The story of an Ortothan whose efforts to give blood offerings to his gods are frustrated by an intense fear of blood which he fears he may never overcome.
I kneel in front of a large stone altar, on top of which sits an ornate clay bowl. Both are covered in stars and arcane symbols, mostly Ortothan runes meaning things like “sacrifice,” “bleed,” and “I give of my life.” Behind the altar stands Eiv-Aímact Priest Luke Moore. Behind me is a crowd of Ortothan worshipers. Most of them are human, but there are stranger creatures among them too. A family of crabs with long pink tentacles. A musty-smelling winged fungus. Two robots, one human-shaped, the other almost completely round, and so large it cannot sit in the pews.
These worshipers have set aside a portion of their weekly ritual to watch me give my first offering, a rite of passage I was supposed to go through when I was thirteen years old.
I tried to go through it then. I failed. I’ve failed several times since then. Now, with my 23rd birthday closing in on me, I’m trying again. I don’t want to be ten years late.
I’m shaking. Every inch of me is moist with sweat. I can feel it pooling, staining my clothes.
I hold the knife in my right hand. My mom suggested that I use a needle, which would theoretically hurt less, but that’s not how first offerings are traditionally done. When I look back on this, I don’t want to know I wimped out and made it easier on myself.
My mom stands behind me. That part’s normal. The parent or guardian of an Ortothan giving their first offering is supposed to stand in that exact spot. Still, I can’t help but be self-conscious about the fact that I, a grown-ass man, have my mommy up here to help me do the most normal thing an Ortothan is supposed to do.
“You can do it,” Mom whispers. “Just close your eyes and make the cut, quickly.”
I force myself to take long, deep breaths. I close my eyes. As I clutch the knife, I feel my pulse pounding against it. I want to cry. I want to run. I’m kneeling here so I can shed blood. Red, thick, staining blood, full of life that was never meant to leave me.
Revulsion invades my mind. I try to push it out. I press the flat end of the knife against my hand. It’s just the flat end. That part can’t cut me. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I take a slow, deep breath. I rotate the knife, so the blade is against my palm. This is it. I’m about to do it. I feel the blood coursing through my hand, my veins pulsing, ready to burst, to ooze out my offering.
I have to slide the blade downward. I have to. This is my duty. To the universe. To life, existence, and eternity. To the Holy Fourth.
I want to do this. I love my god. The thought of his endless struggle against impossible odds, of his divine wisdom and unbreakable resolve, inspires and amazes me. I am supposed to help him with that struggle. I’m supposed to help him by pulling this knife down.
“Give me strength,” I whisper to the Holy Fourth. I shouldn’t need strength for this. Normal people don’t. Normal people don’t freak out at the prospect of losing a bit of blood.
Perhaps in answer to the prayer, a tiny surge of warmth just barely pierces my bone-chilling terror. With everything I have, I drag the knife downward.
The pain makes me flinch. My breaths are loud, quick, and panicked. Gods, everyone is seeing me like this. The terror I feel at such a simple act of selflessness. Something drips down my hand. Something thick and cool, pooling around my wound. That’s my blood. That’s my lifeblood leaving me, trickling down toward the bowl on the altar, about to be claimed by something outside of myself.
From a deep, primal part of my mind comes a panicked protest. My breaths get louder. Everyone can see me on the edge of panic. My mom puts her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’ve almost done it. Deep breaths.”
I’ve almost done it. I’ve almost given my offering. The life is about to leave me.
That thought makes the whole world disappear. What I’m doing, where I am, the people behind me, they all vanish, replaced by an all-consuming terror. Against my will, my eyes pop open. I see the red trail that has trickled down my hand. I pull my hand back before even a drop of blood lands in the bowl, and I run. In front of everyone, my mom, the priest, the entire congregation, I run out of the chapel. Mom tells me to stop, but I couldn’t stop if my life depended on it. I clutch my hand, pressing on the wound to stop the bleeding. There’s a new wave of terror every time my heart beats, and more blood oozes onto my skin.
I sprint out of the chapel, into the church’s lobby. I sit down on a large, soft couch by the church’s front entrance. I breathe, quick, loud, and deep. A small slice of reality is coming back to me. Enough to understand what I just did. That I just ran. Again. I look down at my hand, at the oozing wound, and the crimson stain around it. Drops of blood fall wastefully to the floor.
I break down sobbing.
Mom comes out of the chapel and approaches me.
“Go away,” I say.
“Brady, come back inside,” she says.
I want to. With everything I have, I want to go back to that altar and bleed into it. But I can’t. The thought of the altar, the knife, the bowl, all of them hold me in place as surely as if I were chained to this couch.
