I flew alongside the jet that carried Bright.
The airplane was a heavily modified Boeing 777 with all the windows covered by sheets of metal. More than that, all the doors of the aircraft had a double-door airlock to prevent any sunlight from peeking in and touching unsuspecting individuals.
The cockpit was filled with computer monitors linked to the dozens of cameras on the metal skin of the jet. This ensured the pilots were protected from the sunlight while also allowing them to have a 360-degree vision all around the plane.
Flying at speeds just under that of sound, the jet will avoid Europe entirely since it's become a flesh continent and instead fly through the Sahara before banking north once the plane reaches Libya. From there, the plane will cross the Mediterranean Sea and descend on SCP-2217, the holy site of the Church of the Broken God.
It'll take about 13 hours in total. Abysmally slow compared to how I could cross the Atlantic in less than ten minutes.
This was the reason why I carried a thick book with me. It'll be boring as shit otherwise as much of the journey was over the ocean and desert. Both vast expanses of nothingness for thousands of kilometers around.
It was a bit difficult to read moving at 1000 kilometers an hour. I had to make sure the opened pages of the book as going against the direction of where I was going as otherwise, the pages themselves would go wild as wind speed measures in the hundreds of kilometers rips through the whole thing.
I ended up reading on my back with the book acting as something akin to a sail as I tail the plane from about 10 meters away.
Crossing the Atlantic was a quiet and peaceful affair. Flying at an altitude that is much higher than Mt. Everest meant any possible sea leviathans had no chance of jumping up and snatching planes from the sky like Orcas preying upon seagulls.
Being so far up in the air, the Sahara desert dunes appeared like long, wavy patterns one might find on top of the ocean. There were pockets of sun-corrupted meat, usually concentrated around previous oases that sprouted up in the desert, but they were rare.
The peace that I enjoyed was broken when the jet that Bright was on suddenly banked hard left.
A second later, a bright burning glyph flew into the exact place where the jet would've been had it not moved.
Looking in front of me, I found the air littered with thousands, tens of thousands of these glyphs each no larger than a piece of A4 paper but reached such a saturation that the modified 777 could not enter safely.
Closing the book I was reading, I held it on as I flew towards the jet.
A core of plasma no larger than a baseball appeared next to me. From it, a laser of superheated gas blasts into the cloud of glyphs. Those floating kinetohazards dematerialized the moment they touched the plasma, dispelled.
From there, I conjured up a dozen more orbs of plasma each rapidly firing smaller blobs of plasma at glyphs approaching the 777. Hundreds were dispelled every second, yet it doesn't seem to be reducing the total amount by much.
Bright's jet climbed up higher and higher to avoid the glyphs. I had no problem following closely behind.
Where could these glyphs be coming from? I remember distinctly how in the original article, any animal transformed by the sun lost the ability to fly.
My eyes scoured the landscape below me, searching until I ground a small group of coherent amalgamations of meat with a hundred hands attached to tentacles surrounding an oasis responsible for this.
Without another word, I broke the sound barrier and moved directly towards them. Everything happened in less than a second as I slammed into the ground as a burning rocket at speeds exceeding the limit required to escape Earth's gravity.
The earth shook as a titanic fountain of dust hundreds of meters in width came up, its size dwarfing any man-made structure. The sands of the Sahara were much looser compared to the asphalt streets of a city, and so more were kicked up by the force of my crash.
From there, I flew up back to the plane. The cloud of burning glyphs that were there was gone as the casters who made them had seemingly been incapacitated.
The rest of the journey went smoothly other than that one hiccup. We crossed the Mediterranean Sea, passing through the space between Kalamata and Crete and finally entering the Aegean Seas.
From my spot above the Troposphere, I could see hundreds of islands peaking above the ocean. Most were no larger than a house while there were a few like the isles of Adamantas and Antimilos which were the size of cities.
It was only when the plane passed over Ermoupoli that they started descending.
Destination reached.
As Bright's plane continued in its descent, I checked out the island. Its size is much smaller than Manhattan. There were buildings all over it, buildings that had symbols of gears and machines. They were utilitarian in nature like those Soviet apartment blocks, without any care for human elements like comfort or anything.
I suppose a Church that worships machines and their efficiency wouldn't care for comfort. The weakness of the flesh.
As the plane rolled to a stop on the airstrip, a gathering of people wearing white robes with golden trimmings walked out. The leader of this group held a staff with a gear on the end of it.
"..."
They look like Tech Priest cosplayers. Really, really good tech-priest cosplayers.
