[New and want to jump in? Please read the Instructions, but go ahead!]

Septimus found that he wasn’t meeting Sweet’s eyes any more—at least, not the ones on his face. The ones on his stomach and chest seemed a bit swollen, blood trickling, and their pupils were too wide, which he had to assume still wasn’t normal, even in this incomprehensible circumstance.

He pulled his sleeve down over his knuckles and used that to dab away some of the blood, careful not to get his sleeve into any of the eyes. The nearest one squinted shut in alarm as Septimus’s finger grew near, then slowly opened again at his gentle touch.

“I’m sorry,” Sweet groaned.

Septimus hesitated over what to do, trying not to freak out but still find a way to express what he was thinking. “Well,” he said. “I mean. I did realize by now you weren’t being totally honest to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it’s all right, but he nodded, knowing that Sweet could see it quite clearly. “Are you sure you need to go down there?” he asked, instead of pursuing it further. He wanted to know, but honestly didn’t have any particular questions come to mind. The weirdness was too weird to know where to start. “You don’t look good.”

“I know,” Sweet said. “But I have to.”

He pushed Septimus back a little. Sitting back on his heels, he felt something sway against his chest, and raised a hand to find himself wearing a necklace—presumably the one he’d found in the chest, though he hadn’t got a good look at it then, and couldn’t now with it on him. “Did you put this on me?”

“Huh?” Sweet had got to his knees, his shirt falling back down and making him seem human again. He stayed there, swaying, staring at him. “Oh. No. It wrapped itself around you. I tried to get it off and you clonked me with your elbow.”

“I—sorry,” Septimus stammered, aghast. “Really?”

“Not why I’m out of it,” Sweet promised him, managing a smile. “Sorry, I can’t—I really gotta go. I feel like I’m coming to pieces.”

Septimus looked at him uncertainly for a long moment, then slid an arm around Sweet as carefully as he could. He couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes, and how many more his arm might be pressing against under Sweet’s shirt. How uncomfortable this might be. “Is this okay?”

“Thank you,” Sweet whispered.

Throat suddenly too tight to answer, Septimus just nodded.

The two of them made their way down the stairs with great care, flashlight clutched in one of Septimus’s hands as he supported Sweet. It was still almost impossible to see where they were going, and between the darkness and Sweet’s difficulty carrying himself, it was an agonizingly long process of feeling out each step before shifting their weight to it.

Sweet let out a sigh of relief as they came to the main floor, though whether it was that he was fighting the compulsion less, or that he was just tired after all that, Septimus couldn’t say.

“I’ll take it from here,” Sweet said.

Septimus cleared his throat. On the one hand, it was probably a bad idea to offer—he still didn’t know exactly what was down there, or what tie Sweet had to it, or anything else. But like the guy in the—memory? Dream?—he too was a seventh son of a seventh son, so that had to have some kind of power or significance. Maybe there was something he could do.

“I’ll come with you,” Septimus said, and managed to keep his voice steady.

Without any hesitation, Sweet shook his head, then groaned. He pulled away from Septimus and stood on his own, though he kept a hand on the wall to do it. “No,” he said. “It’s a bad idea. Please. It’ll be fine—it’s always been fine before. He already knows you’re here. I don’t want him to be able to do anything about it.”

“I don’t want to stay up here while you just—”

“I told you before,” Sweet interrupted. “I invited you here because I, I need you to be here for me after. If you go down and get—if things go wrong for you down there, we’ll both be in trouble. If you want to support me, let me go alone.”

Helpless, Septimus stared at him, searching for some kind of argument—though he didn’t have enough answers to make one. He wished, briefly, that he’d asked more, pried more, learned more.

“All right,” he said, finally. “I’ll get the blankets and stuff ready. Don’t fall down the basement stairs.”

“Thanks,” Sweet said. He smiled softly, and opened the basement door. “Love you.”

And then he was taking a step down into the darkness, shutting the door behind him.

Septimus staggered back against the wall of the bent hallway, trying to will his heart to calm down, his mind to stop rushing, everything to slow down again. He swallowed the lump in his throat and mechanically dragged himself back up the stairs to go fetch the blankets.

