There. Just barely visible in the Cognitive Realm, he made out the shadowy tip of Mt. Morag in the distance. That direction was north.
He turned his back toward the ashmount and ran for everything he was worth. It seemed a brief eyeblink before he reached the city and was given a welcome, warming sight. Souls.
The city was alive. Guards in the towers and on the tall rock formations surrounding the city. People in the streets, sleeping in their beds, clogging the buildings with beautiful, shining light. Kelsier walked right through the city gates, entering a wonderful, radiant city where people still fought on.
In the warmth of that glow, he knew he was not too late.
Unfortunately, his was not the only attention focused here. He had resisted looking upward during his run, but he could not help but do so now, confronting the churning, boiling mass. Shapes like black snakes slithered across one another, stretching to the horizon in all directions. It was watching. It was here.
So where was Preservation? Kelsier walked through the city, basking in the presence of other souls, recovering from his extended run. He stopped at one street corner, then spotted something. A tiny line of light, like a very long piece of hair, near his feet. He knelt, picking at it, and found that it stretched all the way along the street – impossibly thin, glowing faintly, yet too strong for him to break.
“Fuzz?” Kelsier said, following the strand, finding where it connected to another – it seemed a lattice that spread through the whole city.
Yes. I… I’m trying….
“Nice work.”
I can’t talk to them… Fuzz said. I’m dying, Kelsier….
“Hang on,” Kelsier said. “I’ve found something; it’s here in my pack. I took it from those creatures you mentioned. The Eyree.”
I do not sense anything, Fuzz said.
Kelsier hesitated. He didn’t want to reveal the object to Ruin. Instead he picked up the thread, which had enough slack for him to slip it into the pack and press it against the orb.
“How about that?”
Ahh… Yes…
“Can this help you somehow?”
No, unfortunately.
Kelsier felt his heart sink further.
The power… the power is hers…. But Ruin has her, Kelsier. I can’t… I can’t give it….
“Hers?” Kelsier asked. “Vin? Is she here?”
The thread vibrated in Kelsier’s fingers like the string of an instrument. Waves came along it from one direction.
Kelsier followed them, noticing again how Preservation had covered this city with his essence. Perhaps he figured that if he was going to be strung out anyway, he should lie down like a protective blanket.
Preservation led him to a small city square clogged with glowing souls and bits of metal on the walls. They glowed so brightly, particularly in contrast to his months out alone. Was one of these souls Vin?
No, they were beggars. He moved among them, feeling at their souls with his fingertips, catching glimpses of them in the other Realm. Huddled in the ash, coughing and shivering. The fallen men and women of the Final Empire, the people even the common skaa tended to dismiss. For all his grand plans, he hadn’t made the lives of these people better, had he?
He stopped in place.
That last beggar, sitting against an old brick wall… there was something about him. Kelsier backed up, touching the beggar’s soul again, seeing a vision of a man with hands and face wrapped in bandages, white hair sticking out from beneath. Stark white hair, a fact not quite hidden by the ash that had been rubbed into it.
Kelsier felt a sudden shock, a painful spike that ran up his fingers into his soul. He jumped back as the beggar glanced his direction.
“You!” Kelsier said. “Drifter!”
The beggar shifted in place, but then glanced another direction, searching the square.
“What are you doing here?” Kelsier demanded.
The glowing figure gave no response.
Kelsier whipped his hand back and forth, trying to shake out the pain. His fingers had actually gone numb. What had that been? And how had the white-haired Drifter managed to affect him in this Realm?
A small glowing figure landed on a rooftop nearby.
“Oh, hell,” Kelsier said, looking from Vin to the Drifter. He responded immediately, throwing himself toward the wall of the building and climbing desperately up it to Vin’s side. “Vin. Vin, stay away from that man.”
Of course yelling was pointless. She couldn’t hear him.
Still, Kelsier seized her by the shoulders, seeing her in the Physical Realm. When had she grown so confident, so knowing? Those shoulders of hers had once cringed, but now they gave her the posture of a woman fully in control. Those eyes that had once widened in wonder were now narrowed with keen perception. Her hair was longer, but her slight build somehow seemed far more powerful than it had when he’d first met her.
“Vin,” Kelsier said. “Vin! Listen, please. That man is trouble. Don’t approach him. Don’t–”
Vin cocked her head, then leaped off the roof, away from the Drifter.
“Hell,” Kelsier said. “Did she actually hear me?”
Or was it a coincidence? Kelsier leaped after Vin, tossing himself carelessly from the building. He didn’t have Allomancy, but he was light, and could fall without getting hurt. He landed softly and sprinted across the springy ground, tailing Vin as best he could, running through buildings, ignoring walls, trying to stay close. She still got ahead of him.
Kelsier… Preservation’s voice whispered at him.
Something thrummed through him, a familiar jolt of power, a warmth within. It reminded him of burning metals. Preservation’s own essence, empowering him.
He ran faster, jumped farther. It wasn’t true Allomancy, but instead was something more raw and primal. It surged through Kelsier, warming his soul, letting him reach Vin – who had stopped in the street before a large building. Soon after he reached her, she took off again down the street, but this time Kelsier managed to keep pace, barely.
And she knew he was there. He could sense it in the way she leaped, trying to shake a tail, or at least catch sight of one. She was good, but this was a game he’d been playing for decades before she was born.
She could sense him. Why? How?
She sped up and he followed, with difficulty. His motions were clumsy; he had Preservation pushing him along, but he didn’t have the finesse of true Allomancy. He couldn’t Push or Pull; he merely jumped, grabbing hold of the shadowed walls of buildings, then throwing himself off in prowling leaps.
Still, he grinned widely. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed training with Vin in the mists, matching himself against another Mistborn, watching his protégé inch toward excellence. She was good now. Fantastic even. Remarkable at judging the force of each Push, at balancing her own weight against her anchors.
This was energy; this was excitement. Almost he forgot the troubles he faced. Almost this was enough. If he could dance the mists with Vin at night, then finding a way to recapture his life in the Physical Realm might not matter so much.
They hit an intersection and turned toward the city’s perimeter. Vin bounded ahead on lines of steel; Kelsier hit the ground, thrumming with Preservation’s power, and prepared to jump.
Something descended around him. A blackness of shredding spikes, of spider leg scratches in the air, of jet-black mist.
“Well,” Ruin said from all sides. “Well, well. Kelsier? How did I not see you earlier?”