Garden of the Gods is an official National Natural Landmark known for its sweeping vistas and massive sandstone formations.
What to do at Garden of the Gods
Plan Your Trip
Garden of the Gods is massive, and can't be properly enjoyed on a whim. A solid plan will set your day off right!
Support Conservation
Garden of the Gods is a hotspot for animal diversity. A small donation can help keep humans out, and them in, in greater numbers than ever before.
Witness Restoration
We work tirelessly to keep our trails maintained and accessible to everyone! If you see our team out and about, don't be afraid to say hello!
Spot the Difference
Garden of the Gods is home to exotic subspecies of wildlife. See if you can spot the key signs!
…forever free!
Garden of the Gods is property of the public! It is free from private interests, enabling people from all walks of life to freely enjoy the beautiful sovereignty of nature.
SCP FOUNDATION CREDENTIALS RECOGNIZED
Salutations, DRAWS.
DISPLAYING TRUNCATED/SUMMARIZED FILE
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-8007 is contained via the PYROCLASM PROTOCOL.
Description: SCP-8007 is the referral to the source of the Ring of Fire1 geological phenomena, via instances designated SCP-8007-1 to SCP-8007-4472.
These instances are sapient draconic entities3 that have adapted to live within the chambers of the active volcanoes along the Ring of Fire4. The anomalies are responsible for all geological activity along the subduction zones of the Pacific Tectonic Plate5 and surrounding tectonics.
NOTE: The prior updates were made in light of the GARDEN OF THE GODS investigation, itself spurred in the aftermath of OPERATION DEVIL'S NINE QUESTIONS. Relevant documentation has been attached below.
DISPLAYING NOTE 0/3
1983
December 22
Doctor Hellen Gibbs is on a plane. It barrels through the uncaring skies with a fervor and a tenor, its engines blaring at twenty five thousand rotations per minute. Exhaust billows as sixty hundred gallons of jet fuel are churned, burned and discarded inside a ten ton turbine. The chassis screeches and bends against the turbulence, the winds, straining against the unerring forces of Gǎ-oh and Njörðr as eight dozen titanium screws combat the wrath of nature and win.
It's dark over Denver. The sun set behind the towering mountains hours ago, all that remains is darkness. The Mile High City shines brilliantly against the oppressive shadow, bringing forth a warm vibrant yellow light that breaks out even unto the heavens, stretching through the cabin of the screeching metal plane.
Gibbs doesn't hate flying. Her colleagues do. Doctor Rune, tall, bespectacled, prim proper and academic, the son of a miner and trapped in those shadows, hates flying. He claims it's because of corporate greed, a hatred in protest of penny-pinching bureaucrats in dusty white offices striking six keystrokes to separate a family into disparate seats lest they pay a tax to remain. That is true, but it is only half the truth. The other half is that when the wheels spin up two hundred fifty kilometers per hour and rubber meets road at unholy speed and the chassis lurches upwards towards the spiraling clouds, Rune feels like he is going to die. Not in a crash, a crash would be a comfort, it implies the presence of an Earth. No, Rune believes he will die of absence, as though there were never an Earth at all.
Her other colleagues have more measured responses, the tall ones complain about the legroom, everyone else belts their small criticisms, they all eventually agree that flying is a necessary evil, except for Hargroves, she loves it, she loves to fly, she loves to soar.
But Gibbs, Gibbs is fine with flying.
And so it is that as she sits in the screeching metal bird in the darkness above Denver between two not-quite-asleep skiers with her shoulders pulled in to avoid an unwanted brush, sipping on a plastic-bottle margarita that's too strong to be refreshing but to weak to be comforting, that she smiles, because she's fine with flying, and she's almost there.
Twenty minutes pass. Twenty more minutes of screaming steel and shaking iron, followed by one hundred thirty nine seconds of bowel tightening impact as the plane lands. The wheels fly from zero to two hundred a fifty kilometers an hour as rubber meets road at unholy speed and twelve decades of engineering roar to life in an instant to bring the lurching eagle to a halt. The ten ton turbines quiet.
Gibbs gazes out at the runway, which is awash in technicolor, each chromatic path designated to aid pilots in navigating the blanketing dark. She continues to relax even as four hundred fifty persons flutter out to a three foot wide hallway, as twelve hundred hundred pounds of luggage are heaved down from shockingly flimsy cupboards. As twenty three men and women in bright orange vests embark to clean the shitty fabric seats.
