He studied the score on the ground before looking back up. He 
plucked the first string and the rest followed suit. Conflicting 
harmonies rang through the air as he continued to play, humming 
along with the frail semblance of a tempo he had constructed. The 
audience suddenly resumed their dance as they moved against their 
will. Servants and philosophers alike begged for mercy, to be 
released and to go free. He heard their requests as the notes 
gradually lost their tune and meaning. For a brief second, the 
thought of stopping flashed in his head. He didn't care. 


As the city continued to burn around them, a spirit entered him. His 
fingers came to a halt and the music came to life. The ground had 
started to shift and turn. Chords dragged themselves out from under 
the dirt, keys formed husks out of urine, and melodies buzzed 
through the air as they observed possible prey. Everyone had 
stopped dancing to watch it unfold, staring agape at the wonders 
before them. Minutes hung in the air. Flames popped and crackled. 
The man observed the stillness around them, as if waiting for 
permission to move. His eyes moved to the score still on the ground, 
looking back up at him. It was waiting for its conductor to resume. 
After a moment's hesitation, he put his lyre down on the ground and 
snapped his fingers as he complied with its wishes. 


The music descended onto the crowd. Servants were scorched, 
their flesh turned to a crisp. Philosophers were sliced open, entrails 
spilling into the ashes. Children jabbed their nails into dirt as they 
were forcibly dragged into the cracks of the ground. The pit was 


complete anarchy, and all involved were singing beautiful, heavenly 
notes. The lyre had started to play itself, and the music it produced 
was that which he had so desired to play as everything burned. 
Regrettably, he thought to himself, none would remain to capture in 
detail this wondrous scene. Everything would be burned and whittled 
away, and the only remains would be ash. 


Nero understood this, and knew he had no more to accomplish with 
the performance. He picked up the score. Blood trickled onto it, and 
satisfaction filled him. He flipped the score over and found just 
enough empty space. Foreign ideas and thoughts rustled in his 
head, and inspiration burrowed itself in him. There was still more for 
him to do. 


The symphony continued to play as he began diligently composing. 


Bloodlines 


The barbed knife ripped through the girl's throat. Her body slumped 
to the cold flagstones, her dark hair settling on the pool of blood 
before her. Reflections writhed on the slick, crimson surface as the 
chill mountain winds pulled and twisted at the flames of the 
courtyard torches. The old woman made herself watch as the girl 
died. Then she raised her eyes to the man holding the blade. 


The soldiers had left. Thirty of her kin lay dead. She and this man 
were the only living things that remained in this castle, on this 
mountain. An old woman, a bloodied warrior, and the knife. 


"Get up, baba," the man said, roughly. He took her arm and pulled 
her to her feet. 


He spoke her language, she realised with a start. He had used 
another tongue with the soldiers, harsh to her ears. But through all 
of the killing, he had been silent; his movements had been ritual, but 
deft and efficient. Beyond her horror, she could even see a beauty in 
them. The thought made her sick. 


The man turned her to face him, still gripping her wrist. "Look at me, 
baba. Do you know me?" 


She saw his coal-black hair and olive skin. His lithe figure, stripped 
to the waist and smeared with drying blood. She looked into his dark 
eyes, burning. The terror pooling in her stomach grew deeper and 
thicker. 


She broke her gaze. "The rumours say you are called the Dragon's 
Son," she said, voice low. 


The warrior inclined his head in acknowledgement. "| have a task for 
you, grandmother.” The diminutive was laced with casual contempt. 


She had expected death, another body amid the slaughter. The idea 


that he would spare her, the eldest of her family, felt cruel and 
mocking. Her jaw tensed as her fear mingled with new emotions - 
hatred, confusion and, underneath it all, a small but defiant hope. 


If he felt that tension in her, that hope, the man did not show it. He 
dropped her wrist. 


"Leave this place," he continued. "Go, and tell your people what you 
have seen tonight. They will respect your words. Tell them that | am 
real. Tell all of the Romani that Wallachia has a new prince, and that 
they shall serve me, or bleed." 


She looked at the scarlet fingerprints he had left on her wrist, and 
her anger flared. 


"The Roma do not serve. We have no princes," she said fiercely. 
But the warrior laughed at her. 


"Do you think you are the first to say that? | have broken warriors 
and enslaved cities. | have travelled here with fifty men, and | will 
rule Wallachia within the year. | shall carve up Moldavia and 
Transylvania like roasting lambs. The Ottomans will fear me, and fall 
before me. You gypsies are nothing.” 


"Yet the Roma will not serve." It was the stubbornness of long years, 
crowding out her dread. 


"Then | will show you the cost," the warrior said. 