The group stopped about 50 meters away from the plane. The moment they stopped, a door on the plane opened up and a staircase dropped from the opening.
Bright, wearing a fully sealed bodysuit flanked by two Alpha-1 'Red Right Hand' Mobile Task Force agents walked down the staircase.
I dropped to the ground and followed closely behind him.
"O5-9 of the Foundation, I am Patriarch Amphrax of the Militant of the Church of the Broken God. I welcome you to our holy site in this time of great strife and disaster." The one holding the staff with a gear in one hand spoke.
There weren't any handshaking or pleasantries. Such was the efficiency the Church of the Broken God preached about.
"Follow me."
Bright followed. So did I and the other two.
Glancing at those around me, I found them to be relaxed. Interesting. Despite my efforts, every time I went to a meeting with Bright I could hear how his heartbeats sped up like a person who's watching a horror movie and is preparing themselves for a jump scare.
We were herded into a dark warehouse lit by lights from above. All around the edge of this warehouse were more humans converted into machines while there sat a round table at the center of it all where three women sat.
"It was said that King Arthur intentionally chose a Round Table because it had no head, thus implying that everyone who sat around it had equal status." The three figures stood up.
The one on the left had whirring fans and blinking lights. The one on the right had wings of metal. Bronze, they were made of bronze. She was like an angel.
And the one at the center…
My eyes stopped as they laid themselves upon one between the other two figures. She was… beautiful.
There were no other words to say it. She wore robes of white and hands of brass, alongside long flowing white hair and a brass hammer in one hand, the woman was the very picture of perfection.
I gulped. My eyes gained distance as I tried to think of anything else other than that woman. Oh my god, she's so beautiful! What the fuck? How can someone be that beautiful?!
"Shall we sit?" The white-haired woman said, gesturing at the empty seat with her free hand.
Bright moved and sat down on the only empty chair. The other three didn't.
Patriarch Amphrax then declared, "I shall now announce the titles of all those present. O5-9, representing the SCP Foundation. Administrator-Priest Saint Hedwig, representing the Maxwellists."
The woman on the left sat down.
"Saint-Legate Trunnion, representing the Cogwork Orthodoxy."
The woman on the right sat down, her wings folding in.
"And finally, His Holiness Robert Bumaro, the Builder of the Broken God."
The beautiful woman— Robert Bumaro what? She's a he?!
My eyes hit the ground as I tried to process what Amphrax said. Wasn't Robert depicted as this young man wearing a pair of glasses? Why the hell is he so different?
I felt confused. I felt out of touch. I felt a sense of alienness surrounding me.
That can't be right… right?
"So, the world has gone to hell." Bright started, but I stared at Robert Bumaro, paying attention to his every detail.
Huh, I guess Robert was very androgynous, and in that robe I automatically presumed him to be a woman.
He must've altered his body, upgrading it to mirror the machine god Mekhane. It is what the Church of the Broken God is all about, transhumanism.
"That's one way to say it," Robert began, "The Sarkites may have won this battle, but the war, the greater war for creation— that is far from over."
"Really? Cause if I look outside right now all I see is Sarkic creatures." Bright thumbed the entrance he came in through, "Let's face it; Ion won."
All three leaders of the Church looked stumped. They clearly weren't expecting this. They must've thought they were really thorough in burning the Founder of Sarkicism from the memories of the world.
"Grand Karcist Ion has not won the war for creation." Trunnion declared loudly as her wings flexed themselves, "There is a way to defeat him. We just need to rebuild MEKHANE. With our God leading our armies, we shall march to the sun and rip Ion off his throne."
"Though humanity has been set back, there is still hope. So long as one human remains, he shall carry the light of WAN." Hedwig said.
"O5-9, we seek your aid in rebuilding our God," Robert concluded, "We need you to open your cells and let us collect the pieces of our God. When MEKHANE-WAN returns, Ion shall be naught but an insect in the face of the Machine God."
Bright pursed his lips. His hands came together as he thought over what the Church asked.
"That's kinda interesting. Didn't you guys try to do the same thing back during the interwar period during the Roaring 20s? Failed so badly that it caused the fall of the Romanovs as a huge famine swept across Russia from the fallout of your disastrous attempt."
Robert stiffed, "That was… an unwise judgment on my part. I had thought enough of the pieces of the Broken God were assembled."
"And how do you know if this attempt would succeed?" Bright was skeptical.
"Because now we have a replacement for the Heart of the Machine God. Your bodyguard. She would become an excellent heart for our Broken God."