On the way, he stopped in front of the door Sweet had identified as the bathroom, hesitated, then went in. It had been a long few hours. When he was done, and had quickly washed his hands—there was at least a little cold water left in the pipes, though he couldn’t be sure if the house need electricity to pump up anything new—he carefully angled his flashlight to check the necklace he was wearing in the mirror over the sink.

It was a small anatomical heart in glass or resin, attached to a chain. His own heart sank, because there was no way it could be a coincidence. It wasn’t the same heart—or at least, this one was small and seemed artificial— but it wasn’t like that was reassuring.

Shaking his head, Septimus made himself keep going. He’d probably taken four or five minutes up here already. He went and gathered blankets, dragging them back downstairs to the basement door, and waited.

And waited. And waited.

His phone was showing 10% power remaining and had frozen at 3 am, but he had no idea how long into the power outage he’d been unconscious for.

He waited.

It was definitely more than six minutes now, and there’d been no change. He began counting hundreds again, and got to eight hundred before he was too disturbed to continue.

Sweet had been so sure that it’d be fine, but what if it was different this time? There were so many reasons it could be, from Sweet’s attempt to fight it to stay by Septimus, to Septimus’s dream with the necklace, to Septimus’s presence here in the first place—the dream had made it clear that the seventh son of a seventh son had some significance. Or it could be all of them together, or other things he couldn’t begin to guess at.

He guessed that roughly fifteen minutes had passed by now, which was not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but when compared to six minutes both times previously, it felt like an eternity.

Septimus rose and put his hand on the basement door. The knob was ice cold as he turned it, opening it to try to shine his flashlight into the darkness below. The light didn’t penetrate it, like the darkness itself had mass.

Was there anything he was forgetting? Was there anything he should do to prepare for this? Did he need to take anything?

There was no question for him any more that he should follow Sweet down, though.

[Please offer actions, thoughts, or concerns for Septimus in the Comments.]

[Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 |  Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Conclusion | Author’s Notes]

[Also, a friend, Mikage, surprised me with art to accompany Day 18. Check it out!! My skin has cleared up and blessings have been laid on my household. I am currently eating both my fists in pure joy.]

[New and want to jump in? Please read the Instructions, but go ahead!]

You hold up a free hand defensively, while the other remains between you two—protecting the heart. You have to protect the heart. You feel that more strongly than ever now, even though you couldn’t say why. Of course you should be sacrificing the heart. But…

“Wait, Five,” you cajole. “One more moment. The way you’ve got me right now, I couldn’t give you the heart if I wanted to—”

“And I’m starting to think you don’t,” Five says flatly. “Or that you’ve lost it or taken it for yourself already.”

“It’s not that. It’s just—” You desperately seek for an excuse to get him to put his guard down. “While I was bearing it, something came to mind. A more powerful sacrifice.”

He’s visibly intrigued despite himself. “You’re stalling,” he says, but he doesn’t sound certain.

“Only because I want this to be the best sacrifice,” you say. You smile and wish you weren’t winging this. You wish you knew why you were struggling so hard. “We wouldn’t want him to wake up unsatisfied. The heart is a metaphor, yes?”

“A… metaphor.”  

“The real sacrifice is our humanity,” you say, and sort of regret it as it comes out of your mouth. It’s not like you’ve ever heard anything like this before. But you have to make it sound real. “Our love, our hopes, our dreams, those things that set us apart… He’ll want that more.”

Five nods. “Yes,” he says. And then, “that’s what he’ll want to eat after he’s awakened. But we have to sacrifice enough power first. The time is now.“

You know now that you aren’t going to be able to talk him out of this. He’s done so many rites and rituals, and he knows what’s supposed to happen next, and he knows that you’re struggling against it in the final hour.

You can’t talk him out of it, but he’s still hoping you’ll give him the heart amicably. But you won’t give him the heart. You won’t give him anything. Still, he expects you to keep on trying, or he expects you to run—the knife is too close to risk fighting, and he doesn’t expect you to do that.

So you punch him in the throat.

He wheezes, and you take a quick step backward, only just barely moving out of range of his knife as he jerks it up. The front of your robes (robes?) tear and you manage to catch the heart before it falls out. He’s choking still, tears of both pain and rage blinding him, but he’s not letting it hold him back, grabbing you by the shoulder and hauling you toward his knife point.

