Ibriya and Shappi sat opposite me, the tension apparent in their posture and faces.
“So. You wanted to talk?”
Ibriya cleared his throat. “Well. We’ve given it a lot of thought, and… Shappi and I have decided to Blood Bond.”
A smile grew on my face. About time, I thought.
The pair had only barely managed to avoid coupling during the last mating season, to the point where Ibriya and I had taken a boys trip pretty far outside of the village. In the time since we started this crazy project, they had both matured into excellent smiths and capable adults, and I had expected this to come for some time.
“That’s incredible news. I’m so happy for you two.”
“And…” Shappi said, slightly nervous. “We wanted to ask you to join us in the Bond.”
“Oh,” I said, blinking in surprise.
When I first arrived in the Sheowon village a couple of years prior, I would have jumped at the chance. I hadn’t been ready, and probably didn’t care deeply enough about any Sheowon to successfully Bond at the time. Now, the problem was more or less the inverse; I deeply cared about Ibriya and Shappi, but I couldn’t honestly say that Bonding with me wouldn’t hurt them, in the long run. If we Bonded, Ibriya and Shappi would surely demand to come back with me to the Uli homeland, and that wasn’t safe. Not for them, and not for me.
There was another factor, something I hadn’t learned until the Sheowon stopped seeing me as a threat. This turned out to be one of the reasons that I so rarely saw Bonded groups larger than four people. Once Bonded, it was for life—and that was very literal. If one member of a Bonded family died, the others followed. If they died while the Bond was active, that was immediate; they were connected, and so the full Blood energy of the Bonded family was ripped from them in retaliation for any member’s death. That wasn’t common, both because the Sheowon were quite peaceful and also because the Bonded family’s total Blood was often enough to augment and restore any member and avoid such a fate, but it was possible.
More interestingly, the loss of one, even while disconnected, still seemed to lead to an overall weakening of the family, and very often, the other members died off within the year. Whether this was because their bodies had grown to depend on the Blood of the others or for the same reason elderly human partners sometimes died close together, I didn’t know. I was still waiting to have a proper conversation with the admin.
My time for that might soon come, if I accepted Ibriya and Shappi’s offer.
“I’m incredibly honored,” I told my friends. I brought one of my hands to my chest, motioning to my heart. “But I have some… practical concerns.”
Shappi shook her head. “We don’t care about your past.”
“I know, and I appreciate it,” I said. “But it’s still a factor. I already have 54 Blood from retaliation, and we have no idea how that will affect you two.”
That ignored the fact that I had 72 Will, hidden underneath my Blood, which further complicated things. The only Sheowon who approached that much energy were a long-time Bonded family, and those never saw a new, Blood-less addition so late in life. There just weren’t any records to draw from that spoke of this kind of Bonding, or whether or not it was safe.
Ibriya frowned and turned to Shappi. “We’re willing to take that chance.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. At least, not yet. Once you two have Bonded and started to train your Blood… particularly after you’ve learned [Blood Augmentation] and [Blood Restoration]… maybe we can revisit this then.”
If they could get their Blood up to 25, or preferably 35, then Bonding with them as a pair would be comparable to if they Bonded with another pair of Bonded Sheowon, to form a quartet. This was a common way for a family to form, though it was equally common for a group of four to Bond from the start. Ushem and Pliwa had been a Bonded pair, as were Keo and Lowar, before the two pairs joined into a larger family. Yishola, Owawu, Nupeal, and Brumesh had all Bonded together at once, back when they were young adults.
Joining them solo, in place of a pair, was definitely unusual in its own right, but it most closely approximated Sheowon precedent. That seemed safer to me than Bonding with them when my Blood so thoroughly outranked them. I had waited this long, and I could wait a bit longer.
Shappi sighed. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“Still, if you’ll have me, I would love to be there when you two Bond.”
“Of course!” Ibriya said, as smiles formed on both their faces. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.”
*
The Bonding ritual took place in the elder’s home-slash-temple. It was a fairly private affair. In addition to myself and the elders, the only other attendants were Ibriya’s family—the potters, who I knew reasonably well from working with them early on in our smithing journey—and Shappi’s.
There wasn’t much ceremony to the ritual, only a small prayer to the All-Bonded to help guide her people into their Bond together, after which the room was mostly silent. Ibriya and Shappi sat on cushions opposite each other while the elders got to work around them. Nupeal pulled out a specially carved ritual dagger, reminiscent of the one I had plunged into Uqar-il Roru’s chest in my Uli First Blood ritual, though this one was made of stone rather than ivory. Owawu and Brumesh were on either side, with bandages at the ready. Yishola placed a small bundle of cultivated herbs into both Ibriya and Shappi’s mouth, instructing them to chew, while crushing up another wad of herbs with a mortar and pestle, which she then rubbed into each of their upper hands.
