Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (87 page)

76

VIN . . . FLOATED.
She wasn't asleep, but she didn't quite f eel awake either. She was disoriented, uncertain. Was she still lying in the broken courtyard of Kredik Shaw? Was she sleeping in her cabin aboard the narrowboat with Elend? Was she in her palace quarters, back in Luthadel, the city under siege ? Was she in Clubs's shop, worried and confused by the kindness of this strange new crew?

Was she huddled in an alleyway, crying, back hurting from another of Reen's beatings ?

She felt about her, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Her arms and legs didn't seem to work. In fact, she couldn't even really focus on them. The longer she floated, however, the clearer her vision became. She was . . . in Luthadel. Af ter killing the Inquisitors .

Why couldn't she feel anything? She tried to reach down, to push herself to her knees, but the ground seemed strangely far away. And, she saw no arms in front of her. She j ust continued to float. I'm dead, she thought.

Even as that occurred to her, she woke up a bit more. She could see, though it was as if she looked through a very blurry, distorting p ane of glass. She felt . . . a power buzzing within her. A strength unlike that of limbs but somehow more versatile.

She managed to turn, getting a sweeping view of the city. And, half way through her turn, she came face-to-face with something dark.

She couldn't tell how far away it was. It seemed close and distant at the same time. She could view it with detail far more detail than she could see in the actual world but she couldn't touch it. She knew, instinctively, what it was.

Ruin no longer looked like Reen. Instead, he manifested as a large patch of shif ting black smoke. A thing without a body, but with a consciousness greater than that of a simple human. That . . . is what
I 've become,
Vin realized, thoughts becoming clearer.
V in,
Ruin spoke . His voice was not that of Reen, but instead something more . . . guttural. It was a vibration that washed across her, like an Allomantic pulse.
Welcome,
Ruin said,
to godhood
. Vin remained silent, though she quested out with her power, trying to get a sense of what she could do. Understanding seemed to open to her. It was like before, when she'd taken the power at the Well of Ascension. She immediately
knew
things. Only this time, the power was so vast the understanding so great that it seemed to have shocked her mind. Fortunately, that mind was expanding, and she was growing.

Awakening.

She rose above the city, knowing that the power spinning through her the core of her existence was simply a hub. A focus for power that stretched across the entire world. She could be anywhere she wished. Indeed, a part of her was in all places at once. She could see the world as a whole . And it was dying. She felt its tremors, saw its life ebbing. Already, most of the plant life on the planet was dead. Animals would go quickly the ones who survived were those who could find a way to chew on dead foliage now covered by ash. Humans would not be far behind, though Vin found it interesting to note that a surprising percentage of them had found their way down into one or another of the storage caverns.

Not storage caverns
. . . Vin thought, finally understanding the Lord Ruler's purpose.
Shelters. That's
why the y're so vast. They're like fortresses f or people to hide in. To wait , to survive a little
longer . Well, she would fix that. She f elt electrif ied with power. She reached out and plugged the ashmounts

. She soothed them, deadened them, smothered their ability to spray ash and lava. Then, she reached into the sky and wiped the smoke and darkness from the atmosphere like a maid wiping soot from a dirty window. She did all of this in a matter of instants; not more than five minutes would have passed on the world below .

Immediately, the land began to burn.

The sun was amazingly powerful she hadn't realized how much the ash and smoke had done to shield the land. She cried out, spinning the world quickly so that the sun moved to its other side. Darkness fell. And, as soon as she did that, tempests began to swoop across the landscape. Weather patterns were disrupted by the motion, and in the sea a sudden wave appeared, enormously large. It rolled toward the coast, threatening to wipe away several cities.

Vin cried out again, reaching to stop the wave. And something blocked her.

She heard laughter. She turned in the air, looking to where Ruin sat like a shifting, undulating thundercloud.

