Chapter 15
The desk is gone when he returns to the odd classroom, as are the arrangement of chairs. The majority of the room is completely empty, aside from a small circular table and two chairs at the front of the room. The cloaked man sits in one, frighteningly still down to the unmoving folds of the layers of fabric draped over his body. The empty chair has a saucer and a filled, steaming cup of tea sat in front of it, the chair pulled out waiting for someone to approach.
The approach to the table feels like it takes hours, despite his pace bordering on a run. His head hasn’t stopped spinning in the hour it took him to get back, fingers digging into the outside of the black box he tosses roughly onto the table as soon as he’s close enough to do so. The cloaked man doesn’t flinch, doesn’t jump, just turns to look at Harry where he stands before the table.
“Welcome back.” He sounds so calm. Anger curls in Harry’s chest, irrational but ever refusing to depart.
“Don’t sound so--!” He exhales through his teeth. “Tell me what’s happening. You said you would. What’s happening? What did he do to me?” His own father. He had some sort of hand in this. He’s one of the people who did this to him.
The cloaked man raises a hand and gestures to the chair. “Sit. Drink.”
The anger bubbles again, motions becoming more aggressive and exaggerated as he speaks, hands waving wildly in his rage. “My own father is part of the reason this-- this all keeps happening and why it follows me and why it keeps hurting me and you’re worried about tea--?”
The cloaked man catches his hand. The fabric feels impossibly soft, almost a thick liquid rather than a cloth. And Harry can’t feel anything hand shaped beneath, just a sort of undefined mass of something more solid that flows to the shape of his wrist, that stops the momentum with ease. “Sit, Harry.”
He retracts his hand, forcing him to breathe for a few moments before he obeys. “What are you?” His voice has lost its fire, breaking halfway through the simple sentence as months of exhaustion and years of confusion and fear weigh onto his shoulders.
“A mouth meant to speak for one who exists outside this reality. Once, I was called Umr At-Tawil. Most in current years call me the Guide.” His voice is irritatingly calm. “I know what your father did. The one I am the mouth of was involved in it.”
He stiffens, bile rising in his throat. “Involved?” His hand drifts towards the knife strapped onto his thigh.
The Guide raises one hand. “Calm. Your weapons will have no effect on one like me. I speak as an Avatar of one who is space and time made manifest, one who knows all that has happened, will happen, and is happening. I operate only to ensure that fabric is left untorn. I take no joy in the pain any of this has and will cause you. I took part not to cause your pain or to exploit the same that my kin seek from you, but instead as one who knows what would come of your existence without my intervention. I have no desire to see you come to harm. I know only that your life as it exists now is vital to my interests.”
“And those interests are?”
“To see that the weave of the fabric that makes up your reality remains free from tears.” He says. “And you wish for your home and your loved ones to remain free from harm, do you not.”
He eyes the veil that covers the Guide’s potentially non-existent face, unsure if the odd entity is deserving of his trust. “I do.”
“Then, with the path time currently flows, our interests align.”
A pause. A lackluster and fruitless attempt to process any of this, to make sense of any of this. “You promised an explanation.”
The Guide seems to sigh, an odd sound. “I did.” He says. “Harry, how much do you know of your father’s rise to success?”
“He… he was self made. It was a point of pride. He and my mom met in college. Same major. Competing for valedictorian. She… she’d wanted to be a painter, but her parents wanted her pursuing something she could make money in, and she was smart. So it was fine.” His father had never told him that. The most he’d learned of his mother had been from an old box of letters and his mother’s diaries that had been left in a box on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in his father’s study, something he’d never been meant to read. Emily Lyman had held a yearning for a life she’d never been allowed to have that not even her husband had been given the privilege of knowing about prior to her untimely death at the hands of complications from having her only child.
“He did love her, in his way.” The Guide agrees solemnly. “Your father is an intelligent man. He’d known it too, perhaps too well. He met another poor young person… almost as intelligent as he thought himself. When they graduated, your father had developed a conviction that the only value any person has is scientific knowledge. And he saw himself and your mother as beyond brilliant, regardless of the truth in that particular matter. To him, his intelligence alone was enough to leave him deserving of any status, power, or money he thought himself deserving of, which was quite a lot. He told you he began his company right after he’d graduated, hadn’t he?”
