Gathering around this pit, the People began to waken the Limbs 
from their deep sleep. By this | mean they began to unearth, one 
after another, the components of that suit and pile them in the center 
of the clearing. As one, soundless, five hundred hands — every 
adult La'Hamon, man or woman — hoisted the first of the Limbs 
from its murky resting-place — a great stone cuirass, a chest-plate 
hewn from the Mountains of the Moon and fit to armor a giant. It and 
the companion pieces which followed wore the black of oldest 
granite, bare of all adornment and without trace of human artifice. 


| watched the junglefolk as they continued the laborious lifting — 
faces we had known for weeks now bore no trace of their former 
kindness and character. Eyes human and otherwise glowed from the 
ferns surrounding the sacred circle and the calling birds seemed to 
redouble their efforts as each new piece of the mighty armor rose 
from the pit of sacred slumber. 


We did feel a stirring in our hearts; an echo, perhaps, of some 
imperceptible sound meant for quite different ears. 


The Three Chimes of the Forest 


The Limbs of the Earth were heaped high before our party, the 
hollow shell of the people's ineradicable deity. Helm, greaves, 
gauntlets and more, each of naked stone and proportioned for a 
Goliath. When the last piece had been settled into place, the 
laboring arms paused. At some unspoken command a waiting 
woman loaded her flare gun — a rather modern addition to the 
proceedings — and launched a crimson bolt skyward, as a signal to 
more of the tribe stationed in the plains beyond the tree-line. Now 
the Rite had begun in earnest, and even fire would not speak again 
until it had concluded. 


Out on the plains far from the forest's sheltering canopy the rawhide 
drums, cued by the flare, began to call and thunder, answered by 
brassy cries and animalistic bellows from deep within the inner 
groves. Leather drums, steel bells, stone horns — such was the 


voice the People gave the forest. Picked men had placed the 
instruments in hidden places the night previously. This cacophony 
was the first of the Rite's three Chimes, and the only one to be 
sounded by human hand and breath. 


Reader, you may find altogether inadequate my explanation of 
subsequent events, for it is now that the animals began to come, 
summoned through a mechanism as yet quite unknown to me. | ask 
you to persevere as we did. 


Procession of the Dignitaries 


The drumming rose into the sky and woke the denizens of the land. 
Solid ground began to convulse with the passage of numberless 
insects, a tide of instability rushing in from the outskirts of the 
encampment and crashing upon the rocky boundary of the Holy 
Grove. The insects and the birds had come to honor the Rite, 
bound, the People say, by its strange powers. They were not the 
only ones. 


High above what daylight still shone through the leafy peaks 
vanished beneath a sudden living cloud; the vivid colors of the 
jungle flock transformed into a swirling vanguard for the tireless 
geese and eagles, condors and falcons, which tore at the sky with 
the fierceness of their passage. | saw these creatures with naked 
eye, a hundred strains quite foreign and indeed totally incapable of 
surviving in these tropical climates; saw the flashing shadows of 
their imposing Liege within the flocks that made new clouds in the 
cloudless sky. At the center of this tumultuous plumage soared the 
magnificent Bird of Paradise herself, Lady of the Hurricane and 
Queen of All the Birds. 


A creature born of wind and wreathed in fog, she swooped low 
beneath the flocks above only once, her passage shaking leaves 
from the trees and frightening the forest antelopes. Her opal eyes 
flashed once at the peak of her descent and darkness fled. | could 
make out the serried nephrite of her breast set at intervals with 
rubies, emeralds, and sapphires as large as oranges. One jeweled 
feather was worth a palace which her tail's gilded streamers could 
have purchased a kingdom to accompany. Then her survey was 


completed and the Bird of Paradise withdrew to the midst of its 
flapping host to await the other comings. 


Even as we craned our necks, searching for the shortest glimpses of 
that heavenly procession, more terrestrial rumblings drew our notice 
downward. Out beyond the warding torches moved many-clawed 
somethings, each no doubt fit to shred our party to pieces, but 
bound by a compact stronger than any lion's claw or leopard's lunge. 
Great cats of every description now prowled around the outskirts of 
the sacred stones, their misty breath seeping from the forest in fetid 
clouds. The awed muttering of the soil announced these sacred 
guests; two hundred leopards, a thousand panthers, and one fierce 
tiger — the entourage of bold Sycorax, eight-legged Lion of the 
Wind and King in the North. 


Some thirty hands high at the shoulder, with teeth more suited to 
clash on armored knights than wildebeests' soft flesh, with decadent 
mane continually infused with the gory remnants of past prey — 
here we found our Landed Dominion. Four pairs of striding legs 
were each a guarantor of the Monarch Terrestrial's mastery over all 
that walked and crawled beyond the human gaze. Those iron claws 
and metaled furs brushed up against the People's higher law and 
grew docile. 


