"No, not particularly. | believe the Fifthists are unstable enough that 
none of the Scribes have really managed to get anything coherent 
written down. Something of a pity, if you look at it in the right way. 


"| mean, they can communicate across lightyears, so they've got to 
have some sort of quantum-entanglement telepathic mumbo-jumbo 
going on and...wait." She sipped at her beer. “That reminds me. 
Were you able to hear Brother Kowalski’s talk on cosmology from 
last week?” 


“No, though | heard it was interesting.” 


A young Asian man walked past their booth, his legs moving 
automatically with jerking, stilted motions. 


“Yeah. Well, let’s see...” Mary-Ann unfolded her napkin on the table. 
“You have a pen?” 


Salah fished in his pocket for a moment and handed a pen across 
the table. In the background, a chorus of laughter went up from the 
young men and women in the cheap, sweat-stained Dial-a-Llama t- 
shirts. 


“So we've got God up here...creation down here...then the Library 
right here in the center of that as....well, sort of the physical version 
of the operating system of everything, keeps everything running, 
links everything together...and expands to what we consider 
supernatural or paranormal...just manifestations of some of the 
more obscure and finicky universal narrative principles...the more 
regular principles would be classified as magic to the unenlightened 
among us, and the immovable ones are physics...whoops, look like 


Dan and Sami forgot to pay their tab again.” She pointed over to 
where Vladimir was dragging out a bored-looking Indian man and a 
grey-haired man wearing a pointed magenta hat by the collars. The 
older man was waving about a brightly-colored snuggy with stitched 
on stars and yelling drunkenly. 


“No, no, see, this is the Robe of Magnanimous Luster, guaranteed to 
increase your appeal to the opposite sex! Nevermind that fact that it 

also attracts dogs, that’s just an added bonus. Come on, since when 
has any of our products let you down?” 


Vladimir did not respond, even to the trail of pugs that followed 
them. He kicked open the door and tossed the two outside, followed 
by throwing the dogs out one by one. He shut the door, re-adjusted 
his eyepatch, and went back to the bar. 


“Those two...” Mary-Ann shook her head. “Anyway, he’s supposed 
to publish his book on all of this by the end of next month.” 


“| look forward to reading it.” 


The waitress returned with their food. Mary-Ann had gotten a steak 
with a baked potato. Salah had gotten curry. A ragged woman and 
her two sons, wearing clothing that with patterns a bit too bright and 
a bit too clashing walked past the booth. 


“How’s the food?” 

“Very nice.” 

“Yeah, Pyotr and lla do a really good job.” 

"Who?" 

"Vladimir's son and daughter in law. They run the kitchen." 
"Oh, right, right." 


"Between you and me, Vladimir can't cook to save his life, except 
when he's trying to kill someone." 


The front door opened, and a wave of silence spread out across the 


bar. The band stopped playing. The spiders stopped discussing 
ways of overthrowing the bourgeoisie. The teddy bear stopped 
waving its knife around. 


Four individuals walked up to the bar. One wore flannel and glasses 
with no lenses, one had lamprey mouths where her eyes and nose 
should have been, one was nude save for a full-body animated 
tattoo reconstructing the Fall of Daevon, and one was wearing a 
unitard made of fetuses with a cape of knitted pubic hair, identified 
as such by the “This cape is made out of knitted pubic hair” stitched 
into it. 


“Oh come on...” Salah groaned. “Right when we're trying to have a 
nice dinner here.” 


“Eat your curry, Salah.” 
“Wh...” 


“Just keep eating, I'll handle this.” Mary-Ann stood up. Lousy punks, 
trying to ruin her dinner. Nope. A hundred times nope. She was not 
having this. Cold food would be better than them fouling up the air. 


“Please, Mary-Ann, sit down. There's no need to cause a scene. 
That's just falling to their level. Let Vladimir take care of it.” 


“This is generally how he takes care of it. I'm not letting them mess 
up our dinner.” 


Mary-Ann walked over to the bar, sending sideways glances to 
some of the other patrons. The teddy bear with the knife. The salt- 
grimed, sun-darkened man with the harpoon and the “Selachiosk 
Pugnix Combin” tattoo. One of the blue-clad band members, with his 
shiny SYNCOPE saxophone. Bigfoot. 


She could hear the conversation clearly now. 


“And / will repeat myself. | do not serve your kind here,” Vladimir 
said, not looking up from the glass he was cleaning. “And do not try 
to tell me that you are not them, for you are obvious as dead cow on 
highway. Leave, or be made to leave.” 


“Look. Old man,” the one with the glasses said. “We're trying to be 
reasonable here, but we’ve received complaints that your bar is not 
friendly towards transfurry five-dimensional-gendered 
neoneanderthal polyamorous omnitapirsexuals without beards. And 
we're not happy about that. That is a completely unacceptable 
phobia, and we demand that you open your services to transfurry 
five-dimensional-gendered neoneanderthal polyamorous 
omnitapirsexuals without beards, or we will be forced to use forceful 
coercion. Are we cool yet?” 


