And nothing happened.
Preservation’s power resisted him still. It shied away from his murderous intent, and push though he would, he couldn’t make it hurt Ruin.
His enemy vibrated, quivering, and the shaking became a sound like laughter. The churning dark mists recovered, transforming back into the image of a deific man stretching through the sky. “Oh, Kelsier!” Ruin cried. “You think I mind what you have done? Why, I’d have chosen for you to take the power! It’s perfect! You’re merely an aspect of me, after all.”
Kelsier gritted his teeth, then stretched forth fingers made of rushing wind, as if to grab Ruin and throttle him.
The creature merely laughed louder. “You can barely control it,” Ruin said. “Even assuming it could harm me, you couldn’t accomplish such a task. Look at you, Kelsier! You haven’t form or shape. You’re not alive, you’re an idea. A memory of a man holding the power will never be as potent as a real one with ties to all three Realms.”
Ruin shoved him aside with ease, though Kelsier felt a crackling at the thing’s touch. These powers reacted to one another like flame and water. That made Kelsier certain there was a way to use the power he held to destroy Ruin. If he could figure it out.
Ruin turned his attention from Kelsier, and so Kelsier took to trying to acquaint himself with the power. Unfortunately, each thing he tried was met with resistance – both from Ruin’s energy and from the power of Preservation itself. He could see himself now, in the Spiritual Realm – and those black lines were still there, tying him to Ruin.
The power he held didn’t like that at all. It tumbled inside him, churning, trying to break free. He could hold on, but he knew that if he let go, it would escape him and he would never be able to recapture it.
Still, it was grand to be more than just a spirit. He could see into the Physical Realm again, though metal continued to glow brightly to his eyes. It was a relief to be able to see something other than misty shadows and glowing souls.
He wished that view were more encouraging. Endless seas of ash. Very few cities, dug out like craters. Burning mountains that spewed not only ash, but lava and brimstone. The land had cracked, creating rifts.
He tried not to think of that, but of the people. He could feel them, like he felt the very crust and core of the planet. He easily found which ones had souls that were open to him, and eagerly he swung down in. Surely among these he could find one who could deliver a message to Vin.
Yet they didn’t seem to be able to hear him, no matter how he whispered to them. It was frustrating and baffling. He held the powers of eternity. How could he have lost the ability he’d had before, the ability to communicate with his people?
Around him, Ruin laughed.
“You think your predecessor didn’t try that?” Ruin asked. “Your power cannot leak through those cracks, Preservation. It tries too hard to shore them up, to protect them. Only I can widen cracks.”
Whether his reasoning was correct or not, Kelsier couldn’t tell. But he did confirm time and time again that madmen could no longer hear him.
However, now he could hear people.
Everyone, not just the mad. He could hear their thoughts like voices – their hopes, their worries, their terrors. If he focused too long on them, directed his attention to a city, the multitude of thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. It was a buzz, a rush, and he found it difficult to separate individuals from the mess.
Above it all – land, cities, ash – hung the mists. They coated everything, even in the daytime. While trapped entirely in the Cognitive Realm, he hadn’t seen how pervasive they were.
That’s power, he thought, gazing upon it. My power. I should be able to hold that, manipulate it.
He couldn’t. That left Ruin far stronger than he was. Why had Preservation left the mists untouched like that? It was still part of him, of course, but it was like… like a diffused army, spread as scouts throughout the kingdom, rather than gathered for war.
Ruin wasn’t so inhibited. Kelsier could see his power at work now, revealed in ways that had been too grand for him to recognize before Ascending. Ruin ripped open the tops of ashmounts, holding them pried apart, letting death spew forth. He touched koloss all across the empire, driving them to murderous frenzies. When they ran out of people to kill, he gleefully turned them against one another.
He had hold of multiple people in every remaining city. His machinations were incredible – complex, subtle. Kelsier couldn’t even follow all the threads, but the result was obvious: chaos.
Kelsier could do nothing about it. He held unimaginable power, yet he was still impotent. But importantly, Ruin had to act to counter him.
That was an important revelation. He and Ruin were both everywhere; their souls were the very bones of the planet. But their attention… that could only be divided so far.
If Kelsier tried to change things where Ruin was focused, he always lost. When Kelsier tried to stop the ashmounts, Ruin’s arms ripping them open were stronger than his trying to seal them. When he tried to bolster Vin’s armies with a sense of encouragement, Ruin acted like a blockade, keeping him away.
In a desperate attempt, he made a push to approach Vin herself. He wasn’t certain what he could do, but he wanted to try battering Ruin away – push himself, and see what he was capable of doing.
He threw everything he had into it, straining against Ruin – feeling the friction of their essences meeting as he drew nearer to Vin, who was locked in a room within the palace of Fadrex. His essence meeting Ruin’s caused shocks through the land, trembles. An earthquake.
He was able to draw close. He could feel Vin’s mind, hear her thoughts. She knew so little – like he had known so little when he’d begun this. She didn’t know about Preservation.
The clashing pushed Kelsier’s essence away, ripping Preservation back from him, exposing his core – like a grinning skull as the flesh was torn free. A soul lined with darkness, but which was Connected to Vin somehow. Tied to her by the inscrutable lines that made up the Spiritual Realm.
“Vin!” he shouted, in agony, straining. The fight between him and Ruin caused the earthquake to intensify, and Ruin exulted in that destruction. It weakened his attention for a brief moment.
“Vin!” Kelsier said, getting closer. “Another god, Vin! There’s another force!”
Confusion. She didn’t see. Something leaked from Kelsier, drawing toward her. And with a shock, Kelsier saw a terrible sight, something he’d never suspected. A glowing spot of metal in Vin’s ear, so similar to the color of her brilliant soul that he had missed it until he’d gotten very close.
Vin was spiked.
“What’s the first rule of Allomancy, Vin!” Kelsier screamed. “The first thing I taught you!”
Vin looked up. Had she heard?
“Spikes, Vin!” Kelsier began. “You can’t trust–”
Ruin returned and shoved Kelsier with a fierce burst of power, interrupting him. To hold on longer would have meant letting Ruin rip the power of Preservation away from him completely, and so he let himself go.
Ruin shoved him out of the building, out of the city entirely. Their clash brought incredible pain to Kelsier, and he couldn’t help bearing the impression that – divine though he was – he was limping as he left the city.
Ruin was too focused on this place. Too strong here. He had almost all of his attention pointed at Vin and this city of Fadrex. He was even bringing in Marsh.