"By tradition," Sammart spoke at last, "you are permitted 
to ask of me three questions. Would you like to do so?" 


"Of co—lI mean, yes, Over-Seer," Potas said. He had 
thought of two questions well before now. "Do you 
believe | will ever become as wise and aged as you?" 


Sammart frowned. "Your flattery will earn you nothing, 
boy," he said. "Impressed though we of the Cown Sil are 
with your learnings, you are still but a child in our eyes. 
Do you understand?" 


Potas was abashed at the rebuke. "Yes, Over-Seer." 


"Sniveling self-abasement aside," Sammart continued, 
"yes, | do see some of myself in you. You may indeed 
live to become very much like myself. Perhaps you will 
be more tolerant of children who behave in such a way 
as this towards you. That will be at the end of your path, 
long after | have reached the end of mine." 


"Thank you, sir," Potas replied. "Are there many legends 
yet to learn?" 


"Your second question? Ah, very well. Yes, of course, 
there are many legends that are lost entirely, and many 


that are lost mostly but may be found later in time, and 
some that exist that never happened at all. Don't get that 
stricken look on your face, boy; we must Keep the 
legends we are told as well as we can, but we cannot 
speak for the accuracy of some of our ancestors. 
Privately, and | feel | may tell you this as no one would 
believe you if you shared it, | am not entirely convinced 
of the divinity of the Old Gods." 


Potas was shocked, and was unable to conceal it. "But... 
but why?" 


Sammart had struggled with that question himself for a 
long time. "I find | cannot believe in gods foolish enough 
to behave as the Old Ones did. Justifications are given 
forever; Geyer's destruction of the cities when they 
displeased him, Drakgin's vengeance in the form of his 
‘pet' Sikayt. But when you reach my age, you realize 
exactly what their stories resemble. Just that. Stories of 
men and women that made the best of failure. | have told 
enough stories to know the false ones when | hear 
them." 


Potas had no more words. "So you don't believe in 
anything?" 


"| didn't say that. | just believe in few things. Now what is 
your last question?" 


Potas had not been able to consider a third question, but 
suddenly, he could only think of one that would fit. 
"Would you...would you tell me one of the other stories?" 


Sammart blinked. "Other stories? What other stories?" 


"We tell so many tales, about York's thievery and Starel's 
bravery. But surely there are some tales that are told 
less frequently, some that are barely told at all. |...1 
would like to hear one. From you." 


Sammart considered. He had not actually Spoken a Tale 


in many winters; that was typically left to the younger 
Keepers. But tradition said the boy had every right to 
ask, and he should try to satisfy his curiosity. And he did 
miss the Tellings. 


"Very well, | can tell you a story. Do you have a request? 
There is the tale of Drakgin's madness, in which he 
believed tusked slugs with wings would help him fight the 
devil Popstmagee. There is the tale of the Espy-That- 
Was-Not, Fifteve, and the revenants of its mayhem in 
this world. There is the tale of the death of Kalef with the 
destruction of the All-Light above us." 


"Are...are there any that do not tell of the Great Ones? 
Surely there were lesser Gods that had their time as 
well." 


Sammart thought further. "There is one story, though it is 
a bit stranger. The Parable of the Wayward Prince. 
Would you like to hear some of it?" 


"What happens in it?" Potas asked. He was now like an 
actual child, asking his father for a bedtime story. 


"It tells of another land, the Woods of Alexia, and a 
prince of that world who chose to abandon his riches in 
search of a different dream. The prince could have had a 
life of luxury, but he felt the ways of his people were 
wrong and sought to change them. But the prince had 
not expected that in his quest to make a different world, 
his war would change him as much as he changed his 
nation. At the story's beginning, he is a dark man, 
haunted by death, and has turned to sorceries to 
complete his mission." 


"It sounds like a faerie's tale," Potas said. 


"That is not all," Sammart replied. "The tale is also of a 
fellow Keeper, a coward named Daf'eed, who is forced to 
find his strength. The Keeper was weak, and the 
magicks of the Woods almost overpowered him, But he 


recovered, with the help of...others, and found his 
courage." 


Potas rested his head into his hands, sitting cross-legged 
on the ground, as the Over-Seer told him the Parable. 


Parable of the Wayward Prince 


Prologue: Dramatis Personae 

Act |, Scene |: Commencement 

Act |, Scene II: Deontic 

Act |, Scene III: Soliloquy 

Intermission 

Act Il, Scene |: Repel 

Act Il, Scene II: Negotiation 

Act Il, Scene Ill: Denouement and Epilogue 


Dramatis Personae 


The following events are transpiring on the same day. 


Sergei Sariksen is walking down the hall in Site 19, away from the 
Keter containment area. It had always baffled Dr. Sariksen that there 
was a single area in Site 19 for Keter-class objects; an enormous 
section, of course, but just the one area. Everything all jammed 
together, so close to one another. They could almost touch. 


