Welcome to the SCP Foundation Tale Hub
The contents of this page are currently [unclassified].
Personnel are reminded that certain files within this hub may be subject to various classifications, and that verified credentials may be necessary to access those files.
This page lists all tales and their tags, starting with the most recently created. The list can be filtered for a particular tag by selecting one of the ones listed below. For definitions of these tags, see the Genre Tagging Guide.
To sort tales by year, see Tales By Year. For a list of tale series hubs, see the Series Hub.
Genre
Genre Elements
Themes
Setting
Style
Currently listing 814 tales.
In Asakusa Station, you may find a train that shouldn’t exist, ready to take you to a place you shouldn’t go. It will be departing shortly.
"Guy gets pulled down a nostalgia fueled tiktok rabbit hole that leaves him a paranoid mess."
Filename: PLACEHOLDER
Author: George Chernilevsky
License: Public domain
Link: Wikimedia Commons
Additional information: Color editing and added text byWondrous Expanse.
TL;DR: Went paintballing, saw something weird, IDK what to do.
Filename: image.jpg
Name: Wayeb Living-Knot
Author: Álvaro de la Paz Franco, modified by DigitalHaruspex
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cenote_Ik_Kil_24.jpg
Derivative of: "Cenote Ik Kil 24" by Álvaro de la Paz Franco
Additional Notes: Distorted and recolored.
3.9K words, ~20 minute read.
Written and illustrated by Dino--Draws
After Twenty Centuries of Stony Sleep
2024
12 October
Site-43: Inter-Sectional Subway System (Blue Line)
Mere moments after the Darkness dropped and all hell broke loose.
"Son of a bitch," Elizabeth Crocker snarls, "she shot the engine."
This is, by and large, a bigger issue than the still cooling corpse of her remaining agent. Crocker grunts, examining the hole that had punched through the metal — which was now contributing to the expulsion of smoke into the tunnel — and swears again. There is a shifting behind her as the Uncontained hauls himself to his feet with a pained groan.
"Well, good morning," the beast remarks with humor, despite gritted teeth, as he picks the bullet out of his shoulder. The manner in which the Uncontained flicks away the busted chunk of lead would almost seem carefree if not for the startling amount of blood it splatters across the deck.
"We're not going to make it far in this," Crocker murmurs. The Uncontained blinks, as though just now realizing her presence, and glances down the tunnel.
"Where does this lead?"
"Out to Lake Huron."
"Oh," the Uncontained smiles, "then there isn't a problem."
"Mm?" Crocker tilts her head as she fiddles with the wiring in the engine, trying to see if it's shot in more ways than one.
"It just means I get to spread my wings a bit early," the creature chirps, though some of the mirth leaves his face, eyes drifting down to the dead giftschreiber agent. Crocker furrows her brow, watching as he crouches down.
The Uncontained briefly examines the body before brushing its eyes losed. Those gnarled fingers stay there, for a moment, resting on the dead man's face.
And then he presses down and through.
In a matter of seconds, entropy chews through the corpse in accelerated years. In the time it takes Crocker to blink twice, the skull has caved in and the body is dust upon the wood.
The Uncontained stands, dusts off his hands, and gives a simple, solemn nod of satisfaction.
They proceed down the tunnel.
The engine is making considerably worse sounds by the time they emerge into the night, but Crocker does not care to voice her concern over this a second time. It seems a nice night for a swim anyways.
The lake air smells of water plants and petrichor, the wispy clouds above and blankets of mist speak to the end of a storm. The moon, Waxing Gibbous and almost Full, shines through the grey. Its pale light dances off dark waters and casts a shimmer that spreads all the way to the misty shores. Crocker pushes off of the smoking engine.
The Uncontained is leaned over the front of the little boat, right hand drifting lazily in the water below. Crocker realizes, as she approaches, that the beast was watching his own blood drip into the depths. He cups some of that lake water between his fingers and stands.
As the water falls through his hand, it takes strips of skin and flesh with it. Crocker's eyes widen, but she does not recoil. Instead of bone, there is an ebony black, shimmering in the moonlight and tipped with curved talons. The other hand follows suit as mortal flesh decays away for darkness. He grins at her, and the slate-grey of his eyes has been replaced by an empty black.
"Are you ready?" The god's voice is an excited, barely constrained whisper, like a child with a secret to tell. "Are you ready to fly?"
