“Oh, Senna…” Preservation whispered. “I’m losing this place. Losing them all…”
“We are going to stop it,” Kelsier said, pulling back.
“It can’t be stopped. The deal…”
“Deals can be broken.”
“Not these kinds of deals, Kelsier. I was able to trick Ruin before, lock him away, by fooling him with our agreement. But that wasn’t a breach of contract, more leaving a hole in the agreement to be exploited. This time there are no holes.”
“Then we go out kicking and screaming,” Kelsier said. “You and me, we’re a team.”
Preservation seemed to condense, his form pulling itself together, threads reweaving. “A team. Yes. A crew.”
“To do the impossible.”
“Defy reality,” Preservation whispered. “Everyone always said you were insane.”
“And I always acknowledged that they had a point,” Kelsier said. “Thing is, while they were correct to question my sanity, they never did have the right reasoning. It’s not my ambition that should worry them.”
“Then what should?”
Kelsier smiled.
Preservation, in turn, laughed – a sound that had lost its edge, the harshness gone. “I can’t help you do… whatever it is you think you’re doing. Not directly. I don’t… think well enough anymore. But…”
“But?”
Preservation solidified a little further. “But I know where you’ll find someone who can.”
2
Kelsier followed a thread of Preservation, like a glowing tendril of mist, through the city. He made sure to look up periodically, confronting that force in the sky, which had boiled through the mists there and was coming to dominate in every direction.
Kelsier would not back down. He would not let this thing intimidate him again. He’d already killed one god. The second murder was always easier than the first.
The tendril of Preservation led him past shadowy tenements, through a slum that somehow looked even more depressing on this side – all crammed together, the souls of men packed in frightened lumps. His crew had saved this city, but many of the people Kelsier passed didn’t seem to know it yet.
Eventually the tendril led him out broken city gates to the north, past rubble and corpses being slowly sorted. Past living armies and that fearsome army of koloss, out beyond the city and a short hike along the river to… the lake?
Luthadel was built not far from the lake that bore its name, though most of the city’s populace determinedly ignored that fact. Lake Luthadel wasn’t the swimming or sport kind of lake, unless you fancied bathing in a soupy sludge that was more ash than it was water – and good luck catching what few fish remained after centuries of residing next to a city full of half-starved skaa. This close to the ashmounts, keeping the river and lake navigable had demanded the full-time attention of an entire class of people, the canal workers, a strange breed of skaa who rarely mixed with those from the city proper.
They would have been horrified to find that here on this side, the lake – and actually the river as well – was inverted somehow. Opposite to the way the mists under his feet had a liquid feel to them, the lake rose into a solid mound, only a few inches high but harder and somehow more substantial than the ground he’d become used to walking upon.
In fact, the lake was like a low island rising from the sea of mists. What was solid and what was fluid seemed somehow reversed in this place. Kelsier stepped up to the island’s edge, the ribbon of Preservation’s essence curling past him and leading onto the island, like a mythical string showing the way home from the grand maze of Ishathon.
Kelsier stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the ground of the island. It was some type of dark, smoky stone.
“What?” Preservation whispered.
Kelsier jumped, then glanced at the line of light. “You… in there, Fuzz?”
“I’m everywhere,” Preservation said, his voice soft, frail. He sounded exhausted. “Why have you stopped?”
“This is different.”
“Yes, it congeals here,” Preservation said. “It has to do with the way men think, and where they are likely to pass. Somewhat to do with that, at least.”
“But what is it?” Kelsier said, stepping up onto the island.
Preservation said nothing further, and so Kelsier continued toward the center of the island. Whatever had “congealed” here, it was strikingly stonelike. And things grew on it. Kelsier passed scrubby plants sprouting from the otherwise hard ground – not misty, inchoate plants, but real ones full of color. They had broad brown leaves with – curiously – what seemed like mist rising from them. None of the plants reached higher than his knees, but there were still far more than he’d expected to find here.
As he passed through a field of the plants, he thought he caught something scurrying between them, rustling leaves in its passing.
The world of the dead has plants and animals? he thought. But that wasn’t what Preservation had called it. The Cognitive Realm. How did these plants grow here? What watered them?
The farther he penetrated onto this island, the darker it became. Ruin was covering up that tiny sun, and Kelsier began to miss even the faint glow that had permeated the phantom mists in the city. Soon he was traveling in what seemed like twilight.
Eventually Preservation’s ribbon grew thin, then vanished. Kelsier stopped near its tip, whispering, “Fuzz? You there?”
No response, the silence refuting Preservation’s claim earlier that he was everywhere. Kelsier shook his head. Perhaps Preservation was listening, but wasn’t there enough to give a reply. Kelsier continued forward, passing through a place where the plants had grown to waist height, mist rising from their broad leaves like steam from a hot plate.
Finally, ahead he spotted light. Kelsier pulled up. He’d fallen into a prowl naturally, led by instincts gained from a life spent on the con, literally since the day of his birth. He had no weapons. He knelt, feeling at the ground for a stone or stick, but these plants weren’t big enough to provide anything substantial, and the ground was smooth, unbroken.
Preservation had promised him help, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted what Preservation said. Odd, that living through his own death should make him more hesitant to trust in God’s word. He took off his belt for a weapon, but it evaporated in his hands and appeared back on his waist. Shaking his head, he prowled closer, approaching near enough to the fire to pick out two people. Alive, and in this Realm, not glowing souls or misty spirits.
The man wore skaa clothing – suspenders, shirt with sleeves rolled up – and tended a small dinner fire. He had short hair and a narrow, almost pinched face. That knife at his belt, nearly long enough to be a sword, would come in very handy.
The other person, who sat on a small folding chair, might have been Terris. There were some among their population who had a skin tone almost as dark as hers, though he’d also met some people from the various southern dominances who were dark. She certainly wasn’t wearing Terris clothing – she had on a sturdy brown dress, with a large leather girdle around the waist, and wore her hair woven into tiny braids.
Two. He could handle two, couldn’t he? Even without Allomancy or weapons. Regardless, best to be careful. He hadn’t forgotten his humiliation at the hands of the Drifter. Kelsier made a careful decision, then stood up, straightened his coat, and strode into their camp.
“Well,” he proclaimed, “this has been an unusual few days, I can tell you that.”