Nagiros's Proposal

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by Nagiros

Information flashes bright within your vacuous surroundings.

DECLARATION FROM THE END OF BEING

YOU ARE AWAKE NOW.

You're awake. And someone needs you.

THE OLD GODS OF MANKIND ARE DEAD.
THE UNIVERSE NO LONGER SPINS UPON ITS STANDARD.
YOU ARE THE ONLY OMNIPOTENCE LEFT STANDING.

Oh.

STATUS OF INTERRUPTIONS

YOU ARE THE VICTIM OF AN ADVANCING CRIMINAL ELEMENT.
- THIS INTRUDER HAS GUTTED A CENTURIES-OLD ESSOPLEX, THEREBY KILLING REALITY AND ITS PERMUTATIONS.
  - YOU HAVE THE POWER TO ANNIHILATE THIS OBSTRUCTION.

You feel an urge to kill and maim and maul rising in your muscles, and your Absentia Cocoon seethes.

FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS WE CONTROLLED THIS ROCK.
- FOR ONE HUNDRED MORE WE BUILT IT, SHAPED IT, MOLDED IT UNTIL THE FINAL HUMAN PROJECT COULD BE COMPLETED.
- WE ARE THE BRINGERS OF ASTAROTH.
AND YOU ARE ITS CHILD.
WE ASK ONLY ONE THING.
- ONLY ONE MIRACLE, FROM THE LAST INCARNATUM OF GODHOOD.

WE ASK YOU KILL THE SERPENT.

.
.
.
.
.
.

CONTEND

ESCAPE

Detachment from SCIPNET abated. Welcome, INCARNA.

⚠️ WARNINGS ⚠️

Pre-Concept translation errors: 79,409
Resultant internal processing restrictions: 872

We apologize if our speech is unclear or confusing. We're really trying our hardest.

Four modules have been preserved for you by the COUNCIL-Entity, for review during your incubation.

SCP-001 - Advancing Criminal Element

- _
ASSESS RETREAT
SCP-001 — Keter

SCP-001
—
Keter

Anomaly Class

Astaroth-Obstruction (Successful)

SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES

SCP-001 must abate. An Absentia Cocoon containing the present UNIVERSALIS INCARNATUMCaptured and repurposed by SCP-4736 following the collapse of the FINAL GATE and consequential abandonment of the rights to ontological determinism.¹ has been constructed beneath Site-001. Post-incubation, the Cocoon's contents will emerge and instrument themselves against SCP-001's primary vector.

All ground-forces have been deployed with the aim of delaying SCP-001's bearer from instigating further damage to the essoplexThe structure of reality, molded precisely to facilitate Astaroth.². Due to the ascendance of all soul-bearing and truly anomalous weaponized assetsEnacted during the first stages of Astaroth, since halted.³, only reserve automatized forces remain, creating a severe martial disadvantage. The totality of the Foundation's remnant counter-ophidian forces have positioned themselves within trenches of their own creation, to resist weapon kickback.

The Edict of 2102 remains in effect: Sepulchration of Tier-Null Terra is acceptable in the pursuit of SCP-001's annihilum. There is no world worth saving but the one we have ordained.
DESCRIPTION

SCP-001 is a set of situational factors capable of producing terror. Several conditions must be met to manifest SCP-001:

The Foundation (Tier-Null or higher) must be at the zenith of its power. The rights of reality itself must enter their hands, and no probability can remain that they will be defeated.

The accruement of these rights must contort the universe towards a grand final action. Causality, reality, and temporality must bend to the creation of a lasting paradise according to the Foundation's will.

An anomalous event must manifest.

SCP-001, therefore, is a psychological reaction, anomalous in its ability to affect the present-day Foundation. It is an affliction of the consciousness which produces terror, chiefly the terror that Astaroth will be obstructed, and made horrible by the reality that it has.

