Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)

Clever, she thought, struggling to her feet. Keeps them from being Pushed or Pulled.

The Lord Ruler shook his head regretfully, his steps kicking up trails in the cool mist that poured across the floor from the broken window. He looked so strong, his torso erupting with muscles, his face handsome. She could feel the power of his Allomancy snapping at her emotions, barely held back by her copper.

“What did you think, child?” the Lord Ruler asked quietly. “To defeat me? Am I some common Inquisitor, my powers endowed fabrications?”

Vin flared pewter. She then turned and dashed away—intending to grab Marsh’s body and break through the glass at the other side of the room.

But then, he was there, moving with a speed as if to make the fury of a tornado’s winds seem sluggish. Even within a full pewter flare, Vin couldn’t outrun him. He almost seemed casual as he reached out, grabbing her shoulder and yanking her backward.

He flung her like a doll, tossing her toward one of the room’s massive support pillars. Vin quested desperately for an anchor, but he had blown all of the metal out of the room. Except . . .

She Pulled on one of the Lord Ruler’s own bracelets, ones that didn’t pierce his skin. He immediately whipped his arm upward, throwing off her Pull, making her spin maladroitly in the air. He slammed her with another of his powerful Pushes, blasting her backward. Metals in her stomach wrenched, glass quivered, and her mother’s earring ripped free of her ear.

She tried to spin and hit feet-first, but she crashed into a stone pillar at a terrible speed, and pewter failed her. She heard a sickening snap, and a spear of pain shot up her right leg.

She collapsed to the ground. She didn’t have the will to look, but the agony from her torso told her that her leg jutted from beneath her body, broken at an awkward angle.

The Lord Ruler shook his head. No, Vin realized, he didn’t worry about wearing jewelry. Considering his abilities and strength, a man would have to be foolish—as Vin had been—to try and use the Lord Ruler’s jewelry as an anchor. It had only let him control her jumps.

He stepped forward, feet clicking against broken glass. “You think this is the first time someone has tried to kill me, child? I’ve survived burnings and beheadings. I’ve been stabbed and sliced, crushed and dismembered. I was even flayed once, near the beginning.”

He turned toward Marsh, shaking his head. Strangely, Vin’s earlier impression of the Lord Ruler returned. He looked . . . tired. Exhausted, even. Not his body—it was still muscular. It was just his . . . air. She tried to climb to her feet, using the stone pillar for stability.

“I am God,” he said.

So different from the humble man in the logbook.

“God cannot be killed,” he said. “God cannot be overthrown. Your rebellion—you think I haven’t seen its like before? You think I haven’t destroyed entire armies on my own? What will it take before you people stop questioning? How many centuries must I prove myself before you idiot skaa see the truth? How many of you must I kill!”

Vin cried out as she twisted her leg the wrong way. She flared pewter, but tears came to her eyes anyway. She was running out of metals. Her pewter would be gone soon, and there was no way she would be able to remain conscious without it. She slumped against the pillar, the Lord Ruler’s Allomancy pressing against her. The pain in her leg throbbed.

He’s just too strong, she thought with despair. He’s right. He is God. What were we thinking?

“How dare you?” the Lord Ruler asked, picking up Marsh’s limp body with a bejeweled hand. Marsh groaned slightly, trying to lift his head.

“How dare you?” the Lord Ruler demanded again. “After what I gave you? I made you superior to regular men! I made you dominant!”

Vin’s head snapped up. Through the haze of pain and hopelessness, something triggered a memory inside of her.

He keeps saying . . . he keeps saying that his people should be dominant. . . .

She reached within, feeling her last little bit of Eleventh Metal reserve. She burned it, looking through tearstained eyes as the Lord Ruler held Marsh in a one-handed grip.

The Lord Ruler’s past self appeared next to him. A man in a fur cloak and heavy boots, a man with a full beard and strong muscles. Not an aristocrat or a tyrant. Not a hero, or even a warrior. A man dressed for life in the cold mountains. A herdsman.

Or, perhaps, a packman.

“Rashek,” Vin whispered.

The Lord Ruler spun toward her in startlement.

“Rashek,” Vin said again. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You aren’t the man who wrote the logbook. You’re not the hero that was sent to protect the people . . . you’re his servant. The packman who hated him.”

She paused for a moment. “You . . . you killed him,” she whispered. “That’s what happened that night! That’s why the logbook stopped so suddenly! You killed the hero and took his place. You went into the cavern in his stead, and you claimed the power for yourself. But . . . instead of saving the world, you took control of it.”

“You know nothing!” he bellowed, still holding Marsh’s limp body in one hand. “You know nothing of that!”

“You hated him,” Vin said. “You thought that a Terrisman should have been the hero. You couldn’t stand the fact that he—a man from the country that had oppressed yours—was fulfilling your own legends.”

The Lord Ruler lifted a hand, and Vin suddenly felt an impossible weight press against her. Allomancy, Pushing the metals in her stomach and in her body, threatening to crush her back against the pillar. She cried out, flaring her last bit of pewter, struggling to remain conscious. Mists curled around her, creeping through the broken window and across the floor.

Outside, through the broken window, she could hear something ringing faintly in the air. It sounded like . . . like cheering. Yells of joy, thousands in chorus. It sounded almost like they were cheering her on.

What does it matter? she thought. I know the Lord Ruler’s secret, but what does it tell me? That he was a packman? A servant? A Terrisman?

A Feruchemist.

She looked through dazed eyes, and again saw the pair of bracelets glittering on the Lord Ruler’s upper arms. Bracelets made of metal, bracelets that pierced his skin in places. So . . . so that they couldn’t be affected by Allomancy. Why do that? He supposedly wore metal as a sign of bravado. He wasn’t worried about people Pulling or Pushing against his metals.

Or, that was what he claimed. But, what if all the other metals he wore—the rings, the bracelets, the fashion that had made its way to the nobility—were simply a distraction?

A distraction to keep people from focusing on this one pair of bracers, twisting around the upper arms. Could it really be that easy? she thought as the Lord Ruler’s weight threatened to crush her.

Her pewter was nearly gone. She could barely think. Yet, she burned iron. The Lord Ruler could pierce copperclouds. She could too. They were the same, somehow. If he could affect metals inside of a person’s body, then she could as well.

She flared the iron. Blue lines appeared pointing to the Lord Ruler’s rings and bracelets—all of them but the ones on his upper arms, piercing his skin.

Vin stoked her iron, concentrating, Pushing it as hard as she could. She kept her pewter flared, struggling to keep from being crushed, and she knew somehow that she was no longer breathing. The force pushing against her was too strong. She couldn’t get her chest to go up and down.

Mist spun around her, dancing because of her Allomancy. She was dying. She knew it. She could barely even feel the pain anymore. She was being crushed. Suffocated.

She drew upon the mists.

Two new lines appeared. She screamed, Pulling with a strength she had never known before. She flared her iron higher and higher, the Lord Ruler’s own Push giving her the leverage she needed to Pull against his bracelets. Anger, desperation, and agony mixed within her, and the Pull became her only focus.