Mistborn: Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5)

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 dietyhood. 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.”