In SCP-087 there is an endless spiral stairwell - let me tell you about the time I was on it, and trapped in a temporal war.
You can climb 87’s stairwell up endlessly, as well as down, and there aren’t any doors, and then one day there were doors at each level. That’s how this story begins, in our world there is grass and mountains and seas, not an actual staircase, but the gods of time saw it appropriate to have our time move in only the two directions, as all time does, but in the wrong direction, as our time has become.
Crawling around the battlefields a soldier hiding himself and moving found that the world had a wall, the air was thick and blurry, while all appeared to be the other side, beyond time’s wall was another world more advanced, he ran to his camp and told his cheif, but was called a liar, he ran many miles nonstop and told his king, who eagerly believed him, soon taking a secret army to crawl thru the grass all the miles to the portal without words, only gestures the entire distant journey.
The king silently signaled and they all crawled quietly thru time’s wall, and found their world aged beyond the echoing reflection they’d seen behind it, now with more trees, deeper valleys, higher hills, and mountains worn in new places with larger cities on them and many new lights, as silent as before they crawled backwards into their old realm and stood guard with only one boy with the king to return to his castle as they waited watching.
In the second world was a land now of channels and lanterns, steeds and armor, roads and cannons, a more amenable time with words more sonorant and clothes of fashion, where a collapse in the mountain diverted a river to an unsuspecting valley, with great loss families were emotional, but for the old riverbed a people soon were desperate without the certainty of water, as these things are, it came to war, fought as alliances became languages for many years.
Across this time, as far away from the portal of the tribal people and their Restless King, another portal opened to the people of the mountain war and thru came a scout, hair groomed but unmanaged, clothes worn but clean, his fashion old, but his boots newer than the time, his weapon a rifle under his cape, his radio under his hat, and his pistol under his belt, he seems as far beyond time as those bushmen beyond the next, which is where he’s heading-to, he finds a village of three houses and other buildings, careful to not speak, careful to not disturb, watches until he is watched, and leaves the village, returning at night to steal a horse, he’s quickly conftronted and drops the persons impeding him, and rides off, in the day he walks the horse slowly wandering, but they have been at war so long there are no wanderers of their people, quiet observations and enjoyment of the air he falls into a trap, and he is captured by them, who find his weapons, his tattoos more of military than of memory, unsure of what the comms link is, uncertain what the rifle is, but smart enough to understand after examining the pistol, quick to call the prisoner and test the theory they shoot the soldier dead.
Beyond the second portal in the soldier’s world they assume he’s dead, and send a small army thru and attack them and retrieve him, they make it seem as if the mountain people had been attacked by the dry valley, in their departure they are attacked, some are captured, some are killed, their weapons are taken, and they see the others escape thru the portal to the third age, they are confident and chase them thru the portal clueless to the other side, and met by many as their portal is inside a great fortress, blinded by flood lights and covered in red lasers of sniper rifles, they are quick to realize what superior weapons are and slow to even breathe, our commander, who may or may not be myself, at the time, asked them to be allies and help in our war of this third age, but the mountain men refused for being in their own war, wishing to return to it for the honor of battle, to my surprise, and shock, believing them against my better judgement, but then they asked why, and learned the soldiers wanted passage back into the second age, austere concern lead to dire warnings that even with numbers and advancement it was a terrible war, pleading for some of our weapons to win it, they were denied and given the reason that the gunpowder was in such short supply, again asking them to stay and fight for us with their old ways, they politely refused while asking for the weapons, not the ammunition, which they would trade for the gunpowder, a great silence in the negotiation ended in confirmations and exchange, as they returned to the second age.
The soldiers are pissed, they want passed the second into the first age, in accord with their mandate, they don’t want the gunpowder, unrefined in cheap hemp sacks spilling dry silt of it, they come thru the portal being watched into the second age and give more weapons, some escaping into the mountains on electric motorcycles, they raid the dry valley people and steal their armor and insignia, staging a false flag attack on the mountains, then they steal mountain men attire and do it again on the valley, then returning to their proper clothes introduce themselves to the valley fighters and tell them they can only give ammunition, seeming apologetic for not offering weapons, the valley people’s leader says it’s okay to the soldier spy, because they will fight the same way and take the more advanced weapons in traditional methods, here and now the soldiers finally find the portal to the first age.
Soldiers enter the first age, they see the great pasture, the mountains high and endless across the horizon, loudest the wind and quietest the hunters hiding in the swaying grass with unswaying blades, the soldiers see one of them and stop talking, stopping walking, waiting for more to show themselves, in respect the hiding hunters all reveal themselves, it gets too quiet, the soldiers nervously aim as the hunters keep standing farther and farther back, in fear one could count a hundred thousand nomads prepared to battle any portal visitor, the Restless King orders without words them be captured, but they think it’s an attack and open fire, some nomads die, some soldiers die, most make it back thru the portal.