Mary-Ann tapped the one with the glasses on the shoulder. 
“Hi there.” 

She then punched him in the face. 

“Night, Di. Thanks again for babysitting.” 


The door shut, and Mary-Ann let out a sigh. Her knuckles were sore. 
Most of her was sore. Her conscience been lecturing her on how 
she shouldn't have enjoyed pummeling four hipsters senseless, but 
she let it slide. They hadn't been roughed up very badly, just enough 
to scare them off. More bothersome to her was the idea that Salah 
might not have had a good evening out because of it. 


"Sorry about all that. Got carried away a bit." 


"Yeah, you did. But, it happens to all of us at one time or another. 
Just try to rein it in a bit next time you want to let off some steam." 
Salah picked up a sheet of paper from the dining room table. “On 
another note, it looks like Di was trying to teach our daughter Latin.” 


“And knowing her, she probably succeeded.” 
Salah put an arm around his wife. 
“Come on, let’s go to bed.” 


« Nor Gloom of Night Shall Stay | Hub | Empire of Dirt (Part 1) » 


Empire of Dirt (Part 1) 


It was cold. Winter bore down on the black stone spires 
and slave pits and smokestacks of Daevon in a sheet of 
frozen lead. Snow and ash had mixed into an indefinable 
slurry that filled the narrow streets. The lamps fought 
uselessly against the encompassing darkness. In the 
gloom, some stray dogs picked at the frozen body of a 
slave that had not made it home to his master’s hearth. 


The artist reclined in her eggshell chair, nude. Silks and 
furs were draped haphazardly around her, more or less 
unneeded in the soft warmth of her studio. 


The euphoria of the act was still fresh, the electric thrill of 
giving life to art. Her hands moved with precision and 
speed, detailing words, figures, shapes. Ink blossomed 
out across the sheet of vellum that was stretched out and 
held taught by jointed iron legs. Ink was the life of art as 
blood was the life of man. 


She had made, created, given birth to, was art. 


The ink had all pooled in the basin underneath her as 
she made the first incision, thin and black, pouring out of 
her body without staining. The gift of the Horned King, 
that his disciples might turn their own life into art for his 


glory. 


She had worked quickly after that, carefully preparing the 
vellum, her heart filled with joy. She took the skin, 
treating it with the appropriate chemicals and spices, 
draining the rest of the ink off into the basin. 


That done, what remained had been burnt in the furnace 
shrine set in the wall, with incense and prayers, 
underneath the painted stone form of the King, and it 


was pleasing to the artist’s lord. It was the King’s 
command that he take part in the art, for if the King bore 
godhood in his crown, and the art was the artist, thus the 
art-artist likewise came to godhood. 


According to tradition, the umbilical cord was tied around 
her neck. 


She continued to work, pouring her life, her soul, into her 
art, and the frozen night pressed on outside. In time, 
when the grey smog-smeared dawn approached, she put 
down her pens, and smiling at the work she had done, 
the artist began to sew up the slit in her belly. 


All this this was pleasing to Moluch, the Horned King 
Crowned in Shame. 


Mary-Ann sat on the floor, propped up against the couch, and 
plucked at her guitar. Naomi sat and watched with bright eyes. 


“ve walked ten thousand miles, ten thousand miles to see you... 
And every gasp of breath, | grabbed it just to find you...1 climbed up 
every hill to get to you...l wandered ancient lands to hold just you... 
and every single step of the way, | pa-a-a-a-ay...every single night 
and daa-aaa-aay...” 


“adaa,” Naomi said, reaching out to touch the guitar. 


“Yep. This is my guitar. | don’t think you’re big enough to play it yet, 
though.” She set the guitar to the side and placed her daughter on 
her lap. “You'd try eating it, and you don’t want a slobbery guitar, do 
you?” She gave Naomi a tickle. 


Mother and daughter had the house to themselves that evening: 
Salah was out at the Chapterhouse helping with the graduation 
ceremony for this batch of recruits. It wasn’t as if it was a closed 
affair or anything, but Salah had the car today and the timing didn’t 
work out to come pick Mary-Ann and Naomi up. That was something 
of a disappointment, but so things went. 


« SCP-633 | SCP-634 | SCP-635 » 


Mary-Ann checked Naomi’s diaper. Nope. Still clean. 


It had been a just over two years since she had been in their shoes, 
taking her oath of office, though all things considered that could 
have been another person entirely, wrapped up in a blanket of quiet, 
desperate, melancholy. Time and care and love had done their job 
at unraveling that cocoon. The world was brighter now. Life was 
better. 


A sharp rapport of knocks on the front door interrupted her musing. 


“Hm? Come on, let’s see who it is.” Mary-Ann picked up Naomi and 
walked to the door. The knocking continued, pausing every few 
seconds and starting up again. 