“It’s not too late,” Mom continues. “You can still give your offering. Come back—”
“Stop it!” I snap.
The volume of my voice startles her. She takes a step back.
I look down. “I’m sorry.”
A few members of the congregation have gathered near the door and are staring out at me through a small window imbedded in it. Most of them are human, but there’s one particularly inquisitive pair of prehensile eyestalks pressed against the glass.
They make way as the priest approaches the door and steps out into the lobby.
Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore is the Ortothan priest. He’s the one who takes blood. I find myself scooting across the couch to get farther away from him. He notices—gods, he notices—and stops approaching. I look at him. I look at my mom. “I’m sorry,” I say to both of them. “I can’t.”
Moore looks at me for a moment. “Very well,” he says. He disappears back into the chapel.
Mom sits next to me. She pulls me into a hug. “It’s okay,” she says.
“No,” I say. “No it’s not.” I’m still clutching my hand. Still trying to stop the flow of the blood that I was supposed to offer.
“You’re sure you can’t go back in?” Mom asks. “The altar is still there. It’s not too late.”
“No.” I say. I look at her. Through tear-soaked eyes, she’s nothing but a blurry shape. I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Please, just get the bandages.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She studies me for a moment. “Okay.” She goes back inside the chapel, leaving me alone, on the bench, clutching my hand.
The Church of the Blessed Sacrifice runs a soup kitchen a few blocks away from our main building. I stand behind the counter, serving unfortunate souls who approach with waiting bowls.
An Ortothan church has some advantages in running an establishment like this. Between our access to alien technology and connections with some of the most powerful mages on Earth, we can do a lot of wonderful things. We can generate food without relying on external suppliers, and magically enhance it to make it more nourishing, and, those are just the things we can do routinely. If we’re willing to spend some money on a single person, we can give the food far greater benefits.
I volunteer here a lot. I’ve done so for as long as I’ve been allowed to. My capacity for self-sacrifice is deficient in other areas, and I have to do things to make up for it.
I scoop a ladle of soup into the bowl of an older man in front of me. “Good morning, Brady,” he says.
“Hey Frank,” I say. Frank is one of the people who’s seen those ‘greater benefits’ I mentioned. A few years back, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Magic is capable of healing that kind of illness. It costs a lot of money. Because of the expense, we wouldn’t normally intervene for the sake of someone outside the faith, but I knew Frank too well to let him die. I lobbied hard for us to cure him. A lot of Ortothans didn’t want to listen to me, but I was able to get a handful, including Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore, to make contributions. I sold a few of my things to get the last of the money, and one very expensive glass of enchanted water later, Frank was cured.
Afterward, we managed to make it look like he’d been misdiagnosed. I think both Frank and his doctor were suspicious, but the outcome was better than any they’d dared to hope for, so they accepted it.
“How was your niece’s wedding?” I ask.
“It was great,” Frank says with a big smile on his face. “The cake was taller than any of the people there. Even the groom, and that’s saying something.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“It was. It really was.”
He moves on, and I serve the next person.
Eventually, my shift comes to an end, and I go into the back of the kitchen to hang up my apron. Another volunteer, I believe his name is Ron, is also there. As he hangs his apron up, he turns to me. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you keep coming to this place, and to weekly ritual?” I look away from him. He continues. “Offerings are the whole point of our religion. It’s right there in the scriptures. There are only two questions worth asking about a person. ‘Do you have blood to give, and will you give it?’ You don’t give blood, so what are you doing here?”
“Trying to help feed the homeless.”
“There are other places you could do that. Places where a non-Ortothan like you would fit in better.”
I keep my gaze away from him. A bit of moisture pools around my eyes. My silence seems to satisfy him that he’s won the argument. He leaves.
I linger for a moment. I’m familiar with the verse he cited. It says exactly what he says it does. That anyone who’s worth anything has the courage to cut themselves open and bleed for the universe.
Once my apron is hung up, I make my way out of the building, where my mom is waiting to pick me up. I get in the car, and she starts driving home.
“Is something bothering you?” Mom asks.
I look at her. “Should I stop coming?” I ask.
“To the kitchen?” she asks.
“And to ritual.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I’m not a real Ortothan.”
She places her hand on my shoulder. “Of course you are.”
“I don’t give blood. That’s literally our entire job. It’s the reason our religion exists, and I don’t fucking do it.”
“You’re not the only Ortothan who doesn’t give blood.”
“Who else? Kids?”
“And hemophiliacs, and the elderly, and the injured, and people with a lot of other medical conditions.”
“None of which I have.”
“You do have a medical condition.”