Harry nods quietly. Thinking now, he realizes how little sense that makes. His father had been almost thirty by the time he started the company he loved so much--same time as around when Harry had been born. Neither did it make sense that the destitute graduate that Norman had loved bragging about the bootstrapping prowess of having enough money to start a company like OSCORP make the slightest bit of sense.
“I see you can guess that wasn’t the case. For the first several years, Norman had entered the industry in the way most graduates did. But his ego had been… rather over inflated at that point in his life. He found he couldn’t ascend as quickly as he’d wanted. Couldn’t comprehend the idea of why he didn’t immediately receive the recognition and power he wanted and why companies might favor people with decades of industry experience over him in the positions he envied. And he’d been unable to handle the blow it dealt to his pride. So he resorted to less savory means to get what he wanted, convinced himself that anyone who could just take what they wanted was more worthy of it than the one who couldn’t defend it.” A pause. “Of course, he was promptly blacklisted from the industry when he was found out. Your mother, too. That’s when he found us.”
“‘Us?’”
“My kin. The great old ones. Gods. Though this is no true shock to you, is it? You found the hidden study of his.”
He had. The room that had seemed to have been abandoned so hastily, books ripped from shelves in a rush that hadn’t bothered moving any that fell to the ground, pages of old notes scattered around the ground.
“He’d thought he could outsmart my kin. He began studying obsessively, making deals without your mother’s knowledge. He’d thought he’d thought out every possible loophole. He approached one of the elder gods and offered them his firstborn in exchange for the success of his startup and the power and success he craved.”
Oh…
“And then he repeated the process eleven more times. He’d thought that by agreeing to offer something apart from himself he was immune to our influence. And he’d been convinced that as none of us specified we wanted to be the only one with a claim over you, it would be impossible for any backlash to come his way. He’d have a dozen gods driving his little company to unseen heights of wealth and influence with no consequence to himself.” The Guide pauses, tone tipping more gentle than it had before. “And to solidify it, he planned to, once you were born, to either abandon you or kill you without Emily’s knowledge so the consequences could really never follow him.”
Harry draws his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and placing his forehead against his frigid hands. His vision is blurring slightly, throat tight. His mind can’t even begin to process the weight of the fact his very existence had been promised to a dozen separate beings that incomprehensibly powerful, that from before his birth his existence had only ever been what his father could benefit from. The only thing on his mind, the heavy weight grasping like a vice around his heart, was the fact there had never been anything he could have done. He’d never been a person to his own father. He’d never been viewed as a child to Norman, he’d never been, not even at the moment of his birth, something worth love or affection or anything resembling care. Norman hadn’t cared for him even when he still held the potential to be what Norman wanted. From the beginning, Harry had only been worth what he could provide. He’d only been worth something to Norman in the same cold, impersonal way business stock had worth, in the same way a valuable deal with a manufacturer had value, only worth the same love Norman afforded products that could make him a more powerful businessman.
One of the Guide’s hands reaches out, taking Harry’s into the same formless but firm embrace he’d felt before, squeezing his hand slightly. It’s unexpectedly comforting. “Do you need a moment?”
He swallows. “No. No, I’m fine.”
The touch lingers, but eventually retracts. “Those who’d been promised you met around then, discussed the matter. It was agreed that if your father believed that he could escape through the gray areas and work to his benefit through the vague and undefined, we could as well. And it was agreed we’d have no conflict over you until you’d reached adulthood, and would instead remind your father that no mortal was ever truly going to find an upper hand over the gods. Nyarlathotep is the only one of us that’s ever capable of being directly physically present and directly personally intervening in your reality, so it was decided he’d be responsible for that reminder. Your father never truly told you how your mother died, did he?”
His hands are shaking, but his entire body feels like something distant. Like he’s miles away, none of this is real, like this is a strange dream, like he’s thinking and moving and hearing through the vagueness and mist that defines dreams. “He liked getting drunk and telling me I had killed her.” He mumbles into his arms. “I thought she’d died giving birth to me.”
