With a swish of shadow and the smell of decay, he vanished. Abby 
smiled, though it was nearly as forced as the pale man’s grin. 


“He’s so full of himself, isn’t he?” 


The girl did not respond. Abby stood up, walked over to the Thing’s 
still corpse, and knelt. 


“Come.” 


She began scooping away the soil, digging out a shallow grave. The 
girl swayed, as if to move, but remained in place. 


“Why are you doing all this?” 
“It wouldn't be right to just let it lie here.” 


“No!” The girl blurted out. “Why am | here, why are you here, where 
is here? What are you even talking about? Just...why?” 


Abby stopped digging, and was quiet for a time. She didn’t look 
angry. 


“| understand. | haven’t been very helpful.” She wiped the dirt off on 
her dress. “I’m sorry.” 


Wind moaned, swirling up the hill, chilling the girl through her 
hospital gown. Abby dropped her gaze back to the shallow grave 
and went back to digging. After a time, the grave was deep enough. 
Abby gently picked up the Thing and placed it in the earth. The girl 
couldn’t make out whether she was sad or angry or happy by this. 
The Thing was dead, dead and buried, but she couldn't feel 
anything. She didn’t know what life would be like without it. If life 
could be without it. 


04:21 AM 


05:11 AM 


06:02 AM 


06:59 AM 


07:42 AM 


08:35 AM 


09:27 AM 


10:12 AM 


the eye, which is observing 
it. 
Image of a city. City 
appears to be constructed 
from web and populated by 
giant spiders. SCP-753 is 
visible trapped in a web, 
with a spider moving 
towards It. 
Image of a nuclear 
explosion. Silhouette 
resembling SCP-753 is 
visible in the expiosion. 
Image of SCP-753's 
containment area. SCP-753 
appears to have shut down. 
Research Assistant is 
inspecting SCP-753. Closer 
analysis shows that 
Research Assistant 
lacks eyes. 
Image of Sector-28 disposal 
facility. Maintenance Worker 
is activating the 
incinerator. SCP-753 is 
visibie among the waste. 
Image of a restaurant. 
Patrons are pointing ata 
chandelier, which has fallen 
from the ceiling. SCP-753 is 
visible under the Chandelier. 
Image of a cottage. A man 
is walking towards the 
cottage, holding an axe and 
a smashed SCP-753. 
Image of a desert. A 
creature resembling a six 
legged wolf is in the process 
of destroying SCP-753. 
Image of a forest. Indistinct 


But Abby was turning the soil over, and the Thing was buried. Gone 
in the ground. Exit the scene. Done. 


The girl was struck with a horrible sense of longing, and thundering 
on its heels came a tide of deep black disgust, tinged with a hatred 
turned inward and refined. How dare she feel pity? Had she 
forgotten? Had she become so weak as to forgive the Masked Men 
their violence? 


The girl’s inner voice screamed, beat at her heart, clawed at her 
throat. Every muscle ached to run away, to flee from this feeling 
inside her, to beat it back into submission, to hide, to do something. 
Something to hide from the Thing, from Abby, from herself, from 
every peering eye and pointing finger. 


And yet, she remained standing on the hilltop. She didn’t understand 
why, but no matter how much she strained to flee, some part of her 
said “no”. The rest listened. 


“Maybe things will be better if | just show you,” Abby said. “Will that 
be okay?” 


The girl nodded. 


Abby reached up, and the sky parted like water as she drew her 
hand across. Curtains of green and streams of purple burst from her 
fingers, bordering a wedge of velvet black that bloomed out to fill the 
entire sky with night. 


And there were stars. So many stars, spilling across the sky, rising 
up into the heavens in a great sparkling band. A billion, billion lights 
forming the trunk of an impossibly tall tree, and billions more to 
make the branches. The hills were lit with silver evening. 


The girl could not remember when she had last seen stars, or if she 
ever had. Their names came to nest in her heart, and the girl felt 
their song filling her. She cried. For the first time in long years, her 
tears were not of pain. 


The girl saw now that Abby had changed. The woman in the white 
dress was gone, and in her place now was a great grey giant that 


sat among the hills. Pale scars swept across her body. Barnacles 
and lice clustered on her arms, on her breasts, on her thighs. A 
shawl of tube-worms and sealskin sat on her shoulders. Streams of 
glowing plankton flowed about her in the air like dandelion seeds, 
growing bright and then dim with the pulse of her own glow. 
Parasites clouded her wide, dark eyes. Her salt-crusted hair hung in 
knotted tangles. A second pair of arms had appeared, the hands 
painted white with seafloor snow. A ragged hole had been torn 
through her stomach, clear through to the other side. The edges 
were crusted in blood and hagfish and a fire danced within, 
wreathed in the black smoke of a seafloor vent. 


“| Know your pain,” Abby said in her vast, sweeping voice. “I shared 
it. Every day they came for you, | felt the same.” 