“Hold on, hold on, I’m coming!” 


Mary-Ann opened the door to see two men standing on the front 
step, one shorter and balding, the other taller with salt and pepper 
hair. Both were wearing suits: Not secret service suits, or Jehovah's 
Witnesses suits, but closer to insurance salesmen suits. Alarm bells 
went off in her head: never trust men who turn up in pairs on front 
steps wearing suits, ever. Their eyes confirmed her suspicions: Dull, 
glassy eyes, like a cow’s. Foundation eyes. 


Her stomach sunk. 
Son of a motherfuck they have the address? 


“Ms. Mary-Ann Lewitt, my name is Mr. Redmond,” the taller man 
said. “The Foundation is in need of your assistance.” 


“If you want help, call the office of external affairs at the 
Chapterhouse. | don’t know how you got my name or my address, 
but | want you off my property. Now.” 


“I’m sorry, I’m being unclear.” Redmond continued. “The Foundation 
requires you specifically. This is a matter of the utmost importance, 
and it requires your complete cooperation.” 


“Important enough that you can just walk up to my front door?” 


“Yes.” His face was completely serious. “I apologize, Ms. Lewitt, but 
time is of the essence. We are in the process of alerting the 
Initiative, but we cannot wait for the bureaucracy to play catch-up.” 


Mary-Ann hesitated for a moment, waiting for her gut to percolate an 
answer. Amidst all the fishiness, she could feel that instinctive lump 
of certainty that something was seriously wrong and it needed 
dealing with right now. Her gut had spoken. 


“Come on in, then. Make it quick.” 


Salah glanced at his watch: 6:48. The graduation ceremony had 
finished up early. A small group of recruits this time, and a lot of the 
pomp and circumstance had been cut down significantly from the 
previous year. 


Always such promise at the ceremony, but it was the next few 
weeks and months that would decide who stayed in the Shepherds. 
Death was always a possibility, but the more pressing subject was 
the strain of the position. People simply broke down, unable to cope 
with being thrown face-first into the horrific absurdities of the world. 
But, this was the Horizon Initiative, built on shaken faith that could 
still stand tall. They would do fine, Salah assured himself. 


Salah got in the car. Time to go home. The digital watch on his left 
wrist reflected the evening sun. 


Mary-Ann sat on the couch, Naomi in her lap. Redmond sat in the 
chair across the room. His accomplice Brown stood in the corner. 


“The item in question is designated SCP-089, a Canaanite statue 
dating from the second century BCE. SCP-089 will provide a name, 
a command, and a fanciful description of a disaster that will occur if 
the named individual does not complete the task. Ten hours ago, 
SCP-089 underwent a locution event, naming you as the chosen 
individual.” 


“And that means...what?” 


“SCP-089’s demands are identical in all events: that the selected 
individual performs a ritual in order to prevent or stop the promised 
disaster event. This ritual will entail, must entail, the loss of that 
individual’s child.” 


The universe froze. Mary-Ann stared at Redmond mutely for a 
moment, trying to process the information, trying to find some 
misheard word or slip of the tongue. He did not just say that. He did 
not just say that...He did. That is what he said. She pulled Naomi 
closer to her instinctively. No. She wasn’t letting them take her. Over 
her dead body. 


“Get out of my house,” she said, voice low, barely covered up a 
savage snarl. “Get out. If you or your Foundation friends come back, 
| start shooting you. Got it?” 


Redmond nodded. 


“| understand, Ms. Lewitt. This is not an easy thing to accept. 
However, | cannot leave. SCP-089 has made its threat, and so the 
ritual must be carried out. If it is not, or if it is delayed beyond 
seventy-two hours, the disaster SCP-089 threatens will begin. We 
know of no alternative method to prevent these disasters from 
occurring.” 


“Have you tried smashing it? Smashing it is a nice idea.” Mary-Ann’s 
voice dripped with mockery and venom. Fucking Foundation 
packrats. 


“Ms. Lewitt, | believe you are at least somewhat aware of the 
principles of the Foundation. Our protocols ban the destruction of 
items and entities except in the most extreme of circumstances. 
Furthermore, the process has already begun. If SCP-089 were 
destroyed now, the ritual could not be completed, and the disaster 
would not end. Beyond this, it is unknown if SCP-089 causes the 
disaster itself, or simply warns of it. Its destruction could be the loss 
of not only a means of prevention, but an early detection system.” 


Mary-Ann couldn’t help but laugh. It was a bitter, ugly sound. 


“And that’s all it is to you, isn’t it? You just go around picking up new 


kids to kill when the batteries run low." 


“No. It is a necessity to prevent greater destruction. Do not be fooled 
into thinking that we are unaware of what it is that we do, Ms. Lewitt. 
The Foundation is aware of what it asks, and it asks only because it 
knows the alternative.” 


“And what’s the alternative?” 
Redmond cleared his throat.