The Guide shifts, fabric flowing, arms moving with no visible destination for a moment. “Nyarlathotep is, among other things, a shapeshifter. He’d taken your father’s face so your mother would let him inside. He murdered her. Tore her body apart and left pieces scattered around for Norman to find when he returned and left our symbols scrawled in her blood so he’d know. Left her so ripped apart they didn’t find all of her until the place began to smell.”
He wants to feel anger towards his father, who’s ego had resulted in his mother being brutalized to teach him a lesson, and who still willingly works with her killer for the sake of advancing himself. He wants to feel some rage towards Nyarlathotep for still desiring power over him, still desiring to make deals with him, still having the audacity to try to do so after he’d killed the only person who might have loved him. But all that is washed away in the sheer tidal wave of self loathing that washes over him. She hadn’t even known. She hadn’t even known that her husband was bartering off their child beyond her back. She had probably thought she was being murdered by her husband out of the blue in her final painful moments being hacked apart by that monster of a god. And it should just be more of a reason to hate the two, but to him all he can see is that if she’d only gotten rid of that pregnancy, if she’d only rejected the notion of children, if only any other person had caught Norman’s fancy, if she’d only chosen to get rid of her pregnancy, her life wouldn’t have been stolen from her so violently. And not only that, but she’d lost her life over a child that had grown up to be him. She’d been murdered over a child who’d not even managed to become something worth dying over. Over someone who grew up to spend his few adult years alive a drunk, angry, resentful, selfish bastard who chased violent revenge over anything noble, who’d spent his life chasing revenge for a man completely unworthy of it and had never spared a thought for her. Who’d died violently trying to redeem himself not for her, not for anyone, but just to gain the approval of loved ones who never spared him a second thought until he was bleeding out in front of them. He’d rarely thought of her. She lost her life over him, who’d been constantly undeserving. And he’d known nothing about her. She’d died over her child and hadn’t known it. And how disappointing that reality must be if she could see him now.
“Keep talking.” He forces out.
“That is when he began trying to purge his history with us from his life. Ripped apart that study. But we had been keeping our promise, elevating his company, and up until then he’d been keeping his end. We still had you. But to him, purging his life of everything touched by us included finally getting rid of you. He began trying to leave you alone in the wild in hopes you’d freeze or starve, as you were only an infant at the time. But he’d continue to find you back in your crib or left on his doorstep without explanation. He’d try to leave you at safe surrender sites, but again you’d appear back at home. In desperation, he began truly trying to kill you. But we’d intervene. My kin did not want him to win. He was to raise you himself whether he liked it or not and we would not let him harm you.”
He’d spent eighteen years living with someone who tried to kill him. “Why?” He croaks out. “Why would you care, other than just harassing him? Why would any of you want me to begin with?”
“There are complexities to the initial agreement where the purposes for wanting you vary from god to god. But upon the realization of his deception, the deal itself wasn’t terminated for one reason: he’d unknowingly made something that could be very useful for any of us, not just those who’d initially been promised you.” The Guide takes one of Harry’s arms in his hands, turning it over, cold blue veins standing out against his pale skin and staring up at them both. “To seal the claim of each god you were promised to had over you, the binding that was forged before your birth means you were born with traces of each god’s power in your blood. Traces of their individual portfolios that each other god would find extremely useful to have control over, and the number of gods deceived by your father means you’ve attracted the attention of gods not initially involved as well.”
He stares at his own forearm, eyes hazy and unfocused. “What for?” It’s barely a whisper.
“That varies too heavily for my own explanation. For myself? I am time. I knew your father’s intentions from the beginning, but I also knew your life, as painful as it will be, is necessary. Your choices influence much of the flow of fate from this point forward, and many of them have the potential to be destructive. Better to help you myself than to abandon reality to the whims of my more destructive siblings.”
“You’d said you all agreed not to do anything about me until I was an adult. What does that mean for me now?”