You duck under and slam your head up under his chin, your shoulder into his chest. The heart goes flying, and your heart nearly stops, but you don’t have time to check on it. You’re fighting with Five, struggling for the knife, blood making your hand slick from some cut you don’t remember getting. He’s heavier than you but he’s winded, and you have the advantage, bending him back over the altar, pinning him down and jamming your elbow into his gut as you twist his wrist with your other hand.

The knife clatters down and you grab it, tightening your fingers around the handle as he scrabbles at you to try to get it back. There’s no time to think, no time to wait, it’s time.

You plunge it into his chest.

His blood is hot as it spurts out, drenching you, and he’s gasping something that turns wet even as he tries to say it, red bubbles forming on his lips instead of the words.

Beneath the ground, you feel him. The sacrifice is reaching down as Five’s blood pours out, a sacrifice made by the seventh son of a seventh son. The sacrifice of one sanctified to him as a priest. The sacrifice of an unwilling man. But you aren’t sacrificing love or hope or dreams. You aren’t sacrificing his kin, or yourself. You’re only sacrificing fear and death.

It’s not enough.

You realize that, and instead of feeling hope you feel fear. The ground is shaking, and you know he‘s half asleep, turning in his dream, hungry now, longing to find a way to exist. To awaken, or to find flesh of his own, or to pass from his own world and that of dreams to yours—

The ground shakes again. Five is dead. You roll off his body and fumble around to find the heart as the stars overhead wink out one by one, eyes of his kin in the outer heavens slowly closing as they realize what’s failing to occur properly.

For a moment, you have a strange thought: if I take the heart into myself it will be safe. But you know you’d have to devour it to do that, and then it wouldn’t truly be safe, only you would. You won’t devour it. You swore you wouldn’t.

You find it. It’s still beating, a panicked fluttering pace as it seems to realize what’s happening, and you pull it to you and hold it close and try to protect it and reality

reverts

Septimus woke in darkness. For a moment, strange memories racing through him, he knew that darkness was how it should be. This was the place that the sacrifice took place, this was the place that thing underground started to wake, and while inside the house wasn’t actually inside the terror, he knew they were right above it.

Slowly, he calmed down enough to realize he could hear rain on the window, smell the dusty scent of Sweet’s mother’s room. The thing they were doing before the dream came back to mind and he realized his hands are empty. In a panic, he patted around himself to find where he dropped the necklace and found, instead, a cold body beside him.

Septimus froze, then fumbled quickly for the flashlight on his belt. It was still there, and he thumbed it on as he yanked it free, shining it down.

Eyes half-open but clearly unconscious, Sweet was sprawled out next to him on the floor. There were damp patches on his shirt, and Septimus tried to keep his trembling hands steady as he stared, trying to see if Sweet was breathing.

He was, though slowly. Careful, Septimus reached down and touched one of the wet spots, and his fingers came away with a wet redness on them.

For a moment, the dream came swimming back, the sensation of stabbing another person, the way the hot blood had poured out. Had he done something in his sleep? Moving slowly more out of fear than anything else, he reached over and pulled Sweet’s shirt up to check the wounds.

There were eyes all over his torso. Like those on his face, they were half open, and these ones were leaking blood from their corners, like tears. Septimus stared at them, slowly panning the flashlight over Sweet’s body to try to understand what he was seeing.

Those eyes abruptly squinted, pupils contracting in the light, and Sweet groaned, shifting, head tossing uneasily.

Septimus’s gaze jerked back up to his face. “Sweet?”

Sweet’s eyes—all of them—focused on Septimus. “Didn’ wanna leave you,” he slurred, only half conscious. “Stayed. Tried to. It hurts. You okay?”

“I, I’m fine—”

“I gotta go… I gotta. Downstairs. I gotta go. He needs me. I’m late.”  

[Please offer actions, thoughts, or concerns for Septimus in the Comments.]

[Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 |  Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Conclusion | Author’s Notes]

[New and want to jump in? Please read the Instructions, but go ahead!]

With him threatening you and making demands, you are, more than ever, aware of the heart hidden inside your shirt and that you need to protect it. No matter how good it smells, you definitely must not eat it, especially not where he can see. And you’re not sure that if you let him know you have it, it’ll remain safe.

