Kalpa

Link to article: Kalpa.

 :root{
   --header-title: "SCP FOUNDATION";
   --header-subtitle: " ";
    --sp_header-logo: url(https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/from-120-s-archives-hub/pride120.png);
}

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blockquote
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[[include :scp-wiki:theme:space ]]
[[module CSS]]
:root{
--header-title: "SCP FOUNDATION";
--header-subtitle: " ";
--sp_header-logo: url(https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/from-120-s-archives-hub/pride120.png);
}
[[/module]]

[[>]]
[[module rate]]
[[/>]]

[[div class="blockquote"]]
Listen! It begins before the Prophetchild was discovered on the dead Earth, before the drifting void-pilgrims departed the heavenly bodies for their final resting place, before revolution burned the Palaces of Stars, before the curtains between reality began to fall, and the galaxy was split in twain.

It starts at the end, when the first age came to pass.

Look now, to the edge of the Thousand Million. Chet-Arth Prime, once the throne of an empire. In two hundred years, it will be once more, but for now, the underbelly has swallowed the planet whole, and thieves walk the streets.

Watch. There is a man at the top of the gleaming spire in the city’s heart. See how he swings the mallet. Hear how the gong rings and how the sound goes down, down, down below.

Booming as a thunderclap, the Priestly Quarter hears it first. A Neomab ecclesiastic begins to boil the sacred oils and gather the writhing sanctified worms. Who else will deliver the last rites tonight?

Loud as a shout, it bounces off the walls of the irrilite mausoleum. A gravekeeper pulls the reins of a shuddering bodywagon, listening to the echo. He sighs. Blood will be spilled here tonight.

Quiet as a whisper, the echo of an echo drifts down past the packed market square, the dying Beggar’s Corner, under the marrow-sucked fleshway and over the plastic ash to the little hut on the edge of the slums. Already, a queue stretches a mile long, promissory notes clenched in fists as necks are craned to watch the shuffling forward, to have the tantalizing, impossible chance of endless glory and riches.

There is a fight tonight.
[[/div]]

A spray of blood paints the sands a fluorescent green. It’s not hers, she hasn’t bled in an eon. She stumbles, staring numbly at her knife firmly embedded in her opponent, a hulking furred thing (Yeren, the word pokes through the mind haze) covered in a dizzying cobweb of gears and runes. With a giant hand, it sends her flying, a resounding //crack// as she hits a wall. There are gasps above her. Spectators shovel salt and sugar in their mouths as they bet on which of her bones will break first. This is a fight.

The Yeren stands above her, wielding a blade the length of two men behind it. Twirling the weapon with ease, it rumbles in a guttural language only able to be spoken by those with two throats as it hoists the blade in the air, bringing it down as --

He scrambled up the chain-link fence, hands grabbing him by the belt loops of his pants, a swift punch delivered to the nose. Eleven years old, Lower East Side, cracked concrete and crumbling tenements. Trees could grow then. Blood forms a stream becoming a river from his face to the sidewalk.

It was a bunch of older boys a grade above that he’d never talked to. Never found out what it was that set them off. It was enough for his mother, though. The country had left her with nothing but a shower they shared with twelve other people and memories of an all-Nuyorican Manhattan boy whose kid never knew his name. As she calls her bosses, he stares blankly at the face in the bathroom mirror, picking matted clumps of hair and blood off his scalp, wincing with every --

Kick against the punching bag, sand and dirt flying in the air as they bobbed and weaved across the facility gym. They spend most of their evenings here. “Home”, the crumbling concrete apartment block across the Warta on the other end of Częstochowa. “Home”, an endless parade of cousins and uncles and aunts and grandfathers and grandmothers who come to gawk and preen at them, the child of the failed American, calling them kochanie as they pull at their hair and rub their skin with bars of soap, wondering if it could look like theirs after a scrub. A right hook sends a plume of dust into their eyes. They don’t like home much.

The locker room’s empty; it always was this time of night. Standing under a showerhead, they watch the filtered rain wash away sweat and grime. They understood the way of the world now. A year ago, their mother sat them down at the coffee table they had taken from the sidewalk and told them that the charity she worked for was more like a foundation. That there were things that were normal and things that were not, and the things that were not had to be sealed up and locked in boxes and buried underneath a mile of concrete and steel. They could be a part of this foundation, too, if they were lucky. Running cold water over purple bruised knuckles, they form a fist as tight as they can, nails digging into their skin as they imagine it’s a box they can put --

Their trust in, but she failed. Adrenaline drowns out all other thoughts. The team trusted her, and she failed.