“The eventual choice was that the route of least conflict was that the individual allowed to take you for themself would be whomever you willingly aligned and willingly entirely bound yourself to.” The Guide explains. “You’ve seen it with Nyarlathotep. You will likely find yourself at the attention of more. Some will try to appeal to you with power or logic, some will try to appeal to you with similar morality. Some like him will try to manipulate you into technical agreement.”
He jolts upward with a start, exposing the burn on one wrist. “Have I already accidentally agreed to him?!”
“Only slightly. Marking you like that is the beginning of that particular process. You are in no particular danger of binding yourself to him, though its advisable to recognize caution.”
His shoulders relax, then he eyes the cloaked figure cautiously. “And you?”
“If you wish to do so for reasons of protection, I will not reject it. But currently, I believe you’ll find freedom a valuable asset. And I find no reason I cannot work with you regardless of that.” The voice never wavers from a complete sense of calm. It’s slightly creepy.
“And what do you want from working with me?” He asks.
“You want to keep your loved ones and home safe, which often manifests in intervening with the activity of my more malicious kin. I want only for the fabric of time and space to remain intact, which has me benefitting from those cults being kept in check. I wish for the harm that comes to you as a result of the burden you bear to be minimal. I’m sure you desire the same.”
The Guide had been honest with him so far. And, once he considers it, more than willing to provide proof. “I’ll consider it.”
That seems to satisfy the entity. “If I am to be frank, that currently is not of high priority. Right now, I must see to helping you survive outside my domain.” He keeps speaking before Harry can sputter out confused protests. “You defied Nyarlathotep for the second time. Normally, he is content to crush those who defy him on the first violation. Despite your odd immortality, I expect he will not spare you any of his favored tortures for disrespecting him to such a degree.”
All logic says this statement should be a cause for fear. And it is, when his mind isn’t slowly drifting to curiosity at the idea that maybe, just maybe, Nyarlathotep could actually finally end his unwanted half-life. But even beyond that, it’s something firm to latch onto amidst the spiraling whirlpool of his own disoriented thoughts, something to grasp to as the rest of his mind tries desperately to sort through the information he’s been given. Or perhaps he’s just in shock. “What do you mean?”
“This place--” The Guide motions to the hidden shrine they both stand in. “Is under my protection. He cannot harm you or intrude on your thoughts while you stand here. But if you leave, that is a much different story. He will torture you from afar. Perhaps to get you to agree to him, perhaps to just kill you despite the wrath it would invoke from the rest of us. But there are ways to protect yourself from him.” He remains silent as the Guide stands, moving several feet away before motioning for Harry to follow. “Come.”
He does so, feeling a bit like a dog following the small child who owns him.
The Guide leads them both from the classroom and into the room of bookshelves, steps confident of the destination he seeks, guiding Harry to the very center of the spiral of bookshelves. The titles become progressively more foreign as they walk deeper into the spiral, beginning with texts whose titles Harry recognizes: first additions of many classic novels sitting alongside a heavy variety of thick academic textbooks heavy enough to be used as a weapon. As they walk, the books become progressively stranger, transitioning to academic texts not about familiar science but about some far more theoretical seeming astronomy and biology, then the shelves becoming consumed by texts that are simply outright occult. Though what throws him off there isn’t the occult nature, but instead that the books are still titled academically, still with authorship cited like the textbooks earlier in the library. At long last, the shelves become occupied by thick, leatherbound, titleless tomes, stating nothing as to their purposes. It is one of these volumes that the Guide pulls from the shelf.
“The rite to gain protection against a god whose wrath you’ve invoked is a lengthy one.” He explains. “It requires you to gain the approval of your resistance by a number of gods, something the vast majority of mortals would not be able to achieve. You have an advantage in that regard. Once the approval is sufficient, proof of devotion is required in the sacrifice of one human life--”
He interrupts at that. “Wait. I’m not going to kill anyone over this!” He couldn’t handle it. Beyond the way that even thinking of something like that makes his stomach turn, he’s not done enough good in his life to deserve his life being saved at the cost of killing someone else.
The Guide raises one hand. “I know. You are in an odd position. You see, death doesn’t stick with you. Whenever spells like these require the sacrifice of human life or flesh, you have the ability to provide just that with no permanent consequence to yourself.”