More to the point, though, this man seems like he knows what’s going on—and knows you, whoever you are. Given that he’s threatening you, it may not be the best idea to antagonize him, but you force yourself to focus on coming up with some questions. If you have something he wants, he might be willing to answer. You don’t remember much, but you have things to rely on, and, perhaps, things relying on you, so you have to do your best. The heart’s still beating—that means it’s alive, right? And might stay that way if you care for it properly.

You take a deep breath.

“Who exactly are we waking up?” you ask. You’re shocked by how unfamiliar your voice is this time.

He stares at you as if you’ve grown a second heart. “Where the hell is this coming from?” he asks. “You know who. The Terror Underground. The Hill’s Horror. He’s lain sleeping for thousands of years, undisturbed. Why are you asking about that now?”

“The rituals.” You make up an explanation for your behavior, anxious. “They’re messing with my memory, I think. You’re threatening to sacrifice me but I don’t know where I am, or how we got here…”

His expression grows exasperated. “I should have realized,” he says, more annoyed than anything else. “Since you’re the sacrifice who bears the sacrifice. But we’ve met here for years, you and I and the others, after we found out this is where he’s sleeping. Once you give it up, you’ll remember again, because you won’t be bearing the burden. So stop on asking questions and it’ll all come back on its own.”

You try to take a step away from him, but his hand tightens around your shoulder. Unable to escape, you try to examine the area around, to get a better sense of where this is, if you’re really supposed to remember. For a moment, you think, Isn’t this where I parked the car? But that’s absurd, because there’s no car here, and you don’t remember driving anywhere.

“I don’t understand,” you say. You don’t have to try in order to sound plaintive. “Why are ‘we’ trying to wake him up? If he’s a terror underground, shouldn’t we let him sleep?”

“Oh, he’ll wake some day regardless,” the man says. “We are a group of individuals who know how to appease him. If we wake him with the sacrifice of the heart of one of his own kind, he will pour power back into us in thanks. Everything is prepared, Seven. We’re running out of time. Give it over. Put it on the altar.“

“The heart of one of his own kind?” you ask.

“It took a lot of work to dig up,” the robed man grumbles. “It was kept in a saint’s shrine, stupidly enough. The fools didn’t know what they had. That the man who they thought was a saint was really a devil’s child, the offspring between a monster and a human woman, and his unnatural heart wasn’t kept beating through God’s power. But now you have it, do you not? Are you not hiding that? Its power will pour out and he will want to eat it and become strong. Let’s give him a breakfast to be thankful for.”

He has managed to drag you to the altar now. It is stone, with a groove in the centre. You stare down at it. “Why should I let you hurt it? Why must we sacrifice anything—”

“Are you not listening, Seven?” he demands. “Don’t tell me you want it for yourself. For fuck‘s sake. I’ll offer yours first and whet his appetite for something better. You’re the seventh son of a seventh son—you can be damn well sure that what you’ve got in your body will be of interest to anything that wants power. That’s why you were chosen.”

“Chosen,” you repeat. Finally, this is starting to sound familiar.

“The sacrifice who bears the sacrifice,” he repeats. “The chosen one. For fuck’s sake.”

Yes, this is familiar. You are the seventh son of a seventh son, the seventh member of their group and known only by this number. From the moment your father invited you into this inner circle, you’ve been praised for your potential due to your bloodline, that most powerful ancient number repeated. It’s been long known that any sacrifice you make will have more power than that made by any other human. You are here because that day has finally come.

It is time.

He has a knife pressed to your sternum now, just below your breastbone. Inside your shirt, you can feel the foreign god’s heart pumping anxiously against your belly.

You are running out of time. You know your options: you can agree to sacrifice the heart of the devil’s child, and spare yourself. You can let Five here kill you.

You search your mind for other options.

You can sacrifice the heart to yourself rather than the horror beneath the ground, like Five thought you might be doing. You can try to flee with the heart, and hope Five does not catch you.

Can you go back Through? You reach for it, but you can’t find that exit. That option is closed to you.

You are out of time. His knife is pressing in. You must choose.

It is time.

