one another, sweeping their arms until their fingertips almost 
touched. They flung their arms away from each other, still parallel to 
the ground, but this time kicked their opposite knees toward each 
other. They stamped their feet out and leaned into each other, 
slamming their knuckles together with their fingers outstretched. 


The blood on the fingertips sparked and twisted itself into runes 
neither of them really understood. Each of the sixteen symbols 
stabbed into the space around them, latching on and ripping it apart. 
The duo pulled at the fabric of reality, spinning in place and dragging 
it with them. They lost sight of more and more of their room as they 
surrounded themselves in the fold until they slapped their hands 
together. They dropped the torn fabric of spacetime and found 
themselves inside their Way. 


While the usual laws that govern the way of existence said that the 
amount of space around them should match the space they tore 
away from their apartment, that was not their Way. Their Way was 
largely undefined, with fragments of ideas and personality strewn 
about, but it was largely empty. They had yet to truly find it, in a way, 
and so it had yet to anchor itself in any real way. Statues and 
floating music notes. A food catering truck with a blurry sign reading 
"Red Bear Bob's Food Truck" was parked outside a counselor's 
office. 


And behind them was the exit, a set of mismatched double doors. 
One was a French door made from oak, a stylized A painted on the 
wooden panel below the windows. The other a flush door 
constructed from cedar, a simple F emblazoned in a position 
identical to the other door's A. The frame holding them was almost 
half a foot thick and carved from stained redwood. 


"Ouch, that stung,” Aldon said, waving the offending hand. "Why do 
you still have that glove on?" 


"| forgot due to my disbelief of that ridiculous Way opening 
ceremony," Finnegan said, starting the march for his door. 


"Shut up, you love it. It's fun!" Aldon trailed him, taking in the sights 
of their Way. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 19/2/2009 

Word or Idiom: smooch, oldmans' (n) 

Definition: Gangrene. After [DATA EXPUNGED], whose secretions 
have a corrosive effect on human tissues. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 
Calendar Date: 21/2/2009 

Word or Idiom: earblind (adj) 

Definition: Unable to navigate using sound. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 26/2/2009 

Word or Idiom: airline, promethean (n) 

Definition: An explosion. Next thing John knew, he was riding the 
promethean airline; he was thrown away by an explosion. 
promethean airline ticket - explosive device. After Prometheus 
Labs, an organization notorious for poor workplace safety. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 03/3/2009 

Word or Idiom: keter sweater (n) 

Definition: From keter, a designation for highly hazardous objects 
requiring active containment measures, used by the SCP 
Foundation. 1. Advanced means of personal protection, such as 
those issued to Mobile Task Forces. Put on your keter sweaters, 
guys, we're going skip hunting.. 2. naysayer, coward, excessively 
scared person. / heard Jim hasn't eaten properly ever since he's 
been posted at [REDACTED] Yeah, he's such a keter sweater 


Researcher Westrin 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 20/3/2017 

Word or Idiom: to chilledattach (v) 

Definition: To apply any sort of media on any platform to be judged 
by other people without seeking prior feedback on that media. 
Author, this article has been clearly chilledattached, with numerous 
grammar and spelling errors scattered throughout. Please seek 
feedback on your article before posting. 


"It's embarrassing.” 
"Yes, I'm sure the ferret is making tons of fun of you in there." 


Everett poked his head out of the backpack, as if he could tell he 
was the center of their conversation. "It's a polecat." 


"What the hell is a polecat?" 
"Forget it." 
"Is it like towercat, but smaller?" 


Finnegan laughed despite himself. He grasped the knob to his door 
and Aldon did the same to his left. Together they twisted their wrists, 
the latch of each door disengaging from the other one's frame. They 
pushed them open and stepped out into one of the many lobbies of 
the Wanderer's Library, shutting the doors behind them. After a 
moment the doors wavered, then outright dissipated. 


They had only the briefest of moments before Felix Cori stormed up 
to them. He was a flurry of panic and another weather metaphor of 
desperation. He paused for breath and then went right into it. 


"Aldon we need to get back to the warehouse ASAP, the statue we 
used got enchanted and it went ape shit." 


"Why." 
The flatness in her voice caught him off guard. "Why what?" 


"Well." Aldon did her best to compose herself. "Why did you try 
enchanting the statue when you explicitly stated you were keeping 
the magic to a minimum? And. Why could that possibly be a 
problem? You said the clay wasn't magic, so unless you did 
something really stupid — not outside of the realm of possibility, 
obviously — then you shouldn't be in that much trouble. Why is it 
just you here, when there were dozens of anartists?" 


Felix didn't say anything. 


Aldon smiled. "So. Felix. No, sorry. Critic. Why." 


She leaned in close and hissed through grinding teeth, "Why are 
you such a stupid fuckup?" 


