The con. The excitement of playing people like flutes, twisting them about themselves, tying their minds in knots. He hurried through the forest, listening to the shouts of fright, the calls of soldiers to one another, the snorts and cries of the horses. The patch of dense vegetation had become demonic disharmony.
Nearby, one of the wizened men was gathering soldiers and his colleagues, calling for them to keep their heads, and started leading them back in the direction they’d come, perhaps to regroup with those that had been lost when the line first scattered.
Kelsier – still wearing the robe and holding his stolen satchel over his shoulder – lay down on the ground in their path, and waited until someone spotted him.
“There!” a guard said. “It’s–”
Kelsier sank himself down into the ground, leaving the robe and satchel behind. The guard screamed at the sight of one of the ancients apparently melting to nothing.
Kelsier crept up out of the ground a short distance away as the group gathered around his robe and satchel. “She disintegrated, ancient one!” the guard said. “I watched it with my own eyes.”
“That’s one of Alonoe’s robes,” a woman whispered, hand pulled to her breast in shock.
Another of the ancients looked in the satchel. “Empty,” he said. “Merciful Domi… What were we thinking?”
“Back,” Elrao said. “Back! Everyone get your horses! We’re leaving. Curse Alonoe and this idea of hers!”
They were gone in moments. Kelsier strolled through the forest, stepping up beside the discarded robe – which they’d left – listening to the main bulk of the expedition crash through the jungle in their haste to escape him.
He shook his head, then took a short walk through the underbrush to where Alonoe and her lone guard were now trying to follow the sounds of the main body. They were doing a pretty good job of it, all things considered.
When the ancient one wasn’t looking, Kelsier grabbed the guard around the neck and hauled him into the darkness. The man thrashed, but Kelsier got him in a quick lock and hold, knocking the man out without too much trouble. He pulled the body back quietly, then returned to find the solitary ancient one standing with lantern in hand beside her horse, turning frantically.
The jungle had become eerily still. “Hello?” she called. “Elrao? Riina?”
Kelsier waited in shadow as the calls became more and more frantic. Eventually the woman’s voice gave out. She slumped down in the forest, exhausted.
“Leave it,” Kelsier whispered.
She looked up, red-eyed, frightened. Ancient or not, she could obviously still feel fear. Her eyes darted to one side, then the other, but he was too well hidden for her to spot him.
“Leave it,” Kelsier repeated.
He didn’t need to ask again. She nodded, trembling, then took off her satchel and opened it, dumping out a large glass orb. The light from it was brilliant, and Kelsier had to step back lest it reveal him. Yes, there was power in that orb, great power. It was filled with glowing liquid that was far purer, and far brighter, than what the ancients had been drinking.
Exhaustion evident in her every move, the woman went to climb back onto her horse.
“Walk,” Kelsier commanded.
She looked toward the darkness, searching, but didn’t see him. “I…” she said, then licked her wizened lips. “I could serve you, Vessel. I–”
“Go,” Kelsier ordered.
Wincing, she unhooked the saddlebags and – lethargically – threw them over her shoulder. He didn’t stop her. She probably needed those jars of glowing liquid to survive, and he didn’t want her dead. He just wanted her to be slower than her companions. Once she found them, they might compare stories and realize they’d been had.
Or perhaps not. Alonoe struck out into the jungle. Hopefully they’d all conclude that Ruin had indeed bested them. Kelsier waited until she was gone, then strolled over and picked up the large glass orb. It showed no discernible way of being opened, other than shattering it.
He held the glowing orb before him and shook it, gazing at the incredible, mesmerizing liquid light within.
That was the most fun he’d had in ages.
Part Six
HERO
1
Kelsier ran across a broken world. The trouble had been apparent the moment he left the ocean, stepping back onto the misty ground that made up the Final Empire. Here he’d found the wreckage of a coastal city. Smashed buildings, shattered streets. The entire city seemed to have slid into the ocean, a fact he wasn’t able to fully piece together until he stood above the town and noticed the shadowy remains of buildings sticking from the ocean island farther up the coast.
From there it only grew worse. Empty towns. Vast piles of ash, which manifested on this side as rolling hills that he ran across for a time before realizing what they were.
Several days into his run home, he passed a small village where a few glowing souls huddled together in a building. As he watched, horrified, the roof collapsed, dumping ash on them. Three glows winked out immediately, and the souls of three ashen skaa appeared in the Cognitive Realm, their strings to the physical world cut.
Preservation didn’t appear to greet them.
Kelsier grabbed one of them, an aged woman who – as he took her hand – started and looked at him with wide eyes. “Lord Ruler!”
“No,” Kelsier said. “But close. What is happening?”
She started to stretch away. Her companions had already vanished.
“It’s ending…” she whispered. “All ending…”
And she was gone. Kelsier was left holding empty air, disturbed.
He started running again. He’d felt guilty leaving the horse behind in the forest, but surely the animal was better off there than it would have been here.
Was he too late? Was Preservation already dead?
He ran himself hard, the heft of the glass orb weighing down his pack. Perhaps it was the urgency, but his course became even more single-minded than it had been during his trip out. He didn’t want to see the failing world, the death all around him. Compared to that the exhaustion of the run was preferable, and so he sought it, running himself ragged.
He traveled for days upon days. Weeks upon weeks. Never stopping, never looking. Until…
Kelsier.
He jolted to a halt on a field of windswept ash. He had the distinct impression of mist in the physical world. Glowing mist. Power. He could not see that here, but he could sense it all around him.
“Fuzz?” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. Had he imagined that voice?
Not that way, Kelsier, the voice said, sounding distant. But yes, it was Preservation. We aren’t… aren’t… there….
The crushing weight of fatigue hit Kelsier. Where was he? He spun about, looking for some kind of landmark, but those were difficult to find out here. The ash had buried the canals; a few weeks back he remembered swimming down through the ground to find them. Lately… he’d just been running….
“Where?” Kelsier demanded. “Fuzz?”
So… tired…
“I know,” Kelsier whispered. “I know, Fuzz.”
Fadrex. Come to Fadrex. You are close….
Fadrex City? Kelsier had been there before, in his youth. It was just south of…