So | sat atop a small ridge overlooking the deep crack in 
the earth where the mines ran down. | had a clear view 
of what would become the open field of battle for all of an 
hour. | began to take notes, expecting a brief report for 
the Overseer. | didn't expect to write a novella. 
Nevertheless, | intended to write as much as possible, to 
amuse my readers further. 


How it began was with a guttural blast of noise. To call it 
a trumpet blast would imply the miners had any metal of 
their own to fashion for such amenities. | expected men, 
dirty men in dirty clothes. | saw them; | saw women and 
children. Some had wrapped blocks of wood or rock to 
their forearms and torsos, makeshift armor. The mass of 
humanity had to be in the thousands. | fully expected the 
numbers, but | had not conceived of just how massive 
such a number would actually look drawn out upon an 
open space. 


| do them ill justice to call them a mere "mass", but all 
proper reports on the incident must include such a term. 


In fact there was a surprising level of discipline among 
them. They began a chant; it was elaborate, if indistinct, 
like a paean to a god of homicide. Beautiful to behold, on 
such a massive scale. You could hardly muster enough 
interest in such ceremony amongst professional knights. 
It was exquisite, but efficient; they were ready to break 
and move at a moment's notice. When the guards took 
up a phalanx of shield and club and sword, the ranks of 
miners broke and charged. 


Some had their pickaxes or shovels to use as weapons. 
This was soon determined to be folly, as many did harm 
to their own comrades long before they could emerge 
before the actual enemy. | do not know what was 
anticipated by the ringleaders, but the ground was utterly 
impracticable for the sort of grand and glorious man-to- 
man combat you read in tales. The guards refused to let 
the miners' numbers exploit the open land, and deployed 
themselves upon the spiraling stairwell coming up to the 
cusp, near where | now sat. 


This exquisite army of rebellious miners devolved into a 
mass out of necessity. What else could a man or woman 
do? The men in front were meat, to be slaughtered by 
the guards. Whether they knew this or not, | could not 
tell, for there was no sign of any relent or attempt to 
break and run. Perhaps there simply was not enough 
time, or perhaps none in the front ranks noticed just how 
quickly they died. 


Again, tales do combat no justice; it is impossible for a 
man, no matter his strength, to cleave through other men 
with a blade as if hacking through linens and fabrics. 
Blades stuck in flesh, in muscle, and in bone. Once the 
miners realized this, they understood that steel was not 
as strong as flesh, and the one weapon they had in 
abundance was flesh. 


Nothing was said to any of the miners, or at least no cry 
that could be discerned as intelligible by myself. As one, 
they seemed to understand that their sole advantage 


over the enemy was themselves. "Meat", the guards had 
disparagingly called the miners for so long. Now they 
truly were meat. The bodies dropped, and more followed. 
One by one, guards lost hold of their weapons as they 
stuck in the viscera of the masses. Miners tore at the 
shields, losing nail and digit as they sought simply to give 
their lives to one purpose or another; "lower this shield", 
"bash this helmet", "gouge this eye". A singular task, to 
be fulfilled in the brief moments allowed to their 
miserable lives, before dying. 


Here is where the term "mass" can be applied; less than 
a full hour in, the miners began to walk atop the guards. | 
mean that literally! The bodies stacked high enough that 
the living could walk over the dead, and walk atop the 
guards, kicking at helmets, screaming, becoming 
impaled or eviscerated by the enemies yet to see the 
front lines. That is how they lost their weapons. They 
brought their shields up, attempting to keep the miners 
off of their heads. A sensible tactic, if not for the fact that 
the mass of miners continued to move over the shields. 
Now they trapped the guards completely, from front, 
rear, and top. 


There was no more "battle" then; | could make out the 
figured of men and women both grabbing and scratching 
with bare hands and teeth. They tore away pieces of 
armor in their enemy, or simply punched and kicked 
defiantly, breaking their bones in the hopes of simply 
denting the enemy's breastplate or gorget. Some of the 
dead began to petrify; those with the strength to do so 
broke off fingers or entire arms to use as bludgeons. 


As they continued to advance, more and more people fell 
from the elevated walkways. At some point, the guards 
broke, but retained enough sense to recognize the folly 
of leaping from such a height. With what little they had 
left, they began to push forward, pressing the mob back 
down. They only sought to get closer to the ground, so 
they could stand a better chance of limping free once 


they had struck the bottom. It would have been a 
glorious sight if it had succeeded. At some point, | 
imagine, it became as if the guards had hit a wall. They 
began to fall away, in twos and threes, until none were 
left. The miners continued to bodily swarm upon each 
other for long moments after, until finally a coherent 
enough cry rose up to cease the animal panic. 


