Ravelling Wrath, chapter 1

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Blood Child

“Ow! Fuck.”

I shouldn’t have messed up jumping that fence! I did this all the time, it was the best shortcut through the Fourth Ring. Yali needed me, and I wasn’t going to slow down. Stern God take whoever put that fence there! I hated taking the main roads – they stank with car exhaust, and I always got a headache from all the safety sorceries. Jump a fence, every time. Fuck the Stern.

I landed on my feet – and my leg did hurt, but it held my weight just fine. Just a bruise, who cares. I took off running. Yali.

She’d caught me between classes, keeping her voice low in the bustle of the hall: “Rinn, there’s something I’ll need to tell you about. In private.” She’d put her big hand on my arm, and I felt her squeeze just a little too hard. “Can we meet after school? My place?”

Gods! Yali was worried? She was the calmest, most patient person I knew! In the whole month I’d been her girlfriend, and the season I’d known her as a classmate, she’d never once spoken like this. If something put her on gatewatch, you can bet it was deadly serious. You know the saying – when the Waiting God moves, beware.

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…but then the Stern gave me a fucking detention! Apparently, when I’d punched those assholes earlier that day, that wasn’t “proper behavior for a young lady”. What was I supposed to do, stand there and take the Waiting while they were picking on that kid? That’s what I would’ve said to the Stern, too, right there in detention – it’s fun to watch them get mad, when they’re supposed to follow the Stern God and be dignified and shit. But then they’d’ve kept me later. So I pretended to care about their lecture, just this once. For Yali.

Now, it was time to catch up. I was almost at the Third Wall already, my feet pounding hard up the steep slope towards the center of the city. Why’d I have to love someone who lived two rings higher than me? Thank the Broken the side-gates were open, at least. Not like last month when the Stern Temple locked everything down because of some bullshit about “Blood worshippers infiltrating the city”. Why would anyone actually worship the Blood God, anyway? I bet some kid just spray-painted the Burning Heart somewhere as a prank, and then the Stern thought that was a great excuse to push everyone around. Would’ve been fine if I just went to school next door in the Fifth Ring like a normal person, but nooooo, my parents wouldn’t let me to go a “bad” high school, they had to get me into a “better” one. “It’s right across the Wall!” they’d said. Then last month I’d had to run all the way to the main gate every day, then all the way back to where the school was in the Fourth Ring. At least that was over now. But now I had to run all the way up to the Third, for Yali.

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At the gate, I paused to catch my breath – leaning on the cool stones of the archway, letting the buzz of sorcery fill my mind. The wall-sorceries were always a relief – they were much stronger, flushing out all the noise from the city. You could almost believe the walls really were made by the five gods. I took deep breaths, smirking at all the cars stuck in the single-lane traffic through the side-gate – I could relax as long as I wanted, and I’d still get ahead of them.

Gods, what was Yali going to tell me? I pulled out my phone – but of course the screen was black, so I jogged a bit further before tapping to switch it out of gate mode. I stopped in front of a “No Loitering” sign to check my texts:

Can’t talk over text! Was she planning crimes? Heresy? I knew I loved her. Fuck the temples.

I was still out of breath, but who cared – I took off running, up past the courthouse, up past the city buildings with the Dauntless Gate engraved all over them, up to the row of little houses where the old pensioners live, and finally – nestled among them – the door of Yali’s house itself.

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I had scarcely rung the doorbell when Yali engulfed me in a hug. I fell exhausted into her arms. She was just so big, and warm, and wonderful – I closed my eyes, legs turning to jelly, leaning into her while she planted a kiss on my forehead.

“You ran all the way here, didn’t you,” she murmured. I didn’t have to answer that. We both knew how it was.

Soon, we’d flopped down on her couch, sinking into the big, well-worn cushions while I panted to catch my breath. I leaned waaaay back, my arm around her – but Yali was still hunched forward, staring off into the distance, and now my hand was sort of awkwardly tugging on a shoulder that wasn’t moving.