“You want me to sacrifice myself.” He says slowly. It should bother him more than it does. It should really, really bother him more than it does. But it only sounds rational to him. Of course. He was born with his only real purpose to be eventually involved with these forces he can’t control in one way or another. It only makes sense he should be able to perform rituals intended to have their costs and consequences written in the amount of flesh they cost with only his own perpetually regenerating, half decayed body.
The Guide nods with no hesitance, like he either understands Harry’s morbid thought process or he’s simply too foreign to humanity to really understand what he’s asking.
“Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”
“Good. You’ll need to work quickly. Nyarlathotep’s revenge against you will begin the moment you set foot outside my domain. Within this tome are listed in addition to the protection spell various counters for what he will try to do to you. They will be necessary to ensure he does not destroy you before you can save yourself. When the rite is complete and your body has healed itself, one of the gods who’s approved your protection will gift you with something that will stave off his assault if kept near you. Never be without it, whatever it is. If you end up separated from it, his revenge against you will begin anew.”
He takes the heavy book, running his hands over the featureless cover. “How do I get home, then? If he’s going to be after me the moment I leave, that makes it hard to get anywhere where I can actually do this.”
“I am able to send you somewhere suitable when you’re ready to begin.”
He nods, feeling sort of blank inside. “Will I need things other than the book?”
“You will have them.” The Guide replies.
No point in delaying, then. If this kills him, he’s dead at last. If not… he’s finally got answers, even if he certainly doesn’t like them. “Okay. Get me out of here.”
“Are you confident?”
“Yes.” It feels like an intense gust the moment he agrees as he’s thrown backwards, landing on the wooden floor of the hidden study he’d found those months ago.
He throws every book still left on the floor to the side and sweeps papers out of his way before dropping to his knees, setting the heavy leather bound volume down on the ground and beginning to flip through it.
A distant manic laughter penetrates his ears as he reaches the first written upon page.
Begin by drawing a circle in white chalk and light four candles. One blue to the north, one yellow to the south, one green to the east, and one red to the west.
He removes the backpack he’d taken from his back, finding the box gone and replaced by candles, chalk, and a variety of other items. He scrawls the circle as quickly as he can, pulling a small compass from the bag to identify the cardinal directions as instructed.
The moment the last candle is placed, pain erupts in his hands and forearms, spine twisting in agony as almost acidic blood leaks from slowly growing holes in his skin. The holes spread up his arms, into his torso as he begins to desperately flip through the book, blood smearing against the stiff brown pages.
Counterspell: Porosity
He tries to read the page as quickly as he can, finding himself blinking as the words seem so drift around the page and letters rearrange themselves. Slow down. Focus, damn it.
Reading the instructions as he does so, he digs around in the bag until he extracts a small sack, undying it with slick fingers. A lump of soft, moist clay sits inside. He steels himself, bracing his shoulders and beginning to smear the substance along his arms, hissing at the immediate spikes of pain. He fills every hole best he can, finding they’ve spread up to his neck by the time he finishes. His eyes dart to the bottom of the page where the necessary incantation is listed. Repeat until they close. Okay.
His body seizes when he speaks the utter gibberish at the bottom of the page for the first time, feeling like his skin is suddenly too tight for his body, like the rest of him is about to rip out of it. The pressure eases with the second time he speaks it, only a vague discomfort beneath his skin at the third. He examines his arms. Dots of faint scar tissue have appeared where his arms were torn open, but otherwise his body is intact.
This works, then.
He flips back to the first several pages, continuing to follow the instructions as quickly as he possibly can.
Bisect a dragonfruit, keeping the halves as similar in size as possible. Remove the insides of each half completely until the shell is left fully hollow.
When he’s able to find the thing left in his bag, he follows the commands of the text with shaking hands, ending up leaving the edible innards of the fruit on the filthy ground when he can’t find a better place to place it.