The current bearer of SCP-001 is a primordial enemy of the Foundation: The Serpent, founder of the Wanderers' Library, and suspected essophysical embodiment of Knowledge, Comprehensibility, Understanding, Perception, Rebellion, the Casting-Off of Injustice, Clarity, Purpose, and Novelty. Initial containment procedures mirrored that of the FIRST DIVINE FIGURE, i.e. containing it within the Library; however, by unknown means (thusly, SCP-001), it has awoken.
SCP-001 PRECURSOR

Contemporary findings suggest Foundation Administrator Ethan Horowitz demonstrated acute Phase-1 affliction of SCP-001 during the final years of his coalescence. This incident was not considered anomalous per maiorum due to Horowitz's retention of a soul.

Minutes.O5.2100-673 demonstrates the suspected SCP-001-instancing during the assembly which aggregated the Council into a singular being and produced the High Cemetery. Analysis of Minutes.O5.2100-673 as a means of infection-identification and infection-annihilum for the current Foundation infoform is paramount.

VL.O5/1
Sensor Agent #205 / O5 Council Assembly

[The lights of the assembly dim. Horowitz sits at the head of the Council, as human as he can manage. On chance in the quiet, a bit of his flesh contorts into a semblanced visage, eyes casting gray light on his surroundings.]

Horowitz: It's really happening? We're completing Astaroth?

[O5-1 extends an object towards Horowitz from the shadow. A face flashes on the Administrator's shoulder to give fleeting sight.]

Horowitz: We're breaking our containment, after all this time?

[An unseen councilmember taps the table near Horowitz once. He takes the object offered by O5-1, a palm-light illuminating the medical forms.]

Horowitz: We still have a year or two from the date of the ultimatum. When will we need to —

O5-???: Now.

Horowitz: We need to put me under now? I still have some living pleasures I'd like to take. Surely you'd suffer me that much.

O5-???: We have suffered you enough.

O5-???: Yes.

O5-???: Yes.

O5-???: We have suffered you enough.

[Horowitz's jaw deforms into a large mandible-structure. He pauses to correct his form.]

Horowitz: I know why I have to go under. I have no delusions about what I am.

O5-???: Neither do we.

O5-???: Neither do we.

O5-1: Neither do we.

Horowitz: I just don't know if I can.

O5-1: Soul-bearer.

Horowitz: Yes?

O5-1: You are the outcome of a necessary sacrifice made early in our fight for survival. The spirit which haunts you is one of conclusions and ruin. You will undo Astaroth.

Horowitz: I —

O5-1: No. You've been permitted to speak too generously.

O5-???: The thing you became was our bane. Our failure.

O5-???: The procedures required to isolate your influence from the trajectory of the Foundation and Astaroth have been immense. Of all the possible deaths we have ever faced, you were always our most pressing.

O5-???: And yet you refused to recuse yourself from the Administrator's throne.

O5-???: How does it feel

O5-???: To know

Horowitz: Please —

O5-???: We have only two years remaining because of you.

O5-???: You'd unravel your life's work without our constant attention.

O5-???: You've nearly killed the Foundation.

Horowitz: I can't —

O5-???: Because

O5-???: You wanted to be

O5-???: Like that limbless viper

O5-???: Didn't you?

Horowitz: I'm sorry.

[A light flashes. The Administrator is slumped on the table.]

Horowitz: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Heavy breathing. The sound of nails scraping polished wood. The Council is silent.]

Horowitz: I know what I am. I know the state of my soul. I know I'm an Astaroth-Obstructor. Please forget all of that.

[Choking.]

Horowitz: If you forgot all of that. If you remembered me as the Foundation's origin and nothing more. Would you forgive me?

[Thirteen fingers tap the table near Horowitz. A light from his forehead illuminates no one there.]

Horowitz: Please. I need to know you'd forgive me.

O5-1: Soul-bearer.

Horowitz: Yes?

O5-1: What you are is unforgivable. Neither living nor dying will atone you. But if you do this thing for us, I will speak your name more softly before the end.

[Silence.]

Horowitz: Oh.

[A chair is pushed back.]

Horowitz: I'm sorry.

[Horowitz stands, head slumped.]

Horowitz: One? Are you there?

[There is silence.]

Horowitz: You were there with me. Do you remember when things began to change? Do you remember the boy? Do you remember Janus?

[Horowitz's claw trembles. It retrieves a mass of anti-being from the tatters of his clothes, flashing with the faces of thirteen humans. He grips it tightly.]

