Ravelling Wrath, chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen: The Waiting God

Yali tells the story

Justicar and Rinn lay before me. One dead, one only unconscious, both my doing.

It had worked! My true plan was working!

It had been hard to lie to Rinn. No one had ever stirred my soul as she had. No one had come so close to piercing my defenses. But I had done it. The potion would heal her – that much was true. But it would also make her sleep. Neither she nor the Blood God inside her would wake until after we crossed the final portal. Given what I was about to do, that was the only way we could be safe.

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What I couldn’t tell Rinn was that I had never intended to drink the unravelling potion. When I’d seen that it was possible, I had seen only one use for it: to give the Blood God something to hope for. After all, to Rinn, and to the Blood God, a fight was simple: You beat up the enemy, and then you won. So if the Blood God would rejuvenate and the Waiting would not, then that was enough. The Blood God would have no reason to resist what we were doing.

But to me, even that wasn’t enough.

The Waiting God had allowed its Farseers to die. It was callously sacrificing us, just to prove that the Blood Child was a monster. Rinn’s words echoed in my head: I will kill you and kill you and kill you, and when I am gone, you will still be strong. And the Waiting God knew it. The Waiting saw the grand span of time. The loss of a single rejuvenation, in a single year, was insignificant to it. And so it was insignificant to me as well. How could I be satisfied, if I only took away what it was already willing to discard?

I could not. The Waiting God had tried to take away the two things I valued most in all the world: my life, and the life of my love. So I needed to take away what it valued most. And what was that? What it had done all this for?

To erase all memory of the Blood Temple.

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So that was my goal. I would take away two of the things it valued most. First, I would I would wring the memories of the Blood Temple from it, whether it wanted me to or not. And then, when the Ravelling completed, I would influence its rejuvenation, just as I had always planned for Rinn to do. I would force it to re-weave its will with mine.

All I needed... were the threads it had woven into my soul.

Ever since I’d learned the truth, I had been waiting for my chance – a chance to pull those threads without the Blood God watching. I’d wished I could believe what Rinn said, that the Blood God wouldn’t harm me now – but I had known knew we couldn’t afford the risk. And now, the risk was over. Soon, the Waiting God would answer to me.

But I could not make my move just yet. Not now, not with my body still shaking from the strain of combat, of taking Justicar’s life in my hands and shredding it upon the blade. I couldn’t think about that right now! Now wasn’t the time to face what it meant that I’d just ended a person’s life –

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Nothing was going to touch her body. Nothing moved among the wreckage around us. But I could not trust until I had seen every possibility. I cleared my mind and listened for the future.

I had planned for this – for how I could use the Seeing at this moment. The Waiting could hide the truth, but it could not show me falsehoods. So instead of listening for danger, I listened for life. There was the heavy hum of Alchemist’s presence. The deadened coil of Morrow’s anguish. And the strong, reassuring pulse of Rinn’s heartbeat. I followed its thread down every branch, into every corner of the future, letting no tiny offshoot escape my notice. But everywhere I looked, the heartbeat continued. And even if the Seeing could still mislead me, there was no one left with hostile intent towards her. All paths led unerringly to the final portal.

It was –

If I said it was over, I would sit down, and I wouldn’t get up again for a long time. I couldn’t let that happen. There were many things I still needed to do.

First, I would have to look at Rinn. There would still be injuries on her body. Logically, I knew that she was not in pain, and that the injuries would not be permanent. The healing potion would see to that. So there was no need for me to feel anxious about what I saw.

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I looked.

Feelings crowded at the edges of my mind. The blood, the horrific angle of one leg – Justicar did this! She had to pay, I should break her body as she had broken my Rinn! – but Justicar was already dead. Every child knew the tales of the curses that befell those who defiled the dead – I couldn’t risk losing control – we had survived too much to stumble at the last moment! I turned my head away –

Head and shoulders were soaked with blood, both Ri– the patient’s and the – attacker’s – I would clean it – but that was for later, since we’d agreed that blood loss wasn’t a danger. More importantly, the left arm and left leg – those angles wouldn’t be possible if the bones were intact. That was – a concern – in this position, the potion might heal them into the wrong shape. I would need to move her. Soon. To what position? I remembered the first-aid videos – you were supposed to put an unconscious person on their side, or else they might choke – I could clear some of the debris, I could manifest a bed to lay her on – but no! Then she’d be on her other shoulder, and both shoulders were mutilated! I didn’t know what to do, now Rinn might get permanent shoulder damage and it would be my fault because I didn’t think of –

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I stilled my breath – I had to be like a doctor, I had to think – how urgent was this? I listened for the future... testing the damaged joints in my hands, easily torn in the coming moments... firmer when they echoed back from the passage of days... I had time. Time to get this right. So I wouldn’t rush into a mistake and have to move her a second time.

So, then, in the long term... how would I transport her? The gods required all Ravellers to reach the final portal, and if I didn’t bring her there myself, they might do it less pleasantly. I could carry her in my arms, but not like this, not with all her injuries. What she really needed was an ambulance! Could I at least have a vehicle that could keep her stable while we moved, so I wouldn’t have to touch her, so I couldn’t make a mistake –

It wasn’t obvious to me.

I couldn’t keep thinking about Rinn! I had to solve the problem in front of me.

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Minutes ticked away. At last, I settled on an idea, based on the rolling hospital bed we’d used in the third layer. I couldn’t copy it exactly – even if I could manifest it, we weren’t in the orderly halls of the Stern anymore. Here, the cracked and slanted roads would’ve jostled her at every step, and if I lost my grip, she would roll out-of-control downhill. But one of the past Farseers had been a mechanic, and I could draw on the memory of their skills. I manifested a bed and gave it wheels, with big rubber tires to soften the bumps, and ratchets so it could never roll backwards. It became a sort of bulky wagon with a mattress on top, and padding to cradle the rider.

Lifting Rinn’s body tugged at my feelings. Such a small thing, limp in my arms, blood smearing my long rubber gloves – was this all my fault? Because I had counted on her to be injured in the fight, so I could feed her the potion? No, now wasn’t the time for those thoughts! Don’t think of it as Rinn, I told myself. It’s just a body – just a patient –

I set the body to recline in the wagon. I concentrated on the work, on getting everything stable. I surrounded the body with stiff foam blocks, shaping each one so the body was nestled in a perfect mold. Once I got the shape right, I made the blocks combine with each other and the mattress, so they formed a single solid piece, where nothing could slip or fall apart.

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I stepped back and checked my work… Rinn was secure now, with only her head sticking partway out of the foam. She looked so cozy, nestled there with a peaceful half-smile on her face. I could just ruffle her hair, cup her cheek in my hand… No! Then I would want more, and then more. Now wasn’t the time for those thoughts either. It was easier if I didn’t even start.

I brought myself back to the present: What should I do next? Rinn... There was nothing more I could do for her right now. The rest was up to the potion and her soul. Could I act against the Waiting, then? No, I was not yet prepared for that – I knew the main idea, but there were so many details to consider. So many things I’d been putting off while the dangers of the Blood God and Justicar were more urgent. Now I could return to those thoughts. It was time to think, to plan, to give myself space now that no one was trying to kill us –

But not to rest. I knew what would happen if I let the adrenaline fade. My mind would fill itself with Justicar’s light, with Rinn falling like a ragdoll. And my body would be racked with pain. For all my hard work to improve my endurance, I could already feel my muscles aching from the strain of combat, waiting to catch up with me the moment I let them relax.

So I compromised – I manifested a hard bench and sat up straight on it. Szaieto would’ve chided me not to be so tense, as he always did… it was funny to think of such an ordinary thing at a time like this. I could allow myself to be amused, but only for a moment. I had plans to make. I needed to clear my thoughts, and –

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Justicar should have listened to me!