She opens her eyes, sets a determined march, retrieves her backpack, and is the last passenger to leave the plane. She gives a curt nod to the stewardess as she departs the vessel.
She enters into the beckoning maw of Denver International Airport, its pristine shining metal contrasting harshly with the drab grey of the jetway. She takes rapid steps through bustling halls until she stumbles upon her mark, a payphone. She approaches and produces a beaten quarter from a stained leather wallet. She struggles to press it into the small metal slot, almost dropping it but not, failing to fail. An ageing mechanism within bemoaningly creaks to life as she rapidly enters precisely ten digits onto the syrup-sticky keypad. She realizes with a sigh that there is a IHOP immediately adjacent. She wipes three sticky fingers on her jeans as the telephonic machinery roars, whimperingly, to life.
JULIAN EDEN: Ahoy?
HELLEN GIBBS: Hey Jules, it's me.
EDEN: Hellen! Good to hear from you. How was your flight?
GIBBS: Unremarkable.
EDEN: Ah. So, how is Colorado?
GIBBS: Inconclusive, I haven't left the airport yet.
EDEN: Are you sure this is how you want to spend your winter break? If you come back right now you could still catch Rune's Christmas party.
GIBBS: It's fine. I've got a beautiful campsite in mind. I'd rather spend that night under the stars anyway.
EDEN: Do you really think you'll find any traces of 9990 in Garden of the Gods? Those rocks are young, only date back to the Pleistocene.
GIBBS: It's called Garden of the Gods, Julian, that screams 9990. Regardless, maybe there is nothing there, so what? I still get a restful break.
EDEN: Fair enough. Keep me posted.
GIBBS: Will do. Enjoy your break!
DISPLAYING NOTE 1/3
1983
December 23
A pristine red rental-corolla barrels down a mountain highway at two point four times the posted speed limit, shale and gravel accelerating rapidly under the tires and flying wildly into the canyon-esque walls.
Six nails are hammered into the Earth by an experienced weathered and muscled arm. Six strings are wrapped rapidly into these sutures in the flesh of the planet. An unremarkable tent is erected in the surgery. An ever deflating mattress pad is filled over an afternoon and three hundred and twenty two breaths. It is winter in Colorado. There is a chill in the air.
A bundle of Chevron-sourced plastic-wrapped logs are freed from their entrapment by calloused hands. Kindling is collected from the feast of dying grass. A match is struck three times and tossed in the kindling. A fire roars to life.
Doctor Hellen Gibbs takes a deep breath of the wintry air, retrieves a pot from the bright red tent and pours two quarter gallons of water within. She hoists it atop the roiling fire and watches with satisfaction as it comes to boil smiling as the steam brushes against her face. She pours half of the pot into dehydrated stir fry and the other into equally thirsting peach crumble. The smells blanket the night, but they do not abate the ever present twinge of cold on her skin and in the air she breaths.
She produces three pieces of silverware; mounted together through a ring in their hinds; from her jacket pocket. They gleam brilliantly in the moonlight, but they do not gleam so purely nor magically as the rocks. She stares out at the beating black sky; there's almost no light pollution here; as she presses the first bites of steaming hot food into her mouth.
Truth is, she's never been very interested in the sky. From the time she was a very small girl, she's been interested in the Earth. Space is old, yes, but it is inconceivably old. "The nebulous age of Eternity", as one particularly pretentious physics major had monologued at her one day. But the Earth is old, in a way that made sense. In a way that she could chart and catalogue and understand. She does not care of cosmos thirteen billion years old, she is much more partial to the notion of mountains older than bone.
Garden of the Gods does not share this age. These pillars of sedimentary rock aren't even that much older than homo sapiens. Garden of the Gods is young, is does not, could not posses 9990 phenomenon. She knows this, Eden knows this. Neither of them care. This is her time, he is happy to give it to her. She loves Site-898, but it's nice to get away on occasion. To be alone, if only for a little while.
She smiles as the frost brushes against her cheeks. This is her time, she's going to make the most of it.
Worn leather mountain boots tread steadily up an ancient dirt path towards the roaring fire. They are unhurried, but not unafraid. Each step carries a weight with it, a history. They have been on this trail before, they are not happy to return.
Doctor Rudy Weller marches with determination. His lungs heave in his chest, he's accustomed to the elevation, but not the air. The air here is thin, he can feel it slip through his teeth and chill his gums. It's dry, too, it's not full; there's no depth to it, no texture. It's almost hollow, as absurd of an accusation as that is.