Carve the sigil below onto the flesh of your designated sacrifice. The sigil should be cut into the lower belly, just above the hips. Take care to ensure the carving is not done so deeply that any abdominal organs are damaged. Only flesh should be harmed to ensure that blood loss or organ damage doesn’t take them before the completion of the protection ritual. Fill each empty half of the fruit with the designated sacrifice’s blood.
The symbol is similar to a large Y shape, with a line drawn between the two arms of the letter to connect them halfway between the top and where the letter splits. Two lines are drawn downward from that line, symmetrical from the center. The arms of the Y both have a hooked small u at the ends, curving upward from the ends of the arms of the base letter. The shape reminds him of a goat's head. He’ll examine that connection further later.
He unbuckles the maybe unnecessarily high number of belts he’s made the decision needed to continue to be part of the Mantis’s look, shimmying his pants down to just below where the bones of his hips jut out, pulling the knife strapped to his thigh into one hand. He steels himself, still feeling sort of detached, and presses the glinting tip to his own flesh, stomach curling with discomfort at how slow his own cuts insist on being. Perhaps it’s his own weakness, his own hesitance, but the flesh resists more intensely than anything else has in the past. The edges of the cut furl outward when the knife passes through, like it’s a particularly gorey flower blooming from within him. Blood and something black and foul smelling flow from him in enthusiastic waves, flowing downward like a waterfall as he completes his cuts. His stomach is so covered by blood by the time he finished just the basic Y shape it’s difficult to tell where the lacerations are, leaving him prodding at his heaving, agonized abdomen to identify where exactly the shapes are. He ends up needing to hold his own skin still to keep his cuts straight as his knife slips against sticky blood, trying to escape the path he intends for it and rip through his body wherever it pleases. The final cuts are much quicker, just his blood soaked hands desire to get it over with. His sticky fingers then fumble desperately at the halves of the dragonfruit, pulling them towards the rapid flood of gore from his stomach, filling them one after the other. He’d not really expected them to fill that quickly, but… it is a lot of blood. Why was he shocked?
He stains the pages of the book with one hand, the other clutching at his stomach like he expects it’ll do anything.
Once the sigil has been cut and the fruit filled, snuff out the candle facing south and consume the fruit removed earlier.
The taste of the filthy floor clinging to the fruit is by no means pleasant, but at least the taste overpowers the iron of the blood on his fingers.
A misty, black, clawed hand bursts through the wall, the arm connected flowing through the solid surface like liquid. Harry jolts backwards, the hand against his bleeding stomach going to the sword and the other flipping through pages before he’s even torn his eyes off the hand.
Counterspell: Incorporeal Visitors
No direct spell to counter visages appearing in your ritual space exists. It is however known that manifested visages have no real sight and only sense movement. Remain as still as possible until they’ve passed through your space.
A misty, dark humanoid body pulls itself through his wall. It’s smaller than the shadowy apparition he’d seen speak to his father. And, like the book suggests, there are no discernable facial features, not even the pinpricks of eyes Nyarlathotep had even had. It stands motionless, torso still half within the desk, facing directly forward. Harry’s eyes bore into it, tracking movement that doesn’t exist. It just stands. Like it’s taunting him.
And then its form lurches forward, sprinting straight at him, movements impossibly fast and shadowy claws ready to rend flesh. Every muscle in his body screams at him to run, every instinct screams to try to escape a thing that has clearly noticed him, but he swallows every last urge, not even moving his head to follow the things movements. It’s sprint halts several feet in front of him and it freezes completely. Waiting. Listening. Standing for what feels like days.
And then it disappears through the nearest wall.
He looks down, scolding his shaking hands. No time for fear. No time for weakness. Keep pressing on. He flips back to the pages for the ritual.
If you’re still alive by then, you have gained approval from one. To proceed to the second, cut a grid lightly into the skin of your upper right arm. The lines and grid must be formed diagonally. This step must be performed on the caster, not the intended sacrifice.
He picks the knife back up, the handle slipping in his sticky hands, trying to suppress the knot in his chest that forms in his chest at the sight of the blade gliding through his skin like butter. The feeling of the tackiness of thick blood coating more of his skin makes him shiver in discomfort, nausea gradually growing more intense.