I could have had her! I had spent so long weaving my web to convince her, appealing to the Stern that we both shared! It would’ve brought an end to my mistake – then she wouldn’t have almost killed Rinn one more time, because of the same mistake –

No. It was no use blaming myself a second time. I had already known that this was the likely outcome. Rinn had known it wouldn’t work. I... had known it probably wouldn’t work.

In the big picture, everything was going as expected.

Yes, it had been possible for things to go better. Justicar could have surrendered. Rinn could have survived unscathed. Then, I would have had to convince Rinn of my true plan. But I had already tried, in many different futures. The Blood God could not abide anything that would allow the Waiting God to rejuvenate. I would have had to drink the unravelling potion, and let the Waiting God go, for our own safety.

And it had been possible for things to go worse. Rinn could have been killed. I could have been killed.

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But what had happened – Justicar dead, Rinn injured and sleeping – had always been the most likely. The most likely, and the simplest. Now, neither of them was a threat any longer. It was one less complication in a situation where our lives were at stake.

Now only my most powerful enemy was left.

The Waiting God…

Until now, my access to its threads had been limited. I needed to fully connect with the god, just as Rinn had connected with hers. How long had I spent planning this – hiding my thoughts, but watching every detail of how she spoke? She hadn’t said “Rinn” and “the Blood God”. She had said “me” and “me”. If I wanted to bring the Waiting God out where I could see it, I couldn’t just think of it as the enemy that I hated. If I wanted to force the god to change, I would have to think of it as changing part of myself.

And I had to go beyond what Rinn had done. All she’d had to do was listen, while the Blood God asserted itself. For me, there was no voice in my head saying the Waiting God’s opinion. My powers only felt like the rituals of etiquette I’d been taught in childhood: I would play my part, and the god would play its own. Had it silenced itself to hide its plan from me, I had wondered? But deep inside, I knew it had not. Silence was simply the god’s nature, just as I had always been taught in the Waiting culture where I grew up: Do not speak until you know that the time is right.

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So the answer was plain enough: I needed to make it believe that the time was right. Which meant that I needed to make myself believe that the time was right.

I closed my eyes, held still on the bench, and cleared my mind, like I always did when I used the Seeing. Then I said to myself: It’s time to rethink my grand plan.

Nothing happened. I was not surprised – that would have been too easy. I tried more things. I need to think over my plan again, because I’m having serious doubts about whether it was a good idea… my goals are at risk because the Blood God is going to rejuvenate, I have to consider what will happen next… None of that helped. How would the Waiting God think of the plan? My plan to erase the Blood God… No, that didn’t feel right for the Waiting. We always spoke of it as a guide, not a destroyer. My plan to… guide… Blood… into nonexistence? My plan to guide… humanity… to a world without Blood…

Yes, that felt closer. After all, it was foolish to imagine that you could simply reach out and erase a part of humanity – if you wanted them to change, you had to show them the way. I would have to remember that, because it was a mistake about how I had thought – about – how the Waiting God thought. So, then… I should rethink my plan about how to show humanity the way away from Blood… because it was at risk? No… because we were having doubts? Well, they weren’t the most important doubts, but it was never a bad time to remind ourselves of –

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Wait, what? I felt like I had been jarred out of a strange dream – why had I felt like my doubts weren’t important?! The plan had put my life in danger! It had forced me to kill Justicar and lie to Rinn! It was cruel, inhuman –

And then I realized what this meant: The Waiting God was here with me, just as I had hoped. And now that I’d felt that fragment of a thought, the not important, I could sense where it lingered in my brain, I could summon it back –

No! cried my own thoughts. How many times must gods and priests tell me how unimportant I am? Didn’t I swear that I would never accept this again? I will not be discarded, I refuse to be discarded! I tried to quiet those thoughts. I knew this was my foothold on the Waiting God! How could I coax out the god if my brain was crowded with my own defenses? At least I knew how to deal with this. I told my thoughts: This was exactly what I must do to strike back. If my only way to strike the god was to feel like I believed its thoughts, then that was what I would do – and I would return to myself when it was done. I was no longer the little girl who could be made to doubt myself. I could win. I would win. I had to.

This thought... the not important. It wasn’t just “not important”. It was the sense of a wider perspective. The knowledge that we must abandon what does not serve us. To say no to our desires if we know that they will only lead to more hurt.

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I smiled grimly. I knew this part of myself. Every time I had delayed my anger, every time I had kept silent when I wanted to scream, that was me, that was the Waiting God that lives within us all. And now it was so much easier, with the god’s soul freshly intertwining with my own. I could see it so easily. My protesting thoughts were already folding away, each into its own cupboard to wait its turn. The world opened up before me, the truth coming into sharper focus. This was why I could understand what others did not. Why I could succeed, while others clung to what they wanted to believe.

Threads of past and future floated past me, ghosts of other worlds that could have been. In the darkness of my closed eyes, I could still see the Blood God’s city around me. And now it was so much clearer. I saw the buildings and towers from every side at once. I saw the foundations and the posts inside the walls. From every brick and beam, more threads trailed away, leading back to the Ravellers, from whose imagination they had formed. The mimicry was so simple, so bold. It was easy to see how Blood had made this. It had chosen these images of ruination, even now, when it had only just begun to weaken. Perhaps it understood what was coming. Yes... it could see the shape of things. This was one of its virtues. Yet how unfortunate that it could not see as we did.

Blood...

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It could not see the truth of our city.

The city stretched across the centuries, from its cloudy origins as a struggling cluster of huts, to the compromise of the five walls around its present-day center on the hill, to the unified metropolis it could one day become. We who rested in every foundation, we who stood watch over every lintel, had guided this city, quietly pointing the way to its potential. The city did not always take the straightest path, it did not always follow where we led, but we showed it the shape of what it could become, and it would always return to that shape in the end.

The other powers, each struggling in their own way to guide the city… they had their own little fragments of wisdom, but they did not understand.

Those of the rigidity of law, the demand for adherence – the Stern, came a thought from our symbiont – they were a foundation. Flawed, yes; at times unnecessarily cruel, yes; but a foundation. Where humanity would not accept gentle guidance to the proper path, the Stern would ensure that the way was not lost. And where the Stern reached to excess, they could be tempered, guided into a more efficient shape. With them, the force of tradition dug in, even against the tide; traditionalists were sacred to us, but whenever they cling to traditions that no longer serve humanity, their story will inevitably come to an end. Thus the Stern would bend, with each passing of the tide, always believing that they had never changed. They would return to where they must be.

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Those of the flash of release, the spark of inspiration – the Seeking – they pointed the way to undiscovered futures. Yes, they were impetuous; yes, they reached out for disaster in equal measure to progress; but their progress could be nurtured, and their disasters could never become too great without a loan of another’s strength. The fuel to their fire could be limited, and with the proper limits, their ingenuity could be turned to the benefit of all. When they burned too brightly, they would only burn themselves low; and they would always grow again, in a form more fitted to the new world. They would return to where they must be.

But Blood...

Blood resisted guidance. This was no mere flareup that would die down; those could be outlasted. This was no mere rigidity of rules; if a rule obstructed the straightest path, other paths could be found that led to the same destination. No: once Blood had latched onto its opposition, it would claw and churn against every compromise. If it did not like the fruits of our dreaming, it would tear down the rest of the vine that had borne them.

Faced with opposition like that, one’s options are limited. One can negotiate, but the labor grows great, and the reward grows dry. One can fight, but it is small comfort to drag down one’s opponent when one is dragged into the quagmire oneself. Only one option stands sturdy in the murk: To withdraw, and wait for a better moment. Many times had we withdrawn; it was not pleasing, but it could be accepted. Many times, our careful dreaming had revealed a route the city could take, yet Blood rejected its benefits; many times we had withheld the full fruits of our dreams, and avoided further destruction.

