The sight of that thing turning its attention upon him, the sensation of being tiny in the face of something so vast, deeply troubled Kelsier. For all his confidence and plotting, he was basically nothing. His entire life had been an exercise in unintentional bravado.
Months passed. He didn’t return to study the thing Beyond; Kelsier instead waited for Fuzz to visit and check in on him, as he did periodically.
When Fuzz finally arrived, he looked even more unraveled than the last time, mists escaping from his shoulders, a small hole in his left cheek exposing a view into his mouth, his clothing growing ragged.
“Fuzz?” Kelsier asked. “I saw something. This… Ruin you spoke of. I think I can watch it.”
Fuzz just paced back and forth, not even speaking.
“Fuzz? Hey, are you listening?”
Nothing.
“Idiot,” Kelsier tried. “Hey, you’re a disgrace to deityhood. Are you paying attention?”
Even an insult didn’t work. Fuzz just kept pacing.
Useless, Kelsier thought as a pulse of power left the Well. He happened to catch a glimpse of Fuzz’s eyes as the pulse passed.
And in that moment, Kelsier was reminded why he had named this creature a god in the first place. There was an infinity beyond those eyes, a complement to the one trapped here in this Well. Fuzz was the infinity of a note held perfectly, never wavering. The majesty of a painting, frozen and still, capturing a slice of life from a time gone by. It was the power of many, many moments compressed somehow into one.
Fuzz stopped before him and his cheeks unraveled fully, revealing a skeleton beneath that was also unraveling, eyes glowing with eternity. This creature was a divinity; he was just a broken one.
Fuzz left, and Kelsier didn’t see him for many months. The stillness and silence of his prison seemed as endless as the creatures he had studied. At one point, he found himself planning how to draw the attention of the destructive one, if only to beg it to end him.
It was when he started talking to himself that he really got worried.
“What have you done?”
“I’ve saved the world. Freed mankind.”
“Gotten revenge.”
“The goals can align.”
“You are a coward.”
“I changed the world!”
“And if you’re just a pawn of that thing Beyond? Like the Lord Ruler claimed? Kelsier, what if you have no destiny other than to do as you’re told?”
He contained the outburst, recovered himself, but the fragility of his own sanity unnerved him. He hadn’t been completely sane in the Pits either. In a moment of stillness – staring at the shifting mists that made up the walls of the cavernous room – he admitted a deeper secret to himself.
He hadn’t been completely sane since the Pits.
That was one reason why he didn’t at first trust his senses when someone spoke to him.
“Now this I did not expect.”
Kelsier shook himself, then turned with suspicion, worried he was hallucinating. It was possible to see all kinds of things in those shifting mists that made up the walls of the cavern, if you stared at them long enough.
This, however, was not a figure made of mist. It was a man with stark white hair, his face defined by angular features and a sharp nose. He seemed vaguely familiar to Kelsier, but he couldn’t place why.
The man sat on the floor, one leg up and his arm resting upon his knee. In his hand he held some kind of stick.
Wait… no, he wasn’t sitting on the floor, but on an object that somehow seemed to be floating upon the mists. The white, loglike object sank halfway into the mists of the floor and rocked like a ship on the water, bobbing in place. The rod in the man’s hand was a short oar, and his other leg – the one that wasn’t up – rested over the side of the log and vanished into the misty ground, visible only as an obscured silhouette.
“You,” the man said to Kelsier, “are very bad at doing as you’re supposed to.”
“Who are you?” Kelsier asked, stepping to the edge of his prison, eyes narrowed. This was no hallucination. He refused to believe his sanity was that far gone. “A spirit?”
“Alas,” the man said, “death has never really suited me. Bad for the complexion, you see.” He studied Kelsier, lips raised in a knowing smile.
Kelsier hated him immediately.
“Got stuck there, did you?” the man said. “In Ati’s prison…” He clicked his tongue. “Fitting recompense, for what you did. Poetic even.”
“What I did?”
“Destroying the Pits, O scarred one. That was the only perpendicularity on this planet with any reasonable ease of access. This one is very dangerous, growing more so by the minute, and difficult to find. By doing as you did, you basically ended traffic through Scadrial. Upended an entire mercantile ecosystem, which I’ll admit was fun to watch.”
“Who are you?” Kelsier said.
“I?” the man said. “I am a drifter. A miscreant. The flame’s last breath, made of smoke at its passing.”
“That’s… needlessly obtuse.”
“Well, I’m that too.” The man cocked his head. “That mostly, if I’m honest.”
“And you claim to not be dead?”
“If I were, would I need this?” the Drifter said, knocking his oar against the front of his small loglike vessel. It bobbed at the motion, and for the first time Kelsier was able to make out what it was. Arms he’d missed before, hanging down into the mists, obscured. A head that drooped on its neck. A white robe, masking the shape.
“A corpse,” he whispered.
“Oh, Spanky here is just a spirit. It’s damnably difficult to get about in this subastral – anyone physical risks slipping through these mists and falling, perhaps forever. So many thoughts pool together here, becoming what you see around you, and you need something finer to travel over it all.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Says the man who built a revolution upon the backs of the dead. At least I only need one corpse.”
Kelsier folded his arms. This man was wary – though he spoke lightheartedly, he watched Kelsier with care, and held back as if contemplating a method of attack.
He wants something, Kelsier guessed. Something that I have, maybe? No, he seemed legitimately surprised that Kelsier was there. He had come here, intending to visit the Well. Perhaps he wanted to enter it, access the power? Or did he, perhaps, just want to have a look at the thing Beyond?
“Well, you’re obviously resourceful,” Kelsier said. “Perhaps you can help me with my predicament.”
“Alas,” the Drifter said. “Your case is hopeless.”
Kelsier felt his heart sink.
“Yes, nothing to be done,” the Drifter continued. “You are, indeed, stuck with that face. By manifesting those same features on this side, you show that even your soul is resigned to you always looking like one ugly sonofa–”
“Bastard,” Kelsier cut in. “You had me for a second.”
“Now, that’s demonstrably wrong,” the Drifter said, pointing. “I believe only one of us in this room is illegitimate, and it isn’t me. Unless…” He tapped the floating corpse on the head with his oar. “What about you, Spanky?”
The corpse actually mumbled something.
“Happily married parents? Still alive? Really? I’m sorry for their loss.” The Drifter looked to Kelsier, smiling innocently. “No bastards on this side. What about yours?”