Elizabeth Crocker inhales, exhales, and then mirrors that sharp-toothed smile.
"Take your freedom."
The Uncontained doubles over.
This time, Crocker does visibly startle, for she smells and then sees the blood that pours from its mouth. Before she can take a step forward, the sound of snapping bone and tearing tendons fills the nighttime air. She watches his face all but rip itself open, jaw slack as sharp keratin pushes outwards. A curved beak all but vomited up, pushing out from the skin, tearing bloody teeth with it.
Black feathers sprout from thickened, leathery skin, as whatever he is begins to stand. Crocker stumbles back to avoid being struck by a massive pair of black talons as they swing past to grasp the edge of the boat. A tail whips in the air, feathered until it falls away towards its tip, again in favor for some odd darkness instead of flesh. Crocker can see, illuminated by the moonlight, the glittering stars that orbit it.
The Falcon, the Chimera, the Dragon, rises. Its head is a bird's, jagged teeth set in its beak, and crowned by a pair of antlers. One is broken and it creates seven wicked points upon its head. The wings spread outwards with massive, tattered feathers.
The word tattered sticks in Crocker's mind, as she takes in the appearance of the gore-slick behemoth. Its feathers are dull and patchy, and fully stripped away at its underbelly, head and neck. Ribs press against scarred skin. With a stab of indignant anger she realizes that this is not the Uncontained's natural state. It calls to mind the image of a bird in a too tight cage. A bird who, with no other respite, plucks itself bloody. The bullet wound from Ibanez has torn itself open messily on its shoulder and bleeds freely down its arm and wing.
Crocker reaches out a hand, but freezes when the great beast's form continues to make a deluge of snapping sounds. Seven eyes open upon its head, shifting around each other and its features with quiet, sickening squelches. Her hand stays frozen in the air, gaze transfixed.
The Uncontained, who now threatens to capsize the boat, leans forward slowly. Its beak lowers, hovers a few inches from her outstretched palm, and they both are still.
Crocker closes the gap and places her hand against its beak. The keratin is scuffed and cold, the dragon rumbles.
"Oh," Crocker lets out a quiet little laugh, "Aren't you beautiful?"
After a moment, the Falcon pulls back. Another sound vibrates in its throat, as it shifts and raises itself upwards. With head hoisted towards the sky, and wings spread out wide, the Uncontained unhinges its jaw and shrieks.
Crocker would harken it to the call of a predatory bird, mixed with a dozen other things, but above all else she would call it joyous. The Uncontained's wings beat once, twice, sending ripples across Huron's water as it maintains that howl to the heavens. Something in the air changes. Crocker feels a trickle of blood down her ear, but simply grins.
Distantly, though she barely processes it, there is a roar in response.
The Uncontained snaps its jaws shut, teeth clacking, flexing its wings. Crocker sees it wince as it aggravates the wound on its shoulder, but it otherwise pays the injury little mind.
The boat sways dangerously as the creature then shifts its weight, crouching down and snaking its neck forward. Crocker braces a hand on wood as the Uncontained lowers its massive head to her level. Seven moonstone eyes study her as a rumbling fills the air.
"Rise with me," says the beast, "come taste the stars."
Elizabeth Crocker reaches out and grabs the Uncontained's antler. Its eyes shift out of the way as she places her foot on the side of its beak for proper leverage, and she hoists herself up onto the god.
Crocker hooks her arm around the antler, for it's about the only sturdy thing to grasp on the dragon. The Uncontained watches her closely, quietly. She tightens her grip on its antler and gives a firm nod.
It grins.
She feels the wind whistle as its wings extend to their full extent, it's almost hard to see just how big the Uncontained's wings even are in the night — but the moonlight glimmers an iridescent sheen across the flight feathers as they ripple in the wind.
The world lurches. Like a thundercrack, the god propels itself into the air. Crocker hears its tail strike the boat, snapping its hull with ease and sending the wood down into Lake Huron's icy depths. She squeezes her eyes shut against the wind, gripping the antler tightly, as the Uncontained rises into the sky.
There's a mild unsteadiness to its flight and Crocker cannot tell if its because of injury or disuse from spending nearly a century chained beneath the Earth. She dares to open her eyes, to glance back at the raw wound, watching the times it makes the Uncontained's flight falter.