“Yali?” I panted – shit, whatever she needed to tell me, it was weighing heavy on her. She turned halfway towards me and opened her mouth – words forming on her lips – but then closed it again. Her eyes lingered, then looked away. I felt her shoulder tense up under my hand. Gods, how bad was it? My heart was pounding, and not just from the run. Fuck relaxing! I gripped her tight, starting to sit back up – “Yali, what’s wrong?? Oh my gods, is there someone I need to beat up?!”

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A short breath burst from her, a choked laugh – “No,” she said. She hesitated, weighing her words. “No, it’s not a, a –” I felt her shudder, suppressing a second laugh “– a material being.”

What?? Those words only meant one thing – the gods! But how could she have something to tell me about the gods?! Since when did the gods ever care about kids like us? It had to be a joke – but I could feel how tense she was. I could see how her gaze was lowered, not quite meeting my eyes, looking down over my body like it was something fragile and precious. This was no joke, it was as deep as the Cloven Earth.

“Your leg!” said Yali suddenly.

I looked down – and saw the dark stain on the leg of my pants. “Stern take it, that’s bleeding?” I complained. “It’s nothing, I just slipped up jumping a fence, that’s all –”

“You wounded your leg, and you didn’t even notice.”

Ugh, now she was giving that same solemn look to my leg. As if I cared about that right now! "I was in a hurry – didn’t think it was a big deal – “

Yali’s lips quirked into a indulgent smile. “Well, we’d better get it cleaned up.”

“I don’t give a shit, I want to hear what’s –” I began. But Yali had already pushed herself to her feet, to gather healing supplies. And there was one thing I knew from experience: once Yali had started something, there was no point trying to interrupt her. So I put up with watching, while she padded across her cozy little house, past the shelves of neatly-organized books and electronics, to a well-worn wooden cabinet. She bent over and fished around inside, then came up holding a ceramic disk the size of my palm.

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I stared at the disk. “You’re using an actual sorcery for this?” I’d assumed she was just going to clean the cut with alchemical wipes, like you get from a corner store. I hadn’t seen a healing sorcery since that time I was in an ambulance with a broken leg – weren’t they too expensive to use for random scrapes?

“‘The Waiting God knows we must prepare for the worst,’” Yali quoted. She was already putting on disposable gloves, laying out bandages and stuff. This was the Yali I knew – every motion clean and precise, none of the hesitation from earlier.

“Okay, Doctor,” I teased. “When’d you go to med school?”

“Video tutorials,” murmured Yali. She handed me a piece of gauze. “If it’s still bleeding, I’ll want you to press this onto the wound.” She gave me a lopsided smile. “Now remove your pants.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I teased back, wriggling out of them.

Yali muttered while she worked. “Those pants were pretty tight. That might have helped stop the bleeding. Still a mess though. Don’t worry about the couch, a stain is just part of its memory. Hold still, this might sting a bit.”

“I’ll be fiiiiiine.” Yali pressed the disk over the wound and snapped it in half, releasing the sorcery into my leg. It stung a bit. I was fine. “Video tutorials?” I grinned up at her. “And you just, what – just watched them and remembered it all perfectly, forever?”

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She smiled wryly. “That’s me, I guess…” I could tell she wanted my teasing to cheer her up. But there was something else underneath. She couldn’t enjoy it. She just focused on the steady movements of her hands, as she finished cleaning and bandaging my leg.

But then… the time came. Yali had put away the extra bandages. I had finally caught my breath. It couldn’t be put off any longer.

“Rinn –” she began.

This was it.

“How much do you know about what happens, during…” She gave the smallest hesitation, her arms tensing up – the final push over the edge, to say the words that couldn’t be taken back.

“…during the Ravelling?”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of the Chosen!?”

“It’s, it’s, it’s worse than that. Just tell me what you know, so I don’t have to explain anything twice.”

I sighed. Obviously, I knew about the Ravelling – all our holidays were based on it! – but who listens to all that boring shit from Divinity class? …but if it mattered to Yali, I wasn’t going to pick a fight about it. “Okay, so, every winter, each god picks some random loser and drags them into the Otherworld, and makes them do a bunch of challenges or something? And there’s this whole thing about how you ‘never know if you might be one of the Chosen’, and it’s supposed to be a ‘great honor’, because then the gods can feed on your soul or whatever.” Ugh, I was definitely failing my Divinity quiz here. “Look, I was just gonna study this the night before exams. And please don’t make me recite the titles –”

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“No, no, it’s okay.” She had that wry smile again. “I like the way you called the Ravellers ‘losers’.”