The girl knew that she was speaking the truth. She could feel Abby’s 
words close by her spirit, the echoes whispering “You are not 
alone.”. What could be done? She knew, with the utmost certainty, 
that she was loved. 


“We were bound together under my father’s seal, sisters in suffering. 
But we don’t have to suffer any longer. The seal is broken. He has 
no power here, over either of us, and we can make things right. 
That’s why you’re here. | wanted to give you back the life my father 
stole from you. | can’t make the pain go away, but | can be here for 
you when it becomes too much to bear alone.” 


Abby extended a hand, holding it flat on the hilltop, her creased 
palm turned up to the stars. 


“Will you stay?” she asked. 


Wordlessly, the girl stepped onto her hand, tears still glistening on 
her cheeks. Abby gently lifted her hand and smiled. 


“Just tell me when you want to be put down. We can get you 
something to eat, if you’re hungry.” 


“I’m okay,” the girl said, wiping at her eyes. “I’d just like to sit here for 
a while.” 


“| can do that,” Abby said. 


The two watched the stars turn slowly above them, and a final piece 
of knowing wrote itself in the girl's heart. A name, remembered from 
the distance times before it was stolen from her. 


Her name was Grace, and she was being put back together. 


The Grand Theological Game 


In the temple of Ana, there were a thousand mirrors. They covered 
the walls, the columns, the arched and vaulted ceiling. Scales of 
silver, lit by a thousand lamps. One could stand anywhere, and see 
themselves a thousand times. See every flaw a thousand times. 
Every fold of meat, every bulge of thick and sagging flesh. One 
could stand anywhere in the temple and see themselves as they 
were beneath the glazed gaze of the dishonest eye: Unworthy. 
Unneeded. Unlovely. 


There was no idol or icon in the temple of Ana, for the Goddess Who 
Does Not Hunger could only be seen in the self, and her judgment 
was proclaimed in the mirror’s truth. 


Ana’s altar sat in the center of the nave: a long stone table with blue- 
tiled benches, bordered by deep troughs in the floor for the 
prescribed purging. Wire-thin statues, twice as tall as a man, jugs on 
their shoulders, poured out twin streams that flowed down the 
troughs and drained away into the temple’s blessed sewage pipes. 


At the head of the altar, the Starvess’ chair had been moved aside 
and a marble paving stone had been pulled up. The dark space 
underneath yawned, a throat caked in black dust. 


A short distance away, a series of interlocking binding circles had 
been set out on the floor with iron flakes and salt. At the center of 
the inner circle sat a massive, brutish skull. It had a weak and 
sloping forehead, wide cheekbones, sunken sockets, an underbit 
jaw with fangs the size of a thumb, and thick horns coiling out from 
the forehead. Bands of darkened metal circled the cranium, 
hammered into the black bone. At the crown of the head was a 
metal plate, engraved with the symbol of the goddess: a single, 
vertical line. 


Sitting next to the skull, surrounded by parchment scrolls, was a 
dark, lanky man named Tokos. He had a wild mane of black hair, 


which made him look something like a lion, and a sort of large, 
hooked nose that made him look something like a falcon. 


He was having a very bad day. 


The self-writing scrolls that surrounded him were covered in narrow, 
neat lines of bloody red error logs that grew ever longer. All he was 
here to do was help install a patch and clean out the system, that 
was it. A maintenance job, half an hour, tops. 


A half-hour job had turned into five hours with no end in sight. 
Fourteen reboots and constant re-entry of his admin credentials had 
not gotten him anywhere closer to actually installing the patch, or 
even recovering an earlier operating state. At this point, it wasn’t 
even recognizing that the patch existed, and each reboot brought 
with it another crippling series of errors. 


These damned mark-ones. If properly maintained, could last for 
centuries, but that proper maintence required everything to be 
installed, removed, or cleaned out by hand. Most of the cults in the 
frontier provinces still used them for their reliability, even when the 
central kingdoms were now running on mark-fives and mark-sixes, 
but when they broke, King’s bleeding spears on the Deepest Throne 
they broke catastrophically. 


If this core couldn't be salvaged, it would be a minimum of three 
weeks to get a replacement shipped from the provincial capital, and 
that was if the core was hunted down quickly and the deliverymen 
didn’t run afoul of the Guild of Highwaymen. Then he'd have to set 
that skull up and transfer over surviving memories, and then actually 
install the patch... 


It was times like this that Tokos could understand the appeal of 
getting rid of DemonOS entirely and upgrading to mana-cloud 
operating systems, even if it meant that he would be out of a job. 
Among all the typical frustrations, DemonOS systems had a 
tendency towards actively plotting the demise of those who worked 
with them. The sign of any good glyph-monkey was a tally of failed 
assassination attempts. Tokos kept his marks tied in his braid: two 
attempted exsanguinations and a near impalation. The skull had not 
outwardly attempted to strike back at him at all in the last five hours, 


which Tokos took as a sigh that his binding circles were doing their 
job. At least that worked. 


