Precipice

Link to article: Precipice.

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[[=image https://i.imgur.com/leyXBPM.png style="width: 50px;"]]
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[[size 200%]]The Tomb of Solomon[[/size]]
[[size 150%]]-- January 2023 --[[/size]]
[[/=]]
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The man who rules the world and the woman who died to save it meet in the chamber at the center of a broken and dying Earth. Today may begin the end of a plague almost a century and a half old, but will certainly prove the treatment worse than the disease.

The two stare down at a three thousand-year old inscribed sigil on the cold tile floor. It is the mark of the spell so mighty it can push reality apart from itself. At the base of the circle is the Cabochon Jewel of Antarctica, its surface glimmering and adrift with stars. At its head is the Iron Crown of Lombardy, wrought of cold-steel and blazing with the red infernal flames of indignity. At its heart is the Ring of Solomon, opaque and languid and weighed with the burden of a thousand thousand jailed souls. On either side is a pair of ersatz foci, lifeless and void, each's glass pupils inscribed with the overwhelming eminence of the Three Arrows.

Both know the backlash and the response incurred when one party attempts this Rite. Both know how things ended the last time it was attempted, and how things ended the time before, and the time before that. Only one is deterred.

"The proposal for SCP-8181-SIGIL I presented to the Council is fabricated". The Founder stood upright with inhuman linearity as he began, neglecting to even mention the other Overseer. "A lie. I could not reveal the truth to the Council, for they are short-sighted and blinded by protocol, unable to see in full clarity the majesty of my vision. Look below, and see the true aim of SIGIL. We will resurrect that old vestige in our own image."

That introduction was superfluous. The second she saw the items on the ground, she knew what they were for. There was only one thing that they //could// have been for; only one Rite with the power to succeed the Vast Sealing in finishing the Foundation's job and completing Eight-Thousand for good.

"A fool, Aaron. You are a fool". The Nazarene held a palm aloft and pressed the stigmata against her stitched-shut mouth, calling forth a choir of hollow unearthly voices. "You would damn us all in bringing back the Rite. We locked it away with those one-hundred and eight for good reason; the War taught us that any one Foundation having them all brings only havoc and baleful violence. They may be naive with their Keys, but you suggest we be driven insane by ours."

The Founder glared back at Two with the blinded look of unimpeded vision. "Frankly, Sophia, we have no obligations to the Coalition anymore regarding what we do with our Keys. As far as I'm concerned, //they// already terminated the Köln Agreement when they went mad during the Impasse and tried to implement the Rite themselves. If they didn't intend to nullify the treaty with that, it's certainly their fault. Since they abandoned their end of the agreement, what commitment to we have to uphold ours?"

One took a step closer and continued. "They lashed out and attempted desperately to seize all of magic for their own, thinking their control over it was the only thing that could save it for the whole world, thinking it didn't matter if they went rogue and axed all their previous commitments to us because they believed -- truly thought they //knew// -- the world was going to end anyways. And to be honest, they may have been right. We can't stop the likelihood of another Impasse with containment alone; we also can't abandon our ways now. But if we controlled magic from the source, we could rewrite the rules to ensure one could never possibly occur again."

Two chose her words carefully. "It is a great irony that the Blue Star saw itself becoming like that which it was founded to destroy the moment desperate times reared their heads. But we are not the Coalition. Hold fast, and do not let yourself break or your mind go mad under the pressure. Be not like them."

"Precisely", the Founder shouted unphased. "The Coalition are children and utopians and fools; arcadian fantasists sitting at the League of Nations and singing kumbaya with the belief in anything but a savage world that must be tamed. //We// are kings. Our dominion is unlike any other's, true and integral and forever."