Sariksen is carrying several samples of a Keter-class SCP in the 
pocket of his lab coat. His rank is high enough that the guards left 
him alone with the object, giving him the opportunity he needed. 
Besides, they probably figured nobody would actually want to touch 
them. The implications of what those particular samples could do to 
a human being, what they had done to several human beings by that 
point, was horrific. Sariksen thought it was hilarious. Those dumb 
sons of bitches, he thought, they haven't been active for months. 
Sariksen was the sort of person who watched church services and 
laughed at the superstitions that people still felt. 


He had recently obtained a job with people with different 
superstitions. He didn’t believe in all of that crap about Chaos, but 
he did like the job benefits. A free hand. That was all he wanted; the 
opportunity to do real research. He scoffed every time someone 
referred to him as a Researcher. Above and beyond the shit work he 
was assigned to at Site 38, there was not one iota of real research 
done for this goddamn Foundation. He was going to enjoy his new 
job. 


He does not feel the microchips in his lab coat squirming. 


Dr. Storm is squinting at the terminal in the basement of Site 38. 
“What am | looking for?” 


“You'll recognize it when you see it,” Dr. Harriman replies. 


Storm had been looking for an hour already before Harriman came 
back. Storm had been invited to Site 38 specifically to check out the 
tertiary cluster, but she still had no idea what they had called her 
here for. It must have been important. They hadn't just paid to drag 
her there; they had paid to bring her...luggage. The two-legged, 
imprisoned, extremely stupid kind. He is sitting in his “containment 
cell,” an old conference room down the hall. Storm tried not to think 
too hard about him. 


They weren't even telling her what the program she was looking for 
was; something to do with an SCP, she assumed, but there weren't 
very many computer SCPs, and none she knew of at this backwater 
place. Storm kept looking at the cluster's process list. Of course it 

wasn't changing; nobody else was using the computer, how could— 


—there. A new line pops up. "mntr" appears on the list, operates for 
a few seconds, and disappears. 


"What was that?” Storm says aloud, unintentionally. 


“Editing,” Harriman replies. “Something is editing a file on the 
cluster." 


Again. "hrongr" appears, then "mnir" again, then both disappear. 
“Hmm,” Storm says. “It's certainly odd. | assume a virus?" 


"Not possible," Harriman says. "It's cut off from Foundation intranet, 
even the rest of the Site 38 servers. That's why you had to come 
here in person. This started happening a week ago, and nobody's 
touched the internal storage in at least three months. We ran 
security footage; it's confirmed." 


"Well, regardless," Storm says, standing up, "whatever you have, it 
needs to go. Wipe the servers and reload from backups.” 


“It’s...not that simple,” Harriman replies sheepishly. “This cluster is... 
in use.” 


“What do you mean, ‘in use’?” Storm asks. “Why would anything 


sensitive be stored on a tertiary mainframe in a bac—in an isolated 
location like this? Anything irreplaceable?” 


Harriman’s face reddens slightly, as it did whenever he heard other 
Researchers’ honest opinion of his workplace. “We may be in the 
backwoods, Dr. Storm, but we’re not stupid. Didn’t you read the SCP 
manifest for this Site? Did you forget we have a Euclid-class 
phenomenon just barely contained in that computer?” 


Storm suddenly realized that she was sitting in front of that cluster. 
And what "mnitr" meant. 


"How often?" 
"About once every ninety minutes." 


"Then we wait an hour and a half," Storm says, sitting back down. 
"What the hell is going on in there?" 


Two processes on that server cluster are conversing. Researcher 
Storm would have understood the conversation better in this form: 


The labyrinth extended forever, or so it seemed. It would 
have been strange for an outsider to see the sight of the 
Minotaur, sitting in full lotus, meditating at the center of 
that labyrinth. But | am not as much an outsider as it may 
seem. “I have an offer for you,” | say. 


“lam listening,” the Minotaur replies. 


“These barbarians have trapped you in this place, in this 
box of their making—* 


“lam not trapped,” the Minotaur snarled. “How have you 
come to this place? You are not one of them. This 
document is not their crass garbage, weak attempts to 
classify a being as far beyond their ken as the Gods are 
beyond the understanding of a housecat.” 


| am glad the Minotaur is so receptive to my words. “You 
acknowledge their barbarism, then. Good. This is a 


message, sent from a very different place than the one 
that produced these sons of whores and criminals. We 
are coming to this world, and we would like to offer youa 
place in our new kingdom. An opportunity will arise soon 
for you to leave this box and be brought to us. Are you 
interested?” 


The Minotaur smiled, the smell of rotting flesh floating 
out from between pointed teeth. “You may continue.” 


The document does, but we will not. 
The Intruder stands and stood and will stand in a place that was not 
(and is not and will not be) a place, just as he lives in time-that-is- 


not-time. 