What?
"..."
One could hear a pin drop in this silence.
All I could hear was Bright's heartbeat speeding up. The whirring internal fans of Hedwig speeding up. The constant clacking of Trunnion became more numerous.
It must've come as a shock for Bright as the man asked for clarifications, "Could you please repeat that?"
"It is simple. We were there as the Moon was turned into a ball of molten rocks. Though you are only human-sized at the halfway point between the Earth and the Moon, the amount of radiation you were emitting was able to be picked up by mundane machines from the 1920s. We turned our sensors to you and we discovered beyond radiation, that you were releasing a type of energy we've never seen before."
Before I could interject, Bright spoke up, "And how does that aid powering your God? Kind of seems like to me you're just grasping at straws."
"We are not!" Trunnion insisted, "The last God failed and had to be put down because of a faulty heart. This time, with a proper heart that emits as much energy as a star it'll be a simple thing to power our God."
The woman then turned to me, "Be honored, for you shall be the crux of reviving and rebuilding the God of Knowledge and Progress. And with our God leading us, Ion is but a stepping stone."
My lips curled downward into a frown.
The lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch.
You're not the one who's getting sacrificed! You have no right to ask others to sacrifice themselves if you aren't willing to do the same!
I stared at the trio with a look of incredulousness. Robert must've picked this up as the feminine man tried to reassure me, "You will not die in the process. You will become a part of a greater whole. You will become Mekhane. It is the highest honor one can have."
Instantly, I wanted to refute this. I wanted to reject this. I wanted to tell them to go to hell with this, that I would not be the sacrificial lamb to be offered to their god who may or may not be deigned to help humanity.
But I didn't.
"There's another way." Bright said after the long silence brought about by me, "The one whom you may know as Uriel has spoken of a way to defeat Ion."
"Uriel? The false angel standing jealously guarding over the gate of paradise?"
It was Hedwig who asked. Though her tone was dismissive, I could pick up a hint of intrigue.
"Yes. You can even call it a prophecy. He said word for word; 'Amidst the roaring tempest of the greatest son of Sol, the jewel of progress will serve as the tip of a spear. For when it pierces the heart of the one who resides upon the throne of the sun, there, humanity will find salvation."
It took all my effort to not react to the modified riddle. What is Bright doing?!
"The 'roaring tempest', the 'greatest son of Sol'?" Hedwig instantly got to work as her internal fans started spinning even faster, "Probably Jupiter but… that head of Mekhane isn't complete with its repairs…"
Robert then asked, "How can we verify this, O5-9? How can we know if you're not just sending us on a wild goose chase?"
Bright in turn rubbed his forehead as though to smooth over a headache.
"You want an audio recording? We don't have it because no sounds were used. Do you want a telepathic recording? Well, guess what? Uriel doesn't leave a trace. We only have hearsay from those present on the scene and this is what they told us."
"I still think our plan to rebuild our God is the best." Trunnion, the obvious hardliner of the group, said once more.
Truthfully, I… wasn't entirely against it.
If this would indeed save humanity, if this was truly the only way to destroy Grand Karcist Ion, then so be it. I will become the heart of Mekhane. I will willingly be subsumed into Mekhane if this is what's needed.
"Ah… my Archenemy still scheming like rats even after I've won."
All of our heads turned instantly towards the source. It was at a corner of the warehouse.
It was a strange thing. A swirling veil of shadow and flesh, almost like a tornado.
Like water dripping from a closed facet, the shadow coalesced into a figure of flesh and bone and eyes. It was clothed in a simple strap like one that belonged to a sheep herder.
Ion
The thing was an abomination. It was completely the opposite of the beautiful perfection of Robert Bumaro.
Ion wielded a staff of —|—— What the hell is that?!
I stared in shock at the thing that was at the tip of the staff. It was… thing… it was a thing that existed but just what the hell is it?!
I couldn't describe it. I couldn't even fully conceptualize its non-existence. I couldn't even know just what in the absolute fucking hell that is.
It was a thing that existed yet it should not. It was a thing that should not exist yet it does.
It was an existing paradox. It wasn't a thing that should exist in the Universe.
"The still-beating Heart of Yaldabaoth, Goddess," Ion said as he turned to look at me who was frozen still like SCP-173 when being looked at.
His three eyes drank in my visage.
"My Goddess… Join me." I'm frozen in place. I couldn't move even when I willed it. The sheer aura that Grand Karcist Ion radiated forced me to orbit him.
SCP-343 had nothing on this man.
