Kelsier kept on walking, and Ruin appeared at the bottom of the hill, in the same pose.
“Those fools in the fortress won’t be able to help you,” Ruin noted. “I think that once this world reaches its end, I will pay them a visit. They’ve existed far too long past what is right.”
Kelsier stopped at the edge of the new land of dark stone, like the lake that had become an island. This one was even larger. The ocean had become a continent.
“I will kill Vin while you’re gone,” Ruin whispered. “I will kill them all. Think about that, Kelsier, on your journey. When you come back, if there’s anything left, I might have need of you. Thank you for all you’ve done on my behalf.”
Kelsier stepped out onto the ocean continent, leaving Ruin behind on the shore. Kelsier could almost see the spindly threads of power that animated this puppet, providing a voice to the terrible force.
Damn. Its words were lies. He knew that.
They hurt anyway.
Part Five
IRE
1
He’d hoped to have the sun back once Ruin vanished from the sky, but after walking far enough out, he seemed to leave his world behind – and the sun with it. The sky here was nothing but empty blackness. Kelsier eventually managed to use some vines to strap his flagging cookfire to the end of his staff, which became an improvised torch.
It was a strange experience, hiking through the darkened landscape, holding a staff with an entire campfire on the top. But the logs didn’t fall apart, and the thing wasn’t nearly as heavy as it should have been. Not as hot either, particularly if – when bringing it out – he didn’t make it manifest fully.
Plant life grew all around him, real to his touch and eyes, though of strange varieties, some with brownish red fronds and others with wide palms. Many trees – a jungle of exotic plants.
There were some bits of mist in here. If he knelt by the ground and looked for them, he could find little glowing spirits. Fish, sea plants. They manifested here above the ground, though in the ocean on the other side they were probably down within the depths. Kelsier stood up, holding the soul of some kind of massive deep-sea creature – like a fish, only as large as a building – in his hand, feeling its ponderous strength.
That was surreal, but so was his life these days. He dropped the fish’s soul and continued onward, hiking through waist-high plants with a blazing staff lighting the way.
As he got farther from the shore, he felt a tugging at his soul. A manifestation of his ties to the world he’d left behind. He knew, without having to experiment, that this tug would ultimately grow strong enough that he wouldn’t be able continue outward.
He could use that. The tugging was a tool that let him judge if he was getting farther from his world, or if he’d gotten turned around in the darkness. Navigation was otherwise next to impossible, now that he didn’t have the canals and roadways to guide him.
By judging the pull on his soul, he kept himself pointed directly outward, away from his homeland. He wasn’t completely certain that was where he’d find his goal, but it seemed like his best bet.
He hiked through the jungle for days, but then it started to dwindle. Eventually he reached a place where plants grew only in occasional patches. They were replaced with strange formations of rock, like glassy sculptures. The jagged things were often some ten feet or more tall. He didn’t know what to make of those. He had stopped passing the souls of fish, and nothing seemed to be alive out here in either Realm.
The pull tugging him backward was growing laborious to fight. He was beginning to worry he’d have to turn around when, at long last, he spotted something new.
A light on the horizon.
2
Sneaking was a great deal easier when you didn’t technically have a body.
Kelsier moved in silence, having dismissed his cloak and staff. He’d left his pack behind, and though there were a few plants out here, he could pass through them, not even rustling their leaves.
The lights ahead pulsed from a fortress crafted of white stone. It wasn’t a city, but close enough for him. That light had an odd quality; it didn’t burn or flicker like a flame. Some kind of limelight? He drew near and pulled up beside one of the odd rock formations that were common out here. It had hooked spikes drooping from it almost like branches.
The very walls of this fortress glowed faintly. Was that mist? It didn’t seem to have the same hue to it; it was too blue. Keeping to the shadows of rock formations, Kelsier rounded the building toward a brighter light source at the back.
This turned out to be an enormous glowing cord as thick as a large tree trunk. It pulsed with a slow, rhythmic power, and the light it gave off was the same shade as the walls – only far more brilliant. It seemed to be some kind of energy conduit, and ran off into the far distance, visible in the darkness for miles.
The cord passed into the fortress through a large gate in the back. As Kelsier crept closer, he found that little lines of energy were running across the stone of the wall. They branched smaller and smaller, like a glowing web of veins.
The fortress was tall, imposing, like a keep – but without the ornamentation. It didn’t have a separate fortification around it, but its walls were steep and sheer. Guards moved atop the roof, and as one passed, Kelsier pushed himself down into the ground. He was able to sink into it completely, becoming nearly invisible, though that required grabbing hold of the ground and pulling himself downward until only the top of his head was visible.
The guards didn’t notice him. He climbed back out of the ground and inched up to the base of the fortress wall. He pressed his hand against the glowing stone and was given the impression of a rocky wall far from here, in another place. An unfamiliar land with striking green plants. He gasped, pulling his hand away.
These weren’t stones, but the spirits of stones – like his spirit of a fire. They had been brought here and constructed into a building. Suddenly he didn’t feel quite so clever at having found himself a staff and a sack.
He touched the stone again, looking at that green landscape. That was what Mare had talked about, a land with an open blue sky. Another planet, he decided. One that didn’t suffer our fate.
For the moment he ignored the image of that place, pushing his fingers through the spirit of the stone. Strangely, the stone resisted. Kelsier gritted his teeth and pushed harder. He managed to get his fingers to sink in about two inches, but couldn’t make them go any farther.
It’s that light, he thought. It pushed back on him. Looks a little like the light of souls.
Well, he couldn’t slip through the wall. What now? He retreated into the shadows to consider. Should he try to sneak in one of the gates? He rounded the building, contemplating this for a short time, before suddenly feeling foolish. He hurried forward to the wall again and pressed his hand against the stones, sinking his fingers in a few inches. Then he reached up and did the same with the other hand.
Then he proceeded to scale the wall.
Though he missed Steelpushing, this method proved quite effective. He could grip the wall basically anywhere he wanted, and his form didn’t have much weight. Climbing was easy, as long as he maintained his concentration. Those images of a land with green plants were very distracting. Not a speck of ash in sight.