"Is that injury a problem?" Crocker shouts over the wind as she glances down to meet the god's eyes. Two of them shift to stare at her.
"No," comes the response, clear despite the din, though Crocker picks up on strain, "I will manage fine."
The lake is growing smaller beneath them as the Uncontained surges through the mist. The wispy clouds of that fading storm spark and crackle with energy anew as the Falcon's talons swipe through them playfully. Crocker yelps, nearly flung from the dragon, when the Uncontained suddenly spins in the air with a cackle. Her subsequent cursing as she scrabbles for better foothold makes the god only laugh louder, and it echoes in the thunder.
"Don't you dare drop me," Crocker chuffs out in her own hoarse but tense laugh.
"You of all should know I never do as told," it remarks with mischief. The Uncontained jerks its head to the side, to purposefully jostle her. Crocker stifles the yelp this time.
"This isn't horseback riding," the dragon giggles, "there are no reins."
Despite this, the Uncontained does stabilize its flight, now above the mist and the crackling multi-colored maelstrom it had left in its wake. Iridescent wings outstretched and steady, they glide instead. Crocker catches her breath as the cold bites her face, and scans the horizon. The moon burns bright, the world lies in its pale light.
"Where are we heading?" Crocker elects to ask. There's a plan already forming in her mind, the continuation of many, but she's since been well informed that she's not in the driver's seat of this particular trip.
"Where the wind takes me I shall fly," The Uncontained replies, a rumble undercutting its words. Its eyes scan the sky, teeth still bared in a grin.
"For the wheel is turning anew, now."
Crocker hums, smiles. "Are we to stop it?"
"We are to stop it all."
Pinery Provincial Park: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada
"Keep moving," Keil Graf commands, "we cannot remain in the open."
While much was barren, the pine trees stood defiant despite autumn's reign. There was greenery ahead of the small entourage as their trek finally let them bid farewell to Site-43's collapsing corpse. The subway's flooded tunnels could take them no further, between slammed shut bulkheads and a growing proximity to Grand Bend. The little town, which had to be half Foundation by volume by now, was most definitely on high alert.
So the forest would have to do.
By the time they delve into the cover of the trees, their charge is beginning to stir once more.
The schriftsteller place the stretcher down at the heart of a clearing, and Keil turns to face the Unyielding as he pushes himself up. A gnarled hand, with a slight tremble, curls around the stretcher's edge.
While the three schriftsteller with them step back and keep at a distance, Keil approaches the waking God.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, sir," he muses, though there's a drop of concern behind the remark as he watches the Unyielding blearily blink in the moonlight.
The chuckle from the sacred beast is a wet, rasping sound, as silver eyes flick upwards to meet Keil's own.
"I have laid idle for far too long," the God creaks, "there is much work to be done, mm?" His head tilts to the side, the motion limp like a doll, and Keil nods.
"It will certainly be easier, now. The scales are finally to be even."
The giftschreiber were not going to be on the winning side of this war for long. The Unyielding makes a pleased hum.
"My people's patience in the shadows is finally to pay off."
Keil moves to aid the God, as he staggers to his feet, but the Unyielding simply shakes his head in dismissal. They all stand in a rough semicircle as the ancient thing's bones crack and pop from years of disuse.
The Unyielding stands, raises his head towards the sky. The Waxing Gibbous hangs above them all, the sun's reflection casting a pale glow and tall shadows through the pines. There is a distant rumble of thunder from the clouds above the lake.
The wind stops. The thunder stops.
There are countless tales, from countless peoples, of the wariness one should hold when the woods fall silent. When the birds go quiet, when the crickets cease their song. As Keil holds his breath, it feels the world is doing in the same. He cannot even hear the waves of the lakeshore.
The weight of the silence hangs heavy as lead.
They all watch, cloaked in their own quietude, as the Unyielding raises a hand towards a moonbeam that cuts through the branches of the pines.
As that gnarled hand enters the light, its skin flakes off. Little motes of white swirl in the air and peel back flesh in favor for a set of curved claws of ethereal light. The Unyielding lowers his hand and runs his claws along the other, frees it of its flesh as simply as one removes a glove. He turns eyes, now empty and white with captured moonlight, to the assembled schriftsteller.
"Do stand back," the beast hums, "It would be such a shame for you to come all this way just to fall here."
They obey.