“No. I don’t. My body and blood are perfectly healthy. The only thing stopping me is that I’m afraid.”
“A fear which is just as medical as any physical—”
“How is me being a coward a medical problem?”
“You take pills for anxiety. Your phobia is diagnosed. You go to therapy. If the difficulties you’re struggling with weren’t medical, medical professionals wouldn’t be treating them.”
I look away from her. She’s not completely wrong. My phobia is medical, in a sense, but that doesn’t change the fact that the barrier is entirely mental. I can give blood. I just won’t because I’m not brave enough. “The scriptures say there are only two questions worth asking about someone,” I say. “Do you have blood to give, and will you give it? I have blood, and I don’t give it. What better proof could there be that I don’t have the right to be an Ortothan?”
Mom sits there, still driving. I can see in her face that she’s trying to formulate a response. I can see her dismay at not being able to come up with anything better than “Like I said, it’s a medical issue.”
“I don’t think I have a right to go to ritual anymore,” I say.
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Too bad. That’s the choice I’m making. You’re going to have to respect it.”
She can’t make me go. No one is ever supposed to be forced to practice any aspect of Ortothanism.
I hate that rule. Without it, my problem would’ve already been solved. People from the church could just tie me down, cut me open, and bleed me into a bowl.
I’ve begged them to do that—both Mom and Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore—but they aren’t allowed to. Even if I’ve asked them to do it beforehand, they have to stop once I give into the fear and tell them to.
“What if I never give an offering?” I ask Mom. “What if I die having never done it? What if I can’t get into the Eitoth because of that?”
“You’re going to give an offering.”
“What if I don’t? What if I end up in some other afterlife, or none? What if we never see each other again, for all eternity, just because I couldn’t man up and bleed into a stupid bowl?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Once again, I can see that Mom is trying to formulate an answer. Once again, I can see that she can’t.
I kneel in front of the altar in my bedroom. My parents got it for me on my thirteenth birthday. They thought I’d be making my first offering later that day, and that I’d use this altar to give further offerings at home. It’s beautiful. The carved stone is full of spiraling runes and intricate murals of the Holy Seven.
I pray. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry that I’m too weak to help you. I wish I was strong enough.”
A vague comfort washes over me. Is it the Holy Fourth reaching out to comfort me, or is it just a fuzzy feeling generated by my own brain? That’s probably all it is. Why would the Holy Fourth want to comfort me? It’s not like I’m an Ortothan.
“Please, help me,” I beg her. I’m so pathetic. A worthy Ortothan wouldn’t need help to serve his own god. I’m supposed to be the one helping him. “I know you’re far away, and that you have more important things to focus on, but if there’s anything you could do for me, any way you can help me make the sacrifices you need, please, do it.”
Before I can say anything more, my cell phone rings. I open my eyes. I know this number. It’s Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore. I take a deep breath. I’m okay. It’s just the phone. He can’t take blood over the phone. I answer. “Hello, venerable leader,” I say. “What can I do for you?”
“Fellow believer,” he begins, “would you mind coming to ritual early this week? Maybe half an hour or so? I’d like to have a talk with you.”
I freeze. He’s going to tell me off for never making an offering. He’s finally lost patience with my bullshit. “Of course,” I say, as cheerily as I can.
“Excellent,” he says. “I’ll see you there.”
He ends the call.
Just summoning the willpower to go to ritual is a struggle. I barely manage to force myself into the passenger seat of Mom’s car. She was happy when I told her the priest had asked to meet with me. She must think there’s something he can do to help.
There isn’t, but I don’t feel like arguing with her about it again.
We pull up to The Church of the Blessed Sacrifice. It’s a typical Ortothan church. It looks Christian from the outside, for the sake of the veil. There’s a cross on the top, and its name has a deliberate double-meaning, so passers-by can mistake it for a reference to Christian mythology. The mosaic on the front door shows a long-haired white man bleeding from both hands.
I’ve always had a hard time looking at those bleeding hands, even though the ‘blood’ is just small triangular shards of stained glass.
I take a deep breath and keep my gaze on the ground as I walk inside. “Do you want me to come with you?” Mom asks.
“No,” I say. Maybe that’s a mistake. It might be easier to have her there for emotional support, but that’s exactly the problem. I’m not a child. I shouldn’t need my mommy there to help me talk to a priest.
Steeling myself, I take a few deep breaths as I walk down the hall, then I knock on the priest’s door.
“Come in,” he says.