Wrap the wound in a sheet of fish scales. Cover the area as entirely and to the best fit you’re able to manage.
Indeed, there’s a rolled sheet of fish skin in his bag, unexpectedly glossy and wet for something pulled off of the animal who knows how long ago. They thrum against his skin when he wraps his upper arm, twitching against his body in ways he tells himself he’s just imagining, feeling living in their own right. Living not as part of a fish that hasn’t died from lack of connection to the body yet, but instead living as if the fish skin is its own, independent organism. The sheet tightens around the shape of his forearm when completely wrapped, like memorizing the shape of it, molding around it, before the scales vanish, absorbed into newly intact, slightly wet skin.
If the scales are absorbed into healed skin, you were successful. Snuff out the easternmost candle. If not, pray death will be quick.
Somehow, that sight sickens him just as much as carving himself open did.
If you remain alive now, take three rodent skulls and arrange them in a triangular fashion on the western end of your chalk circle. Turn your back to the circle and wait thirty seconds exactly. Keep your eyes shut for the duration.
It feels like there’s something with him. But it doesn’t feel the same as when Nyarlathotep spoke to him. There’s a presence with him, something far larger and far less… humanoid, looming above him as he arranges the skulls and turns away. When he shuts his eyes, the presence draws closer to him, as if stooping over him, and something cold and scaley and massive presses to the backs of both his hands, smearing something. Whatever it is, it retracts when he opens his eyes, looking down at the backs of his hands where two crescent moons of candle wax have been smeared onto his hands.
If all is successful, paint crescent moons in the wax of the red candle onto the backs of your hands and snuff out the western candle.
Choosing to take this as a desperately needed good sign, he puts out the candle. The entity in the room with him vanishes with the motion.
If eyes begin to open on your walls around this point, complete the remainder of the ritual as quickly as you can. And do not make eye contact.
Almost on cue, a piercing red eye forms in the center of the wall opposite him, staring him down maliciously, dozens of smaller eyes blinking open around it and gazing at him with similar malice. He forces himself to look back down.
Check your sternum. If a diamond shaped patch of something looking like outer space has appeared on your flesh, you have already gained Yog-Sothoth’s approval. Put out the last candle. If not, there is nothing more you can do. DO NOT LOOK AT THE MARK FOR ANY LONGER THAN YOU MUST..
The cracks form in his skin just as he glances down at his chest, unexpectedly mesmerized at the flickers of light dancing beneath the cracks in the surface of his skin like chipped paint. And then his skin falls away in the pattern of a diamond, peeling off his body in sheets, drifting off like autumn leaves. And he’s looking at a vast void from a small hole in his own skin, stars twinkling at him from miles away, swirls of dark purples and blues dancing along the perpetually moving pattern. It’s hard to tear his eyes away, hard to define why the odd gap is so calming to stare at. Hard to even care enough to question the odd beauty of it. Why does any of what happens in his tiny life matter when he could look into things so much bigger than him. He is insignificant. A speck in comparison to the vastness he looks into. But why should he even care? It’s meaningless to care. It’s meaningless to not care.
He rips his eyes away before his thoughts can spiral further. The eyes are spreading, consuming an entire wall and moving towards him in a slowly creeping, staring wave.
Get moving.
Complete the sacrifice. The designated person must be killed by exactly three knife wounds to the chest. The first under the third rib on the left side, the second under the fourth on the right, and the third directly through the sternum. The body must be placed back down within the chalk circle.
He steels himself, taking the knife in both hands as he lays down. He counts the ribs with the tip of the knife once, then, in a move he logically knows is just him being spineless, him being a coward, twice. The tip is pressed just beneath his third rib. He wishes he had something to bite down on again.