The Unyielding's head jerks with a crack, turns at an unnatural angle as he drops to a kneel.
Its face solidifies into a mask of glittering metal as light in the air weaves around it. With the sound of grinding stone, two arms become four, and claws curl inwards. Pale white fur, shining like a sunset, covers the creature as it snaps, expands, shifts. The schriftsteller bow as the gargantuan feline form begins to rise. Metal shackles at each of the four front limbs mark where flesh meets light, as claws the size of swords unsheathe from the beast's paws. It carves the earth as the God squirms in the throes of its transformation.
There's a clanging, a hissing, as pale chains ensnare the haunches of the beast, coiling around its flank and back legs. They press into the fur, sizzling still, as though branding it with their presence. The mask shifts upwards and its jaws become exposed. The maw of a lion, with three rows of jagged fangs, yowls as though pained.
That mask of a man, face blank and eyes empty, becomes crowned by seven horns. Curved like a ram, the deadly points find their place above that fearsome maw. Seven eyes ignite in a halo orbiting its head.
What stands before the worshipers of Order is the Falconer, the Lion, the Sphinx whose head nearly meets the tips of the pines. Keil rises, heart pounding as he stares at the beast with reverence. While it not his first time beholding it, it has been oh-so-very long. The leader of the schriftsteller falters, though, when the Unyielding does the same.
The God is panting. One of its front paws slips and it half-falls. It crouches, almost bowing before them in turn, as its sides continue to heave from exertion. Blood and spit drip into the dirt.
There is a crack in its mask. A deep, splintering thing that ran from the left brow down to the right corner of the cheek. The inside looks slick with something. Blood? Without thinking, Keil takes a step forward, hand outstretched, and brushes against the torn metal.
And then he sees the stars above. His legs are suddenly slammed out from beneath him with the swipe of the behemoth's claws.
For a brief moment, as his head hits the half-frozen earth, he is a young apprentice once more. Trapped in an arena of chalk dust and bone, with a hungry beast at its heart, as the deep snarl from the God shakes his chest. The slavering jaws hang inches from him, and he feels the hot air of its breath as it chuffs. It fogs in the cool air, and its sickly sweet stench — like a rotting rose — sticks in his nostrils.
"Forgive me," Keil chokes, and he knows he is not the only one who cowers before the great beast, "Forgive me, my lord. I did not—"
The Unyielding wordlessly pulls back. A mere warning, then. Keil lowers his arms, having thrown them before his face as though that would have saved him should the God have chosen to strike.
One of the other schriftsteller help him to his feet, and they watch with a wariness as the God stalks the clearing. He can see the beast's muscles shift with each movement, as it regains its bearings. It circles them, before placing its claws against a large outcropping of rock. The Unyielding hoists itself up, stands before and above them. Seven eyes scan the scant group, but now the lion's rumbling sounds more pleased. Keil allows himself to breathe easier.
The silence is split by a distant shriek, like a bird's cry.
The Unyielding's head snaps up like a predator's, alerted. There's a huff, an exhale, before its mask once more shifts up to bare its fangs. The Sphinx throws back its head and roars to the sky. It is a low, deep sound, moreso felt than it is heard, though Keil does not doubt it reaches the ears of the intended recipient.
He sees the other schriftsteller flinch out of the corner of his eye as the god's bellow shakes their skulls like a blast of sudden pressure. The stillness in the air is unceasing. Keil can feel a headache beginning to bloom behind his eyes, but simply grins.
"We must regroup with the rest of your people, Keil," speaks the Sphinx, "I can ready the ritual. Calling them to the hall shall suffice as a gathering." It flexes its claws, tracing glowing lines along the stone.
Keil closes his eyes to try and mask the grimace. The three others either suck in a breath, or shift backwards still.
"We… cannot return to the Guildhall," Keil says, slowly.
Thunder rumbles. A crack of multi-colored lightning strikes the lake beyond the beast. The Unyielding peers down at them, a shifting of its claws knocks a few pebbles from its perch. When it finally speaks, it is a single, incredulous word:
"What?"
"The Guildhall has been lost," and there is a keen mourning in Keil's tone, "not to the giftschreiber, but to a damned gaggle of upstarts led by 43. They forced us out, and we were betrayed by some of our very own."
The Sphinx growls, stalking down from the stone. Keil can see its fur bristling, raised in anger at the loss of a most valuable territory.