[Please offer actions, thoughts, or concerns for Seven in the Comments.]

[Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 |  Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Conclusion | Author’s Notes]

[New and want to jump in? Please read the Instructions, but go ahead!]

You freeze up briefly as the cliffs—the eyelids—come sliding in towards you. If you don’t move, you will be crushed by them. You know that, but this isn’t exactly a situation you’ve had time to prep for. Even without memories, you are fairly certain that ‘getting crushed by blinking’ never crossed your mind as a possible way to die.

As they rush in, you force yourself to move.

First, you drop the heart down the front of your hoodie and pray that it won’t fall out the bottom as you move. Or, worse, get squished along with you. (Why is that worse? You just somehow know it is.) But you don’t know how much you’ll need your hands, and you can’t risk everything by not having them free.

You consider your options as quickly as you can, gaze flicking rapidly around, your own eyes straining for anything that might be an opportunity. You could try stomping through the soft place beneath you and hoping you slip beneath the ?ice?. You could try lunging for the cave and hoping you fall into it as the lids close, leaving you safe. You can reach up and let the horrible, unknowable, foreign stars take you.

In your confusion and growing panic—I don’t want to die! Sweet, help me!—you try to do all of them at once.

You

fall

and

go

t                 h                 r                  o                  u                  g                  h

It spins. It yanks you around and whirls you and you are sick and lost and you do not know who you are, you do not know, you do not know, you do not know.

You didn’t mean to go far, but you did. You have. You are too far, perhaps, but you feel as though you’ve been too far this entire time.

When you land, you find yourself on a hilltop. It is a cold autumn night and you are crouched, arms wrapped around your midsection to try to protect your heart. Tears are blurring your vision, and you are humiliated and afraid, sobbing, trying to catch your breath. You wish someone would shield you from this.

(“Sometimes we need other people to make decisions for us in the heat of the moment.” Who had said that? Why can’t you remember? Someone’s missing, the person who would say that. You feel a fondness for them, a jab of pain, of fear.

But that’s just another incomprehensible thought in this incomprehensible place.)

You close your eyes so you cannot see whatever might be around you and you try to pull the ragged, shaking pieces of your mind together so you can be you, practical and reasonable. You know that about yourself. That you try to stay calm even when things are beyond reason. That you’re practical. That you have a powerful imagination, sometimes, but you know how likely it is that it’s just imagination.

This isn’t.

With your eyes still closed, you stick your face down into the front of your hoodie a little, hiding. The heart is in here. Still cradling it inside, you bring it up a little to your face and inhale its scent. It smells …

???

No. You focus.

It smells… sweet. Strange. You don’t know how a heart should smell, but probably just meaty—right? This smells like sap on old, damaged trees. You remember going on a field trip once as a child and they poured the tree blood out onto the snow and told you to give it a try. You were young, and you were upset. The trees were being hurt. But when you tasted it, you tried to believe it was all right. The trees would be fine; they told you that, and they should know. That was their job. You tried to believe the trees would give it to you willingly—it tasted so good. It was so sweet.

Without meaning to, you stick your tongue out and taste the heart, a quick, tentative lick.

It’s good.

It’s sweet.

It tastes like it smells, syrup and sugar and nature.

You want to eat it.

A hand grabs your shoulder and shakes, and you jerk your head up, pretending you weren’t just rubbing your tongue over the disembodied beating heart of some unthinkable creature, that you weren’t just tasting an impossible, inhuman organ that you have stuffed into your hoodie.

You don’t recognize the man there, or, at least, you don’t think you have any way to. He’s wearing a robe, though, and you don’t think you’ve known anyone who wears robes any time except Halloween.

(Isn’t it Halloween, though?)

“Do you have it?” he asks.

You stare at him, then look around. With the tears gone, you realize that there is an altar in the clearing on the hilltop.

The man pulls you up by your shoulder. “Do you have it?” he asks again impatiently, as he drags you to the altar. “If you don’t have it, we’re right fucked. We have to wake him up or the rituals are for nothing. I swear, if you don’t have it, I’ll pull your heart out and sacrifice that instead.”

[Please offer actions, thoughts, or concerns for ?you?? in the Comments.]

[Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 |  Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Conclusion | Author’s Notes]