I do. His office is half library, half shrine. The large bookshelf to one side contains countless Ortothan scriptures and arcane tomes, including a large, valuable, ancient book with a seven-pointed star on its front, which the church acquired not long ago. Many other elements of the room are covered in Ortothan stars, including the wallpaper on his computer. On his desk, there’s a large statuette of the Holy Seven, alive and united, assembled for battle as they might’ve been when the Second Hytoth was young.
“Take a seat,” Mr. Moore says, gesturing toward a chair. I glance at it. A pulse of fear rushes through me. He’s not going to take blood, I assure myself. Even if that’s usually his job, he’s not going to do it to me. He’s not allowed to. I sit. “Thank you for coming,” he says.
“No problem.”
“You seem frightened.”
“I am.”
“I’ve not brought you here to have you make an offering.”
“I know,” I say. “What I know doesn’t matter. That’s not how the fear works.”
“I understand.”
I don’t know how he could possibly understand, but I have no intention of arguing with him. “Did you summon me here so you could ask me to stop coming to ritual?” I ask. “Since I don’t give offerings?”
That question surprises him. “What? No. Gods, no! Why would I summon you here just to tell you not to come? I wanted to tell you the exact opposite, that you are welcome, and encouraged, to keep coming to ritual for as long as you find it fulfilling.”
He’s probably just being nice. He’s nice to everyone. That’s all this is. He of all people should understand why my cowardice makes me unworthy. “Why?” I ask.
“Our faith is not just about blood.”
“It is, though. Isn’t that what the scriptures say? There are only two questions worth asking about a person. ‘Do you have blood to give, and will you give it?’ I do, and I won’t. How could I still be worthy to be here?”
“You do give blood, though.”
“No, I don’t. I haven’t, ever. You know that.”
“But you have. You have done it many times. That verse doesn’t say that the only thing that matters about someone is whether they give blood to the Holy Seven. If that were the case, we would have to conclude that every non-Ortothan is a bad person, which is obviously absurd.”
“Is it, though?” I ask.
“Yes, Brady. It is. I’m disappointed to hear that question from you. Ninety-two percent of the people in the universe are not Ortothan. Only the most self-righteous fool could think all of them are deficient.”
“I mean, sure, not all of them. There are people who don’t about any of it, or have valid reasons to follow another religion, but if someone knows why offerings are necessary, surely they… I, do have an obligation to give them.”
“There are other ways to give of your lifeblood. Brady, you are one of the most selfless people I know. You volunteer at the kitchen more than anyone else. The largest donation I have ever received was from you. Remind me how it was you acquired the three-thousand dollars you gave to help pay for that man’s cancer to be healed?”
“I sold my new gaming PC,” I admit, “but that doesn’t change anything. The blood in our religion isn’t metaphorical. That’s the Irelist heresy.”
“The Irelist heresy is the idea that nothing in our mythos is real, and literal blood offerings are pointless. However, in religion, everything is metaphorical.”
“Even the literal things?”
“Especially the literal things. Brady, if the sole determiner of a person’s worth is whether they’ve given blood to the Holy Fourth, wouldn’t that mean that the Holy Fourth himself isn’t a worthy person? He hasn’t made any blood offerings to himself. Not once, in the billions of years he has existed.”
“Yes, he has. He bleeds constantly, both inherently and when he’s wounded in battle. That’s why he needs our blood.”
“But it’s not his literal bleeding that makes him worthy. It’s his willingness to fight for others, to dedicate his existence to preserving the universe. That fight costs him blood, but also time and pleasure and power and everything else he could acquire for himself if he left the battle against the Voruteut to be fought by another. Those are his offerings, and they are abundant, just as yours are.”
There is a thread of logic to what he’s saying, but I can’t fight off the feeling that he’s sugarcoating things for me. “Don’t we try to convert people, though?” I ask. “Don’t we do that because it’s better for people to be Ortothan and give offerings?”
“But we’re not meant to convert everyone. Let me ask you this. Why did the Holy Seven dedicate themselves to protecting the universe in the first place?”
I tilt my head. “Because we would be destroyed by the Voruteut otherwise.”
“And why is that bad?”
“Because everyone would die. Are you messing with me?”
“Not at all. You’re correct. Because everyone would die. Not just us. Not just Ortothans. The Holy Seven fight and die for everyone in this Hytoth. They swore an oath to do so before they knew they would need blood offerings. The offerings are simply tools to help them protect the living things in this universe. That life does not gain its value from the offerings it gives. The offerings gain their value from the life they protect. Before you were even born, six gods had already died for you, and, in doing so, they gave their opinion on your worth.”
The things he’s saying feel wrong. Like more sugarcoating. At the same time, I can’t find a flaw in his logic. The Holy Seven chose to fight and die for the universe. All of it. Including me. “Maybe you’re right,” I say, “but I don’t want to just passively benefit from their struggle. I don’t want to be in the same boat as a non-Ortothan. I want to help.”