V in, Vin
. . . he said.
Do you realize how like the Lord Ruler you are? When he f irst took the power,
he tried to solve everything. All of man's ills
. She saw it. She wasn't omniscient she couldn't see the entirety of the past. However, she
could
see the history of the power she held. She could see when Rashek had taken it, and she could see him, frustrated, trying to pull the planet into a proper orbit. Yet, he pulled it too far, leaving the world cold and f reezing. He pushed it back again, but his power was too vast too terrible for him to control properly at that time. S o, he again left the world too hot. All life would have perished. He opened the ashmounts, clogging the atmosphere, turning the sun red. And, in doing so, he saved the planet but doomed it as well .

You are so impetuous,
Ruin thought.
I have held this power for a period of time longer than you can
imagine. It takes care and precision to use it correctl y
.
Unless, of course, you
just want to destro
y
. He reached out with a power Vin could feel. Immediately, without knowing how or why, she blocked him. She threw her power up against his, and he halted, unable to act.

Below, the tsunami crashed into the coast. There were still people down there. People who had hidden from the koloss, who had survived on fish from the sea when their crops failed. Vin felt their pain, their terror, and she cried out as she reached to protect them.

And, again, was stopped.

Now you know the f rustration,
Ruin said as the tsunami destroyed villages.
What was it your Elend
said? For every Push, there is a Pull. Throw something up, and it will come back down. Opposition
.
For Ruin, there is Preservation. Time immemorial! Eternit y! And each time I push, YOU push back.
Even when dead, you stopped me, f or we are forces. I can do nothing! And you can do nothing!

Balance! The curse of our existence
.

Vin suffered as the people below were crushed, washed away, and drowned.
Please,
she said.
Please
just let me save them
.

Why? Ruin asked. What is it I told you be f ore? Ever ything you do serves
me. It is
out of kindness
that I stop you. For, even if you were to reach your hand out for them, you would destroy more than
you preserve
.

That is always the way it is .

Vin hung, listening to the screams. And yet, a part of her mind now so vast, now capable of many thoughts at once dissected Ruin's words. They were untrue. He said that all things destroyed, yet he complained about balance. He warned that she would only destroy more, but she could not believe that he would stop her out of kindness. He wanted her to destroy.

It couldn't be both ways. She knew herself as his opposite. She
could
have saved those people, if he hadn't stopped her. True, she probably didn't have the accuracy to do it yet. That wasn't the power's fault, however, but hers . He had to stop her so that she wouldn't learn, as the Lord Ruler had, and become more capable with the power.

She spun away from him, moving back toward Luthadel . Her awareness was still expanding, but she was confused by something she saw. Bright points of light, dotting the landscape, shining like f lares. She drew closer, trying to f igure out what they were. Yet, just as it was difficult to look directly at a bright lantern and see what was emitting the light, it was difficult to discern the source of this power. She figured it out as she reached Luthadel. A large glow was coming from the broken palace. Most of the light was shaped vaguely like . . .

Spires. Metal. That's what caused the glowing power. I was right. Metal is power, and it's why Ruin couldn't read things written in steel . Vin turned away from a brightly shining spire. Ruin was there, as always, watching her.

I was surprised when Preservation said he wanted to create
you,
Ruin said, a bit of curiosity in his voice.
Other li fe is ordered by way of nature. Balanced. But Preservation . . . he wanted to create
something intentionall y unbalanced. Something that could choose to preserve at times, but to ruin at
others. Something in the form of that which we'd seen be fore. It was intriguing
.
I f ind it odd that he expended so much of himsel f to create you. Why would he weaken himself,
eventually giving me the strength to destroy the world, simply to place human beings on his world? I
know that others call his death to imprison me a sacrif ice, but that wasn't the sacri f ice. His sacri f
ice came much earlier
.
Yes, he still tried to betray me to imprison me. But , he could not stop me. He
could only slow me. Forestall. Dela y. Since the day we created you, there has been an imbalance. I
was stronger. And he knew it
.

