Brandon SANDERSON: The Hero of Ages

They can’t keep you here forever , he told himself. The First Contract says …

But he was beginning to doubt the First Contract – or, rather, that the First Generation paid any attention to it. But, could he blame them? TenSoon was a Contract-breaker. By his own admission, he had gone against the will of his master, helping another instead. This betrayal had ended with his master’s death.

Yet, even such a shameful act was the least of his crimes. The punishment for Contract-breaking was death, and if TenSoon’s crimes had stopped there, the others would have killed him and been done with it. Unfortunately, there was much more at stake. TenSoon’s testimony – given to the Second Generation in a closed conference – had revealed a much more dangerous, much more important, lapse.

TenSoon had betrayed his people’s secret.

They can’t execute me , he thought, using the idea to keep him focused. Not until they find out who I told .

The secret. The precious, precious secret.

I’ve doomed us all. My entire people. We’ll be slaves again. No, we’re already slaves. We’ll become something else – automatons, our minds controlled by others. Captured and used, our bodies no longer our own .

This was what he had done – what he had potentially set in motion. The reason he deserved imprisonment and death. And yet, he wished to live. He should despise himself. But, for some reason, he still felt he had done the right thing.

He shifted again, masses of slick muscle rotating around one another. Midshift, however, he froze. Vibrations. Someone was coming.

He arranged himself, pushing his muscles to the sides of the pit, forming a depression in the middle of his body. He needed to catch all of the food that he could – they fed him precious little. However, no slop came pouring down through the grate. He waited, expectant, until the grate unlocked. Though he had no ears, he could feel the coarse vibrations as the grate was dragged back, its rough iron finally dropped against the floor above.

What?

Hooks came next. They looped around his muscles, grabbing him and ripping his flesh as they pulled him out of the pit. It hurt. Not just the hooks, but the sudden freedom as his body was spilled across the floor of the prison. He unwillingly tasted dirt and dried slop. His muscles quivered, the unfettered motion of being outside the cell felt strange, and he strained, moving his bulk in ways that he had nearly forgotten.

Then it came. He could taste it in the air. Acid, thick and pungent, presumably in a gold-lined bucket brought by the prison keepers. They were going to kill him after all.

But, they can’t! he thought. The First Contract, the law of our people, it–

Something fell on him. Not acid, but something hard. He touched it eagerly, muscles moving against one another, tasting it, testing it, feeling it. It was round, with holes, and several sharp edges… a skull.

The acid stink grew sharper. Were they stirring it? TenSoon moved quickly, forming around the skull, filling it. He already had some dissolved flesh stored inside of an organ-like pouch. He brought this out, oozing it around the skull, quickly making skin. He left the eyes alone, working on lungs, forming a tongue, ignoring lips for the moment. He worked with a sense of desperation as the taste of acid grew strong, and then…

It hit him. It seared the muscles on one side of his body, washing over his bulk, dissolving it. Apparently, the Second Generation had given up on getting his secrets from him. However, before killing him, they knew they had to give him an opportunity to speak. The First Contract required it – hence the skull. However, the guards obviously had orders to kill him before he could actually say anything in his defense. They followed the form of the law, yet at the very same time they ignored its intent.

They didn’t realize, however, how quickly TenSoon could work. Few kandra had spent as much time on Contracts as he had – all of the Second Generation, and most of the Third, had long ago retired from service. They led easy lives here in the Homeland.

An easy life taught one very little.

Most kandra took hours to form a body – some younger ones needed days. In seconds, however, TenSoon had a rudimentary tongue. As the acid moved up his body, he forced out a trachea, inflated a lung, and croaked out a single word:

“Judgment!”

The pouring stopped. His body continued to burn. He worked through the pain, forming primitive hearing organs inside the skull cavity.

A voice whispered nearby. “Fool.”

“Judgment!” TenSoon said again.

“Accept death,” the voice hissed quietly. “Do not put yourself in a position to cause further harm to our people. The First Generation has granted you this chance to die because of your years of extra service!”

TenSoon paused. A trial would be public. So far, only a select few knew the extent of his betrayal. He could die, cursed as a Contract-breaker but retaining some measure of respect for his prior career. Somewhere – likely in a pit in this very room – there were some who suffered endless captivity, a torture that would eventually break even the minds of those endowed with the Blessing of Presence.

Did he want to become one of those? By revealing his actions in an open forum, he would earn himself an eternity of pain. Forcing a trial would be foolish, for there was no hope of vindication. His confessions had already damned him.

If he spoke, it would not be to defend himself. It would be for other reasons entirely.

“Judgment,” he repeated, this time barely whispering.

ELEND VENTURE, SECOND EMPEROR of the Final Empire, had not been born a warrior. He’d been born a nobleman – which, in the Lord Ruler’s day, had essentially made Elend a professional socialite. He’d spent his youth learning to play the frivolous games of the Great Houses, living the pampered lifestyle of the imperial elite.

It wasn’t odd for him to have ended up a politician. He’d always been interested in political theory, and while he’d been more a scholar than a true statesman, he’d known that someday he’d rule his house. Yet, he hadn’t made a very good king at first. He hadn’t understood that there was more to leadership than good ideas and honest intentions. Far more.

I doubt you will ever be the type of leader who can lead a charge against the enemy, Elend Venture . The words had been spoken by Tindwyl – the woman who’d trained him in practical politics. Remembering those words made Elend smile as his soldiers crashed into the koloss camp.

Elend flared pewter. A warm sensation – now familiar to him – burst to life in his chest, and his muscles became taut with extra strength and energy. He’d swallowed the metal earlier, so that he could draw upon its powers for the battle. He was an Allomancer. That still awed him sometimes.

As he’d predicted, the koloss were surprised by the attack. They stood motionless for a few moments, shocked – even though they must have seen Elend’s newly recruited army as it charged. Koloss had trouble dealing with the unexpected. They found it hard to comprehend a group of weak, outnumbered humans attacking their camp. So, it took them time to adjust.

Elend’s army made good use of that time. Elend himself struck first, flaring his pewter to give himself yet more power as he cut down the first koloss. It was a smaller beast. Like all of its kind, it was human-like in form, though it had oversized, drooping blue skin that seemed detached from the rest of its body. Its beady red eyes showed a bit of inhuman surprise as it died, Elend yanking his sword from its chest.