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But now! As history swept towards the present, change built upon change. Humanity was on the verge of a great triumph. Their technology was flourishing, helping them see beyond their clouded vision. The great library, which transcends the failing memory of flesh, now folded into every pocket. Cities grew beyond their previous limits. Never before had we had such a rich variety of –

I allowed a breath to pass. This wasn’t the time for fighting – I needed to know the god’s thoughts. Before this interruption… it had been... rich variety of choices for... Ravellers, yes, that word was close enough. Humankind’s prosperity had begun to give them the leisure to... to Wait, to observe and plan for something beyond their immediate hunger. It was far from fully formed, but the potentialities were there. With proper guidance, humanity could become so much more. Their technology, as it had already begun to do, would give them cause to reshape their minds around it, making them more receptive vessels for structure. In only another scant few centuries, this could increase a thousandfold. In the absence of interference, we would need only to point the way.

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But the future we faced was the one where Blood’s interference increased with every step of progress. Blood tried to impose their own rules on how humanity would transform, rules that were limiting and self-contradictory. They wanted the benefits of technology, yes, but not the full benefits. Whenever a thing was created, they demanded to know how it would serve humanity’s blood – rejecting all that did not fit within their own narrow conception of reality.

And why? When we gently probed for their reasons, Blood screamed about injustice, about human suffering and alienation. But these things had existed for all of history. Blood understood this. Before a baby could learn to control its limbs, it first had to flail and hurt itself. There would always be suffering as humanity learned how to use its new capabilities. As long as they could be steered away from total destruction, they would eventually learn their limits and settle into a structure that was both actualized and safe. On the scale of a single life, Blood understood this. But for all humanity? Did Blood not understand humanity’s corruption, how they would destroy each other time after time, if they could not remember the consequences of their actions? The senseless deaths, from disease and war and famine, inevitably borne of their failings? How could Blood hope to protect them if it could not change this? If it would cut off every future that could free them from what they are?

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…It felt so right! My own thoughts twanged in echo of the god’s. How many times had I been hurt by people who couldn’t see beyond their own cravings? And our technology – how many nights had I spent deep in the Internet, showing me things beyond the Dalners’ abuse? And how many worthless adults had chided me for being on my phone all the time? They understood nothing! If it hadn’t been for technology, I would have been all alone, I would have been ignorant, I would have suffered like every generation of victims before me. How could people think it was okay to go on how they always had? Humanity WAS shortsighted and corrupt, and it always had been! If that could be changed – if I could make everyone understand as I did –

Wait, I wasn’t supposed to agree with the Waiting God! It was my enemy! I could never forgive it for how it was using me! For the brutal deaths it would have brought upon myself and Rinn!

…For how it had taken my mother from me.

How had she been chosen as high priest, I demanded of my thoughts. Seconds passed, with no answer. Soon, I realized: I was too close to my own upset thoughts again. Too far from the god.

I forced my mind to clear and tried again. What was the god’s – our – plan for the temples in all this? It had spared no thought for the temples yet, only the gods and the city’s people. Indeed – though the collapse of Blood’s temple had been a great bellwether, its weight came from its roots in the city’s people, and the collapse was borne naturally of humanity’s shift.

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The Blood Temple! Was that – A thing best left forgotten, lest it entangle the city once again. Best to move on to other things. Thoughts of the Blood Temple slid away as I tried to form them. I wouldn’t get there this way.

Besides, I had been thinking of the Waiting Temple. Did it deserve so little mention? Shouldn’t it be our Temple, our vessel in the material world? Perhaps one could wish it so. The temple’s history glowed unsteady in my inner sight, fragile threads tugging like a spiderweb on the broader tide. The high priest? I saw not one, but an unbroken cord of their souls, stretching over the centuries, despite a few frayed branches where the succession had been cast in doubt. How clumsy it was to guide them – humans with a shadow of the yearning to enact our will, a shadow of the skills to achieve it. But with our guidance, at least their choice of priests was not altogether wrong.

Where was my mother in this? The name, Arinyo Seti… the image of her face… this was only the view of a human. An image was not our priest. If not, then… I searched along the cord, until I found the section that hovered in the middle, where the fixed past met the branching future. This latest priest… this one was a little threadbare, but it had a sturdy core. Sufficient to keep our temple intact.

In the back of my mind, my anger wavered. Did the god not even approve of her? Had it not meant to take her as its priest? But then the anger returned. How could the god justify keeping her, after she had left me to suffer? Did it understand what this... glowing ball of threads... had done wrong? I reached inside the threads, and... it was there, as clear as anything. A sodden tangle of selfishness, denial, and guilt, sometimes tugging the important core away from its stable position. And the Waiting God’s attitude was clear, too: this was a tangle of typical human failings. It made this one a worse high priest, but long experience had taught that it was wasteful to hope for humans to be clean of such things.

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So I might as well just expect everyone to let everyone else suffer? I didn’t like it, but I had no confidence to argue against it. Hardly anyone could claim to be good enough. The police had protected me, but they hadn’t bothered to see the truth until I forced them to. People like Alchemist, and Szaieto and the other monks, didn’t want to hurt anyone, but they were useless in a crisis unless somebody else told them what to do. But was I supposed to think that Arinyo Seti was no worse than they were? After everything I’d gone through because of what she did?

And what about the god? Even if it couldn’t fix its high priest, at least it could have had the decency not to pick me as its Raveller! How had it decided to pick me?

Again, I demanded to know. But my anger, my image of myself… none of this was what the god would recognize. What was a Raveller? That feeling of abundance flared again in my memory, a rush wiping away the regrets of the the temple. It was exhilarating! I wasn’t looking at a chain of souls from a distance, I was inside the souls, practically tasting them. Overwhelming, alien sensations told me exactly what I – the god – wanted to... to absorb. And this one? The latest one we had chosen? It was a little unusual, but so very gratifying. Strong and sophisticated, a little more Stern and less Broken, on the cusp of its coordination. Perhaps we should have taken it on the previous cycle; it would be... overripe soon. But it was still an extraordinarily appealing candidate.

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But didn’t we know that I... that this Raveller... had been betrayed by our high priest? Wasn’t it cruel to take her – it – when we had already been responsible for its suffering?

No god-thought answered this.

Did we even understand that this Raveller was the one who had been betrayed by our latest high priest?

Naturally, we understood the life history of every Raveller. This one had indeed been neglected in the way we had identified. But by a high priest? No, it was by... I saw the image of my mother. But wasn’t this a reflection of the high priest? Yes, it was. So wasn’t the high priest the one who had committed the neglect? No, that was a slip of thought; the high priest had committed neglect, but the sufferer in that case was… I saw the image of myself. Yali Seti. Not the Raveller.

I tried again. The Raveller held the name Yali Seti? Yes, written right there in its soul. The high priest held the name Arinyo Seti? We supposed it did. Arinyo Seti had committed a grave wrong against Yali Seti? Indeed, the kind that cannot be forgotten. The high priest had committed a grave wrong against the Raveller? ...Nothing.

I squinted. Every thought had felt different than the last. In one, the reluctant patience with the priest. In the other, the eagerness to digest the Raveller. Wait a minute, if the Farseers were being killed every year, how could it expect to rejuvenate – did we not understand that either? Alas, we understood too well; a long drought, but not too long to weather. There was little to gain from overturning our normal process…

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Frustration was building inside me once again. Since the moment I had been Chosen, I had hated the Waiting God for taking advantage of me. For expecting me to serve it after it had done nothing to protect me. But somehow, it hadn’t even understood that that was what it was doing?! Was I supposed to be patient with it for not understanding, like I was supposed to be patient with a baby for being clumsy?! But it wasn’t a baby, it was a god! It had no right to not understand!

I forced the thoughts back. Hadn’t I told myself – I couldn’t afford to let myself get upset! If the Waiting God couldn’t understand its own nature, that didn’t change anything – it was just more reason to sever its abhorrent plan and put my own in its place.

No, it’s better than that, whispered a cruel thought of my own. Anything the Waiting God couldn’t understand… was a weakness I could use to my advantage.

[????? Possible section break around here?]

