. It took Atanti a bit longer to drift off. A mixture of hope and 
doubt swirled through his mind, crowding out thoughts of sleep. 
Everything about this place seemed like something that would fit 
perfectly in the home that he new, yet he didn't recognize any of it. 
The land and sky around him seemed like that had come straight out 
of one of the tales that his elders used to tell, just impossible enough 
to maintain wonder, yet familiar enough to be relatable. These 
thoughts continued to twirl and flow until they became faint and 
murky in the depths of the behemoth's sleep. 


Quarseta was awoken by a small object bumping into her leg over 
and over again. She groggily opened an eye and looked down to 
see a fuzzy green ball about the size of a baseball. After a few more 
tries at rolling over her leg, the ball seemed to give up, just before 
unrolling itself. The resulting creature looked like an odd 
combination of weasel, armadillo, and pillobug. Having a small, alien 
creature climb on your lap is almost as good as coffee, and 
Quarseta woke the rest of the way up very quickly. Looking around, 
she saw that there were a few dozen of the creatures all around 
them. A few were curiously observing the three intruders, but most 
of them were crawling around, stripping the ground of the dead 
grass. Wherever they crawled, they left lines of exposed red earth 
with little bits of green just beginning to poke out. Unfortunately, they 


didn't get to enjoy the creatures' company for more than a few 
minutes. A loud, metallic roar echoed across the area from no 
particular direction, sending the pillweaseldillos rolling into the 
woods, and at least one scampering into her pack. 


"That didn't sound familiar," said Atanti, trying to mask the worry on 
his snout. "We'd better be on our way again." 


They traveled few days, slowly working through the supply of rabbits 
and water that they had packed. Quarseta had found that she was 
unable to coax out the creature from her pack when they were ready 
to depart, and ultimately decided to dub it "Tooki" and bring it along. 
In an effort to combat the stillness and silence that surrounded them, 
the travelers constantly swapped stories and riddles. Every now and 
then, the silence would win out, for stories could only last for so 
long, and time seemed longer than it should have been in that place. 


Eventually, they reached what appeared to be a giant, iron wall. 
While Atanti and tsa-Fanu could have broken through it with only a 
bit of work, the group decided to explore down the wall a bit and see 
if they couldn't find an outpost or guard of some sort. While they 
never were able to find what they were looking for, they were able to 
find a rather large hole in the wall. The grass still grew on the other 
side, but it was all a glossy black color. The most interesting thing, 
however, was a large triangle of greenish fabric, with what looked 
and felt like a papery wasps' nest plastered on one side. Atanti 
identified it as a kind of journal, and promised Quarseta that he 
would show her how to read it as soon as they reached a town or 
city. 


The travelers began to advance at record speed. Atanti seemed to 
have been reinvigorated by the scrap of familiarity, soeeding the 
group past rocky towers and strange places where the world 
seemed to tip upside down. After about a week, they reached a 
second wall. This wall stood in stark contrast to the previous one; 
while the iron wall had seemed plain, practical, and foreboding, this 
wall sparkled in shades of emerald, and was covered in beautiful 
intricate carvings. This wall even had small tunnels moving through 
it so that you could reach the opposite side with only a bit of work. 


Emerging on the other side, they were greeted by brilliant colors 
which cannot be found in our world. Reddish-greens and yellowish- 
blues and colors from light across the spectrum and other colors 
which didn't even really exist at all. Small plants which tried their 
hardest to transcend the duality of life and death, wide open 
meadows, towering palaces. The travelers couldn't help but look at 
the world around them in awe. 


The entire illusion was shattered with a loud, metallic roar which 
echoed across the area from no particular direction 


The group of the three travelers and Tooki turned tail and ran. They 
were pursued by some giant, grey thing on ten legs. Slithering 
around its feet were long chains of stone with snapping jaws. If they 
thought they had been moving quickly to reach the second wall, they 
now knew that they had been moving very slowly indeed. Yet, no 
matter how fast they ran, they never seemed to put any distance 
between themselves and the beasts. It was just before they reached 
the first wall that they caught them.