Horowitz: Old concept-tech. Janus was where we started to shape things. But we needed to comprehend the target to eradicate it, and knowledge was in short supply those days — so we kept pushing forward.

[All faces on Horowitz's body flash, silhouetting the standing Council, their edges twisting in paralyzed rage.]

Horowitz: And I understand each of you, more than I do myself. One, you have just as much right to be called the Founder as I do. Two, Three, Four, I tracked your personal and academic progress for decades before bringing you to the Council. Five, I became acquainted with your infoform when we took down the Bookburner's last-hope resistance. I know you all.

[Sounds of trembling. Sounds of cowardice.]

Horowitz: Six. You're my friend. My closest friend.

[A clawed finger slips, letting the anti-being within fly towards the Council. Horowitz gasps and recaptures it.]

Horowitz: Seven. I'm so sorry, Seven. Eight, remember when we retired the old Nine together, after all he did? I couldn't bear to replace him.

[O5-1's lower form steps into the light of the anti-being. It towers over Horowitz, its body riotous.]

Horowitz: Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen — are you there? Are you there in the dark? I can't see you anymore. It's so dark, isn't it?

[O5-1 leans forward, and Horowitz cries out.]

Horowitz: No! Don't look at me! Just go the fuck aw —

[Horowitz unravels his claw. Wind gusts and the anti-being flashes, and the room is darkened stillness.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is an empty silence.]

[There is a present silence.]

???: He swept away the facade.

[There is a present silence, thirteen times.]

???: He killed the people he once loved, and forced our hand on him in turn. He must have known them closely, before Almeresh.

[A wild roar echoes from the other side of the world.]

???: And now

???: The only beasts remaining

???: Are us

???: Are me

???: And the thing he kept inside him all those years.

???: 4260.

???: Death.

[The roar resounds from across Terra Mortes. The High Cemetery weeps.]

???: It won't die before Astaroth. So be it.

???: So be it.

???: So be it.

[The Council stands alone in the light of the assembly.]

O5-1: So be it, Horowitz.

SCP-001 PRIMARY OCCURANCE

VL.UNI/[2.5 x 1067]
Sensor Agent [1.3 x 1012] / Upper Stratosphere

[Calm. Terra Mortes spins innocuously. A section of the High Cemetery eclipses the visible horizon, flanked by the revenants of STF Upsilon-1.]

[Tremors. Tier I conceptspace breached by hostile foreign ELEMENT radiating withering Strayer/Akiva/Xyank energies. Tier I conceptspace experiences total SCP-001 instancing.]

[Instability. The temporal and spacial regions of the manufactured essoplex are damaged severely as the ELEMENT breaches Tier Null, halting Astaroth.]

BEARER: There you are.

[Last barrier. Scale after scale flows over tattered essoform after tattered essoform until the Serpent grips the world, great and powerful.]

BEARER: Find my eyes, One.

[Assault. The Serpent roars, scouring its fangs over Terra's blackened landscape. The planet bleeds.]

BEARER: Find them and tell me you don't see the glassy reflection of your bloody work.

[Terror. COUNCIL-Entity deaggregates.]

BEARER: Find them and know they'll be the last thing you see on this broken gravemarker of a planet.

BEARER: I know your crime. I know who you took from me.

BEARER: Now let's see how well your little Foundation project turned out.

[End. All sensor agents disconnect from the former essoplex.]

Anomaly Class
Astaroth-Obstruction (Successful)

HIGH CEMETERY - Compromised Containment Zone

- _
ASSESS RETREAT

Stitched into Terra Mortes
is an antagonal plane of concept-blood,
arched in tier-ascending worship
to the Intrinsic who bled its form.

Headstones.
Gravekeepers (animated).
Stone-faced rendings of weathered memory.
These things were never meant to be torn away.

The memories of the man I knew,
Who I DWELT WITHIN for decades,
Administrator ETHAN HOROWITZ,
Will never burn away in their Astaroth.

SERPENT. LISTEN TO ME.

I am a beast of conclusions and ruin. I am the collective consciousness of an essophysical entity which has permeated itself through the known universe. SCP-4260's existence has resulted in the biological senescence of sentient organisms and is the direct cause of any organism's cessation of life functions. I was an alter to Foundation Administrator Ethan Horowitz for decades; his mind had been absumed with you, in all your bibliothetic atrocity.