The technician pressed his fingers against his forehead, and ran 
through the steps of the defragging process once again, inscribing 
his own scrolls with taps of his fingers and mystical mutterings. He 
settled into the familiar metronome of arcane coding. 


This musing was interrupted by the low, sepulchral groan of the 
temple doors opening. 


“Temple’s closed!” he shouted, standing up sharply. The code on his 
scroll trailed off and stopped as the errors kept flowing. “Services 
are to be carried out in the home until further notice!” He strode 
towards the figure standing in the doors, fists clenched in frustration 
that had to go somewhere. “There was a sign! | put a sign right on 
the door!” 


A woman stood in the doorway, her head shaved, her skin pallid and 
yellowing, stretched too tight over bird-thin bones and bulging blue 
veins. Hollow eyes deep in their sockets. Lips and eyelids pulled 
back, desiccated. Age uncertain. A bowed stance from brittle bones. 
A pale silk dress, embroidered with verses of self-recrimination. An 
unassailable aura of devotion, paired with the creeping image of 
approaching death. She held a small parcel wrapped in cloth in her 
hands. 


From where she stood, a thousand copies stared back at her, and a 
thousand and one Tokoses. 


The thaumechanic cleared his throat, and reined his frustration back 
in. Today had been enough trouble. He didn’t like trouble. No need 
to cause himself more trouble. 


“The temple is closed for maintenance,” he said again. 
“Oh,” she said. Her voice was like chalk, crumbly and soft. 
“lam afraid that you'll have to come back tomorrow.” 


“Ah. | am sorrying.” 


A curious accent, Tokos noted. A curious appearance, too — she 
was too pale to be from among the swarthy-skinned locals, though 
her bodily condition had deteriorated so much that Tokos could not 
tell where she came from. Her sandaled feet were caked with dust, 
as was the hem of her gown. She carried a scent of dried sweat and 
dirt, covered up with a spice-laden perfume that could not hide it 
completely. 


Not only a foreigner, but a pilgrim, who apparently came alone... 


It had been said that it was safe for a woman carrying a sack of gold 
to walk unmolested from one end of the empire to the other. This 
was true mostly because the gold could pay off any brigand that had 
not been eaten up by the slave pits or the conscription masters, so 
one’s safety was generally tied to how much cash one had to pay 
the proper bribes or hire the appropriate mercenaries. If this woman 
truly had journeyed alone, and from so far away, she must have 
possessed a sizable sum of wealth. Either that, or she possessed a 
significant amount of power granted from Ana herself. 


Tokos realized that he might have made a massive mistake. 
Crossing someone with wealth was dangerous enough. Someone 
channeling divine magic was even worse, because gods did not 
have to play by rules. Gods did what they wanted, and a sorcerer 
like Tokos, who had schooling and rules and limits and methods and 
systems, could not pose any sort of resistance. 


He scrambled to salvage the situation. The pilgrim appeared to not 
be of the vengeful type, he could salvage this and go back to not 
meddling in affairs which might attract attention. 


“Wait. Wait, wait. Actually...| think that | can make an exception,” he 
said. “You've clearly come a long way, and so long as you don't 
need to use the tenet core for anything, you should be okay.” With 
luck she would be in and out and gone, and he would not even have 
to explain it to the Starvess. 


“| am gratefuling to yun,” she said, bowing creakily. She walked past 
him and approached the altar. Illiterate, Tokos decided. Or at least 
unfamiliar with common script — if she was as rich or as powerful as 
he thought, she would have had some sort of education. 


She sat down and unfolded her parcel. She was less substantial 
than a skeleton. She was...nothing. A wisp of silk and a breath. 
Tokos caught a glimpse of a small brick of cheese, coated in white 
wax. The red glyph on the side explained everything Tokos needed 
to know. If she could afford whale cheese, he was not fool enough to 
step between her and anything. Whale cheese was limited to the 
highest echelons of the cult — they were the only ones who could 
buy it or survive eating it. 


Tokos went back to the skull, back to the scrolls, back to the ciphers. 
He tried to work as quietly and nondescriptly as possible now 
accompanied by cycles of faint chewing and splashes of vomit in the 
trough. 


Tokos wasn’t particularly familiar with the cult of Ana. He knew the 
basics, from back in his time in seminary. They starved themselves 
to a state of perfected beauty beyond the cage of physical nature, 
and then died. They were popular among frontier nobility and the 
disenfranchised youth of the central kingdoms. Rival of the Mother 
and the Flesh, no major alliances. Never known to manifest directly. 
Enough money and power to make someone miserable and / or 
dead. 


That was enough for him. 


Time passed, and eventually the chewing and retching stopped, 
though Tokos did not hear the pilgrim rise from her bench. The skull 
was still obtuse. 


“lam not wishing to be causing dis-ruption, but | am questioning,” 
the pilgrim said. “Who is those who be crossified outwards?”