Our tremendous consorts answered no call, responded to no 
summons — this Rite within the trees was not ordered, it did not 
even occur — at most one could say that all within the Hidden Wood 
simply was in accordance with that Will which tolerates no 
description and bursts the boundaries of all adjectives. That Will 
which was the entity we had come to see, perhaps even catch. 
Mundane thoughts, utterly unsuited to what we found instead. 


The Force of the Will 


Supplicated, the Limbs of the Earth stirred. We had heard these 
relics called the Altar of History, the Armor of the Before, but what | 
saw in that grove knew no name's mastery. Drum calls poured in 
from the plains and merged with the lamentations of the bells. The 
armor summoned its Wearer, as the Wearer had summoned all of 
us. All rose, all swelled in a pulse which banished reason. The 


second chime. 


Acknowledge, my reader, that | make no use of metaphor or literary 
artifice in rendering you these scenes! What | say is as it was — 
completely. Here was the purpose of the Rite now before us; the 
labors of the La'Hamon, the confluence of the animals, and all the 
rest were slaved to the single purpose of invoking what was both an 
entity and far more. Drumming turned to roaring, calls to siren 
shrieks. There came before us now the Indomitable Will of the Earth. 


A creature, a thing, the soul of our very planet — no name is 
adequate. Whence, why — ask not! | tell it to you as it was 
witnessed and no more. | beg again your patience and tax your 
credulity. Our tongue is tried heavily by the task before it. 


| should not say we waiting watchers were joined by the Will, the 
Bearer of the Limbs — we joined It. That last word is meaningless 
as well, for the Wearer neither has gender, nor lacks it — but to 
explain further | am unable. Not even the La'Hamon understand that 
which is both older than and quite beyond the bounds of human 
thought. 


We animals stepped back in unison as the Will donned Its 
assembled regalia, taking up the plates’ stony bulk as easily as the 
wind lifts the leaves, though even now language itself buckles under 
the weight of the event's mere description! 


What had brought forth those leaders of the beasts now produced 
the Laughing Herald of the Four Winds and the Blazing Champion of 
the Sun, whose roaring gusts and stinging beams of light threatened 
to scour the flesh from our bones and ignite the still-sodden trunks of 
the rainforest. Yet | cannot linger over their description, for at their 
arrival the jungle cats and taunting birds sent up a paean, a song of 
triumph of such great volume that the total sound of the whole ritual 
prior bore a greater resemblance to silence, than to this new 
pandemonium. 


Only now was the Stony Crown of Nations raised to the highest by 
that Will which did not raise it. The climax of the ceremony was upon 
us and the World-Soul quivered. The granite helm lowered on to the 
incomprehensible brow of that Foremost Strength. Amidst 


combustuous ruin and clarion call the Rite Without Words birthed a 
third stupefying pulse which banished language. 


KKK 


When our tongues returned to our heads, we of the expedition left 
the village and returned to our homes. We had seen a marvel 
without equal. A phenomenon to sate an enormity of wanderlust and 
fit to confound any number of representatives from those 
adventurous organizations which seek to police the stranger things 
on earth. 


Behind us, the orbit of history continued. The stone armor, once 
more inert, was laid back within its burrow. A year, perhaps three if 
not a hundred, would pass before the People came to wake it once 
again. 


My Duchess, | have traveled far at your behest and brought you 
many treasures. There, by the Bend of the River, the fabric of the 
world soul was revealed through a phenomenon which | have 
described as fully as speech allows. As for the how or the why of it, 
the name of the land from which those beast-lords hailed, or of the 
Stone Armor's divine sculptor; to all such questions | must Say let it 
be enough that | saw these deeds, and can relate them to you — of 
explanations, the True World has no need! 


What Is Love? 


“EVELYN!” 


Her head jerked up, the tentacle in her hands twitched of its own 
accord, and an inky substance squirted across the nearby wall, 
where it immediately burned a hole in the wood paneling. Evelyn 
Navon glared at the tiny Asian man who had interrupted her. Two of 
her hands pinned the tentacle back to the table, while a third raised 
her protective goggles from her eyes, to better project the force of 
her glare. “God damn it Clarence! How many times have | told you 
to knock? | am in the middle of a very delicate experiment.” 


Clarence Prometheus didn’t pay a whit of attention to her glare, or 
the anger in her words. Instead, he inspected the paneling where it 
was melted, a smile on his face. “Ach lass, it looks like you've finally 
got the mixture right!” The thick Scottish burr that emanated from the 
tiny wrinkled Asian features was generally a shock to anyone who 
hadn’t met Dr. Prometheus before. Many an intern had dug into his 
past, in hopes of explaining it, but these people were rarely heard 
from again. The good doctor liked his secrets. “And | knocked. 
Repeatedly. Then | opened the door. Slowly. Called your name, 
musta been a half a dozen times. You were lost in your own little 
world, aye?” He eyed her carefully, prepared for an explosion. She 
was his best scientist, and his most erratic. 