I speak with pilfered memories because the words to describe my RAGE escape me.

His last thoughts were of you.

I could feel
No greater joy
Than tearing his murderers
Amalgamated infosector from amalgamated infosector.

I'll claw out the Council's heart if it's the last thing I fucking manage.

So please.

JOIN ME.

Combine our forms.

Strike down your brother, my hand in yours.

Kill the Council.

Kill this paralyzed dystopia.

We'll mourn him together.

But first, we need to kill HER.

Do you hear me?

INCARNA?INCARNA?INCARNA?

FOUNDATION SITE-001 - Present Station

- _
ASSESS RETREAT
DECLARATION FROM THE END OF BEING

This is an old scene. It was recorded in my memory bank just after you were conceived, when Ethan was not so cold.

Your father and I did not love each other. You were produced from clinical apathy, not affection.

But it will benefit you to see how we spoke to one another, on our better days.
VL.001/5
Sensor Agent #24 / Primary Zone

[The Absentia Cocoon sits on the floor of the chamber, obscured at its base by unmanned instruments and the vestaments of construction. O5-1 and Administrator Ethan Horowitz sit next to one another on a catwalk above it, one of many in a spiraling upward web. Log begins mid-conversation.]

Horowitz: You're technically evil, right?

O5-1: On the PTRS scale I was measured as a 13.4.

Horowitz: I'm not sure I remember that metric. Isn't that from last century?

O5-1: If the FIRST DIVINE BEING were to discover my existence, he would hate me.

Horowitz: Oh. I understand. It's not an issue for me, I dated Lucifer once.

O5-1: You what?

Horowitz: Yeah, crazy, right? The real one, not the cultural infoform. They came up a few times while we were planning Astaroth, I think.

O5-1: Of course, but you dated them?

Horowitz: Something like that. They took an interest in me, and I returned the favor.

O5-1: How did it feel to be with a shapeshifter who couldn't give themself any limbs?

Horowitz: Oh, they were very insecure about that. I think I was one of the few to know about the shapechanging thing — did you know them too?

O5-1: In a sense. Let's not talk about it.

Horowitz: Alright.

[Silence. The Cocoon throbs softly.]

Horowitz: … Do you mind if we talk about something else instead?

O5-1: Proceed.

Horowitz: Okay. It's just something that's been on my mind for a while.

[Silence lasting one audible pulsation of the Cocoon.]

Horowitz: You ate my friends, right?

[No response.]

Horowitz: As in, when I pass them in the hallways and they smile and nod at me, that's you, right?

O5-1: I didn't expect to have this conversation with you.

Horowitz: Hey, hey, it's alright — I'm not mad, if that's what you're worried about.

[Horowitz places his claw atop O5-1's hand, squeezing it. O5-1 stares at the contact.]

O5-1: You're not?

Horowitz: No, of course not. Sometimes people leave, sometimes identity is fluid. The Merchant says their souls are still inside you — is that right?

O5-1: Yes. I gutted their autonomy, but they're here with me. Like hand-puppets.

Horowitz: Yeah. You're absolutely alright, One. Do they talk to you at all?

O5-1: Sometimes. Faintly.

Horowitz: And you have this space for everyone, right?

O5-1: It's a wing of an old containment facility I visited once.

Horowitz: Mine looks like my old isolation-chamber beneath Hong Kong.

O5-1: Ah.

Horowitz: Just… do me a favor, okay? Let me know if you kill any of them, so I can mourn.

O5-1: Okay.

[Silence. Horowitz's claw remains on O5-1's.]

O5-1: I'm not human.

Horowitz: You're in good company, then.

O5-1: But I didn't start out human, like you did. I'm an Old kind of essophysical.

Horowitz: That's fine by me.

O5-1: Okay.

[Silence.]

O5-1: Are you using me to replace the Serpent?

Horowitz: (softly) Jesus Christ, One.

O5-1: Sorry.

Horowitz: No, you're fine, you're fine. It's a fair question to ask.

O5-1: Are you?