Back to the plan, then. But suddenly, I realized: [????? I’d been lost on a tangent, need to look at the whole picture: immediately realized, I didn’t know the facts any better than before, I only knew the God’s overall attitude. Was this yet another layer of concealment? I needed details, details! If and now my thoughts slipped away like a dream – I reached for my phone to take notes – don’t open your eyes, I realized just in time. I slipped my phone from my pocket – the real phone, not a manifested one, I needed to keep this into the material world – thumbed to the notes app without looking – [tone of thoughts: comforting familiarity] manifested a keyboard so I can type without looking, like I always did for dream notes]

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Thus, for now, the city was limited, only able to develop in ways that could navigate around Blood’s limitations.}

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Thinking of it this way, it wasn’t so different from the Seeing after all. Keeping still and silent, I listened for the Waiting God’s consciousness. The reassuring pillar of inevitability. The watchful presence that knew the past and future, that would grant me the knowledge to guide the world to my chosen outcome.

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With each new thought, the presence felt weaker. This was too easy. It couldn’t possibly be this easy to influence the god, so I had to assume I wasn’t influencing it. After a little more thinking, I realized what was really happening. By denying the god directly, I was only distancing myself from it. To really influence it, I would have to synchronize with the god. I would have to go deep into its thoughts, even if that meant feeling like I believed them.

I did not know, but I knew. The Waiting God did not feel the reassurance of inevitability. The Waiting God was inevitability. To be the Waiting God was to watch and wait. To plan. To know. The Waiting God did not obtain knowledge. It reviewed knowledge. Past and future were already united within its being.

Part of me was Yali again. So far, the Waiting God hadn’t technically admitted to anything, but with what I knew, the implications couldn’t be more clear. I tried to prompt it, to see if it would reveal more. And so we were going to do something about that, weren’t we, I thought.

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That was an odd thing to think. Who was we?

I concentrated. I had felt like we was the right thing to say, because that was how the god’s thoughts had felt to me. But of course, the god hadn’t really been thinking human words like that, it was just the closest approximation that my brain could fill in. I repeated my thought, carefully using the god’s concept of itself instead of just the human word. And so we were going to do something about the Blood God, weren’t we?

No, do something about was too combative a term for it. It was only natural that the Blood God could not be sustained forever. We simply needed to ensure that their decline would be one that did not bring down the city along with them. Until then, we could work around them; we could still guide the city despite the occasional outbursts; but we had understood for millennia that there would come a time when it was necessary for Blood to come to an end.

In these last scant few centuries, it had become clear that this moment was approaching. Humanity was on the verge of a great triumph.

However, in the end, it made little difference. Blood had always been a flawed power, a power which would hold back humanity for as long as they could act on their intention. They would not have been saved by a small respite of understanding. It would only have made the necessity more regrettable.

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Working slowly, I woke myself up from the god. It felt a lot like a dream, so I thought back over the god’s thoughts using my own mind, to make sure I would remember them.

This conflict was all about Blood interfering with the path we knew was right... or, to translate... it was all about the Blood God interfering with what the Waiting God believed in. Or, that was what the Waiting God thought it was about. It didn’t have to be how I would see it when I was myself.

In a different history, I might have been tempted by the Waiting God’s ideas. Humanity was shortsighted and corrupt, and it needed to change. Technology had transformed me, literally freeing me from abuse. But if the Waiting God had gotten its way, both Rinn and I would have died a brutal death. There was nothing it could say that would stop me from working against it.

I spent a while sorting out the thoughts, looking for weaknesses in the Waiting God’s logic, things I could use to cast doubt on its plan. But I had trouble finding anything specific to work with. The god thought on such a grand scale that it was hard to relate it to anything human. If I said “you killed seventy people”, that wouldn’t even make an impression on it. Even though it saw every individual death, even though it understood the echoing consequences of each one, it felt them only as ripples in a lake.

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How many people would have to die for the Waiting God to care? I imagined the deaths of ten thousand people, fire raining from the sky and destroying entire city blocks, and I listened for the Waiting God’s reaction. The god found it... concerning. Ten thousand deaths would be a warning sign of inadequate disaster readiness. Well, if that wasn’t enough... I imagined the entire city being destroyed in a single night. The Waiting God found that unacceptable. At least it had some limits. What about destroying half the city? That would be a very heavy price to pay. The god wouldn’t allow it unless it was absolutely necessary.

That line of thinking wasn’t getting anywhere. There was no way I could make the god care that it was killing Rinn and the others.

Still, if this conflict was about the fate of humanity, there had to be some way I could make the connection between the god’s scale and the scale of everyday life. Or, some way I could understand exactly what it had disagreed with the Blood God about. It had thought a lot about... about the growth of the city, about technology in general, and how it would affect humanity... but there hadn’t been any specific details about what technologies that had been about. Was it about cell phones? Cars? Stone tools? The god didn’t react.

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This must have been what Rinn had experienced when she was trying to get the Blood God’s side of the story.

I slowly tried to coax out more details. What was a specific example of a time the Blood God had obstructed something? Not the big picture, but a detail, maybe something small and unimportant.

Images flowed into my mind. A galaxy of images, too many to comprehend, fading in and out of focus. Most of them were alien. I saw human souls as complex knots being tugged in many different directions. I saw webs of soul links winding through computer systems, connecting people thousands of kilometers apart. There were probably vast amounts of information here, but for the moment, I just needed something I could understand. I tried to focus on the more human-looking memories. I picked one at random, trying to hold onto one specific memory amid the torrent of thoughts. The Waiting God resisted a little, thinking I couldn’t understand the one memory without the full context. But I couldn’t understand the full context either, so I insisted on taking just the one.

I slowly made the memory come into focus. I saw a room, a meeting around a conference table. On one side, there were a few people in business suits. On the other, another group, not dressed quite as formally, but clearly some sort of organization, like they were claiming to represent... more people... a neighborhood? What were they actually discussing, though? This was frustrating. The Waiting God’s thoughts were clear: the businesspeople were offering an opportunity for progress, and the other people, influenced by Blood, were irrationally rejecting it. But beyond that, I couldn’t tell what was actually happening. It felt like this memory was on the far edges of what the Waiting God could remember, it didn’t have the full details.

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Also, why business? I had expected to see something involving the temples. But then again, the Waiting God hadn’t thought about the temples earlier, either. It was more interested in... the people of the city. The downfall of Blood’s temple had been an important touchstone, of course, but only because of its influence over the city’s people, and it had occurred as part of the natural course of humanity’s shift.

Even that last thought – when I had wondered about the temples, the Waiting God only bothered to think about the Blood Temple. Did it not even care about its own temple very much?

Even so, this detour into my past had gone on long enough. It was time to get back to thinking about the Waiting God’s plan.

Why had I – we – tried to hide the plan from us – from the humans? Well, that was straightforward. Humans were tangled creatures, full of complications that limited their growth. There was nothing to be gained from polluting them with knowledge of such things. It would only disquiet them, creating pointless turbulence.

That was unsettling. The god hadn’t shown the least bit of concern that humans could stop the plan. It was only worried about indirect effects, like humans behaving self-destructively because they were upset about it. Was its victory that inevitable? I glanced at Rinn nervously. Hadn’t I kept her alive? Oh, we had? It seemed that we had. Well, the plan could accommodate a few errors. How many errors could it accommodate? Blood could be allowed to... grow... healthy... rejuvenate, that was the human word... twice in every fifteen cycles of the seasons, and they would still recede into powerlessness as early as was needed.

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It was like I thought. A single rejuvenation wasn’t enough to stop the plan. In fact, if the Blood God hadn’t rejuvenated even once in the last seventy years... the Waiting God was being much more successful than it thought it needed to be.

If it was going to win anyway, hiding the plan seemed petty and manipulative. Didn’t humanity have a right to know what the gods were planning for them? Yes, we had a long-term plan to establish such a right, once humanity was better equipped for it. In the world of the present, it would not be possible to achieve. Regardless of what we might do to communicate our plans to humanity, they still wouldn’t understand clearly enough for such a right to have been fulfilled.