“I mean, they are, right? You get yanked out of your life, and then half the time, you die and never come back! And if you do make it ’til spring, you get, what, one festival in your honor, and then you get to shut up and go back to your normal life? What kind of reward is that? – Wait, what did you mean it’s worse than that?! If you were Chosen, you could – I could lose you forever –”

Yali looked down.

“The gods don’t just bring us there physically. When they take us through their portals, they weave more of their threads into our souls. The Ravellers are like vessels for the gods’ magic. At the height of the Ravelling, they’re almost as much god as human.

“And one of the gods – the Waiting God alone –” Was that an edge of bitterness in her voice? “– grants its Chosen the knowledge of what’s coming. The Farseer knows they’re the Farseer, one season in advance. They can prepare. They can recognize the other Chosen, if they can find them.”

“‘Us’...”

“Yes. I know this because it’s me. I am the Farseer. And I have to tell this to you, because –”

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I froze. I could see where this was going, and I didn’t like it.

“– because I found that you are the Blood Child.”

Silence gripped us. Her eyes drilled into me. Waiting for my reaction. But what could I even say to that?! Me, one of the Chosen? Since when did –

“Wait a minute, the Blood Child?!” I exploded. “But I’ve never – what have I ever done to follow the Blood God?! Why would it pick me? Shouldn’t it be picking some sort of cultist? Or like... murderers or whatever?”

“The gods don’t choose us for the deeds we’ve done,” began Yali patiently. Her voice always got so soothing whenever she started explaining something – it was already helping my head clear. “It’s about how we live our lives. I don’t do the rites of the Waiting either, but... ‘When we watch, when we plan,’” she sang. She was quoting the old children’s rhyme:

Five gods guide us, every way they can

Waiting when we’re patient, when we watch, when we plan

Seeking God excites us, for danger, for fun,

Stern when we sacrifice for what must be done.

The Broken is the ground when the others fall apart,

But Blood gives us hatred and poisons our heart.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s obvious why the Waiting picked you. But Blood?! I’m not here to hurt anyone if they’re not being assholes –”

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Yali shifted uncomfortably. “There has to be something more to it. There’s plenty of terrible people in the city that it could’ve picked. If it picked you... I know it’s supposed to be a god of our animal urges, but there’s more to you than that.” I didn’t like how that made my urges sound bad, but I let it go. “But... you know how pre-Blight novels kinda talk about the gods differently? –”

“I’m not a grandma!” I laughed –

“...Well, in older books, it’s almost like the Blood God is just another god. It was a more violent time, so maybe that makes sense. The Blood God was supposed to value, to value… strength? Personal power. I think that was the phrase.”

“Power? What am I, a high priest?”

Yali suppressed a laugh. “Not that kind of power.” She leaned in close to me. “I think it means… the way you feel like you can do whatever you want. The way you’re not afraid to tell anyone what you think of them. That’s what I like about you. And that’s a kind of power too, a power that you already have… right here.”

She reached out a hand, and touched my heart.

Her hand on my heart felt like a pulse of energy. It was like she was giving me the power, not just telling me I had it. It was a thrill, but it also felt like… a burden.

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“Shit,” I said glumly. “This is real.”

“It – is.”

“Well… at least we’ll be in it together? I won’t have to wait here on Earth all winter wondering if you’re going to make it?”

“…So you don’t know,” she said gravely.

“Don’t know what?!” Gods, what now?! Why did she sound like there was still an incredible weight on her? Wasn’t it bad enough that –

“The Ravelling doesn’t kill anyone.”

“But I thought the Otherworld was, like, full of monsters, or –”

“No, it’s, it’s nothing like that. The Otherworld, it’s… strange, but it doesn’t kill you. I know this because I remember. Because of the powers that the Waiting God grants to the Farseer.” That bitterness touched her voice again. “Right here in my head, I have their memories. Memories of every Farseer from the last seventy years, preserved in the Waiting God’s tapestry at the moment they died. And then given to me to look back on. I know how they lived, I know how they faced the Ravelling, and I know how they died.