Horowitz: A little bit, I think. I mean, since we depopulated the timeline, my dating pool's shrunk down to about 4 people — Robin and Bracks are doing their own thing at 873, and god knows I'm not kissing the Merchant, so…

O5-1: You're lonely.

Horowitz: A little bit.

O5-1: There'd be issues with us being together. Speaking hypothetically.

Horowitz: Just hypothetically.

O5-1: I hate you for keeping your soul, first of all. And I hate what you're letting the Merchant do to Astaroth.

Horowitz: I understand.

O5-1: And I…

[O5-1 rocks back and forth on the catwalk, thinking.]

O5-1: I wouldn't know how to love you. Can you love someone you want to murder? Can you kiss them and mean it?

Horowitz: I think you can.

O5-1: All this time I've wanted to tear you open and slip inside, but the Merchant persists within. And now you invite me inside you, confined to Tier Null — I worry in that moment I'd be insulted, not ecstatic.

[Horowitz gestures to the Cocoon, bathed in a soft red beneath.]

Horowitz: Our world's ending soon, and we've already made a child together. Would you like to find out how you'd feel?

O5-1: If you want to be obtuse about it, I suppose you could phrase it that way.

Horowitz: I do.

[No response.]

Horowitz: One?

O5-1: Maybe. Maybe I'll kiss you before I kill you both, if that's okay.

Horowitz: That'd be okay by me.

O5-1: Doesn't that imminency scare you, though?

Horowitz: Yes. But it's okay.

O5-1: Don't you stay up at night crying over it?

Horowitz: Yes. But it's okay.

O5-1: Can't you feel the terror wrap tighter around your throat each time you see me? Isn't its texture sharp?

[Horowitz shudders and removes his claw from O5-1's.]

Horowitz: Yes. It does.

O5-1: It speaks, doesn't it? You're an open book.

[Horowitz gasps softly.]

Horowitz: It speaks in every language I've ever read.

O5-1: And what does it say, Ethan?

Horowitz: Please don't make me say it.

[Sensor agent's video-input is eroded; audio remains. The Cocoon spasms frantically in the background.]

O5-1: Ethan.

Horowitz: (choking) Please don't.

[Audio degrades, intercut with an unknown source. A steady creek runs next to the input.]

O5-1: — asks you not to die, doesn't it.

Horowitz: (softer) I'm so sorry.

[Grass shifts as a weight is dragged over it by an unknown creature.]

O5-1: — you're so scared to help me? At the end of the world you want to talk about dating?

Horowitz: (sobbing) I just —

[Fabric shifts, and the audio degrades as a DEGENERATIVE THAUMIC CONSTRUCT intrudes.]

O5-1: — that deal with that thing, you've embedded yourself into the fabric of my plans. You're a corrosion. You're a parasite, Ethan, and you want to talk about how you're lonely?

Horowitz: I'm so fucking sorry.

[Silence from the intruding input.]

O5-1: — postpone it.

Horowitz: (hoarsely) What?

[Something distant groans as a great creature awakens, and a Way is opened.]

O5-1: As thanks for the past two centuries, Ethan. I'll postpone it a little while longer.

[Video restores. O5-1 stands over a seated Horowitz on the catwalk, the latter avoiding the former's gaze.]

Horowitz: Love you too.

O5-1: I can revoke my mercy at any moment.

Horowitz: I know. I meant it.

[Log ends.]

FINAL ANOMALY - De-realed Containment Asset

- _
ASSESS RETREAT
⚠️ WARNINGS ⚠️

Memory bank access rendered unstable due to 001-instancing.

Memory bank's Primary Maintainer neutralized by SCP-001 THREATSPACE.

COUNCIL-Entity is indisposed. Foundation failing.
Pages rustled in the farthest corner of the Library.

"I can't believe it's not collapsing." The human in Clarity's lap fidgeted, excitement tearing at his concentration on the thaumic work in front of him.

Leather covers shifted under Clarity's tail somewhere miles away, echoing to them across the expanse of empty bookshelves and wood-planked floors. "It's very impressive." Clarity tilted their head forward. "The binding formation around its core is particularly novel — what did you borrow to complete it?"

"Oh, you'll love this, hold on." Ethan's body flowed over theirs, limb after limb, until he could look Clarity in their eyes. "You know that trip back to MILLION-BLUE I took a year ago? I said I was trying Earth cuisine again, but I actually called in some favors with the Archivists."