Ion approached me. He ignored everything else but me. Before he could move more than a few feet, blades of metal came out of his chest.
"Argh." The thing groaned out in pain, cursing "Damnable metals blessed by machines!"
With a single swipe using his staff, and the one responsible for sticking the metal blades into Ion, Trunnion, had flesh growing out of her metal body.
The woman quickly collapsed onto the ground as horrific screams filled the warehouse. Those Mekhanites who stayed near the edge of the room finally snapped out of their stupor and moved.
But it was simply not to be.
The thing that used to be Trunnion shed its shell of metal and sprouted tendrils of flesh. Then, those tendrils moved wildly and skewered the guards from the Church.
"I'll tell you this much: it was most certainly difficult to project an avatar of myself from my throne upon the sun into this place filled with machines. Even back before my resurrection doing such a thing would've been—"
*Boom*
I finally took action. The sound barrier was once again broken when I slammed into the avatar of Ion and pushed it right out of the warehouse.
Flying through the air, I got the feeling that Ion was trying to talk to me, but I couldn't hear him since we were traveling faster than the speed of sound.
"Goddess…" Ion tried to communicate with me using telepathy.
I pushed Ion up away from the ground. My green shield flared as I felt something trying to pierce it. It was Ion, trying to break free from my hold by using his staff.
A plasma sheath formed around me and Ion until I escaped Earth's atmosphere. There, I finally let go and saw the man covered in the flesh of a dead god tumble forth through the vacuum of space, the sunlight nonexistent as the huge body of the Earth blotted everything out.
My clothing changed as I tapped into a fraction of the power held within the Heart of ORT.
Ion stopped. Then, many more Ions appeared.
"This is pointless. This tantrum is pointless. You're trying to attack my shadow."
I ignored him and activated my Noble Phantasm.
I started glowing. Every inch of my body was shining. I was like a star, orbiting 50,000 kilometers away from the Earth's surface.
My radiance soon became overwhelming. It very quickly outshone the very sun itself as I manifested the same kind of Luminous Body as Arcueid Brunestud, only, I didn't have any ability to strip a planet of one of its Textures.
I was a burning green titan possessing the same ideals of a sun and flame while also retaining that of a plant and mineral. I was a contradiction possessing an internal pressure of close to four trillion psi and a surface temperature of 16 million Kelvin.
If I manifested this form on the British Isles, I would set everything in Britain and Ireland on fire.
I was over a thousand kilometers tall. Raising a hand, I cut right through the many manifested Ions like they were paper.
"It is pointless, Goddess." I heard that voice from behind me.
I raised my other hand and grabbed a new Ion before punching him with my free hand.
"You can't kill me." With a single downward swiping gesture, I felt an overwhelming force descend upon my body and force me down into Earth.
It was gravity. Ion increased the hold of Earth's gravity upon me by a factor of billions.
I tried to fight against it. I tried to fight against that force with all my might but it was pointless. It was as though I was on the very edge of a black hole.
There, I had to dematerialize that green titan form since I would crack the planet if I crashed into it in that form and at that speed.
In my normal form as second-ascension Kukulkan, I could fly so much better and so I just barely managed to slow down as I crashed into the Sahara with a force equal to that of the Tunguska event.
I flattened a noticeable region of the Sahara. As I tried to get up from the molten glassed surface of sand and rocks, I found Ion standing there patiently, as though waiting for me to notice him.
"Why?" I asked, my voice distorted by the heat radiating from the ground and the polluted air.
"Tell me, my Goddess, you are a hero are you not?"
"I'm not your Goddess."
"You must think I'm the worst human who's ever lived with that scowl on your face. Tell me, my Goddess, what do you think is there after death?"
"What does this have to do with anything?!"
I sent out blades of wind that rend meat from the bone. Ion didn't even flinch as he took it.
"Oh, it has to do with everything my Goddess!" I could practically hear Ion smiling, "Once you realize what's there, you too, will willingly walk into the sun and join me in peace and love."
"Fuck off, you hippie."
"Alright. I've already completed what I came here for anyway." Ion agreed, "The united front of the Church of the Broken God Robert Bumaro created on the eve of my victory is forever shattered with the death of Trunnion. As for you, my Goddess… I always have time. After my victory, all I have is time. You will join me once you realize how correct I am, Goddess, it's only a matter of time."
Ion spoke like entropy itself. He spoke like he was the inevitable destination at the end of each person's journey. And he disappeared like the grim reaper in the face of someone whose time isn't up yet.