He reached toward her face, faster than she could react, and she 
felt his fingers rub blood - still wet, still warm - across her eyelids. 
The world spun, and her eyes opened on a rust-coloured nightmare. 


She was looking down on an army encampment, which grew ever 
closer. The moon's light was garnet and ruby, the shadows black. 
She fell nearer to the soldiers, spying their turbans and scimitars. 
Suddenly, tents across the camp were ablaze, sending men and 
horses into a panic. As the fires roared, dark figures raced between 
them, slaughtering the confused soldiers. At their head, the warrior's 
face was lit by flames and bloody moonlight. 


Then the vision was gone, and she was walking through a dense 
forest, the light still red. She felt pulled forward, inexorably. As she 
squeezed through the mass of tall, bare trunks, a drop of liquid on 
her shoulder drew her gaze upward. Upward, to the corpses 
hanging over her. 


There were no trees. She was in a forest of stakes, a thicket of the 
impaled. Men, women, children: hundreds of bodies, thousands - 
she could see no end to them. They hung slack from the poles 
driven through them from every angle, sharpened points protruding 
from mouths, necks, limbs, bellies. The sheer weight of them 
looming above staggered her, but she kept walking, drawn forward 
despite herself. 


Blood dripped steadily from above as her weakened legs led her up 
a small rise. She emerged from the forest of the dead into a 
clearing, and saw the warrior. He was standing at the crest of the 
hill, a young girl in white on a stone slab before him. From all 
directions, streams of blood were flowing up the hill towards him, 
gathering in a pool at his feet. The stakes stretched around in every 
direction, death as far as she could see. The warrior leaned down 
and grasped the girl, and as he bit into her neck, his eyes flicked up 
and met the old woman's. 


And then she was back in the courtyard, in the cold night. The 
warrior looked at her imperiously. 


"Dhampir!" she cursed. "Blood demon!" 


She pulled a wooden crucifix from her belt and thrust it towards him, 
her other hand fumbling in her pockets. The warrior spread his 
hands wide. As she advanced, he stepped cautiously backwards, 
stopping with his feet in the pool of blood. 


She hesitated, and again he laughed. A swift gesture from the 
warrior, and the crucifix snapped in her hand, the arms of the 
crosspiece falling to the flagstones. The Christ-figure had been 
twisted and distended, with the stipe of the cross now impaling it 
from groin to crown. 


The old woman dropped the defiled cross - in any case, it had been 


merely a distraction. Her other hand emerged from her skirt with a 
mix of preserved leaves, which she blew towards the warrior. 
Suspended in the air, they swirled thicker and faster, enveloping the 
man in a disorienting cloud of debris. He ducked downwards, 
doubled over, but the miniature whirlwind moved with him, cutting off 
sight and sound. 


The woman fell back, looking for an escape. Even as she retreated, 
she saw the blood rise from the ground. A wave of it soaked the 
leaves and washed them to the ground, and the warrior rose, 
striding forward. Blood hung in the air in sheets behind him, like 
great red wings. 


"Herb witch," he snarled. "Do you think your dirt magic can touch a 
host-lord of the Daeva?" 


He waved a hand, and she could not move. He closed the gap 
between them, swinging the knife. The flat of the blade caressed her 
cheek as it passed her head. Then it was still and poised in his 
hand, the point towards her face. 


The warrior continued, "Our empire stretches from Kalmar to the 
Siberian wastes. | am the spearhead - through me the Daeva shall 
conquer West and East, onwards without limit. You and your people 
are ashes before the wind of our coming." 


He brought the dagger slowly in, pushing nearer. Her throat 
thickened, but she could not scream. Her world narrowed to the size 
of the knife, to the size of the point. Still it came closer. She felt the 
tip resting on the surface of her eye. 


"You cannot choose but serve," the man said, his voice grown quiet. 
"Only the manner of your service is within your power. Tell your 
people - they will be slaves, or they will be cattle." 


The knife stopped. She could not blink. The point on her eyeball was 
worse than pain - every nerve in her body was focussed on the 
pressure, willing it not to increase, imagining that it had. 


The Daeva lord leaned in close to her motionless head, and 
whispered, "That girl, the last | killed. She was your granddaughter, 


With restraints, sedation, and periodic feeding, Mrs. 
has survived for the past years. 


« SCP-687 | SCP-688 | SCP-689 » 


yes? | could taste it in her. Think on her before you answer. Think on 
her sister. On all of your family." 


Her realisation was abrupt - she had one last, desperate hope. She 
pulled at her memories for scraps of forbidden knowledge, that only 
long years of training with her own grandmother had taught her to 
resist. Suddenly he released the hold that was on her; she wrenched 
her head away from the knife, and he smiled and threw it high. The 
old woman gathered herself, turning back to the warrior. 