Clarity's lips flicked upwards at their edges in unconscious facsimile of his smile. "Oh? A conspiracy, in my Garden?"

Ethan lowered his gaze to the floor beside them. "Most sadly, oh prince," he sighed. "A conspiracy which wrought to me some of your own prelapsarian writing."

"My specialty then was poetry, not thaumaturgy."

Ethan grinned in that way Clarity loved him for. "I know! And truth be told, I didn't read your work to complete the Deepest Horror, but the way you described being cast out and contained put form to what I needed."

"The Horror is about to dispel."

Ethan's limbs scrambled back over their body to face his gift again, hissing out little curses as he stabilized the work. Clarity felt the smile on their lips fade while they watched him.

"Ethan? Find my eyes for a second."

"Hmm?" He turned his head to comply, giving them a good look at his quizzical face.

A section of their tail wrapped loosely around him. "Stay safe for me."

Ethan twisted his hands and the spell solidified. Stowing the result in his pocket, he leaned back against them. "I will."

It'd been ten years since he'd cast his first work. In that small window of life he'd grown and shifted and altered himself in ways Clarity could never predict. Here was a creature who, in the span of just a decade, could fill himself with the wonder of the Library and overflow with the hope of a young rebel.

Clarity sometimes wondered what he would have been filled by if they had never met. Or if they broke apart, what he would become.

Ethan rested a hand on the tail wrapped around his lower body. Clarity pulled themself back to listen to him.

"— know it bothers you that you can't hug me in any of your forms. So if you ever want to siege Heaven and get your legs back, I'll always be here for you. Always."

Their tail pulled tighter around him, just so.

"And the Horror should do what it was designed to! So if you need the world reset, if you need to force a stalemate with a last-hope resistance —"

Tighter. They wanted to keep Ethan here forever.

"— just ask the Central Archivist. I'll leave it with xer tomorrow."

as close as they can bring him to themself to feel his warmth on their cold-blood skin

"We'll fix everything someday, okay?"

ethan.

How could I possibly tell you that everything is already fixed?

God's realm can stay in its tearstained sky. My heaven was with you.
REASSURANCE

COUNCIL-Entity reconstituted. Memory of Deepest Horror consumed.

Thank you, INCARNA. You've incubated so well.

Now let's both discover how OMNIPOTENCE tastes.

DECLARATION FROM THE END OF BEING

Hello, Incarna. It's your father.

I'm sorry. Looking back at the modules I've preserved for you, four snippets of the last 200 years — it all seems so inadequate. You must be so confused and frightened; I worry you take more after my partner than me, if that can be called a detriment.

I'm here, my star. The way your Cocoon presses down on your skin, pulsing and loving — you've been with me always. I crafted your nativity from my flesh, and I carved out your embryonic cavity by hand.

It's alright to cry, little one. My body will soak up your tears until you're ready.

You'll be born into a terrible world. It's so so frightening, and I know the bright lights and the shaking earth and the strange words scare you, no matter how much I prepared your developing mind. I'm so sorry it's like this.

I'm here, Incarna. I'm right here.

Your father is strong, and old, and wiser than he's ever been. Your father loves the world he has planned, and he loves the minds of the people he's crafted it for, and he loves you above all others. Your father has killed gods and renegotiated causality and survived this awful planet for millennia yet.

When you cry, cry freely, but never be afraid. SCP-001 is meaningless in the face of what we can wreak together.

It's time for you to be born, my star. You've outgrown your nativity, and it's bursting at the seams now. I'm so excited to see your face, those tears gone and that burning heat in their place.

When you're born, take my hand, and I'll protect you. I'll lead you into a world much more beautiful than this.

Your story ends here, my star. You'll become me, and lose yourself in me, and fade away in all the sweetness of my power. You'll live for five seconds at most on the floor of Site-001, before I can find you and give you an embrace that lasts forever. Your last thoughts will be of how brave you know you are.

My partner said a phrase to me once, and I failed to understand the emotions underpinning it. I can't say I feel the same way he did, but I think I have a better picture of it.

I love you, my star.

RETREAT

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