“Going?” Preservation said. “You’re leaving me?”
The urgency of those words startled Kelsier. “If these people can help us, then I need to talk to them.”
“They can’t help us,” Preservation said. “They’re… they’re callous. They plot over my corpse like scavenging insects waiting for the last beat of the heart. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
“You’re everywhere. I can’t leave you.”
“No. They’re beyond me. I… I cannot depart this land. I’m too Invested in it, in every rock and leaf.” He pulsed, his already indistinct form spreading thinner. “We… grow attached easily, and it takes one who is particularly dedicated to leave.”
“And Ruin?” Kelsier said, turning toward the west. “If he destroys everything, would he be able to escape?”
“Yes,” Preservation said, very softly. “He could go then. But Kelsier, you can’t abandon me. We… we’re a team, right?”
Kelsier rested his hand on the creature’s shoulder. Once so confident, now little more than a smudge in the air. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If I’m going to stop that thing, I’ll need some kind of help.”
“You pity me.”
“I pity anyone who’s not me, Fuzz. A hazard of being the man I am. But you can do this. Keep an eye on Ruin, and try to get word to Vin and that nobleman of hers.”
“Pity,” Preservation repeated. “Is that… is that what I’ve become? Yes… Yes, it is.”
He reached up with a vaguely outlined hand and seized Kelsier’s arm from underneath. Kelsier gasped, then cut off as Preservation grabbed him by the back of the neck with his other hand, locking his gaze with Kelsier’s. Those eyes snapped into focus, fuzziness becoming suddenly distinct. A glow burst from them, silvery white, bathing Kelsier and blinding him.
Everything else was vaporized; nothing could withstand that terrible, wonderful light. Kelsier lost form, thought, very being. He transcended self and entered a place of flowing light. Ribbons of it exploded from him, and though he tried to scream, he had no voice.
Time didn’t pass; time had no relevance here. It was not a place. Location had no relevance. Only Connection, person to person, man to world, Kelsier to god.
And that god was everything. The thing he had pitied was the very ground Kelsier walked upon, the air, the metals – his own soul. Preservation was everywhere. Beside it, Kelsier was insignificant. An afterthought.
The vision faded. Kelsier stumbled away from Preservation, who stood, placid, a blur in the air – but a representation of so much more. Kelsier put his hand to his chest and was pleased, for a reason he couldn’t explain, to find that his heart was beating. His soul was learning to imitate a body, and somehow having a racing heart was comforting.
“I suppose I deserved that,” Kelsier said. “Be careful how you use those visions, Fuzz. Reality isn’t particularly healthy for a man’s ego.”
“I would call it very healthy,” Preservation replied.
“I saw everything,” Kelsier mumbled. “Everyone, everything. My Connection to them, and… and…”
Spreading into the future, he thought, grasping at an explanation. Possibilities, so many possibilities… like atium.
“Yes,” Preservation said, sounding exhausted. “It can be trying to recognize one’s true place in things. Few can handle the–”
“Send me back,” Kelsier said, scrambling up to Preservation, taking him by the arms.
“What?”
“Send me back. I need to see that again.”
“Your mind is too fragile. It will break.”
“I broke that damn thing years ago, Fuzz. Do it. Please.”
Preservation hesitantly gripped him, and this time his eyes took longer to start glowing. They flashed, his form trembling, and for a moment Kelsier thought the god would dissipate entirely.
Then the glow spurted to life, and in an instant Kelsier was consumed. This time he forced himself to look away from Preservation – though it was less a matter of looking, and more a matter of trying to sort through the horrible overload of information and sensation that assaulted him.
Unfortunately, in turning his attention away from Preservation he risked giving it to something else – something equally demanding. There was a second god here, black and terrible, the thing with the spines and spidery legs, sprouting from dark mists and reaching into everything throughout the land.
Including Kelsier.
In fact, his ties to Preservation were trivial by comparison to these hundreds of black fingers which attached him to that thing Beyond. He sensed a powerful satisfaction from it, along with an idea. Not words, just an undeniable fact.
You are mine, Survivor.
Kelsier rebelled at the thought, but in this place of perfect light, truth had to be acknowledged.
Straining, soul crumbling before that terrible reality, Kelsier turned toward the tendrils of light spreading into the distance. Possibilities upon possibilities, compounded upon one another. Infinite, overwhelming. The future.
He dropped out of the vision again, and this time fell to his knees panting. The glow faded, and he was again on the banks of Lake Luthadel. Preservation settled down beside him and rested his hand on Kelsier’s back.
“I can’t stop him,” Kelsier whispered.
“I know,” Preservation said.
“I could see thousands upon thousands of possibilities. In none of them did I defeat that thing.”
“The ribbons of the future are never as useful as… as they should be,” Preservation said. “I rode them much, in the past. It’s too hard to see what is actually likely, and what is just a fragile… fragile, distant maybe….”
“I can’t stop it,” Kelsier whispered. “I’m too like it. Everything I do serves it.” Kelsier looked up, smiling.
“It broke you,” Preservation said.
“No, Fuzz.” Kelsier laughed, standing. “No. I can’t stop it. No matter what I do, I can’t stop it.” He looked down at Preservation. “But she can.”
“He knows this. You were right. He has been preparing her, infusing her.”
“She can beat it.”
“A frail possibility,” Preservation said. “A false promise.”
“No,” Kelsier said softly. “A hope.”
He held his hand out. Preservation took it and let Kelsier pull him to his feet. God nodded. “A hope. What is our plan?”
“I continue to the west,” Kelsier said. “I saw, in the possibilities…”
“Do not trust what you saw,” Preservation said, sounding far more firm than he had earlier. “It takes an infinite mind to even begin to glean information from those tendrils of the future. Even then you are likely to be wrong.”
“The path I saw started by me going to the west,” Kelsier said. “It’s all I can think to do. Unless you have a better suggestion.”
Preservation shook his head.
“You need to stay here, fight him off, resist – and try to get through to Vin. If not her, then Sazed.”
“He… is not well.”
Kelsier cocked his head. “Hurt in the fighting?”
“Worse. Ruin tries to break him.”
Damn. But what could he do, except continue with his plan? “Do what you can,” Kelsier said. “I’ll seek these people to the west.”
“They won’t help.”
“I’m not going to ask for their help,” Kelsier said, then smiled. “I’m going to rob them.”