The **##green|twisted, gnarled branches##** lap at her heels as she scrambles up the hill, the hushed voices of --Sergeant Aprile and Specialist Estreicher of Mobile Task Force Chi-8-- **##green|the grass and underbrush##** begging her to stay, to relax in the shade. She crushes a tendon-pink mycelium tendril under her heel as her fingers find purchase in the ridgeline, hauling her up and over.

The ritual circle, the way back, is gone. There’s a mound of fresh dirt and a shallow, empty grave. Her sidearm is gone. There’s a click behind her, and the last thing she sees is --

The reflection of her skull in a puddle of blood and gasoline. It was all gone, the lingering baby fat on her cheeks, the bits of hair on the side of her chin that never went away even with a shave, the scar from a boiling hot summer day along a chain-link fence, all wiped clean and replaced with empty eyes and an eternal smile.

There’s an explosion overhead. A horde of skeletons rush past her with spears and semi-automatic rifles, bullets and blades plunging deep into a horned devil. Claws grip her shoulder joint as a winged imp drags her towards the ceiling of the [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5572 vast cavern], a flock quickly gathering to tear her apart. She thrashes and punches and kicks and bites, anything to get an upper hand. A finger bone finds its way into the eye of a demon and she pulls upward, hopping on its back as it shrieks and plummets downward. The ground rushes to greet her, and she digs into its skin and braces for impact on the cold --

Hard steel as she steadies her aim and fires into the back of the head. The Moscow kingpin spills onto the dinner table. Gunshots outside, screaming (this is good, her men don’t scream), the compound is finished.

Crawling out from six feet under, she’s born anew. Years of Foundation training, knowledge of the Veil-cloaked underground, and six thousand undying warriors eager to make a new mark on the waking world. She runs Europe now. There’s a file on her in some GOC database, “The Queen of Bones.” It gets larger by the day as she extorts, robs, slits, seizes the para-underbelly of the vast continent and people flock by the dozens to join her Court.

Something groans behind her. She whips around to find the corpse of the kingpin unraveled like string, nerve bundles swaying and shivering as it blindly stumbles towards her. Of course he was a damn Sarkic.

It stiffens, body turning and reforming to face her. It screams and she howls and teeth meets steel as she grabs a steak knife, plunging --

Out of the smoking helicopter towards the deep blue Pacific. Halfway down, she realizes the pilot in her arms is still alive. In one fluid motion, she snaps -- the antenna off of the glitching android. It splashes into the steaming vat as she marches across the catwalk towards the cowering Prometheus guard, racking her shotgun as automated turrets spin -- the staff out of the monk’s hands, clattering on the cobbled temple grounds.

Europe isn’t enough. She travels to the horizon to see who can stand against her. None can. She rules the world. The world gets smaller, and the crowd keeps getting bigger. The world becomes worlds, and she hitches a ride.

She’s on the imploding Mizar-Five, dodging wild swings from a slack-jawed revenant. She’s on frozen Europa, cutting the oxygen line of a bloodshot berserker. She’s on the fortress world of Sazapal, storming the ramparts with grenades in both hands. She’s a general-warlord-revolutionary. For a time, the stars speak her name.

Kingdoms rise and fall like tides. Ideologies wax and wane. History creaks and splits under the weight of time. Memories become legends become lost. One day, she looks up and finds that none of the constellations remain.

She’s slipping. Decades, centuries pass with the turn of a head. She’s a bandit-beggar-thief. One day, everything crashes down upon her, and it doesn’t stop. She’s stabbed through armor. She’s kicked into walls. She’s flung through ceilings. Each one sends her spinning, careening, hurtling, falling towards --

The dirt. She’s on her back, watching five moons slowly dance in orbit. She’s dimly aware of a slow screech a few yards to her left, the Yeren dragging its blade on the ground towards her. The audience is eating from its hand, every step setting off a round of cheers and applause. This is a show for them.

She was a queen once. She ran an empire.

She’s the last one left.

There’s a hush in the stands. A whirlwind of sand has been kicked up, a small duststorm now covering the arena. With beady optic-sensors, the Yeren scans the area. It’s standing still. This will be a fatal mistake.

Behind it, a skeletal hand palms the fallen knife and charges forward.

She’s Marie Surratt. She’s been fighting her whole life.

She’s here to win.

[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
> **Filename:** pride120.png
> **Author:** [[*user EstrellaYoshte]] & [[*user Limeyy]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0
> **Source Link:** [https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/from-120-s-archives-hub/pride120.png SCP Foundation Wiki]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]

Kalpa

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