Felix continued saying nothing. 


Bordering on hyperventilating, Aldon grabbed Felix by the shirt. 
"Just take us to the Way so we can fix your stupid problem." 


It took a jog across the lobby, up and down and up and down and 
down several sets of stairs into another lobby, but it didn't take long. 
Felix frantically lifted the garage door embedded in the lobby wall, 
ducking under it when he had a little clearance. Aldon and Finnegan 
followed suit and the door fell down behind them. 


"Is this seriously a one direction Way?" Aldon asked. 


Felix still said nothing. The three of them dashed out into the main 
room of the warehouse, and were greeted by a strange sight. On the 
left was a series of sigils, runes, and symbols arranged in various 
patterns surrounding one spot. From that spot, splotches of clay led 
through the pews, which had been pushed together into rows much 
closer to the main platform than before. It was almost a full house, 
most of the anartists tied to their seats so they wouldn't miss a 
moment. The platform itself had since been converted into a stage, 
where the remaining anartists were performing a play. Which was 
quite an infamous play in certain circles. 


And center stage was Cassandra Paulson, in the role of Alinda. In 
her hand was a bloodied dagger, and at her feet was a corpse with 
its throat slashed. She stood beside an animate clay being, molded 
to look as if it was wrapped in fabric from head to toe, with the toes 
also shoved into high-heels from the look of it. 


"With this, our blood, it is the... The Sculptor's," she choked out. 
And then the cast hung. 
"Wow." Aldon said. "Wow. Holy shit, you guys fucked up." 

« Exasperated Efforts | Hub | Gray God » 


Gray God 


Jakeob Aldon watched the makeshift cast of The Hanged King's 
Tragedy sway back and forth. Almost a dozen anartists hung from 
nooses that extended all the way up to the warehouse's rafters. The 
initial shock was still there, albeit grounded by the realization that 
the being was not the Hanged King. It was just some clay poser. A 
poser that was capable of forcing so many people, who had likely 
built up resistances to various forms of magic, to hang themselves. 
Without all the prep the King seemed to require. Aldon swallowed 
heavily, as Hollywood had taught her. 


"Well, this is happening," she muttered. 


Felix hissed a string of unhelpful curses as his arms seemed to be 
collapsing in on his chest. Finnegan examined the scene quietly 
before nodding to himself. 


"Any suggestions, Critic?" 


Felix ceased his fidgeting. He thought for a moment, then asked, 
"Kill it?" 


"Oh yes, let me just pull out my big god-killing gun." 
"You have one of those?” 
"NOI" 


"Oh. Because that would have been extremely helpful, given our 
current situation." 


Aldon decided, for her sanity's sake, to drop the conversation. 
Which was good, because it looked like her little outburst had 
garnered the being's attention. It cocked its head before snapping 
back much farther than a human neck would allow. It strode over to 
them, by now leaving clay chips and dust behind rather than half-wet 


clay footprints. When it was within stomping distance of them, it 
stopped. The ring on the center of its chest shifted into a mouth, 
which the being promptly used. 


"Welcome back, Clipper! | see you've brought some friends." It 
stooped over to look at Aldon and Finnegan with its nonexistent 
eyes. "Care to take part in the encore performance? Although. The 
Critic hasn't shown up yet, so | guess the first might have just been 
rehearsal." 


"Not much of an actress," Aldon replied after glancing at Felix. "Mind 
if | just watch?" 


The actress comment seemed to give the being pause. Lips within 
the ring smacked together, only to come apart as eyelids. With its 
new eye the sculpture examined Aldon closely, namely centering on 
her face and chest, before it rolled back and the mouth reformed. 


"Course not. Could always use a bigger audience. Let me gather the 
cast, should only take a few minutes." 


Aldon nodded and politely waved as the thing departed, her mind 
kicking into overdrive. She watched it extract almost twenty anartists 
from their seats before lumbering over to the stage, where the 
curtain drew itself. All the while she wondered how she was 
supposed to kill the bloody thing. 


Her gaze whipped to Felix. "Why does that thing think you're still 
The Clipper?" 


"That clay we had you use? We got it from The Old Sculptor's 
workshop. Apparently it was clay he had imprinted his mind on. 
When he was trying to murder The Old Critic." 


"Fan-fucking-tastic. So why is he murdering these guys?" 


"When he first started talking, Sandra recognized his voice. She 
pulled a gun and started shooting, but... | mean, he's all magicked 
up. So he put on a play so The Critic will come to... well, criticize it." 


"Okay, okay, okay," Aldon said. Her eyes darted back and forth as 
she searched the warehouse for anything that could be of use. 