I tried to focus on myself. I didn’t like this merged state, where the god’s thoughts could interrupt my own. But I still had to use it.

Maybe it was time for me to be more direct. Maybe I understood enough for that now.

I invited the Waiting God to think over its plan again. To think of the parts it – we – were the most confident about. The city we knew would come. The process would be long, and Blood would not let go easily. But we knew the way to the overarching goal. In time, Blood would fade, and humanity’s true potential could start to emerge. They had spent so many centuries struggling in the murk, but once there was no more Blood, the city could flourish unhindered.

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Or perhaps there was something wrong with this flourishing we were imagining. Something tainted.

That was a strange thought, askew from our centuries of planning. Why would we think this now? It felt more like an error, something irrational introduced by our human element. We temporarily put aside our thoughts of the plan, to examine –

No! You – I – we needed to keep thinking about the plan! There was a mistake, there was a flaw inside it, from the very beginning! It had felt right, it had felt justified, but we hadn’t thought about what we were doing, she was suffering right in front of us! We didn’t deserve –

Terrible uncertainty crept into the base of our mind. Our... our human chest had filled with a crushing feeling. This made no sense. To doubt the plan of centuries, without even a scrap of new information, was incoherent. Yet the thought would not go away. Why had we thought the plan was wrong? Why... why had we thought of Blood as “she”? Something had drifted far out of position, we needed to review our –

I was Yali again, my body shaken away from the god by a violent force. It was agony, pushing myself back upright and trying to control the painful tears. My mind was in disarray. I’d thought I was being clever, using my own feeling of guilt, but it had gotten mixed up with my guilt about Romhisat – no, it HAD been clever! It had worked! The Waiting God was shaken too, I had felt it! A feeling of triumph rose inside me. And this was only the beginning! I gathered my determination. I listened for the Waiting again, and felt...

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Nothing but fatigue.

It was like the way I had felt back in the material world, when I had forced myself to use the Seeing for as long as I could. Had the god taken precautions against a Farseer doing what I was doing? Had I triggered a failsafe that would make it disconnect from me? I strained to remember the god’s thoughts. It had wanted to review something... maybe a plan for how to interact with me? But gods couldn’t think human thoughts by themselves, so when I stopped thinking its thoughts, it wouldn’t be able to review anything. So why would it do that?

Unless... When I thought back, it hadn’t fully understood that it was in a human body. Maybe it had tried to review some divine plan, but failed. If it tried to access part of the broader god that the Farseer wasn’t able to access... that would be a lot like me trying to use the Seeing more than I was capable of. So maybe I was just exhausted in the same way as before.

If that was true, that was a relief. The god hadn’t detected my interference and protected itself – it had just accidentally overtaxed the connection between the Farseer and the rest of the god. If it was like before, it would recover after a time. It would not be soon, but I would have many more chances to confront the god.

Still, this was troublesome. There were multiple things I would have to consider. While I was recovering, I wouldn’t have access to the Seeing either. From the moment I’d entered the Otherworld until now, it had never been fully inaccessible. Even though I couldn’t fully trust it, it was an important tool. What other things was I relying on the god for, that I might need to consider? I checked whether I could still access the memories of the former Farseers. I could – the memories were still there. The god must have actually implanted them inside me somehow, rather than just giving me access to look at them. At least that was one less thing to worry about. And I could still see through the Watchful Eye to both Rinn and Morrow. So I had only lost the Seeing and a few other magical senses I got from the god. I could live without them if I had to. I could challenge the god again as soon as it got back, and even if this fatigue might happen again, I didn’t have to worry about it.

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But... if I challenged the god every time I had contact with it, I might end up spending most of my time out of contact with it. The more I thought about that, the less it seemed like a good plan. There were many things I wouldn’t be able to do if I spent most of this layer with no access to the Waiting God’s thoughts. And in hindsight, it was unlikely that I could change the god through only a few weeks of challenging its ideas, even from my position as its Raveller. The most powerful way to change it would be through the Ravelling itself. If I made my entire soul reject its plan, then once it absorbed part of my soul, it would permanently have a part of itself rejecting its plan. To make sure that happened, the most important thing was for me to get the thoughts in my own soul just right. I had to make them oppose the Waiting God’s plan perfectly. And to do that, I needed to understand the Waiting God’s plan perfectly. And that meant having access to its thoughts.

If the god didn’t seem changed when it came back, I wouldn’t plan on challenging it again just yet. The real confrontation would take place inside the final portal.

For now, there was nothing more I could do with the Waiting God.

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I forced myself to my feet. I had sat for a long time, thinking and planning, but my thoughts had begun to stray. If I tried to keep at it much longer, I would start to think of things that were not necessary, things that would only distract me with worries. It was time to take Rinn and begin moving.

But first... there was Justicar’s body to consider.

If I left Justicar’s body now, there would be no one left to say the prayer for the dead. A brief and spiteful thought told me that I could simply leave her to rot. But the satisfaction would be short-lived, and I would likely have guilt and doubt about that decision for much longer. It was better to say a prayer. It would bring closure to this tragedy.

But which prayer should I say? Every god had its own prayer for the dead. All the Waiting prayers were etched in my memory, but it seemed cruel to say a Waiting prayer, when it was the Waiting God which had created the situation that caused her death. The Stern prayer was what she would want, but part of the Stern prayer said “let her sacrifices be not in vain, but let the world bear the fruit of her toil”. I would not be able to say that sincerely. And in the judgment of the gods, an insincere prayer was the same as no prayer at all.

And the Blood prayer for the dead was lost to me.

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In the end, I settled with the Broken. I stood over the body and spoke, keeping my voice level.

“As the sun rose, you were a tangle of hope, holding on to life. As the sun set, you were smoke and threads floating on the wind. Now you may return to the Broken, as we all return. Our souls are one with the sky, our flesh is one with the earth. So says the dust.”

I stepped back from the body. This was good enough. The prayer had been said, and there was no need to physically bury her when this world would be absorbed soon anyway. I could finally leave her behind me.

Part of me wanted to keep looking back at her. This didn’t feel like a satisfying conclusion. But no matter how long I would hesitate and look back, it wouldn’t make me feel any less unsatisfied. So I decisively turned away, hefted the handle of the wagon, and prepared to start rolling Rinn through the city.

I walked.

Next to the vast structures of this world, I felt very small. Walking past just one building took multiple minutes. I felt suspended in time, slowly trudging away, wheeling Rinn along with me, the pulsing sun continuously burning away. I couldn’t look straight ahead without getting it in my eyes. So I looked down. I had no sense of what was coming. The buildings and flagstones went past me one after another, not following any pattern I could see.

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The road heaved sharply uphill, twisting at an angle that made it hard to walk, as if a mountain had begun rising under the city with no regard to what was built there. I trudged past a collapsed tower, even its fallen stones taller than I was. I trudged past a massive spike of metal reaching up at an angle into the sky, like a giant’s spear stabbed up through the ground from below. And everywhere, the braided cables of steel, huge and winding, that Rinn called the muscles of the city.

My road ended at the entrance to a massive open-air forge. Enormous mechanical bellows sat motionless, looming nearby broad anvils which were layered with the dust of years. Vast crucibles stood against the sky, with channels where molten metal might have poured down from them. The whole place was piled with every kind of tool and device imaginable, the floor barely visible under them. I could just imagine Rinn digging through the piles, pulling out random devices and doing irresponsible things with them. I smiled despite myself.

But to me, it was only a pile of trash getting in my way. I looked for a way around, but I already knew I wouldn’t find one. This was the Blood God’s world. I would have to face my problems head on.

If Rinn was awake, she could have manifested a giant bridge going all the way over everything, like she had before. Maybe even I would be able to do that, if my “heart was ready”. But that wasn’t something I could think about now.

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In the end, I had to cut my way through the pile by hand. Most of the tools were rusted through, easy enough to break apart and toss on top of the rest. It was heavy work, making a path just wide enough for me and my wagon. But I made it through.