All at once, they were human again. Men kissed women, 
men kissed men, women kissed women, everyone was 
in ecstasy. A few fell and died afterwards, or dropped 
from the exhaustion. Few got back up. The crowd came 
out of the mine, and spread across the landscape. | did 
not fear them; | had nothing worth taking, and | dressed 
as modestly as they. | did fear they would confiscate my 
notes, and prevent my report from reaching the 
Overseer's eyes. But they easily took me for one of them 
— | imagine more than a few of the miners were 
previously literate men and women, as the fact that | 
continued to write did not arouse the suspicion as | 
would have anticipated of a mob of uneducated 
peasants. 


| can tell you now why they succeeded. Not there in the 
mines; that was sheer numbers alone, but why they 
succeeded in breaking out of the Lowlands and 
destroying the border guard so soundly. The guards 
hired by the mine owners were foreign men, 
unaccustomed to one another. They ate and slept in the 
same barracks, but they did not truly live the same lives. 
Some could not speak the same language. They were 
ex-knights, men-at-arms, sellswords, or soldiers of 
fortune. They learned to fight individually, for duels or 
contests of money and valor. 


The miners had endured decades of hardship together. 
The deprivations they endured were endurable solely 
because of the shared effort of them all to extricate 
themselves from certain death. They had done more 
than eaten and slept together; some did not even eat, 


but gave their meager rations to others. Childless women 
offered their breast to motherless infants, elder men 
were given more time to rest, while complete strangers 
broke their bodies to fulfill the old men's quotas. They 
had established a community in the rocky depths, and 
they were driven not by money or glory or valor. They 
were not driven even by fear. 


They loved one another. All of them together 
acknowledged one another as friend and family. The 
only fear they felt was fear that they would all suffer if 
any individual failed at any point in their journey for 
freedom. 


| tell you this, Overseer; such a force as that is the most 
dangerous and deadly you will ever find anywhere. Many 
would see this mob of vagabonds and peasants and fear 
them. | suggest you look upon them, if and when they 
arrive, and greet them with love. They are a nation unto 
themselves. All they will need is a hand such as yours to 
claim them. An entire under-class, subject to your will. 


Eternally your servant, 
Hagne-Allon 


The Overseer — not the intended reader of the report — set down 
the sheaf of parchment, and smiled up at the short woman kneeling 
before her. She looked young enough to be the Overseer's 
daughter, in another time. 


"An entire 'under-class'?" The Eighth Overseer knelt down, placing a 
finger beneath the short woman's chin and tilting her head back. The 
woman shuddered. The Eighth Overseer had lost much of the left 
side of her jaw, too much for panacea to recover. She had been 
almost beautiful in her youth. She still saw herself as such now... as 
much of her original body was left. 


"Truly these people are not strong or educated enough to be 
considered citizens proper." 


"According to whom?" 


The woman squirmed and tried not to look at the gaping hole in the 
side of the Overseer's face, "To all good and noble persons of the 
Third Overseer's Empire." 


She patted the woman on the cheek, "You are now a good and 
noble person of the Eighth Overseer's Empire. Do you understand?" 


The woman nodded hesitantly. 


"And these miners... the 'under-class', are now subjects of my new 
Empire. Do you understand?" 


Again, she nodded. 


"Go find them, and direct them here to Whore's End. Make sure to 
avoid the artists, and don't drink from the river." 


« The End of a Man | The Under-Class | A Monolithic Species » 


Kirche 


The German Border, near Dresden 
February 15th, 1945 


Calling them members of a charitable foundation was half-right. 


The instant the bombs stopped on the fifteenth, a platoon from 
Prague — Baker-Six-Six, aka "Rare Mediums" — had been 
deployed to Dresden. They were relatively close, barely an hour and 
a half away. The Yanks had decided to take the Axis from two ends, 
and as such, bombed both Prague and Dresden, so a good part of 
B66 was behind aiding in recovery efforts and trying to prevent 
things from getting even worse. 


Officially, they represented the "Allied Relief for Victims of the 
Conflict in the European Theater Foundation", and they had all the 
trappings of it; fake documentation, supply trucks full of emergency 
rations and water filtration, bandages for the wounded. 


Dresden was close to both the southern and eastern borders, and 
they were desperate for any kind of relief, for fear that the Soviets 
would come in from the east and deal them the killing blow. 


Anastazie Dvorak kept her head down as they passed through the 
checkpoint; too often in the occupied zones, she had been stopped 
because of her ‘Jewish eyes’, whatever that meant. someone else 
had told her that it was a perverse compliment, and that it meant 
that they wanted to take advantage of you. 