His laces are tied, though there's only half of them, and half a pair of shoes. A large, metal protrusion demarks the space where a left leg ought to be in a naive anatomy. It's spiked to provide better grip on crags and rocks. A younger, more foolish version of him might have once mourned the 'loss', but the cave-in was thirteen years ago, that's an entire childhood, well, a childhood up to those messy years at least. Now he doesn't get foot cramps, as he often jokes.
It did hurt, though. It hurt like a motherfucker.
He can still remember that pain, but he does not live in fear of it. He will not allow himself too. And so his steps are steady as he presses up the long, worn road.
When he at last arrives at the makeshift hearth, eyes weary from many hours on mountain roads, there's already a cup of hot apple cider ready for him. He picks it up gratefully, and consumes it in lavish, starved gulps. It is just a matter of time before his host emerges from her tarp-ish cocoon to greet him, raising a gloved hand and waving with abandon. She wears these gloves even when she is in her sleeping bag. It is cold in Colorado.
WELLER: Dr. Gibbs.
GIBBS: Rudy, we're fifteen hundred miles away from protocol and the chain of command. You can call me Hellen.
WELLER: I know, I just get out of practice.
GIBBS: So, how was your drive?
WELLER: Can't complain, well, I could. But I won't. How was your flight?
GIBBS: Just fine. Pilot did a good job.
WELLER: Why'd you drag me out here?
GIBBS: I didn't drag you anywhere. I asked if you wanted to come.
WELLER: Was I suppose to say no?
GIBBS: What's your problem with this place, anyway?
WELLER: No problem. Just… it lacks gravitas. The air is boring.
GIBBS: Boring?
WELLER: Boring. And well, it's so young. Our home lies among the bones of gods, now you're asking me to come all the way here and play rocks with you. Tell me that's not a downgrade.
GIBBS: Heh. I'm glad you came.
WELLER: Yeah, me too.
DISPLAYING NOTE 2/3
1983
December 24
Doctor Hellen Gibbs is the first one awake by a good couple hours. She emerges from her tent, wandering out into the morning air and the layer of dew permeating it. Her eyes take in the nascent Rudy Weller's tent, a compact blue affair smaller even than her own. The sun is just starting to peak over the distant Rockies, casting the Earth in a purple hue. The hairs on her arms prickle with excitement and her heart pulses eight beats per minute faster. It's time for fieldwork.
The first mile of her journey is exciting. The second, exhilarating. It is seven thirteen ante-meridiem, and already rock climbers sprawl across the many spires of the garden, clambering across them with abandon and rope. Their picks chop deep yet shallow into the rock, slowly and repeatedly scarring the Earth with a thousand cuts. Of course, these cuts are small, and the Earth will forget them, as it always does.
One of the climbers, an older man, yet still below the halfway mark of his life, who really ought to have something better to do on a Saturday morning, looks down at her, noting her archeological garb. He gives her a salute, knowing she is one of the elite few who appreciates this rock as much as he does. She returns the gesture, though is slightly confused by it.
What she does not know, and what he does not know, is that this place, this rock, is going to betray them. Tonight will be a blizzard for the ages, the coldest Christmas Eve there ever was and ever would be. He does not know that in six hours, she will be wrapped up in her tent, shuddering against the cold, trying desperately to cling to life and warmth. She does not know that in six hours, he will be lying in the trunk of his Camaro, blasting the heat and burning through the gas. Neither know that in six hours, temperatures will plummet. They will fall to thirty two, and then ten, and then zero, and they will not stop. They will fall through negative fifteen, and negative thirty five, and still they will fall. Tonight, it will be seventy five degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
There is no coal in Garden of the Gods. That's not fully true, a little coal exists, but no large, useful deposits. Certainly none resembling akivite coal. 'Garden of the Gods' is a name, and just a name. But she knew that, or was pretty sure of that long before she ever came here. The investigation was warranted, but it was very much a formality.
Still, she continues walking. Dust collects on her boots and on her coat. Slightly melted snow joins it. She walks another hour, barely checking her watch, breathing at ease even through the thin air.
It is then she finds the door.