Beyond the forge, there was another long stretch of road, but my body was nearing its limits. I rolled Rinn into a hollow shell of a building by the road, and manifested new glass for its broken windows to keep us sheltered from the wind. For myself, I made another hard bench, with a back only slightly reclined. My body might need rest for now, but this wasn’t the time to let my mind succumb to rest. I had to be able to keep going.

My body was sufficiently rested again. I forced myself to my feet and began to walk again.

Most of the journey was not difficult. I only had to endure the soreness of my legs, from the walking, and my arms, from hauling Rinn in the wagon, and my eyes, from the constant glare that I somehow couldn’t keep out of my sight, even when I wore a visor. It was all unimportant. What mattered was reaching the black dot in the distance, the final portal.

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The road was wide and rose steadily uphill. Here, it was long and straight, letting me see far into the distance. I picked out a tower near the end of my vision, and when I counted the time as I walked there, it took me most of an hour to reach it. When I did, I picked out another landmark and counted the time again.

After nine hours, I came to another obstacle. Ahead of me, the road was interrupted by a huge chasm. This was a problem. I had to keep going towards the portal, but I couldn’t think of a way across the chasm. It was too wide for me to manifest a bridge across it. The edges were too steep for me to cart Rinn down one side and up the other. Looking down, I saw the remains of multistory basements embedded in the chasm wall. Judging by the depth of the basements, the chasm was at least ten stories deep, maybe more.

Once again, I wanted to go around the problem. But as I looked to the left and right, the chasm went on as far as I could see. It might have even formed a complete circular moat around the location of the portal. One way or another, I would have to cross over it.

I stood near the edge and thought about my options. Earlier, through the Watchful Eye, I had seen Morrow and Alchemist get across this chasm, in a different place, but they had used Alchemist’s potions of flight. I still had some – I had used one of them in the fight – but Rinn couldn’t use them right now. I would have to figure out my own way to get past this.

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Could I manifest a hot air balloon? No... even if I could do that, I wouldn’t know how to land it without jostling Rinn. Besides, Rinn had said that we wouldn’t “get closer to the heart” unless we moved using our own bodies. Would it count as using my own body if I used my arms to operate an engine that carried me...? How did Rinn even know what counted and what didn’t? If she was awake, she’d probably say it was obvious, like you could feel it with your body or something.

It wasn’t obvious to me.

Either way, flying across probably wouldn’t be practical. For any way of flying, I just wasn’t enough of an expert to do it safely. And I also wasn’t an expert in... whatever it would take to slowly lower the wagon down one side and then slowly raise it up the other. One of the old Farseers was a engineer who might have been able to do it, but just because I could remember designing pulley systems didn’t mean I had the skill to make a new, complex design in the present.

Besides, none of this was like the Blood God. It wouldn’t have put this here just to make me think of a clever solution. I felt like I was supposed to go straight across. But how was I supposed to go straight across? There was no way I could manifest a bridge that big. Unless...

Rinn had manifested that huge stone hand and that golden bridge earlier. They were way bigger than anything she had manifested in the earlier layers. It could have been a new Blood Child power, but as the Farseer, I could normally sense the difference – and it had felt like just regular manifesting. It was probably an aspect of the Blood God’s world, just like how the weather in the Broken God’s world responded to people’s unconscious emotions. If something about this world made it possible to manifest at a huge scale, then I might be able to do it, too.

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I stood and held out my arms, copying the way Rinn usually stood to manifest. How did she do it? What kind of feelings did she draw on when she was making that golden bridge? She was probably just completely confident. She could probably unleash the full power of her soul, without trying at all. The problem was, that wasn’t me.

I had to try.

In my mind, I visualized a bridge in front of me, a steel structure that would span all the way across the chasm. Then I focused my will on making it real. It flickered into existence, but then flickered out again. I stayed calm and focused, trying to make it stable. But it was too weak. I pushed with my mind, but it failed to become real.

I stared at the chasm for many minutes, trying each variation I thought of. First I tried to push harder with my mind. When that didn’t work, I tried to push more gently. I tried to build the bridge a little at a time, but it got harder and harder the more I added, and I ended up with something that didn’t even reach a quarter of the way across. I was clearly missing something. When Rinn had done it, it felt like she wasn’t trying at all. So I tried not trying at all, just waving my hand and expecting the bridge to appear for me. Again, nothing happened.

A shred of impatience slipped in from the back of my mind. What did the Blood God want from me, I thought, staring at the barely-real bridge in frustration. But the thought had scarcely finished when the bridge was suddenly different. For the first time, it was almost solid! I froze, quickly trying to understand what had happened –

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– and the instant the frustration was cleared from my mind, the bridge was gone as well.

I noticed that my heart was pounding. I felt like I’d almost been caught – the bridge had spilled over from my impatience, I’d been careless, and – No, I reminded myself. You’re not at the Dalners’ anymore. There’s no one who’s about to punish you. This is about the manifesting. You need to pay attention...

Was it really the impatient feeling that had made the manifesting work? It wasn’t hard to make myself feel impatient again – I had kept myself stable, but I wasn’t calm anymore. I didn’t like what the Blood God was making me do. Very carefully, I allowed the impatience to come forward, glaring at the chasm, forcing the bridge into existence...

But there was an ache in my mind, and I could feel that there was something missing. Even with the impatience at the forefront of my mind, the bridge would not appear. I could feel that this was supposed to work... but I needed to do something more...

And then I understood.

I could already feel the anger building inside me. The Blood God wanted me not to even regulate my feelings? It wanted me to throw away every skill I’d built to keep myself safe? It wanted me to show it the Yali who put herself in danger by acting on petty frustrations, the Yali who hurt people, the Yali who had yelled at Romhisat whenever Romhisat didn’t do what she wanted? I didn’t want to ever be that person again. But the Blood God wanted me to unleash my feelings, and this was the feeling I had available. Fine, then. I would. And the Blood God would only have itself to blame.

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I knew I was about to do something unwise. And I knew I didn’t want Rinn to get hurt by what was about to happen. So I wheeled her away, gripping the wagon’s handle tight in my fist as I brought her far away from the edge. Then I walked back alone, to stand at the edge of the chasm, glaring at the city.

A bridge. I could make a bridge. But why should I just let the world make me play its games, and not make the world play mine? I raised my arm like a claw. I would show the Blood God what would happen if you tried to control Yali Seti. With my will, I reached out and crushed the ground on the other side of the chasm. Under the force of my manifesting, concrete cracked and collapsed, buildings crumbled, and the waste slowly slid and fell into the hole. Yes, this was the power I deserved. When Rinn had said we were the equals of this world, it had meant nothing to me. But now, I finally felt something. We were better than this world. This chasm was an insult to me. That temple building standing tall near the edge – what had it ever done for me? I crushed it and threw the debris in the pit. This city was nothing but a pile of worthless toys. Just trash getting in the way of the only things that mattered: Rinn and myself.

I felt a pressure pushing back at me. I could tell what that meant. The Blood God didn’t like me calling its world worthless. But I didn’t care what it liked. I pushed past its resistance, toppling building after building into the pit. You tried to kill me, you put the one I love through so much pain, and now you dare tell me how to feel? We may have a truce, but you have no right to speak to me.

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Mountains of waste piled up in the pit as I expanded my swath of destruction. At last, the heap grew as high as the very lip of the chasm. That was my bridge. With a final gesture, I flattened it down, pounding it into place with a titanic fist of force.

I stared at the surface. For a long moment, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Then I released my breath. The dangerous feeling had relented, a little, and I was suddenly aware of how much anxiety it had given me. I hurried to force it back out of my mind – what had I been doing before I let it take over? Right, the whole point of this was to construct the “bridge”. And it had worked – it was flat enough to use. I could move on now.