There really wasn't much of anything, except maybe dropping one of 
the magic 'windows' on him. Hopefully the magic within the things 
would hurt him, even if the physical impact didn't. She'd have to fight 
fire with fire, magic to destroy magic. She looked to Finnegan to 
think about what they had brought. 


"Well, that's a frightening look," Finnegan said. 


Vaguely aware of a powerful tugging sensation at the corner of her 
mouth, Aldon looked her roommate dead in the eye. It made him 
lean back slightly. 


"| have an Idea," she said. 
"Oh. It's that look." 


Grabbing him by the elbow, Aldon spun Finnegan in place and 
began rooting around in the backpack. Everett slinked out of the 
pack and onto Finnegan's shoulder, allowing Aldon easy access to 
the various elemental golems within. She scooped them up and 
grinned at the little creatures clinging to her arms. There were now 
somehow ten despite the fact Finnegan had most definitely placed 
nine in the pack back at the apartment. 


"Seriously, where do you guys keep coming from?" she asked, more 
herself than them. Glancing into the backpack, she noticed there 
were significantly less CDs than Finnegan had actually put in there. 
"| don't even know what element some of you are." 


The new golem waved its arms and tapped itself on the head, and 
then tapped Carbon on the head. Boron nodded and scratched at 
Zinc, filing the number 30 into its dome. The others followed suit 
until they were all labeled. Hydrogen, Boron, Carbon, Oxygen, 
Aluminum, Iron, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, and Gold looked up at her as 
Felix and Finnegan hurried off to untie the anartists. 


"Oh. Huh. Thanks, Hydrogen. Nice thinking." She glanced between 
the others as they freed more and more anartists. Her gaze hovered 
on the stage before she looked down to the golems again. "So, uh, | 
need you guys to make yourselves into a weapon. | guess a sword 
will work." 


Hydrogen, being the smart little fellow that it was, began pointing at 
the others and making elaborate gestures with its arms. The group 
leaped to the concrete below and began striking at it, chipping 
themselves and the ground in the process. Hydrogen and Oxygen 
were completely amputated by their comrades, releasing small 
blasts of energy in the process as their limbs instantly warped back 
into gasses. They were then gradually fed the chunks of loose 
concrete. As they ate, their limbs grew back, and the two golems 
spat out small globs of compounds. The globs were passed around 
between the golems until they were honed into chunks of dull grey 
metal. The golems were stripping the concrete down into calcium, 
which was then molded to give birth to a skeletal golem named 
Calcium. Its skull was adorned with a 20 and it did a little dance to 
celebrate its birth. 


Aldon watched with her jaw wide open. She had noticed that Boron, 
the lowest numbered element prior to Hydrogen, had been a bit 
sharper than the rest. Or less dense, rather. But this was just shy of 
ridiculous. Meanwhile, several rows of anartists were free, and more 
were only being released faster. The curtain had still yet to move. 


Zinc and Iron went about smashing themselves into Carbon, who 
was squeezing at its own torso as if it was in an invisible straitjacket. 
With each collision, Carbon seemed to be getting skinnier and 
skinnier, until eventually it ejected a diamond the size of Aldon's 
thumb onto the ground. Awe struck Aldon as somewhere in her 
mind, she was reminded that diamond was only an allotrope of 
carbon. Then Carbon ate some of the aggregate compound left over 
from the concrete, fattened up, and they repeated the process. 
Aldon laughed like a madwoman when she saw Gold shaping the 
diamonds into bullets. 


Boron, Nickel, and Oxygen now were conjoining their bodies into a 
flintlock pistol. Even their little faces remained on the grip and the 
end of the barrel. Meanwhile, Oxygen was half-embedded in Boron 
and looked to be chewing on air, its arms now positioned where the 
hammer of the pistol would be. No doubt it was the firing 
mechanism. Aldon picked up the golem gun and fed Boron diamond 
bullet after diamond bullet so that Nickel could spit them out later. 
She readied the gun, finger on the trigger, and Boron's little trigger- 


limb held her finger in its tiny hand. 


"Oh fuck, this is awesome," she choked out, hard of breath from 
laughing. It was heavy, though she wasn't sure how it compared to 
an actual gun. But she could lift it with one hand, and with two she 
could keep her aim relatively steady when she wasn't busy giggling. 


Finnegan hurried over, also short of breath, but from running. "Okay, 
everyone's free. Are you done thinking or- where... where the hell 
did you get a gun?" 


Aldon giggled some more and gestured to the bullet factory at her 
feet. Finnegan stared at them blankly before looking back up to 
Aldon. 


"Okay, | was not expecting them to be able to do that." 
"Surprise!" Aldon exclaimed, brandishing the pistol. 


"Well, Felix has the aussies working on something to strip the 
statue-" His sentence was cut short when he whipped his head 
around to the opening curtain. "Fuck."