“How?” Kelsier demanded, counting on the obligator to understand more about the koloss. “How did this happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” the man said.
Kelsier felt his heart sink.
“The beasts,” the man continued, “should have known better than to take an obligator! I was their keeper, and they did this to me? This world is ruined.”
Should have known better? Kelsier clutched the obligator’s shoulder as the man stretched toward nothingness. “How? Please, how is it done? Men become koloss?”
The obligator looked to him and, vanishing, said one word.
“Spikes.”
Kelsier gaped again. Around him on the misty plain, souls blazed bright, flashed, and were dumped into this Realm – before finally fading to nothing. Like human bonfires being extinguished.
Spikes. Like Inquisitor spikes?
He walked to the slumped-over corpses of the dead and knelt, inspecting them. Yes, he could see it. Metal glowed on this side, and among those corpses were little spikes – like embers, small but glowing fiercely.
They were much harder to make out on the living koloss, because of the way the soul blazed, but it seemed to him that the spikes pierced into the soul. Was that the secret? He shouted at a pair of koloss, and they looked toward him, then glanced about, confused.
The spikes transform them, Kelsier thought, like Inquisitors. Is that how they’re controlled? Through piercings in the soul?
What of madmen? Were their souls cracked open, allowing something similar? Troubled, he left the field and its dying, although the battle – or rather the slaughter – seemed to be ending.
Kelsier crossed the misty field outside Fadrex, then lingered out here alone, away from the souls of men until Vin returned, trailed by a shadow she didn’t seem to know was there this time. She passed by, then disappeared into the camp.
Kelsier settled down near one of the little tendrils of Preservation, and touched it. “He has his fingers in everything, doesn’t he, Fuzz?”
“Yes,” Preservation said, his voice frail, tiny. “See.”
Something appeared in Kelsier’s mind, a sequence of images: Inquisitors listening with heads raised toward Ruin’s voice. Vin in the creature’s shadow. A man he didn’t know sitting on a burning throne and watching Luthadel, a twisted smile on his lips.
Then, little Lestibournes. Spook wore a burned cloak that seemed too big for him, and Ruin crouched nearby, whispering with Kelsier’s own voice into the poor lad’s ear.
After him, Kelsier saw Marsh standing among falling ash, spiked eyes staring sightlessly across the landscape. He didn’t seem to be moving; the ash was piling up on his shoulders and head.
Marsh… Seeing his brother like that made Kelsier sick. Kelsier’s plan had required Marsh to join the obligators. He had deduced what must have happened next. Marsh’s Allomancy had been noticed, as had the fervent way he lived his life.
Passion and care. Marsh had never been as capable as Kelsier. But he had always, always been a better man.
Preservation showed him dozens of others, mostly people in power leading their followers to doom, laughing and dancing as ash piled high and crops withered in the mists. Each one was a person either pierced by metal or influenced by people around them who were pierced by metal. He should have made the connection back at the Well of Ascension, when he’d seen in the pulses that Ruin could speak to Marsh and the other Inquisitors.
Metal. It was the key to everything.
“So much destruction,” Kelsier whispered at the visions. “We can’t survive this, can we? Even if we stop Ruin, we are doomed.”
“No,” Preservation said. “Not doomed. Remember… hope, Kelsier. You said, I… I… am…”
“I am hope,” Kelsier whispered.
“I cannot save you. But we must trust.”
“In what?”
“In the man I was. In the… the plan… The sign… and the Hero…”
“Vin. He has her, Fuzz.”
“He doesn’t know as much as he thinks,” Preservation whispered. “That is his weakness. The… weakness… of all clever men…”
“Except me, of course.”
Preservation had enough spark left to chuckle at that, which did Kelsier some good. He stood up, dusting off his clothing. Which was somewhat pointless, seeing as how there was no dust here – not to mention no actual clothing. “Come now, Fuzz, when have you known me to be wrong?”
“Well, there was–”
“Those don’t count. I wasn’t fully myself back then.”
“And… when did you become… fully yourself?”
“Only just now,” Kelsier said.
“You could… you could use that excuse… anytime….”
“Now you’re catching on, Fuzz.” Kelsier put his hands on his hips. “We use the plan you set in motion when you were sane, eh? All right then. How can I help?”
“Help? I… I don’t…”
“No, be decisive. Bold! A good crewleader is always sure of himself, even when he isn’t. Especially when he isn’t.”
“That doesn’t make… sense….”
“I’m dead. I don’t need to make sense anymore. Ideas? You’re crewleader now.”
“… Me?”
“Sure. Your plan. You’re in charge. I mean, you are a god. That should count for something, I suppose.”
“Thank you for… finally… acknowledging that….”
Kelsier deliberated, then set his pack on the ground. “You’re sure this can’t help? It builds links between people and gods. I’d think it could heal you or something.”
“Oh, Kelsier,” Preservation said. “I’ve told you that I am dead already. You cannot… save me. Save my… successor instead.”
“Then I will give it to Vin. Would that help?”
“No. You must tell… her. You can reach… through the gaps in souls… when I cannot. Tell her that she must not trust… pierced by metal. You must free her to take… my power. All of it.”
“Right,” Kelsier said, tucking away the glass globe. “Free Vin. Easy.”
He just had to find a way past Ruin.
3
“So, Midge,” Kelsier whispered to the dozing man. “You got that?”
“Mission…” the scruffy soldier mumbled. “Survivor…”
“You can’t trust anyone pierced by metal,” Kelsier said. “Tell her that. Those exact words. It’s a mission for you from the Survivor.”
The man snorted awake; he was supposed to have been on watch, and he stumbled to his feet as his replacement approached. Kelsier regarded the glowing beings, anxious. It had taken precious days – during which Ruin had kept him far from Vin – to search out someone in the army who was touched in the head, someone with that distinctive soul of madness.
It wasn’t that they were broken, as he had once guessed. They were merely… open. This man, Midge, seemed perfect. He responded to Kelsier’s words, but he wasn’t so unhinged that the others ignored him.
Kelsier followed Midge eagerly through camp to one of the cookfires, where Midge started chatting, animatedly, with the others there.
Tell them, Kelsier thought. Spread the news through camp. Let Vin hear it.
Midge continued speaking. Others stood up around the fire. They were listening! Kelsier touched Midge, trying to hear what he was saying. He couldn’t make it out though, until a thread of Preservation touched him – then the words started to vibrate through his soul, faintly audible to his ears.