While I wheeled Rinn across the “bridge” I’d made, I tried to clear my head from the feelings it had brought up. I knew these feelings were a warning sign for abusive behavior. I had read all about it online. If someone put their partner on a pedestal, but hated everyone else, they were likely to mistreat their partner too. And I was no exception. If I let this feeling control me, it would start with me hating things that Rinn liked – in fact, I already had, because this world was something Rinn liked. And then, if I was honest with myself, there were things I hated about Rinn herself, too. I hated the way she jumped into things without thinking and got away with it. I hated the way she could always tell how I was feeling, even when I could hide it from everyone else. And if I wasn’t careful, I would try to control Rinn so she’d be the way I wanted her to be. And when Rinn didn’t do what I wanted, I would hate her, and try to make her suffer, even while I still loved her. These were things that other abusers did all the time, and they were what I would do too.

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But I understood the danger. I wouldn’t let that happen. It would be dysfunctional to stop myself from ever feeling hatred, but I could keep it directed at the ones that actually deserved it. Like the Dalners. Like Arinyo Seti. Like the Waiting God. Like the Blood God. Like Morrow. Even if Rinn liked those last two. I was always allowed to hate abusers, even if Rinn liked them. It didn’t count as “hating things Rinn liked” because I wasn’t trying to control what she liked. She was allowed to have complicated feelings about Morrow. I could make myself be okay with that. And she was allowed to like the Blood God, because –

No, she wasn’t! How could I be okay with Rinn liking the Blood God?! After everything it had done to us?! Even if we had seen its good side, even if we wanted to stop the Waiting God from slowly starving it, it was still the god who had gone in her head and tried to make her kill me! There was no way I could be okay with that! Well, that could be another exception. The Blood God was probably distorting her sense of reality. I didn’t have to be okay with what she liked if she only liked it because of an outside force controlling her mind. That was just basic logic.

That explanation didn’t make me feel better. Instinctively, I knew things were more complicated than that. Some part of the real Rinn liked the Blood God now, too. Why did the Blood God have to make things complicated? Why did it have to make Rinn take its side? Why did it have to force me to feel things I didn’t want to feel? Why couldn’t it just get out of the way and...

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My hands began shaking as I realized it. That was how the Waiting God felt. I had resented the Blood God, just as it had. I had seen it as getting in my way, interfering with me. I would never be able to change the Waiting God if my own soul had the same judgments inside it.

There was a great pain behind my eyes. I didn’t want this. I had been justified. Everything I felt about the Blood God was fully justified. But it didn’t matter how justified I was. If I kept fighting against it, the fighting would be part of me. And then the Waiting God would absorb that part of me. And then it would continue the cycle that had nearly killed us.

If I wanted to win, I would have to do the opposite. Somehow, somehow, I would have to, to value the Blood God’s perspective.

I would have to accept its influence. I would have to become more Blood.

I was still walking across my ruinous bridge. It was a long way across the chasm. And my eyes had decided to start crying. I kept having to blink the tears away so I could see where I was going. It was making me have to concentrate harder to keep rolling Rinn along steadily.

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Even if I could make myself accept the Blood God... how?

Rinn would know what to do. She was really into this Blood stuff. She’d probably say something like “just feel your feelings!” or “look to your own heart!” like it made perfect sense. But my feelings didn’t make sense. If I let them control me, I wouldn’t be able to think or get anything done. That was why I had to keep each of them under careful management. If I got upset when I had to do something important, it could destroy everything I had worked for, and then I would have much more to be upset about. Being upset was supposed to mean you didn’t want something to happen, so it made no sense to be upset if that would cause more of it.

Of course, I couldn’t get rid of my feelings either. I had tried it once. When I was eight, I had told myself that if my feelings were getting me hurt, I would just refuse to ever feel anything. It had worked for a while, long enough for me to be proud of it. But when I read more about it, I started to see how much it was costing me. I had found a long thread on an abuse survivors’ forum where people were talking about how hard it was to recover from emotional suppression. Once I knew what it was like for them, I knew I didn’t want that to be me.

So that was why I had to strike a balance. It was like I had told Rinn, months ago now. I had to take each of my feelings out for a drive, in a controlled way, when it was safe. That way I could know their limits. I could know how to put them back away when they were getting in my way.

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But that was something to do when it was safe. It wasn’t something to do during a crisis. And we were still in a crisis, weren’t we? The entire Ravelling was a crisis. If I didn’t stay in crisis mode, I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to do. So it was definitely still a crisis.

I kept that thought in my head for a while, mulling it over.

Something was wrong about it. It felt very logical, and before the Ravelling, the logic had made sense. But now, my feelings were part of the crisis. If I wanted to connect to the Blood God... I wasn’t sure if my strategy of “taking my feelings out for a drive” was the same thing the Blood God would want me to do, but it might be a place to start. So now was the time to do it.

Well, not now. When I did it, it might have physical effects on the world, so I needed to get Rinn to more stable ground again. I was all the way across the “bridge” by now, but I had done a lot of damage to the ground here, and it didn’t feel completely steady.

To be safe, I walked another half kilometer further into the city. Then I parked Rinn and looked for a good place to sit.

In front of a dried-up fountain, I manifested a black iron bench, the right amount of cold and hard to make this a little bit easier.

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I sat. I stared.

I hadn’t done this in a long time. Ever since I was chosen as the Farseer, I had been entirely focused on how to keep us both alive. Managing Rinn’s feelings was important to keep us physically safe, so that was what I had filled my mind with. My own feelings weren’t important to that, except when they were relevant to keeping our relationship healthy. So I had held them back for this whole time.

I was already getting a headache. I didn’t want to do this.

But the Stern was in my nature. To achieve my goals, I would always do what I needed to, no matter how painful it was in the moment. And the pain was waiting for me, right in the back of my mind where I had stored it away. All I had to do was bring it forward.

Decisively, I brought it forward.

The sun was glaring in my eyes. It was hard to breathe. There was a lot of pain in my head. A lot of emptiness. I didn’t know how to handle it. I wanted to force it to go away again. But that would go against my goals. So I left it there.

My eyes were crying again. It hurt. Was this what the Blood God wanted? Was it Blood to just have all this pain? With Blood, the pain was supposed to mean something. But I didn’t feel like there was any meaning at all. I needed to do something Blood, but there was nobody here to tell me what that was. I would have to figure it out by myself.

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Why? Why did it always have to be me? Why did I have to do all the work when everyone else could only see what was right in front of them? Hadn’t I worked hard enough for one lifetime just to escape the Dalners? Hadn’t I worked hard enough for two lifetimes just to keep Rinn and me alive? And now I had to suffer for a third time? When would it end?

Thinking about this was making me feel deeply unfulfilled. I wanted something more. That meant it was time to get myself back under control – no, if I was trying to be Blood, it was right to keep going. If I wanted something more... what did I actually want? I couldn’t tell. I tried to pay attention to what I was feeling. For a moment, I had an impulse to curl up on the ground. But that didn’t make sense. If I curled up on the stone street, that would just give me extra, physical pain, not the cathartic feeling I seemed to be imagining. So that wasn’t really what I wanted. Or was it? I couldn’t tell. What was the Blood thing to do? It definitely wasn’t Blood to keep sitting around wondering about it. Blood was more impulsive than that. Was I supposed to just follow the impulse without thinking about it? That might be it. I tried to force myself to curl up, the way I had imagined. That ran into a block. I couldn’t get myself to do it.

Why couldn’t I do it? When I tried, there was a haze in my mind, holding me back. I felt like the world was closing in on me. What was this feeling? It was like I was terrified of... something. Or, that was the feeling. I was terrified.

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It didn’t make sense for me to be afraid of this! Hadn’t I explained this exact thing to Rinn, only months ago? There was no harm in feeling the feelings if you were going to come back from them afterwards! Right now, there was no immediate danger, so it made no sense to be afraid of taking some time to feel things! Wasn’t I Yali Seti? Hadn’t I let someone stab a blade through my body just to get what I wanted? And I would do it again without a second thought! Why was this so much harder? Why was this fear, this feeling, getting in the way of me being more Blood?

