Brandon SANDERSON - Mistborn - Secret History

Those experiences faded and seemed to grow cold . One of the lights from the mass of fleeing people – it was hard to make out individuals, with everyone alight – scrambled toward him. At first he thought perhaps this person had seen his spirit. But no, they ran to his corpse and knelt.

Now that she was close, he could make out the details of this figure’s features, cut of mist and glowing from deep within.

“Ah, child,” Kelsier said. “I’m sorry.” He reached out and cupped Vin’s face as she wept over him, and found he could feel her. She was solid to his ethereal fingers. She didn’t seem able to feel his touch, but he caught a vision of her from the real world, cheeks stained with tears.

His last words to her had been harsh, hadn’t they? Perhaps it was a good thing that he and Mare had never had children.

A glowing figure surged from the fleeing masses and grabbed Vin. Was that Ham? Had to be, with that profile. Kelsier stood up and watched them withdraw. He had set plans in motion for them. Perhaps they would hate him for that.

“You let him kill you.”

Kelsier spun, surprised to find a person standing beside him. Not a figure made of mist, but a man in strange clothing: a thin wool coat that went down almost to his feet, and beneath it a shirt that laced closed, with a kind of conical skirt. That was tied with a belt that had a bone-handled knife stuck through a loop.

The man was short, with black hair and a prominent nose. Unlike the other people – who were made of light – this man looked normal, like Kelsier. Since Kelsier was dead, did this make the man another ghost?

“Who are you?” Kelsier demanded.

“Oh, I think you know.” The man met Kelsier’s eyes, and in them Kelsier saw eternity. A cool, calm eternity – the eternity of stones that saw generations pass, or of careless depths that didn’t notice the changing of days, for light never reached them anyway.

“Oh, hell,” Kelsier said. “There’s actually a God?”

“Yes.”

Kelsier decked him.

It was a good, clean punch, thrown from the shoulder while he brought his other arm up to block a counter strike. Dox would be proud.

God didn’t dodge. Kelsier’s punch took him right across the face, connecting with a satisfying thud . The punch tossed God to the ground, though when he looked up he seemed more shocked than pained.

Kelsier stepped forward. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re real, and you’re letting this happen?” He waved toward the square where – to his horror – he saw lights winking out. The Inquisitors were attacking the crowd.

“I do what I can.” The fallen figure seemed to distort for a moment, bits of him expanding, like mists escaping an enclosure. “I do… I do what I can. It is in motion, you see. I…”

Kelsier recoiled a step, eyes widening as God came apart , then pulled back together.

Around him, other souls made the transition. Their bodies stopped glowing, then their souls lurched into this land of mists: stumbling, falling, as if ejected from their bodies. Once they arrived, Kelsier saw them in color. The same man – God – appeared near each of them. There were suddenly over a dozen versions of him, each identical, each speaking to one of the dead.

The version of God near Kelsier stood up and rubbed his jaw. “Nobody has ever done that before.”

“What, really?” Kelsier asked.

“No. Souls are usually too disoriented. Some do run, though.” He looked to Kelsier.

Kelsier made fists. God stepped back and – amusingly – reached for the knife at his belt.

Well, Kelsier wasn’t going to attack him, not again. But he had heard the challenge in those words. Would he run? Of course not. Where would he run to?

Nearby, an unfortunate skaa woman lurched into the afterlife, then almost immediately faded . Her figure stretched, transforming to a white mist that was pulled toward a distant, dark point. That was how it looked, at least, though the point she stretched toward wasn’t a place – not really. It was… Beyond. A location that was somehow distant, pointing away from him no matter where he moved.

She stretched, then faded away. Other spirits in the square followed.

Kelsier spun on God. “What’s happening?”

“You didn’t think this was the end, did you?” God asked, waving toward the shadowy world. “This is the in-between step. After death and before…”

“Before what?”

“Before the Beyond,” God said. “The Somewhere Else. Where souls must go. Where yours must go.”

“I haven’t gone yet.”

“It takes longer for Allomancers, but it will happen. It is the natural progress of things, like a stream flowing toward the ocean. I’m here not to make it occur, but to comfort you as you go. I see it as a kind of… duty that comes with my position.” He rubbed the side of his face and gave Kelsier a glare that said what he thought of his reception.

Nearby, another pair of people faded into the eternities. They seemed to accept it, stepping into the stretching nothingness with relieved, welcoming smiles. Kelsier looked at those departing souls.

“Mare,” he whispered.

“She went Beyond. As you will.”

Kelsier looked toward that point Beyond, the point toward which all the dead were being drawn. He felt it, faintly, begin to tug on him as well.

No. Not yet.

“We need a plan,” Kelsier said.

“A plan?” God asked.

“To get me out of this. I might need your help.”

“There is no way out of this.”

“That’s a terrible attitude,” Kelsier said. “We’ll never get anything done if you talk like that.”

He looked at his arm, which was – disconcertingly – starting to blur, like ink on a page that had been accidentally brushed before it dried. He felt a draining .

He started walking, forcing himself into a stride. He wouldn’t just stand there while eternity tried to suck him away.

“It is natural to feel uncertain,” God said, falling into step beside him. “Many are anxious. Be at peace. The ones you left behind will find their own way, and you–”

“Yes, great,” Kelsier said. “No time for lectures. Talk to me. Has anyone ever resisted being pulled into the Beyond?”

“No.” God’s form pulsed, unraveling again before coming back together. “I’ve told you already.”

Damn, Kelsier thought. He seems one step from falling apart himself.

Well, you had to work with what you had. “You’ve got to have some kind of idea what I could try, Fuzz.”

“What did you call me?”

“Fuzz. I’ve got to call you something.”

“You could try ‘My Lord,’ ” Fuzz said with a huff.

“That’s a terrible nickname for a crewmember.”

“Crewmember…”

“I need a team,” Kelsier said, still striding through the shadowy version of Luthadel. “And as you can see, my options are limited. I’d rather have Dox, but he’s got to go deal with the man who is claiming to be you. Besides, the initiation to this particular team of mine is a killer.”

“But–”

Kelsier turned, taking the smaller man by the shoulders. Kelsier’s arms were blurring further, drawn away like water being pulled into the current of an invisible stream.

“Look,” Kelsier said quietly, urgently, “you said you were here to comfort me. This is how you do it. If you’re right, then nothing I do now will matter. So why not humor me? Let me have one last thrill as I face down the ultimate eventuality.”

Fuzz sighed. “It would be better if you accepted what is happening.”

Kelsier held Fuzz’s gaze. Time was running out; he could feel himself sliding toward oblivion, a distant point of nothingness, dark and unknowable. Still he held that gaze. If this creature acted anything like the human he resembled, then holding his eyes – with confidence, smiling, self-assured – would work. Fuzz would bend.