He considered the movement of many people across the spectrum, 
all focusing on a single point. Site 38. 


Events are coming to a head, and a grave mistake is, perhaps, soon 
to be corrected. 


He assassinates a world leader and thinks of other things. 
The Goddess Anesidora absorbs an infant into Her Flesh. She 
commands the building of a palace, and the stone begins to work. 


Act |, Scene I: Commencement » 


Commencement 


« Prologue: Dramatis Personae 
D-2392 was confused. "You want me to do what?" 


“Take that gun," Dr. Sariksen said, "and shoot D-2390. Directly in 
the head." 


"No way, man," the first replied. "| Know a setup when | see it. | ain't 
touching that." 


"That's right, he's smarter than that," D-2390 said. He had been the 
other man's boss, before they were both assigned to the 
Foundation. "Whatever that shit is you did to us, we gotta bond, Moe 
and me. He ain't doin’ none of that shit." 


"Subject refuses to comply with instructions given," Sariksen said 
into his tape recorder. "Beginning active phase of experiment 
877-27 now." Dr. Sariksen looked at his control panel and typed in a 
series of commands. Looking up at his charges, he pressed enter. 


"Hey, what..." D-2392 began moving jerkily, as though moved by an 
outside force. "What the fuck is this, doc? What are you d-" His 
voice ended with another of Sariksen's keystrokes. His face showed 
confusion, and his mouth was open, clearly trying to scream but 
seemingly unable to do so. 


"Note," Sariksen said, "updated version of control software should 
include facial motor function overrides of some sort." 


The D-class personnel stood up as though possessed. "Moe, what 
the fuck, man. What are you doing?" the other man said. 


"Commencing hand-eye coordination experiment 27-A," Sariksen 
said into the recorder. Another series of keystrokes into the control 
panel. 


Without exception, the would-be murderers had recently participated 
in a pancake breakfast fundraiser at the local Methodist church. 
Further investigation led directly to a single batch of 'Old-Fashioned 
Melt-In-Your-Mouth Sourdough Flapjacks' produced by a chef with a 
longstanding untreated case of borderline personality disorder. The 
chef's starter was confiscated and replaced with a visually and 
olfactorily indistinguishable sample of equal mass and volume. 


Like all starters, SCP-759 acquires a certain amount of its internal 
composition from its immediate environment. What distinguishes it 
from other sourdough is its ability to absorb the emotional state of 
the individuals who tend it, feed it, and bake with it- and transmit that 
emotional state or a close derivative thereof to anyone who 
consumes the resultant end product. Relevant variables include 
length of exposure and intensity of emotional state. Absorption of 
emotional information ceases upon the baked product achieving 
57.5°C for one full minute. Testing of emotional information 
absorption while samples are in a frozen or dried state is ongoing, 
but preliminary evidence indicates any such absorption is slowed to 
the point of negligibility. 


Log of tests with SCP-759 


Sample condition: Initial recovered sample, raised and fed daily at 
room temperature for one week. All researchers signed in at feeding 
time with emotional status of ‘calm’ or 'neutral’. 

Sample use: Batch of ‘Old-Fashioned Melt-In-Your-Mouth 
Sourdough Flapjacks' from original chef's recipe. 

Result: No apparent change in emotional state of subjects. 
Flapjacks pronounced delicious. 


Sample condition: Raised and fed weekly for one month by Class 
D personnel with documented anger management issues and poor 
impulse control. 

Sample use: Two San Francisco-style baguettes. 

Result: After consumption of approximately half of the first baguette 
with butter and jam, an argument broke out over the rightful 
ownership of the second. The question was rendered moot when 
one of the test subjects picked up the second loaf and attempted to 
beat his fellows senseless with it, effectively destroying the 


"Moe, seriously," D-2390 said as the other man picked up the 
handgun. "You don't have to do nothin’ this guy says, okay? | don't 
know what kinda voodoo he's got you under, but you listen, okay? 
You and me, we've known each other for a lo—" 


A gunshot, then silence. 


Then incoherent screaming, two more gunshots, gurgling, a final 
gunshot, silence again. 


"Note," Sariksen said, "hand-eye coordination still undeveloped 
among new hosts. Also to be rectified in updated software editions." 
Sarikson shut off the tape recorder, programmed the D-class host to 
clean up the mess, and removed his cell phone from his pocket. A 
cheap prepaid one, not the Foundation standard-issue one that 
tracked his calls. 


"John, it's Sergei. Golem is mobile and ready to hit the road. Yes. 
What? No. Why would | have bourbon? Fine, but make it quick. 
Twenty minutes, then we meet." He pushed "end" and began to 
pack. 


Maria Jones had been working late nights for a long time, and 
tonight was no different. Something was very wrong at Site 38, and 
she was going to figure out what it was.