It is so almost missable, but she does not miss it. It is a slight demarcation in the sedimentary rock. She approaches with nothing more than mild curiosity, curiosity that is rewarded. It is tall, that's the first thing she notices, very tall, bordering on towering. It is at least twice as tall as her, around three point three meters if she were to guess. It is significantly thinner, however, no wider than a normal door. The rock is worn, as all the rock here is on the rare occasion that it rains in Colorado, but some of the wear is different, special. The grooves are most certainly intentional.
The grooves are shaped like tendrils of smoke, spanning the length of the door and spiraling as wisps, cut six to eight centimeters deep. A light flicks on in her brain, but it takes her time to pinpoint it. The realization happens all at once and much too fully. The grooves are the exact same shape as the patterns on her arms. And the patterns on Nerys' arms. They are a mark in a tongue never spoken by man, an ancient language of elden things. They convey a universal message: 'HERE BE DRAGONS'.
The very last thing she notices is the plaque, a metal trunk with a plastic face, engraved with a stylized picture of a bird. The words read:
Carved in 1860 by Prospector Gleann Dennis, an Irish immigrant who set out for Colorado during the Pike's Peak gold rush, Dennis spent some time camping near this area, at the base of the peak. A successful prospector, he would eventually settle down in Manitou Springs. His legacy of mining would continue until his grandson was killed in an unrelated mining accident.
It is unknown why Dennis made this carving, or what the significance of its patterns are, though this remains a topic of debate and discussion among locals.
Hellen Gibbs finishes reading the plaque and spends several minutes staring at the door. She sighs. It's time to head back to camp.
At least she won't come back empty handed.
The curvature of Rudy Weller's lips instantly betrays his stress. He looks anxiously at Gibbs as she approaches up the hill and paces in circles around the still roaring fire. He can hardly wait to speak as she approaches, but he does. Through great restraint, he allows her the first word.
GIBBS: Hey.
WELLER: Hey, how was your walk?
GIBBS: Good.
WELLER: Find any traces of 9990?
GIBBS: What do you think?
WELLER: No.
GIBBS: Go with your gut. Anyway, what's up? You seem stressed.
WELLER: There's a cold front coming in. Bad one. Real bad. First traces will arrive within the hour.
GIBBS: Sky looks peaceful.
WELLER: It won't be.
GIBBS: What do you suggest?
WELLER: Get the hell out of dodge. I'm ready to go, but I wasn't gonna leave without you.
GIBBS: Thanks Rudy, but I'll be alright. Plus, I wouldn't wanna waste my plane tickets.
WELLER: You sure?
GIBBS: Yeah. Plus I've still got some investigating to do. I found something.
WELLER: So did I.
GIBBS: You can go first.
WELLER: I've been thinking about the formations, they're a little… off, I guess. Something about them seems familiar.
GIBBS: I agree…
WELLER: I think it's a dragon, Hellen. I think they're the spines of a dragon.
GIBBS: Yeah. I've been thinking the same thing.
WELLER: That's why you want to stay.
GIBBS: Yeah.
WELLER: Alright then. I won't insist. Good luck to you. They have a pay phone at the visitor center, call me if your fingers still work in the morning.
GIBBS: Glib's not a good look on you, Rudy.
WELLER: Heh. Sorry.
DISPLAYING NOTE 3/3
1983
December 25
It is four twelve ante-meridiem and the storm has not passed. Darkness and snow shroud the Earth and her tent as a million million snowflakes are cast from the heavens and crash violently unto the dust. She is cocooned in her sleeping bag, warmed mostly by the proximity of her limbs to each other, constantly radiating heat in a cycle driven by her beating heart. But that beating is slower now.
The other, former, source of her warmth, indeed of her survival, is the fire. Before he left, she had Rudy offer up some gasoline from his tank. She whipped up a drip feed by taking a frying pan and angling it such that only a couple drops flow out at once. It worked well, the fire was kept full and burning strong and hot even against the rhythmic cold. But something has changed.
The fire's gone out.
She doesn't want to believe it, at first. Wants to believe its just the storm taking a turn for the worse, but it isn't. The storm has mostly passed, it's up to zero Fahrenheit. Yet she can feel the blood stilling in her veins.
She sighs in acknowledgement, before wriggling out of her sleeping bag. She pops on her shoes and ties them in a double knot, then reluctantly crosses the threshold to the cold. The first thing she checks is the fire, it is indeed out. It's not hard to find the culprit, the gasoline froze last night. It's only just beginning to thaw now, and without it the wood was burned through quickly. She shakes her head.
