Brandon SANDERSON - The Hero of Ages

A ruler’s most basic duty was to protect his people. In this one area, Elend continually felt impotent. Useless.

Why can’t I do it? Elend thought with frustration. I spend a year searching out storage caverns to provide food, only to end up trapped with my people starving. I search all that time looking for the atium – hoping to use it to buy safety for my people – and then I find it too late to spend it on anything .

Too late …

He paused, glancing back toward the metal plate in the floor.

Years searching for… atium .

None of the metals Demoux had given his soldiers had worked. Elend had been working under the assumption that Demoux’s group would be like the other mistfallen back in Urteau – that they’d be composed of all kinds of Mistings. Yet, there had been something different about Demoux’s group. They had fallen sick for far longer than the others.

Elend pushed forward, rushing past Sazed, grabbing a handful of beads. A vast wealth, unlike anything any man had ever possessed. Valuable for its rarity. Valuable for its economic power. Valuable for its Allomancy .

“Demoux,” he snapped, rising and tossing the bead to him. “Eat this.”

Demoux frowned. “My lord?”

“Eat it,” Elend said.

Demoux did as asked. He stood for a moment.

Two hundred and eighty men, Elend thought. Sent away from my army because of all the ones who fell sick, they were the most sick. Sixteen days .

Two hundred and eighty men. One-sixteenth of those who fell sick. One out of sixteen Allomantic metals .

Yomen had proven that there was such a thing as an atium Misting. If Elend hadn’t been so distracted, he would have made the connection earlier. If one out of sixteen who fell sick remained that way the longest, would that not imply that they’d gained the most powerful of the sixteen abilities?

Demoux looked up, eyes widening.

And Elend smiled.

Vin hovered outside the cavern, watching with dread as the koloss approached. They were already in a blood frenzy – Ruin had that much control over them. There were thousands upon thousands of them. The slaughter was about to begin.

Vin cried out as they drew closer, throwing herself against Ruin again, trying to drive her power to destroy the thing. As before, she was rebuffed. She felt herself screaming, trembling as she thought about the impending deaths below. It would be like the tsunami deaths on the coast, only worse.

For these were people she knew. People she loved.

She turned back toward the entrance. She didn’t want to watch, but she wouldn’t be able to do anything else. Her self was everywhere. Even if she pulled her nexus away, she knew that she’d still feel the deaths – that they would make her tremble and weep.

From within the cavern, echoing, she sensed a familiar voice. “Today, men, I ask of you your lives.” Vin hovered down, listening, though she couldn’t see into the cavern because of the metals in the rock. She could hear, however. If she’d had eyes, she would have been crying, she knew.

“I ask of you your lives,” Elend said, voice echoing, “and your courage. I ask of you your faith, and your honor – your strength, and your compassion. For today, I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well, or just, or even glorious. But I will say this.

“Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is a victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated!”

There was a brief pause.

“In the end, they will kill us,” Elend said, voice loud, ringing in the cavern. “But first, they shall fear us!”

The men yelled at this, and Vin’s enhanced mind could pick out around two hundred and fifty distinct voices. She heard them split, rushing toward the different cavern entrances. A moment later, someone appeared from the front entrance near her.

A figure in white slowly stepped out into the ash, brilliant white cape fluttering. He held a sword in one hand.

Elend! she tried to cry at him. No! Go back! Charging them is madness! You’ll be killed!

Elend stood tall, watching the waves of koloss as they approached, trampling down the black ash, an endless sea of death with blue skin and red eyes. Many carried swords, the others just bore rocks and lengths of wood. Elend was a tiny white speck before them, a single dot on an endless canvas of blue.

He raised his sword high and charged.

ELEND!

Suddenly, Elend burst with a brilliant energy, so bright that Vin gasped. He met the first koloss head-on, ducking beneath the swinging sword and decapitating the creature in one stroke. Then, instead of jumping away, he spun to the side, swinging. Another koloss fell. Three swords flashed around him, but all missed by just a breath. Elend ducked to the side, taking a koloss in the stomach, then whipped his sword around – his head barely passing beneath another swing – and took off a koloss arm.

He still didn’t Push himself away. Vin froze, watching as he took down one koloss, then beheaded another in a single, fluid stroke. Elend moved with a grace she had never seen from him – she had always been the better warrior, yet at this moment, he put her to shame. He wove between koloss blades as if he were taking part in a prerehearsed stage fight, body after body falling before his gliding blade.

A group of soldiers in Elend’s colors burst from the cavern entrance, charging. Like a wave of light, their forms exploded with power. They, too, moved into the koloss ranks, striking with incredible precision. Not a single one of them fell as Vin watched. They fought with miraculous skill and fortune, each koloss blade falling just a little too late. Blue corpses began to pile up around the glowing force of men.

Somehow, Elend had found an entire army who could burn atium.

Elend was a god.

He’d never burned atium before, and his first experience with the metal filled him with wonder. The koloss around him all emitted atium shadows – images that moved before they did, showing Elend exactly what they would do. He could see into the future, if only a few seconds. In a battle, that was just what one needed.

He could feel the atium enhancing his mind, making him capable of reading and using all of the new information. He didn’t even have to pause and think. His arms moved of their own volition, swinging his sword with awesome precision.

He spun amid a cloud of phantom images, striking at flesh, feeling almost as if he were in the mists again. No koloss could stand against him. He felt energized – he felt amazing. For a time, he was invincible. He’d swallowed so many atium beads he felt as if he’d throw up. For its entire history, atium had been a thing that men had needed to save and hoard. Burning it had seemed such a shame that it had been used only sparingly, only in instances of great need.

Elend didn’t need to worry about any of that. He just burned as much as he wanted. And it made him into a disaster for the koloss – a whirlwind of exact strikes and impossible dodges, always a few steps ahead of his opponents. Foe after foe fell before him. And, when he began to get low on atium, he Pushed himself off a fallen sword back to the entrance. There, with plenty of water to wash it down, Sazed waited with another bag of atium.

Elend downed the beads quickly, then returned to the battle.

Ruin raged and spun, trying to stop the slaughter. Yet, this time, Vin was the force of balance. She blocked Ruin’s every attempt to destroy Elend and the others, keeping it contained.