The nomad army begin to approach the portal while others immediately begin ceremony of consecrations and dismantling the dead, their armor and tools, their bones for weapons, their skin for leathers, their body for hunting dogs, and they too approach the portal, on the other side in the second age they make their first sounds laffing at the traps of the mountain war, and cry at the beauty of a horse, examining the traps they are right to assume there is a war in the second age not meant for trapping pet horses, they move forward quietly and are so many that some improve the traps making them more deadly, or more effective, before slipping into the grass, spreading into the realm with the crawlers crawling and the walkers walking in small groups of two or four to seem like herders or refugees, when confronted by the fighters of the second age they throw their weapons down, except one dagger, barking some language unknown or lost to time depending on the perspective, their tattoos are more memories than militia, like spiders on hands and feed the crawlers shoot them down and snatch them under the tall grass, examining their bodies they steal the armor and wear it perfectly, walking stogedly like sentries and more modern men tend to walk, when confronted by the mountain fighters they surrender, and again the hunters quell the threat with smite, the hunters pretend to be them are split in two groups of the two and head in two directions, each town they find they arrive in ruse and run the rage of retribution.
The general of the third age comes to the court of the second age and the Mountain King, offering trainers and a bride for an alliance, the mountain king knows it’s a ploy to plant spies, but welcomes the bride and noble if not tenative truce, 3D CHESS, the nomad invaders in falsified uniforms attack, and meet the soldiers’ heavy weaponry, light artillery, the silent communications they reluctantly learn are the comm link radios, the camoflaged uniforms they slowly realize are militant, the’re are heavy nomad losses, of one half, of one half, of a group, the soldier general escapes early and the eyes in the grass stay hidden.
The mountain king feasts in victory celebration, but the nomad hunters seek the bodies of the soldiers, killing the mountain guards, taking their weapons, taking the soldiers’ weapons, and their camouflage uniforms, and their comms links, and make it to the portal avoiding speech, repeating a single word they heard, sparingly, and enter with the courage of a rite of passage, they ender the third age and the soldier’s era fortress, immediately they see the impressive fortifications, but are unimpressed by the architecture, they begin explaining themselves in a language that both sides now know nobody is going to understand, revealing their tribal tattoos, and giving the soldiers the proof that they know what the third age has been doing to the second, the general watched the whole thing, impressed he approaches, the nomads give the dogtags of the scouts that reached the first age, the general is impressed more/again, they spend a week learning to communicate, the general asking them to return and keep attacking the second age, they don’t want to weaken the barrier to the first without knowing why, he tells the tribalists about a story, one of the words in the story is ancient to him and at present very holy to them, so they agree, and do, but they are indiscriminate in threat reduction and benevolent to the innocent, because they also remove the advisors and the bride offerings are kidnapped, drawing the mountain fighters into the valley fighters, and the valley fighters into their own traps and better ones.
The general wakes to a portal event, an alarm sounds and a black mirror portal opens, a shuttlecraft enters from the fourth age, they open fire like reunion, their ammo depleting or their caution presiding the shooting stops, their technology already broken or unpowered, the shuttle opens fire on their weapons, a silence and a pause then a cosmic sound makes anyone with a weapon go mad with thoughts and grab their heads falling and stumbling, a low tech cannon pops up and pops a shell at the shuttle, the shuttle retreats but the portal stays open, they open fire at the portal, with no catharsis the general is pissed and orders them to remain firing the cannon and march it thru the portal after the shuttle, so they do, on the other side their weapons are gone, the security arsenal is simple but noticable, this fourth realm quite like the first, a pallisade or mansion with vines of flowers and a fountain, a patio is where the shuttle lands with the cosmic sound again affecting the soldiers, this time only making them dizzy until passing out, they wake with the general opening his eyes to the shuttle opening, from it a man and a girl half his age exit, the man introduces himself vaguely, only calling himself the administrator, and offering the young woman as a bride for him who would teach the third age technology beyond their knowledge, the general is unable and unready to speak.
/end
/twist
Here in the fourth age a soldier looks at the administrator, looks at the mountains, and realizes a symbol on the administrator is familial, as is his own, in the rules of their forgotten or unknown written language, the soldier takes off his helmet, his jacket, his shirt, kneeling arms wide and eyes closed.
/twist+
the administrator speaks to the nomad pretending to be a soldier, in words only they understand, standing and approaching there they hug and the nomad cries, it’s the actual king from the first age, alive in the fourth age.
/darkest-timeline
the general is scared, unspeaking, the administrator has all the soldiers killed, as nomads rise from the grasses.
/the-end
A Game of Kings
mjbanks/swehttamxam