No time to keep delaying. The eyes are spreading, blinking open in a wave, in a plague with one individual as a target for infection. He grits his teeth and drives the blade into his flesh, blood spraying in an arc from the wound as he can’t stop himself from screaming into the silent room, agony blooming against the layers of ripped flesh and organs. His right lung fills with blood, making his rapid breaths even more painful and laborious as he pulls the knife free with a squelch, pressing it just beneath his opposite fourth rib before he can pussy out, the scream that tears through his chest louder and filled with further shocks of pain as the blade rips through the flesh of his motionless heart with a second geyser of blood. His body weakens almost immediately with the destruction to his heart and second lung, but he pulls the blade free with weakening arms anyways, shaking hands lining it up with his sternum best he can as vertigo begins to claw at the edges of his vision. Colors are smearing together in his vision, the world growing indistinct beyond the waves of pain tearing through his body. He presses the blade down before he loses the necessary strength, gritting his teeth and swallowing a howl as he musters his last shreds of strength to push the blade through the bone, the sharp torment of the bone shattering only barely distinct to the rest of the pain consuming his chest.
He’s too weak to even fully pull the knife from his chest now, hands pawing at it uselessly without the precision necessary to grab it. His arms feel like lead, joints too stiff to move. No amount of effort can stop them from falling useless to his sides. Color swirls in his vision, everything in front of his heavy eyelids impossible to make out. He turns his head, resting his cheek against the cold ground as his eyes fall shut.
Even with this occasion being self administered, dying was worse the first time.
He’s woken to his whole body aching intensely, like every muscle in his body is swollen and every inch of his skin inflamed. His throat is dry and swollen, as are his eyes, so he fumbles an aching arm out to the side of him, the limb screaming at him with every movement, but knowing he usually keeps water on his nightstand.
All his fingers find is more dusty, grimy, cold floor, but his forearm lands on top of something thick and scaled, something that doesn’t just shift and move around his arm, but loops around it.
Snake, his brain supplies helpfully, though it can’t seem to muster anything like a normal level of concern about that fact.
The cold tip of a snakes head pokes at his jaw, then rubs against it, followed by a second. And a third.
That makes his eyes pop open, met by the sight of coils of black scales that shift moments after his eyes open, like the serpent has seen the movement. A small black snake head enters his view, followed by the half expected second and third heads that rub against his face, coiling further around his wrist.
“Hey.” His eyes are watering because of the light. Yeah. Yeah. Not because he knows this little reptile, not because he’s crying or anything. “H-hey, buddy.” He forces his second hand to move, ignoring the way his chest screams in agony as he twists to face the animal, stroking the scales along its back gently.
The three headed snake rubs it’s heads against his face and neck affectionately, coils tightening a little, though not painfully, around his forearm as he does, the reptile intent on coiling around as much of his body as it can. He rolls back onto his back, careful to avoid crushing any of it. “I missed you too. A lot, actually.” He stares at the many, many coils of snake looped around his arm and neck as the reptile pulls itself onto his chest. His torso screams in agony at the pressure against it but he couldn’t care less. It’s the snake! His snake. He’s not getting mad at his old buddy if he tried. “You got so big.”
The snakes eyes are intelligent, more so than he remembered, so he feels compelled to assume the response is intended when it loops around his shoulders. He did too, didn’t he? He’d been a little kid. Clearly, so had the snake. He never had let that attachment go, had he? He’d always loved snakes after that. Perhaps that’s why his little friend is only showing back up now, he wonders, recalling what the Guide had said. “Are you here to keep the asshole from killing me? My good luck snake?”
The little guy loops around his shoulders and chest as he slowly sits up, as if to show how he can be easily kept close for asshole god repelling duties. He looks down at himself, covered in dried blood and finding it can’t put a damper on his joy at getting his little buddy back. The sigil he cut into his stomach has scarred over, as have the three stab wounds in his chest. The snakes three heads wriggle through his hair, almost an attempt at comfort. He can’t stop himself from reaching out and rubbing it’s tiny heads. “I’m good, buddy. I’m great.” He laughs. He should be horrified by the past… day, or past day that he’d been awake for, depending on how long he was out. He is, if he’s being honest. But he can’t get his overwhelmed, short circuited mind to focus on it. Sure, he’ll probably emotionally collapse later, but he’s got a snake.
“Probably gonna need you around a lot. That’s good. That’s great, actually. I missed you. Get to-get to hang out with my little buddy again.” Fuck it. He’s definitely crying.