She could restart the fire, try and go to bed. But then again, it's not that cold out, she'll be fine as long as she can get her blood flowing and stay moving. Plus, this may be her best shot to mess around with the door without anyone around. She smiles, the excitement has her feeling warmer already.
Two miles in the cold is easier said than done. She can feel her heart pumping, her boots pounding relentlessly into the dirt. The human spirit to just keep going and never give up swells within her. She rubs her hands together and hugs herself for warmth. She crushes two hand-warmers in her palms and feels heat inject into her flesh. Yet these factors, all of them, melt away to reveal one singular, absolute truth:
She is fucking cold.
At first her thoughts are varied, even scattered. Thinking about the implications of the door, or of an instance, all the way out here. She thinks of tests to conduct, questions to ask. She wonders if the instance is even alive. Then her thoughts, too, converge, and soon she can only think that she is cold.
She almost misses the door, yet again. This time she does not even succeed in distinguishing it from the rock. She notices only the metal trunk of the bronze plaque, which shines harshly against the snow. She approaches, crossing sixteen meters in forty eight steps.
Were her faculties in order, she would examine the door. She would look for a handle, or a switch, or any mechanism at all. But her mind, as any mind would be, has been muted by cold. And so she knocks. First with candor, then with an unnecessary desperation. It is not that cold, she is in no danger, though her mind conceals this truth from her as well.
It is on the third knock that the door opens and her arms burn. She desperately pulls up her sleeves, gazing down at the marks. They do not glow any brighter, but they do burn. Somehow, this brings her no pain. She feels only warmth as she is recognized. Only joy as she is known.
The door slides open with a groan as an ancient mechanism is triggered revealing an interior lined with shining schist giving way to a spiraling series of stairs. She approaches with caution, but finds the endeavor wildly comforting. It is warm inside. Very warm.
The first steps she takes are slow, cautious, but they quickly increase in vigor as her blood defrost and her scientific curiosity grows. She makes many many steps deep into the Earth, but not too deep, no more than two hundred feet, this place was, after all, still carved by human hands. The steps grow rougher, more uneven as she arrives closer to the bottom. Then end on a small, barren plain, decorated only by a few rocky outcroppings.
She looks around, disappointed. There is nothing here. And then there is something. And it is an eye. A massive eye, forty six meters in diameter. It is an eye she has scarcely seen before, and always in circumstances much more desperate than this.
When it speaks to her, it is only through the pact that it gets through at all. But this is an imperfect medium, it is akin to forcing the Mississippi through a diner straw. On the first word alone she can feel her brain go numb and her nose start to bleed. A tempest rages within her mind as the enormity of the dragons thoughts come to rest upon her mind.
But this isn't her first rodeo. She grits her teeth, steels her mind, and chokes out a greeting.
GIBBS: Nice to meet you. I'm… uh, I'm Doctor Hellen Gibbs.
[A WHIMPERING FIRE. ANGRY AND ALONE. A JUDGEMENT. DISPLEASURE. TRESPASSER. DEFILIER.]
GIBBS: No! I'm just a scientist. I'm a friend of Those Below the Flames.
[DISBELIEF. VISAGE OF DEAD LEGIONS AND BURNED VILLAGES. DEATH BY MAGNETIC DYSTROPHY. NO ALLIES REMAIN.]
GIBBS: That's not true, just look at my arms.
[The notion of age. Respect and admiration. Hawaii.]
GIBBS: Yes. Her. Standing Ceaseless, Protection of Everlasting Fire. That's who I made the pact with.
[]
GIBBS: You okay? You're not saying anything.
[BEGRUGING ACCEPTANCE. Welcomeness. A fire besides a family.]
GIBBS: Thank you. I just found the door that lead here and wanted to check it out. I'm not trying to trespass.
[Acknowledgement. contemplation. CONDITION. You must stay for dinner.]
Dinner with a dragon is much like anything else with a dragon, awe inspiring, mystical, and kind of scary. They speak for a while more first, before eating, the pact struggles to translate, within fifteen minutes she gets a headache, within another fifteen, a nosebleed. This half hour is not entirely unproductive, however. She learns this instance's name is 'Slumbering Shallow, Whisper of Vacant Winds'. And, she'd been able to answer her biggest question:
How does it survive?