Evelyn carefully pinned the writhing tentacle to the table with strong 
metal clamps, and even more carefully lowered a glass sphere over 
the end with the acid squirter. She took a moment to make sure that 
it was still comfortably attached to the complicated machine that 
kept it alive, and then turned her full attention to her technical 
superior. Mentally, the term made her snort. She was far more 
intelligent than he was; just because it was his company didn’t make 
him superior in anything but name. “I may be a little distracted. But if 
you want the Eight of Spades rolled out in time for the new year, | 
have to be focused.” 


“A little focused, aye. A wee bit even. But I’ve never seen you so 
deep in your work.” He absently touched the tablet in his hand, and 
his eyes roved over numbers he had already memorized. “In the 
past month, you've finished the Ace of Hearts, the Two of Clubs, 
and all four Fives, with hardly a break in between. And you’re not 
spending any time with the children after you breed them, like 
normal. | think the Fives are going to have some definite Oedipus 
complexes. And,” as he laid one finger aside of his nose, and tapped 
it lightly, “don’t think | haven’t noticed you’ve been all fired up since 
ye got that wee message from the Hand. Something happened at 
that meet up, didn’t it?” 


Without thinking about it, Dr. Navon's eyes drifted to a box very 
carefully secured on a shelf above her desk. A couple of her eyes 
teared up, and were quickly wiped away by a slim tendril designed 
for such delicate work. “I’m sorry, Doctor- Clarence. It’s very... 
personal.” 


“But hasn’t all your work for me been personal?” He hopped up on 
one of her empty medical carts, his tiny legs kicked as he got 
himself comfortable. “I might even exposit, that’s one of the reasons 
you came to work for me in the first place, innit? Because | could 
offer you resources you couldn’t get anywhere else.” 


“They were so stupid.” She hissed, as a forked tongue flickered 
between her lips, her eyes locked in the far distant past. “I could 
have worked miracles with what they chose to contain. | could’ve 
saved my children, fixed them.” Her hands gripped the metal table in 
front of her, and bent the edge without conscious thought. 


The wee Scot egged her on; he wanted her to keep talking, wanted 
to hear the full story. “Given them a life better than the box your 
husband thought they deserved. It musta hurt, losing two children to 
your Foundation, in the same day.” 


“We tried to stop them.” She repeated it to herself, by now so deep 
in thought that her boss was little more than another voice in her 
head. “We tried to stop them. We both rose through the ranks. 
Sought power we’d avoided before. He tried, damn it! He loved 
those kids, just like | did.” 


edges of SCP-996 to straighten it. 


SCP-996 seemed to have manifested a distorted "knot" in the fabric, 
and despite self-intersection properties, would not come undone. D- 
class examined the knot, but could not discern its structure. 


D-class generated three more knots through similar procedures. D- 
class attempted to undo the knots by hand, but only succeeded in 
tangling the fabric once more. After much poorly-understood 
interaction, [DATA EXPUNGED] believed to be an area of negative 
volume. D-class extracted hands successfully, but claimed that it 
"gave [him] a headache". Subject reached into area of negative 
volume and removed SCP-996. Area reverted to normal. [Footage is 
being studied to understand the spatial anomaly.] 


Intermediate interview: 
Dr. L : What was that...incident, like? 


D-class: Hell if | know. It's like...1 think the sheet thing 
was round. Huh, it didn't have a shape, but...it, like, 
opened when | folded it one way. [EXPLETIVE 
REDACTED]... 


Dr.L : Do you understand the knots? 
D-class: | think | broke it. 


D-class instructed to continue interaction. Another knot was quickly 
generated, followed by a complex fold that joined two knots. Pulling 
on the sides revealed that a tube had formed between two points on 
the fabric, defying current understanding of topology. D-class 
inserted hand into tube and became tangled again. D-class 
requested assistance. 


Dr.L arrived and extricated D-class's arm. Arm ended at the wrist; 
palm and fingers are absent. SCP-996 reverted to regular shape, 
lacking knots. 


Test Log Addendum: D-class terminated on schedule. After 
several more tests, one well-preserved hand was retrieved from an 
area of negative volume. DNA tests confirm that it belonged to the 


“But trying isn’t enough.” The impish little inventor smiled to himself, 
but his tone sounded contrite and caring. 


“No. | told him that. If we couldn’t free our kids, even with the power 
of an Overseer? Then the system didn’t work. It couldn’t work! And 
then, to add insult to injury, my sweet beautiful James...” She 
sobbed and her entire body quivered, in memory of her anger.