"The Roma do not serve." She spat at his feet. 


His swiftness was beautiful and savage. One hand grabbed her 
arms, the other plucked the dagger from the air. Blood sprayed from 
her wrists as the barbs tore them open. Her hands hung limp, and 
pain and shock overtook her. 


The Daeva's hand was a vice on her arms. "I will not make this quick 
for you," he said, and bent to drink from her severed veins. 


As she stood, dying, the old woman gave a keening wail: for her 
daughter, for her daughter's daughter, for all her kin. Her voice 
wavered into a thin, wordless tune, discordant as the crows that 
roosted in the castle towers. 


She had only sung for a short time before the warrior cut her throat. 


But it was long enough. 


When Konstantin, janissary of His Imperial Majesty Mehmet II, 
climbed with his guards the thousand steps to Poenari Citadel, he 
had not believed the stories they told in Sibiu. But the grisly scene in 
the courtyard was beyond his ability to explain. 


Close to a hundred bodies, dead for at least a month but untouched 
by wolves or carrion birds. Some hung upside down from the walls, 
their throats slashed open like butchered pigs. Others lay in piles, 
naked and pallid, their skin ribboned by hundreds of deep cuts, as if 
to bleed them from every scrap of flesh. Many of the corpses 
appeared to be gypsies. The rest were like no people known to the 


Ottoman Empire - wild-haired and tattooed, with devilish-looking 
weapons, oddly undrawn. But even this was not what had daunted 
him. 


Almost every surface of the courtyard was painted with blood. The 
recent rains had streaked it into illegibility, but it must have been 
monumental: perhaps a mural, or notation in a language with which 
Konstantin was not familiar. But it was impossible, unthinkable. For 
what great work would all these people bleed? 


As he passed another heap of corpses, Konstantin spied a lone 
figure slumped against the far wall. A pool of blood had clearly dried 
beneath the body, but the wall next to it was the only clean surface 
in the entire courtyard. 


Konstantin, walking closer, saw a man with olive skin and a fighter's 
build. The warrior's face was smudged with faded red, with deep 
scratches down each side from sharpened fingernails: the man's 
own nails, Konstantin could see the blood beneath them. His eyes 
were open in a fervid stare at that last blank piece of stone. His left 
arm was covered in wounds - the tip of one finger cut off, the palm of 
the hand slashed across. The left wrist was almost severed by a 
single deep cut; it was pressed against the edge of the empty wall in 
a final faltering smear. And his right hand still gripped the barbed 
knife. 


Konstantin climbed back down the thousand steps, his thoughts 
troubled. But as he descended, the soft Transylvanian rains 
returned. The tide of history ebbed, and his memories of the Daeva 
were washed away. By the time he reached the valley floor, he had 
forgotten his purpose there, and he once again felt sanguine. 


Riding away, he began to sing softly to himself. 


The Journal of K. M. Sandoval 


Hub | Bigger Than Jesus » 


"All right, if you could please step up towards the object," says the 
stone-faced researcher. The lone man in the room takes two 
tentative steps towards the box on the pedestal, wary of what is to 
come. A sharp click sounds through the room, echoing off the cold 
walls. 


"Open the safe, if you will.” 


Inside is a pile of papers, neatly organized, and a large box of pens. 
The paper calls to him like nothing before. Without any hesitation, 
the man pulls the paper from its confines, spreading it on the floor so 
that he may continue this masterpiece. 


The righteous ones emerge from beneath the stone, crying out for 
justice. 


The visions are overwhelming, taking over all his senses. The man 
is not aware of the notes he is writing on the page, their meaning 
lost but their divine purpose resonating with each beat. 


The sun blackens and the moon becomes red as blood, before they 
fall out completely, as the sky peels back like an old scroll, and stars 
fall while pure souls ascend. 


The notes are coming from his hand much easier now, while the 
visions continue to dance around him. 


Old mountains crumble while whole continents sink into the depths 
of the sea. From their ashes rise new land forms, as perfect and 
untainted as Eden. The strongest of the faithful retreat to the new 
caves, and call upon the rocks to seal them in. 


"D-1875, stop writing.” 


But he can't, not even if he wanted to. The visions are too 
overwhelming. Even after the tranquilizer dart has hit him in the 
neck, he fights as hard and as long as he can to keep writing, to 
perfect this masterpiece, until he finally collapses from exhaustion. 


"They're getting harder to stop," mutters a researcher, watching the 
unconscious D-Class be taken from the room. 


"So what does that tell you?" asks Dr. Pherson, her supervisor. 


"Something’s changed. They haven't added a new sheet in over a 
year, though seven tests have been run in that time. And they're 
fighting the tranquilizers for much longer," she says, looking through 
her notes. 


"Then what are they doing?"