Typical 8007 instances live in volcanoes, and subsist off of the magma therein. Colorado has only one single active volcano, the Dotsero crater, and it's on the other end of the state. The answer, ultimately, is wind. The instance is covered in holes, she'd initially assumed they were wounds, similar to those found in deceased instances, but there's a doubt there, they are too irregular, too natural. They are, of course, not wounds, they are funnels, catching and intensifying the wind and pushing it towards a series of stone gears within. They churn in unholy gear ratios amplifying the energy until they reach the central chamber of the dragon's chest. Rather than a magmatic heart, there is a turbine. It translates this energy into the heat which keeps the instance alive and hot. While the instance's internals are very different, it's externals are very consistent with other instances. It is, still, a fire breathing dragon.
Below the turbine, there is a circuit of gears that all run into each other. This serves almost as a battery, allowing the instance to survive even when the wind is not blowing. This is rare, however. The dragon's spines form the garden of the gods and are covered in the funnels. They receive massive amounts of wind, especially on a night like tonight.
And so the dragon is very warm, and so the same for all her food.
The dragon does not eat food. It is full to bursting with an utter glut of wind.
This is good, as she does not have much food. Four Chevron-sourced slim-jims, a pack of fifty-eight honey roasted peanuts, and raspberry-honey caffeine gummies made for runners that she underestimates the strength of until she eats three too many and feels her heart accelerate to one hundred and twelve beats per minute.
The dragon offers to warm up the food for her as excess heat billows from its mouth in the form of steam and smoke. She politely declines as she does not want her food heated to eleven hundred degrees Celsius. And also because the notion of even lukewarm slim-jim makes her sick to her stomach.
Though, she does accept the entities aid in the beverage department.
Tea is fine, to her. The rest of the department likes it a lot, some to a sociopathic degree. In the break room, right next to the coffee pot, there's a matching pot of tea, keyed to the 'flavor of the day'. That changes, there's a calendar which specifies it, which Eden controls. Gibbs doesn't know it off of the top of her head. She's never actually bothered to read it. When asked what her favorite flavor of tea is, she's always replied 'Long Island'.
Her central tension with tea is not the flavor, or lack thereof, but with the process. Waiting several minutes for the water to boil, made all the longer given how weak the power is; the outlets in the break room are fifty volts max; for an end product that is only slightly better than water. She's willing to go through the process for coffee, mostly because she's probably chemically addicted to it, but it's just not worth it for tea.
This is a complaint that evaporates instantly in the presence of a dragon which can boil water in five sixteenths of a second. And, as a responsible hiker, she does carry both tea and water. Within half a minute there's a complete, steaming cup of peppermint tea.
Still, she'd prefer it were Long Island.
The dragon does not speak as she eats, it leaves her mind, and the pact, in peace. It is only when she is done and fed and full; relatively at least; that it again imposes its mind.
[The gnashing of teeth. The burning of acid. The feeling of satisfaction.]
GIBBS: Was it good? Yeah. Well, it was basically a gas station dinner, but it was good.
[Contentment.]
GIBBS: Can I ask you a question? Scientific curiosity. What's your relation to the others? Are you a subspecies?
[No. REEVALUATION. Maybe.]
GIBBS: How did you get like this?
[A burning fire. Normalcy. Complacence. Exhaustion. Reinvention.]
[Departure. Coldness. COLDNESS. Desperation. LONGING. Adaptation.]
[Wind and water on rock. Erosion. THE SPLITTING OF SKIN. AGONY. THE CHURNING OF GEARS. REINVENTION.]
[Rebirth. Travel. Settling. Normalcy. Complacence.]
The last few thoughts, few sentences, carry massive waves of emotion. The pact burns her body with agony as her mind flares and bends under the pressure. Her heart beats at one hundred forty six beats per minute for eighteen seconds before the agony subsides. But the message is clear. The instance altered its body by force; possibly magic, possibly natural; at no small cost and not without one.
Of course, this only serves to create more questions in her querying heart and burning arms.
GIBBS: But why? Why undergo that process?
[Scarred human shoulders shrugging. Indifference. Unknown.]
GIBBS: You don't know?
[A river's course splitting around a rock. A fork in the road.]
GIBBS: You wanted to change?
[]
GIBBS: Were you trying to get away from everyone else?
[]
GIBBS: Why?
[Site-898. A plane. HER. Arriving here.]
GIBBS: No! No. I'm not running away from anyone. I spend most vacations at 898. I just thought it was time I used a vacation to actually, you know, go somewhere.
[POWERFUL WINDS. SWIRLING STORMS. THE PEAK OF THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. THE ZENITH OF HE ABOVE THE WINDS. A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT.]