Vin frowned or, at least, she felt as if she
were frowning, though she no longer had a body. His words

. . .

He says he's stronger,
Vin thought.
Yet, we are equall y matched. Is he lying again?

No . . . he didn't lie. Looking back with her ever-expanding mind, she saw that everything Ruin said, he
believed
. He truly thought that whatever she did helped him. He saw the world through the lenses of destruction.

. 179 201

He wasn't lying about being more powerful than she. Yet, they were obviously matched at the moment. Which meant . . .

There's another piece of Ruin out there,
Vin thought.
Preservation
is
weaker because he gave up a
piece of himsel f to create mankind. Not his consciousness that he used to f uel Ruin's prison but an
actual bit
of his power .

What she had suspected before, she now knew with certainty. Ruin's power was concentrated, hidden somewhere by Preservation.
The atium
. Ruin
was
stronger. Or, he would be, once he recovered the last part of his self. Then, he would be able to destroy completely they would no longer be balanced. She swung about in frustration, a glowing white aura of mist with wispy tendrils expanding across the entire world. There's so much I still
don't know,
Vin thought. It was an odd thing to acknowledge, with her mind broadening to include so much. Yet, her ignorance was no longer that of a person. Her ignorance was related to experience. Ruin had such a huge head start on her. He had created for himself servants who could act without his direction, and so she could not block them. She saw his planning manif est in the world. She saw him subtly influencing the Lord Ruler a thousand years ago. Even while Rashek held the power of Preservation, Ruin had whispered in his ear, dire cting him toward an understanding of Hemalurgy. And, Rashek had obeyed without realizing it, creating minions armies for Ruin to take when the time was right.

Vin could see them the koloss converging toward Luthadel.

I will give you credit, Vin,
Ruin said, hovering nearby.
You destroyed my Inquisitors. All but one, at
least. The y were very di f ficult to make. I
. . . She stopped f ocusing on him, at least with most of her mind. Something else drew her attention. Something moving into Luthadel, flying on spears of light. Elend.

. 180 201

Looking back, we should have been able to see the connection between the mists, A llomanc y, and the
power at the Well of Ascension. Not only could A llomancers ' vision pierce the mists, but there was
the fact that the mists swirled slightl y around the body of a person using any kind of A llomanc y
.
More telling, perhaps, was the f act that when a Hemalur gist used his abilities, it drove the mists awa
y. The closer one came to Ru in, the more under his in f luence, and the longer one bore his s pikes,
the more the mists were repelled
.

77

ELEND STOOD IN THE RUBBLE
of Kredik Shaw, mind numb as he contemplated the destruction.

It seemed . . . impossible. What force could have leveled such an enormous, ma jestic building? What could have caused such destruction, breaking apart buildings and f linging rubble several streets away? And, all of the destruction was focused here, at what had once been the center of the Lord Ruler's power. Elend skidded down some rubble, approaching the center of what looked like an impact crater. He turned around in the dark night, looking at the fallen blocks and spires.

"Lord Ruler . . ." he swore quietly, unable to help himself. Had something happened at the Well of Ascension? Had it exploded?

Elend turned, looking across his city. It appeared to be empty. Luthadel, largest metropolis in the Final Empire, seat of his government. Empty. Much of it in ruins, a good third of it burned, and Kredik Shaw itself flattened as if it had been pounded by the fist of a god. Elend dropped a coin and shot away, heading along his original path toward the northeastern section of the city. He'd come to Luthadel hoping to find Vin, but had been forced to take a slight detour to the south in order to get around a particularly large swath of lava burning the plains around Mount Tyrian. That sight, along with the sight of Luthadel in ruin, left him very disturbed. Where was Vin?

He jumped from building to building. He kicked up ash with each leap. Things were happening. The ash was slowly trickling away in fact, it had mostly stopped falling. That was good, but he remembered well a short time ago when the sun had suddenly blazed with an amazing intensity. Those few moments had burned him so that his face still hurt.