"No matter," it snarls, and Keil fights not to flinch, "Flushing vermin is never a difficult task."
"We will reclaim it," Keil states with an anger of his own, "I refuse to allow such a sacred space to be violated as it has."
"We will take what is ours, and more." purrs the Sphinx, raising its mask to the moon. It has steadied its breathing, now standing strong.
"But first, there is business to attend to. A long overdue discussion to be had."
"Ah," Keil chuckles, and he realizes what is meant.
"The Foundation needs steadier hands upon the wheel."
Chief Delfina Ibanez would be loath to admit she'd lost consciousness in the lake water of the Blue Line, but when her head hit the frigid October waters she felt everything had briefly snapped out of alignment.
She gags to proper awareness when Huron's icy grip tries to invade her lungs. There is an undercurrent of blood on her taste buds, though it is not hers.
Pensak.
She got one of them now, she'll get the rest later. Like a little game of Duck Hunt. Delfina uses this angry trail of thoughts to anchor herself while she physically anchors herself — reeling still from adrenaline, a loathed panic, and her own pounding heart — grasping one of the Blue Line's maintenance ladders to haul herself up. The Chief grunts with the effort, her muscles battling both overexertion and temperature shock. It makes her grit her teeth and growl.
Delfina ends up roughly flopping over onto the concrete, once pulled fully from the water. She lays there, wheezing, no longer able to hear the stuttering gasps of the little boat's dying engine.
"God dammit," she hisses out through chattering teeth. She tries not to consider how much has been lost today, staring at a half-collapsed ceiling and dangling light fixture that spits down sparks. She tries not to think about how she nearly lost her family for a second time, and she doesn't even know the full extent of who is and isn't with them anymore, in this moment.
When she finally gains her bearings, stumbles to her feet, there is something in the water.
At first, she thinks it pieces of Pensak, and thus almost ignores it entirely. But no, no this is something else.
Feathers?
There were black feathers drifting in the tunnel's current, and they were massive. One of them had to be the length of her arm, and while exceeding that size is no achievement, she knew of no bird whose feathers would be of such a scale.
She crouches down at the water's edge and snatches one from the stream. Delfina turns it in her hand, examining the twilight colors that dance upon its darkness.
It makes her frown, it reminds her of something. An exhausted, frazzled Roz stumbling back into their dorm murmuring of the twin world-enders that were (formerly) sealed in Site-43's depths. Delfina asked, in a jest she'd picked up from a new agent and liked to echo to make Roz groan, "Those old freaks fail the vibe check?"
The fidgeting woman had stared at her, shivered, and among other things murmurs: "The half-men are half-monster."
And Harry once called the one a Falcon.
Delfina stares at the feather, feeling her pulse pounding anew. What does this mean for the other one?
She knows not her wife's tussle with the sphinx below. Knows not of the pitiless mask that has seared itself into Udo's vision, nor that the beast has raked its claws against her palm and found purchase in her soul.
No, Delfina's eyes stay on the feather.
Despite being half soaked through, it smells as though it is burning.
[…] These were often warnings: A little after my son's birth I came home to confront my wife with the statement "Michael is ill." A smell of burnt feathers had announced what she and the doctor had hidden.
Sometimes my wife saw apparitions: before the birth of our son, a great black bird.
[…] Leap Castle, though burnt down during our Civil War and still a ruin, is haunted by what is called an evil spirit which appears as a sheep with short legs and decaying human head. […]
— William Butler Yeats, A Vision
« Indivisible | Words of Power and Poison | TBA »
See also:
- SCP Series - Tale Edition I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII
- Explained SCPs - Tale Edition
- Joke SCPs - Tale Edition
- Foundation Tales - Audio Edition: Links to the best audio readings of Foundation Tales.
- Series Archive: An archive for listing the various series hubs.
- Canon Hub: An hub for the various Foundation universe canons.
- Creepypasta Archive: An archive for spooky standalone stories written on site. Not necessarily connected to the SCP Universe at large.
- Incident Report Archive: An archive of incident reports, eyewitness interviews, and various other Foundation addenda.
- Contest Archive: An archive dedicated to the various contests the SCP Wiki has held over the years.
- Top Rated Tales: The most popular tales on the site.
- Tales By Year: Tales sorted by year of publication.
- Tale Calendar: Tales sorted by calendar dates.