“That is admirable,” he says. “I’m eager to aid your efforts to do so in any way I can. Just understand that, even if you never manage to make an offering, you are still a worthy Ortothan.”
I wipe a tear. Gods, I’m crying in front of him. “Still, I want to give back. I… I know I’m not very good at showing it, but I really do want to help.”
“You are extremely good at showing it,” he says, “and there are things we can do. You are not the first Ortothan to have this problem. Blood is not a rare phobia. I’ve seen exposure therapy help others in a similar position. I’m to understand you are already undergoing it.”
“I am. It hasn’t helped as much as we would hope.”
“Keep at it. It can take a while.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“And when you’re ready, the Holy Fourth will be here to take your offering.”
Unless he isn’t. Unless he dies, and the whole universe dies, because I wasn’t brave enough.
No. I can’t let myself think like that. The Fourth Shall Be Eternal. “I understand,” I say. “Thank you.”
A moment passes.
“If I die,” I say, “before I manage to make an offering, will I see the Eitoth?”
“The gods have never told us the exact rules that determine who gets into the Eitoth,” Moore says. “I don’t believe that’s an accident. Our faith isn’t meant to be about salvation in the afterlife. I suggest you trust the gods and their judgement. They will take you where you belong. Knowing you, knowing how well you embody our faith’s ideals, I can’t imagine them turning you away.”
I feel lighter, listening to the priest. “Thank you,” I say.
“Ritual will begin soon. Will you be attending?”
I hesitate for a moment. “Yes,” I say. “Maybe I should sit in the front row. I’ll try to watch the offerings from up close. Maybe that will help desensitize me.”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll see an appropriate seat reserved for you at future rituals.”
I’ve been sitting in the front row at ritual every week, watching the offerings as they’re given. At first, it made me feel light-headed. I even passed out once. I kept at it. Week after week, I watched the congregation give their sacrifices.
Between rituals, I’ve spent as much time as I could stand watching videos of offerings being given, and of other bleeding wounds. I’ve used butter knives to roleplay the act of giving an offering.
It all still frightens me. Looking at blood, dragging the knife across my hand, they’re still hard, but over time, they’ve gotten easier.
Nine months later, I’m ready to try again.
I kneel in front of the altar, shaking. My eyes are closed. The knife is in my hand. I take a deep breath. In my past attempts, I’ve always tried to focus on the fact that I needed to do this. That I am obligated to make the sacrifice, to justify myself as a person and an Ortothan.
This time, I’m not thinking about myself at all. I think about the Holy Fourth. About the sacrifices he’s made for me, for everyone. About the billions of years he’d already spent fighting for me before I was even born. I think about how thankful I am for that, and how badly I want to repay her gift.
I clutch the knife, putting everything I have into holding it steady. I turn the blade and press it against my palm. I drag the knife down my hand. It hurts. Just like before, I can feel the sweat pool all over me, but I take a deep breath, directing my mind away from the altar in front of me, and toward the god this offering is headed to.
“And so, an offering is given,” the priest says. I open my eyes. It’s over already? It is. There’s my hand, bleeding over the bowl, into which a small puddle of blood has collected. My soul bursts with pride. Wonderful, shining pride and satisfaction. The congregation claps. One of the robots plays a few notes of triumphant music.
I only keep my eyes open for a second. I’m already starting to grow light-headed. Still, even if I do pass out now, it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it. I can hear my mom sobbing with joy behind me. “Thank you,” I mutter, to the Holy Fourth.
He thanks me back. I feel it. A powerful, almost overwhelming gratitude. I’ve heard about this feeling. The thanks he gives to those who give him offerings.
And with that feeling comes a profound spiritual joy, sparked by the idea that a god, something older and grander than I can imagine, can see me, can see my gift to them, and is thankful for it.
I let my blood drip into the bowl for a little longer, but, sooner than I’d like, it’s time for the priest to bandage my hand.
The congregation claps again. I stand, turning to look at them. These are the same people who’ve seen me humiliate myself year after year, and now, they’re applauding me.
After ritual ends, Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore approaches me. “Congratulations,” he says, as the other worshipers file out of the pews. “We’re all very proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I say. I start to say something else, but it fizzles on my lips.
He notices. “What is it?” he asks.
I hesitate. “I don’t think I’m ready to do this every week. Maybe eventually, but not yet.”
“That’s alright,” Eiv-Aímact Priest Moore says. “Do everything at your own pace. The Holy Fourth will be there to accept more offerings once you are ready to give them.”