GIBBS: The top of you? What about it?
[The notion of understanding.]
GIBBS: You want me to climb up there? To understand?
[YES.]
Doctor Hellen Gibbs is on a mountain. Her fingers tense in pain as she white knuckles each crag and approaches the three hundred foot summit. She's in no real danger, the dragon is helping her, blowing warm wind on her hands and face so that they do not chill or freeze. Additionally, she is secured by a rope and years of experience. Still, this is a rather extreme physical feat for her, or, well, anybody.
The first hundred feet are tiring. The second hundred are miserable. The last hundred are herculean. They are altogether easier than her doctoral thesis.
The winds blow ferociously at her as the forces of Gǎ-oh and Njörðr combine to push her away from the rock, where the forces of gravity will return her swiftly to the Earth. But she does not fall. And her knuckles strain. And her arms strain.
The energy given unto her by the slim-jims is quickly expended, followed by lunch and breakfast and six more meals before that. After the first five minutes she is sweating water she never even drank.
She only ever actually slips once. A patch of ice in a hold that she cannot see when she grasps it. Her palm slips out of it and is scraped up by the sharp rock, her other hand fails to fully compensate and slips out too, and she falls. She clambers desperately for the rope, grasping on with vigor and swinging towards the rock. She kicks her feet towards the wall repeatedly to slow her descent until she can reestablish the hold. She loses at most twenty five feet overall, though her confidence is, slightly, shaken.
And so it is that she is thoroughly exhausted by the time she reaches the peak.
She hefts her shaking, freezing form up onto the ridge, her torso splayed across the edge. Every one of her pores dilates in frigidity and her teeth chatter in defiance of the stillness. She is not done.
Slowly, but certainly, limb by limb, she rights herself, so that her feet balance precariously on the peak. She is truly cold, now. The dragon's air cannot warm her, it does not want to risk blowing her off.
She gazes up at the wintry moon, it's color is the same as the snow. But then, she's never been one for gazing at the sky.
She then looks out, over the landscape. Out into the expanse, away from the Rockies. There is low visibility, she cannot see far, likely no farther than twenty miles, but that is not what matters. She understands, now, why Slumbering Shallow came out here. It is breathtaking, it is unlike anywhere she has ever been. It is unique and singular and singularly unique and more than any of these things it is isolated and alone and lonely. If she wanted, as it had suggested, to run away, there would be no finer a place.
But that is not what she wants. Not at all. What matters about this view, about these twenty miles, is that past the storm, past another twenty miles and another and a hundred and a thousand and a couple hundred more, there is Site-898, and they are staring right back at her, probably through dorky yellow binoculars.
She smiles, she feels the cold winds brush against her rosy cheeks and chill her frigid skin as she stands three hundred feet above the sallow Earth.
And for a moment she is on top of the world.
Cite this page as:
"GARDEN OF THE GODS" by sprawlingstar, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/garden-of-the-gods. Licensed under CC BY-SA.
For information on how to use this component, see the License Box component. To read about licensing policy, see the Licensing Guide.
Filename: crags.png
Author: Lorc
License: CC BY 3.0
Source Link: https://game-icons.net/1x1/lorc/crags.html
Filename: peaks.png
Author: Lorc
License: CC BY 3.0
Source Link: https://game-icons.net/1x1/lorc/peaks.html
Filename: divider.png
Author:sprawlingstar
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Source Link: SCP Wiki
Filename: header-bg.jpg
Author: Dicklyon
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garden_of_the_Gods_central_gardens_from_the_north.jpg
Filename: planyourtrip.jpg
Author: Daniel Schwen
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garden_of_the_Gods_Sunset.jpg
Filename: supportconservation.jpg
Author: mark byzewski
License: CC BY 2.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025-01-01_Garden_of_the_Gods_-_Coyotes,_Deer_-_135.jpg
Filename: witnessrestoration.jpg
Author: mark byzewski
License: CC BY 2.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025-01-01_Garden_of_the_Gods_-_Coyotes,_Deer_-_175.jpg
Filename: spotthedifference.jpg
Author: mark byzewski
License: CC BY 2.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2025-01-01_Garden_of_the_Gods_-_Coyotes,_Deer_-_026.jpg
Filename: foreverfree.jpg
Author: mark byzewski
License: CC BY 2.0
Source Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2024-10-08_Garden_of_the_Gods_Sunrise_-_034.jpg