Her handler, a kind Ukranian man who she just called Humphrey — 
because he looked so much like Humphrey Bogart — had finished 
talking to the German at the checkpoint, and soon, they were bound 
towards Dresden. It was a fair distance into the country, still, another 
half-hour. 


"Are you all right, Ana?" Humphrey asked. His Czech was passable, 


at most, but she could hold a conversation with him. 


"Yes, thank you." She swallowed, looking towards the northern 
horizon. "...| feel so much sadness from there. So much loss. 
They're saying twenty-thousand dead?" 


"Two-hundred thousand, Ana." He glanced at the driver of the 
transport, and then looked back at her. "But word is that the Fuhrer 
is inflating the figures. I'm sure it's far less than that!" He had a 
genuine smile on his face, hiding his own unease. 


".,.they're lying again, then." She felt at her uniform; a nurse's garb, 
for their cover. "Why do they lie about the number of deaths? It's 
dangerous and will induce panic." 


"| think they know that," Humphrey said, looking north with her. "1 
just don't think they care." 


He didn't have the same sensitivity that Ana did. He couldn't talk to 
the dead. He couldn't cause spots of cold. He wouldn't faint or 
scream in the presence of death and destruction. He was just there 
to make sure she was kept safe. 


But you can't kill something that's already dead with a bullet. He 
clutched his Bible in his breast pocket. 


The bombing had stopped at half-past noon. By the time they got 
there, it was almost five o'clock. The city was dead silent, except for 
the burning of the flames in the distance, and the sound of the 
trucks. Every now and again, they would see clothing sticking from 
the rubble. Ana tried not to think about it. She just focused on the 
pain she heard. 


This city would forever have a psychic scar on it. Even if the wounds 
were to heal, the mind of this city would be forever concussed, 
shellshocked. After ten, fifty, one-hundred years, there would still be 
something in this city to remind the people of Germany — and the 
world — of what happened here. 


"What the hell?" someone asked in Czech. It was the driver, who 


she called Clark, after Clark Gable; he had the same voice as the 
actor. "Her ears are bleeding." 


"Dammit." Humphrey reached forward to dab at her ears with a 
handkerchief. "That bad?" 


Ana nodded. "The worst yet. Remember Trafalgar Square, four 
years ago?" 


"You wouldn't stop seizing," Humphrey nodded, taking out a white 
pill and a bottle of water, offering both to her. "Kept saying the 
children there could taste the war rations, and they were hungry for 
chocolate." 


"Yes." She nodded. Ana took the pill placed it under her tongue, and 
swallowed it with some water. "It... it wasn't good." 


The truck came to a stop. "We're here," Clark said, stepping out of 
the cab. "I recognize the building." 


They stepped out onto the street, in front of what had once been 
some form of church. It could barely be recognized as one; only a 
few walls were left, and in the center, some rubble of what had once 
been the dome and spire. The chancel was the largest part left 
standing, all dark stone; whether the surroundings smouldered in 
such a way that it looked dark, or if it was naturally that way, none 
could tell. The altar, somehow, was mostly intact. 


Clark looked at the photograph they had been given, then at the 
remains of the church, then waved Ana over to inspect it. She 
herself had taken the picture, with a special camera; ‘spirit 
photography’ she called it. It depicted the remains of the church, 
with dozens, if not at least one-hundred, black-eyed, pale beings 
looking at the camera. It had frighted her, the Foundation, and the 
New Dawn Initiative enough to come and find it. 


"Who are they?" Humphrey asked, disembarking from the back of 
the transport. 


"| don't know." Her hand balled up in her uniform. "Better question 
might be what are they. You've heard reports from where Husiatyn 


mechanical means into fragments larger than 8 cubic centimeters, 
each fragment retains the full mnemonic content of the original 
sample. 


Construction of the original building was commissioned in 15 by 
Patrizio of __, Italy. Records of the construction, such as the 
source of the stones used and the identity of the architect, were lost 
in a fire at Villa . Historical accounts claim that the fire was set 
by Signora , for reasons unknown. The fire claimed the lives of 
all present in the manor. It is therefore unclear whether the 
presence of SCP-888 in the construction was intentional, and if so, 
what the purpose of its inclusion might have been. 


The current storage site originally contained roughly 1 cubic meter of 
‘empty' stone, which was previously housed in a sealed vault of 
ordinary granite. This cache was discovered by Father , who 
was Cataloging the occupants of the catacombs attached to this 
library. Fortunately, his initial contact was with a small chip broken 
off when the vault was unsealed, and the main mass of stone was 


therefore left untouched. Fr. contacted , the occult 
research division of , however once it was determined that 
SCP is not [REDACTED], contacted the local SCP liason.