Mistborn: Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5)

In fact, the lake was like a low island rising from the sea of mists. What was solid and what was fluid seemed somehow reversed in this place. Kelsier stepped up to the island’s edge, the ribbon of Preservation’s essence curling past him and leading onto the island, like a mythical string showing the way home from the grand maze of Ishathon.

Kelsier stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the ground of the island. It was some type of dark, smoky stone.

“What?” Preservation whispered.

Kelsier jumped, then glanced at the line of light. “You . . . in there, Fuzz?”

“I’m everywhere,” Preservation said, his voice soft, frail. He sounded exhausted. “Why have you stopped?”

“This is different.”

“Yes, it congeals here,” Preservation said. “It has to do with the way men think, and where they are likely to pass. Somewhat to do with that, at least.”

“But what is it?” Kelsier said, stepping up onto the island.

Preservation said nothing further, and so Kelsier continued toward the center of the island. Whatever had “congealed” here, it was strikingly stonelike. And things grew on it. Kelsier passed scrubby plants sprouting from the otherwise hard ground—not misty, inchoate plants, but real ones full of color. They had broad brown leaves with—curiously—what seemed like mist rising from them. None of the plants reached higher than his knees, but there were still far more than he’d expected to find here.

As he passed through a field of the plants, he thought he caught something scurrying between them, rustling leaves in its passing.

The world of the dead has plants and animals? he thought. But that wasn’t what Preservation had called it. The Cognitive Realm. How did these plants grow here? What watered them?

The farther he penetrated onto this island, the darker it became. Ruin was covering up that tiny sun, and Kelsier began to miss even the faint glow that had permeated the phantom mists in the city. Soon he was traveling in what seemed like twilight.

Eventually Preservation’s ribbon grew thin, then vanished. Kelsier stopped near its tip, whispering, “Fuzz? You there?”

No response, the silence refuting Preservation’s claim earlier that he was everywhere. Kelsier shook his head. Perhaps Preservation was listening, but wasn’t there enough to give a reply. Kelsier continued forward, passing through a place where the plants had grown to waist height, mist rising from their broad leaves like steam from a hot plate.

Finally, ahead he spotted light. Kelsier pulled up. He’d fallen into a prowl naturally, led by instincts gained from a life spent on the con, literally since the day of his birth. He had no weapons. He knelt, feeling at the ground for a stone or stick, but these plants weren’t big enough to provide anything substantial, and the ground was smooth, unbroken.

Preservation had promised him help, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted what Preservation said. Odd, that living through his own death should make him more hesitant to trust in God’s word. He took off his belt for a weapon, but it evaporated in his hands and appeared back on his waist. Shaking his head, he prowled closer, approaching near enough to the fire to pick out two people. Alive, and in this Realm, not glowing souls or misty spirits.

The man wore skaa clothing—suspenders, shirt with sleeves rolled up—and tended a small dinner fire. He had short hair and a narrow, almost pinched face. That knife at his belt, nearly long enough to be a sword, would come in very handy.

The other person, who sat on a small folding chair, might have been Terris. There were some among their population who had a skin tone almost as dark as hers, though he’d also met some people from the various southern dominances who were dark. She certainly wasn’t wearing Terris clothing—she had on a sturdy brown dress, with a large leather girdle around the waist, and wore her hair woven into tiny braids.

Two. He could handle two, couldn’t he? Even without Allomancy or weapons. Regardless, best to be careful. He hadn’t forgotten his humiliation at the hands of the Drifter. Kelsier made a careful decision, then stood up, straightened his coat, and strode into their camp.

“Well,” he proclaimed, “this has been an unusual few days, I can tell you that.”

The man at the fire scrambled backward, hand on his knife, gaping. The woman remained seated, though she reached for something at her side. A little tube with a handle on the bottom. She pointed it toward him, treating it like some kind of weapon.

“So,” Kelsier said, glancing at the sky with its shifting, writhing mass of too-solid tendrils, “anyone else bothered by the voracious force of destruction in the air above us?”

“Shadows!” the man shouted. “It’s you. You’re dead!”

“Depends on your definition of dead,” Kelsier said, strolling over to the fire. The woman trailed him with that odd weapon of hers. “What in the blazes are you burning for that fire?” He looked up at the two of them. “What?”

“How?” the man sputtered. “What? When . . .”

“. . . Why?” Kelsier added helpfully.

“Yes, why!”