I was pretty sure those were just natural painkillers and antiseptics, and not crucial for the ritual beyond comfort and safety. If I was wrong, I would need to bring those plants back to the Uli and cultivate them there. Maybe it was a psychedelic, to get them into the necessary mindset for Bonding. I wouldn’t know more until I could speak with the so-called goddess myself.
Nupeal muttered something to the pair, and they nodded. Then, quickly, the elder slashed open both of Ibriya and Shappi’s upper palms before stepping out of the way.
My two friends clasped their upper hands, with their lower two arms folded in their laps. Had this been a four-way Bonding, I presumed there was a more complex arrangement for the hands such that all four were connected. Owawu and Brumesh quickly moved in to replaced Nupeal and wound the bandages around the clasped, bleeding hands, tying the two together. That was likely both symbolic and to stop blood from dripping all over the place during the ritual. Once they were bound, Owawu and Brumesh stepped back to join the other two elders.
Ibriya and Shappi closed their eyes, and I watched closely, extending all my senses. It was times like these that I really missed [Mana Manipulation], allowing me to peer deeper into the supernatural.
Blood seeped into the bandages, escaping their clasped hands, but before it could saturate the wrappings enough to start to drip, it seemed like the flow slowed and then stopped. Ibriya and Shappi’s breathing hitched slightly, in unison, and then…
It was hard to say, from an outside perspective. If I had to guess, with their hearts aligned and their blood in physical contact with each other, they had connected their energies, in a way that wasn’t retaliatory but cooperative. With that newfound connection and a doubling of Blood, they had enough control to circulate their blood together.
That connection would transcend the physical, allowing them to combine their Blood energy from now on. Ibriya and Shappi opened their eyes, grinning at each other. They were now two parts of a greater whole. They were Bonded.
*
I stepped outside, looking over the village from on top of the small pyramid. The ceremony was over, though Ibriya and Shappi were still bound and talking with the elders, getting advice about next steps so their could develop their Bond. Listening in seemed rude, particularly when they would probably tell me later.
Their hands would need to heal up after this, since they wouldn’t have [Blood Restoration] from the get-go. That would put more work in the smithy on me and their apprentices for a few days, though in a small village like this with so few needs there wasn’t that much “work” to begin with. If we really needed something done, they still had their lower hands, but we could all probably afford to take the coming days off.
Thinking back to the ritual, it wasn’t particularly complicated from a physical standpoint. It was the unseen aspect that was the challenge. The connected hearts. Being so in sync with each other, willing to trust in the other person, that one could mesh and give up control of all their Blood energy—their very life force—in service of something greater.
It likely couldn’t be forced. If one party wasn’t committed to Bonding, it may even trigger retaliation, or something similar to it. It had to be symbiotic, not parasitic.
I frowned. Would that even work, with Uli culture?
From an individual perspective, probably not. The people who were willing to challenge and kill for their own strength likely would struggle to give up that strength to another. But from a larger, social perspective, the Uli were willing to give up their strength—and their lives—in service of the village’s overall strength. Perhaps it was only a matter of perspective, then.
It might take a generation, then, to get something similar off the ground. The youth, not yet Bloodied, should be able to achieve something like it. The issue was that Sheowon waited until after adolescence to Bond, whereas the Uli were Bloodied at the very start of adolescence. Even if I could convince a tribe to learn to Bond instead of farm retaliation, that would result in a period of adolescence where the tribe didn’t grow in strength, delayed until the next generation’s adulthood.
Fishing could bridge the gap, if the tribe was safe from outside threats in that time. No uqandu attacks, or tribal conflicts, or internal challenges for a new caste of growing teenagers who had never been Bloodied in the first place. If none of the up and coming males were being killed, that would also affect the number of claims on the females, but if those couldn’t be resolved with challenges, the entire family structure of the Uli tribes would need to change in turn.
It wouldn’t be just a change in how Blood powers worked. It would be a total cultural shift.
Despite it being a moral improvement, at least from my perspective, it still felt a bit wrong to intentionally set out to erase a culture. But that was what the admin wanted of me, wasn’t it? If the admin wanted it, surely it would come to pass. If I didn’t bring Bonding to the Uli, would they just be entirely replaced? Wasn’t it better for them to adapt and survive?
My gaze fell onto the All-Bonded’s statue, in the area in front of the elder’s raised structure. It had been a while since I last tried to reach her. I took the steps down, then knelt in front of the statue.
“I still haven’t Bonded myself, but I was invited to one, and witnessed the ceremony. Is this enough acceptance for you?” I muttered before opening my eyes.
The familiar white void of the metaversal borderlands almost caught me by surprise, after so many failures.
“You sure are a self-important little gnat,” the admin said, scowling. “Fine, that’s good enough. Let’s chat.”