Perhaps he was correct in this sense. They claimed to safeguard humankind, but thought the paranormal could be reconciled and negotiated with. He, the great and terrible and toxic and glorious cancer he had crafted that now called itself Foundation, had no such misapprehensions, and no such moralistic code. It only Secured, and it only Contained, and it only Protected, coldly and ceaselessly and unconditionally. It continued without end like an unmovable force of nature, and replicated itself to repeat this task with greater and greater efficiency like an unstoppable creation of man.

"In the early days, we believed that a better and more scientific world could be created after the Godhead's reign, once the business of dealing with the backlash from its death and implementing the new Veil was over with. The Foundation's halls of power were filled with humanists; we believed truly that the mastery of the human will over the paranormal would usher in an enlightened age. May I remind you it was under this pretense that we suspended the Rite in 1945."

"That illusion", One insisted with dire finality -- "was dispelled when the Impasse struck. Our enlightened ways could not contain the world when push came to shove, not without another Godhead. Indeed, it is now clear: the only way to ensure a normal world in the coming decades will be through the old ways of blood and iron and ruthless divinity, whether you like it or not. Better we control that ultimate authority, better it be under an enlightened master, than under one who uses it to force humankind back into the era of huddling in the shadows and hiding from the light."

They had braved the thaumic interregnum, had managed to keep Earth without any deific master for an unprecedented century and then some, subjecting humankind only to its own will and reason. But if this era was to end, if the world couldn't survive much longer without the Rite's control, why //wouldn't// he want it to be on their terms? The Foundation once made for a world without God would become God if necessary, would take every conceivable unholy action, he would make sure, that was needed to preserve normalcy -- no matter the cost.

"Was not the Sealing enough?", Two shook her head. "Gaze upon your works, and see where your ambition brings you. See where it has brought us, what is left of us. All who truly remain are you and I: Vincent reveling his treachery, leaving the Council behind. Adam dead and buried and all his kin cursed. Williams turned a mad god down the barrel of a gun, next the spectre that haunts us. Agnes an old lich rotting in some bunker beneath a mountain of cybernetics and old apparatus. And poor Felix..."

"Silence. He was my friend too, but old and impotent long before then. We both signed the waiver. We both know he's more useful in Death than in life."

It was those words which convinced her he was too far gone, to cut the theatrics and save what was left of One while she still could.

"This will not pass". The Nazarene hung her head and spoke through frantic spells and signs with scarred hands. "Aaron Siegel, son of Solomon, I command you to stop. Should you make any advances upon the other Keys, it will constitute an act of treason against the Council."

She gestured toward one of the ersatz Keys, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces. "Never shall this Rite pass without even a majority of the Keys; you know this as well as I. So do not bother remaking it, for your false artifacts will never function, and your Foundation forbids you from stealing the true ones in treachery."

Enraged, the Founder tried to grab Two, a hand that passed through an apparition in vain and slammed against the millennia-old stone brick. Instantly, inhumanly, he regained his composure and snapped back to perfect wooden posture. "You don't understand", the spiteful man spat and scolded. "Not even you, eh? Look around you. This trajectory, it will spell the end of the Foundation."

It would not. F.W. on high would rewrite and reweave the grand universal tapestry a thousand times to make sure of that. But it //would// be the end, perhaps not so ironically, of Aaron Siegel.


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[[=image https://i.imgur.com/leyXBPM.png style="width: 50px;"]]
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[[size 200%]]Site-01[[/size]]
[[size 150%]]-- 2037 --[[/size]]
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You are the god of this world, and you have trapped yourself in a bunker a hundred miles under the Earth. The whole High Court and all the Magic Army are dead, with nowhere left for you to go. This is the end.

You hear a man begin to break down the vault door, hear the unworldly ringing and pulsing and resounding, the booming echoes of a weapon you know all too well. The tip of a spear breaks through the reinforced metal, and is visible for a split second. How did those fools ever rediscover that terrible thing? Perhaps that, you think, was the moment it was all doomed.

[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/djkaktus-s-proposal-iii You are James Aaron Siegel, and now you meet your end].

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