“The Farseer doesn’t die from the Ravelling. The Farseer dies because the Blood Child kills them.”

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No way! No way! I was NOT going to let the Blood God make me hurt her! “So that means the Blood God fucked up, right?” I demanded – I was all but shouting in her face, clinging tight to her arms, but I didn’t care – “I’m obviously not going to kill you! It picked the wrong person –”

“No. You don’t understand – you don’t understand the influence that the Blood God will have on you. If we do nothing… you will kill me.”

“But – I love you! I would never! Never let anyone touch you –”

“I know.” The force in Yali’s words stole my breath. “But this isn’t the first time. This isn’t the first time a Blood Child has loved the Farseer. I’ve seen it in the memories. And I need you to understand, so I will tell you what I remember.

“There’s no doubt that he loved me – loved the Farseer, that is. He cared for me, he wanted to keep me safe. But I could see the anger growing inside him. He tried to hide it, because didn’t want me to worry… But he couldn’t control it. When we got to the last layer of the Otherworld – ‘I can’t control it, I can’t control it!’ – that’s what he said – he was standing, with the blade in his hand –” Yali’s eyes stared at nothing – “He was bent over, fighting with himself, wailing that he didn’t want to hurt me – but he came to me, he took the blade and –” her arm tensed under my hand – “he –”

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“Woah, woah! If it hurts to remember, I don’t want to make you –”

“You don’t have a choice,” said Yali evenly – back to reality in an instant. “I’ll need to look at these memories to know what we’re going to face. If I don’t get used to it…” She shook her head.

“So…” I began. “The Blood God… it’s really going to do that to me?! No way! I don’t care what it says! I’d cut off my own arm before I’d just watch myself hurt you!”

“Don’t talk like that. We, we need to –”

“But it’s the truth! I love you so, so much! I’d rather stab myself through the heart than be the one to –”

“Don’t – you – dare –” Oww! Yali’s hand was crushing my shoulder – her voice growling, too close to my face – what the fuck, she never acted like this! “Don’t you dare sacrifice yourself for me.”

“What – Yali – I didn’t think –”

Her voice tightened, holding back from another explosion. “Do you think I want to live the rest of my life knowing you died for me?! Remembering you as just one more thing the gods took away from me because I couldn’t find a better way –”

“– didn’t think that would actually happen –”

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“Promise me you won’t! Promise me – No matter what happens, promise me you’ll never die for my sake. We are both going to get out of this alive.”

Her eyes drilled into me. Fuck, this had gotten way too serious. “Uh… I promise,” I said nervously.

“Remember that.”

Yali looked at her hand. With an awkward motion, she released it from my shoulder. “– I, I’m sorry.” Her voice cut short, like she didn’t really mean it. But I didn’t care. Shit, it was exciting how she’d grabbed me that hard! Felt like it was actually gonna bruise! –

Yali looked away. “If you die in the Ravelling, you won’t kill me. It’s logical you’d think of it.”

Well, that was a punch in the gut. No drama, just cold practicality. That made it real, more surely than a solemn oath. “If I’m that dangerous –” My mind whirled. “I’ll stay away from you! I’ll go to the far corners of the Otherworld, if that’s what it takes!”

“I wish it was that easy. But the Otherworld doesn’t work like that. When the gods want to bring us together…”

“FUCK the gods!!” I yelled. “What the fuck do we do! How do we stop the gods if they can throw us around however they want?! What the fuck do we do!”

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“Well –” said Yali, trying to sound confident – “I’ve been working on a plan.”

“Of course, ha ha, you have a plan, I should have seen this coming,” I babbled.

“It’s, it’s, it’s not perfect. But I think there’s a way we can prepare, while we’re still here in the material world, to make sure we never get to the point where you would actually kill me.”

I didn’t want to have to hear it. I didn’t want to need a fancy plan just to stop myself from hurting the person I loved. But Yali would never lie to me. If she said the Blood God could do this, I couldn’t dare ignore her. Reluctantly, I forced out the words: “What is it?”

Yali squared her shoulders, and began to explain her plan.