I stared at the paving stones. I needed to think. I knew I was missing something important, I just couldn’t see what.

Time passed. I thought some more. Then I realized something, and it put another unpleasant feeling in my head, the feeling of knowing I had made a mistake. Even when I was trying to be more Blood, I was still being anti-Blood about it. The Blood God wouldn’t want me to see a feeling as getting in the way. It was like Rinn had said, a feeling was supposed to mean something. What did the fear mean? If it did mean something, how was I supposed to figure out what it meant? It was just a feeling.

If only I understood the fear better. Then maybe somehow a meaning would show up. Or maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t know until I found a way to learn.

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“Listen to your body,” Rinn had said. A stray tear dropped from my face onto my hand. I brought the fear forward, and listened.

I was six years old, I wanted to just go to bed but I couldn’t, I had to check everything, I had to check the cooktop so no one would get burned again and mom wouldn’t be anxious. I was eight years old in my room, I wanted to scream but I couldn’t, it would wake dad and he would come yell at me, I had to make sure to only feel things when I was outside the house or they would both yell about how worthless I was, I was not worthless, I was worth more than their pathetic lives! I was twelve years old, I wanted to check my recording to make sure it had worked, but I couldn’t, I had to wait until we were all in bed and use one earbud to make sure they didn’t overhear. If I ever forgot, if I ever acted on my feelings, it could be the one mistake that ruined everything, I could be caught, everything I worked for could amount to nothing, I could die. Rinn could die.

That was what the fear meant. It was very familiar. I wasn’t crying anymore.

But now, if I didn’t act on my feelings, it could be the one mistake that let the Waiting God win. Countless future Farseers and Blood Children could die. I could live to see the Waiting choke the Blood out of the city.

It was a contradiction. A situation with extreme risks on both sides. This wasn’t the first time I had had to handle a contradiction like that. Did I risk going to the police, or did I risk staying at home? Did I risk keeping Rinn at my side, or did I risk letting her out of my sight? And every time, I had answered it with the Stern. I had weighed which need was greater, and knowingly sacrificed the other. Any part of me that went against the decision was a danger to my goals, so I didn’t allow those parts to come forward. That was the way of the Stern, and it was what had gotten me to where I was now. My ability to sacrifice my temporary feelings was what let me do things other people my age could not. I would never give up the Stern, no matter what Rinn said.

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I didn’t want to think about Rinn right now.

But I couldn’t use the Stern this time. If my feelings were my blood, then the fear was my blood too. I couldn’t just lock it away. Somehow, I had to listen to it, to value it. So I listened for the fear, and waited.

As I listened, the fear kept insisting that I was wrong, I was making a mistake, I shouldn’t listen to my feelings.

I couldn’t help but laugh. It felt incoherent. It felt unreal. Maybe this was what they called a “Broken laugh”, the laugh you laugh when you look back at one of your oldest beliefs and realize it doesn’t make as much sense as you thought it did. It hurt. I felt lost. But the fear wasn’t as strong anymore.

I had the impulse to fall over and cry again. This time, I didn’t try to force myself to do it, and I didn’t hold myself back either. Instead, I released myself to the impulse, allowing it to take me over.

I tilted over and went down onto my side on the bench. Before long, my shoulder was in pain under the weight of my body. My legs got twisted and I awkwardly shuffled them into a better position. My neck ached from trying to hold up my head. I kept holding it up, because otherwise it would be lying on the hard iron of the bench. But... but... I released myself again, lowering my head to the iron. The side of my forehead jammed against the bars. It hurt. My neck hurt from being at a bad angle. Lots of parts of me hurt, too many to process. And I was just lying there. It felt awkward and pathetic. And knowing that I was just lying here, not doing anything about it, made it feel even worse.

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What was the point of all this? I had given into my impulses, but I didn’t feel Blood. Maybe Broken, but not Blood. There was still just a lot of pain. I hadn’t suddenly had any insight that would make it mean something. What was I doing? I had no idea what I was doing. Why had I thought I would be able to figure this out? For some reason it had felt like the right answer would be right around the corner when I got around to it, like I had only been putting this off, not that it would actually be hard. It had been so easy to think so, back before I started actually trying this, back when, when...

Rinn would know...

If only I could still talk to her! But I had left her unconscious. Why had I done that?! Because of what I did, I could have lost the only way for me to understand Blood! Pain welled up behind my eyes, tears dropping out between the bars of the bench. Why had I done that?! It had been my own decision, and it could have ruined everything I was trying to accomplish! Again! First I had thought I was protecting Rinn by controlling her anger, but it had left her open to Morrow’s abuse! Then I had thought I knew what I was doing when I let her stab me, but it had almost got her killed!! And now – now – My eyes were stinging, puffy. I squeezed them shut, my vision already blurred from the tears. I had thought I knew what I was doing when I gave her the potion that put her to sleep! But now I needed her! Why had I done that?! Why?!

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Why??!

But I knew why. My Waiting side would never leave me, never let me forget the truth. Even though I was overwhelmed by pain, I could not help but think of the answer: I had done it to make sure we would survive. It had seemed like a perfect solution. After Justicar was dealt with and Rinn was unconscious, there would be no reason left that either of us would die. At that moment, it was the only thing I’d thought about. Once I found a future where neither of us died, I had called it a success. I hadn’t looked further than that.

But now that it was over, now that I had a chance to think about what to do now... There were a lot of other things I wanted, more than just... not dying.

I hadn’t stopped to think that I might need Rinn as a resource to help me with my emotions. For all the futures I’d considered, the thought hadn’t even entered by mind. And now it was coming back to haunt me.

An old saying came to mind: No matter how many things you plan for, you’ve never planned enough for the Waiting. It meant you should never get complacent. But it also meant that mistakes were inevitable. When you missed something, it might mean that you were doing a bad job, but it might also mean that you were doing a good job and just couldn’t get lucky every time. It didn’t have to be your fault.

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I had had good reasons for what I did. It wasn’t my fault.

I shoved myself up into a sitting position. My hands hurt from pushing hard on the rough iron. I manifested a handkerchief and blotted away my tears.

I had made a mistake. Now I had to think about what to do next.

I decided to think on my feet. I didn’t want to do the work of walking, but I would have to do it eventually, and it gave me something to occupy my mind other than revisiting all my own mistakes.

The road went on and on. The pulsing of the sun – the heart – felt different now. It was almost an invitation, an invitation I had no idea how to answer, one that made me ache to my bones.

And then, I saw something that made me pause and turn to the side.

A crumbling temple rose above the street. Of all the gods, only the Blood God had represented literal temples in its world. The Waiting God – and perhaps all the other gods – had viewed their temples as mere reflections. But to the Blood God, the Blood Temple was something vital. From our very first day in the Otherworld, Rinn had shown anger about its loss. A loss we still did not fully understand.

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My gaze fell on the arch of the temple gate. Some unknown temptation drew my eyes upwards over the cracked stones. At the top of the arch was engraved the Burning Heart – the Blood God’s sigil, the sigil that was now illegal to display throughout the city and its territories.

The Burning Heart... I felt an overpowering need to keep looking. Memories crowded into my mind, love and hatred and regret. I was a farmer coming through this gateway to pray for the health of my livestock. I was a librarian coming to the funeral of a priest. I was Garthold Brannet, here to argue a case in Blood court. I was Hiram Soleocchi, returning home to a temple much like this one.

I shivered. These were the memories I had tried so hard to find, the ones the Waiting God had been hiding from me. And now, without fanfare, they were suddenly laid bare. For a moment, I wondered why. But then, with a second shiver, it became clear. My connection with the god was still drained. Just as I had lost access to the Seeing, the god had lost access to lay its guidance over the memories that were stored inside the Farseer. I could dig through the memories for answers now, and nothing would be able to stop me.

It was finally my chance to learn what the Blood Temple really was.