Mistborn: secret history

2

Over the next few days, Kelsier tried to replicate his success in getting Vin to listen to him.

Unfortunately, Ruin was watching for him now. Each time Kelsier got close, Ruin interfered, surrounding

him, holding him back. Choking him with black smoke and driving him away.

Ruin seemed amused to keep Kelsier around the periphery of Vin’s camp outside Fadrex, and didn’t drive

him away. But anytime Kelsier tried to speak directly with her, Ruin punished him. Like a parent slapping

a child’s hand for getting too close to the flame.

It was infuriating, more so because of the way Ruin’s words dug at him. Everything Kelsier had

accomplished had merely been part of this thing’s master plan to be freed. And the creature did have

some kind of hold on Vin. It could appear to her, as reinforced by how it led her away from the camp one

day, in a sudden motion that confused Kelsier.

He tried to follow, running after the phantom that Ruin had made. It bounded like a Mistborn and Vin

followed, obviously convinced that she’d discovered a spy. They left the camp behind entirely.

Kelsier slowed, feeling useless, standing on the misty ground outside the city and watching them vanish

into the distance. She could sense that thing, and as long as it was here it overshadowed Kelsier. He’d

never be able to speak with her.

Ruin’s reason for leading Vin away soon manifested. Something launched an assault on Vin and Elend’s

army of koloss. Kelsier figured it out from the bustling of the camp, and was able to reach the scene faster

than the people in the Physical Realm. It looked like siege equipment had been rolled out onto a ridge

above where the koloss camped.

It rained down death upon the beasts. Kelsier couldn’t do anything but watch as the sudden attack killed

thousands of them. He couldn’t feel any real regret when the koloss were destroyed, but it did seem a

waste.

The koloss raged in frustration, unable to reach their enemy. Curiously, their souls started to appear in

the Cognitive Realm.

And they were human.

Not koloss at all, but people, dressed in a variety of outfits. Many were skaa, but there were soldiers,

merchants, and even nobility among them. Both male and female.

Kelsier gaped. He had never quite known what koloss were, but he had not expected this. Common

people, made beasts somehow? He rushed among the dying souls as they faded.

“What happened to you,” he demanded of one woman. “How did this happen to you?”

She regarded him with a bemused expression. “Where,” she said, “where am I?”

In a moment she was gone. It seemed the transition was too much of a shock. The others showed similar

confusion, holding out their hands as if surprised to find themselves human again – though not a few

seemed relieved. Kelsier watched as thousands of these figures appeared, then faded away. It was a

slaughter on the other side, stones crashing down all around. One passed right through Kelsier before

rolling away, breaking bodies.

He could use this, but he would need something specific. Not a skaa peasant, or even a crafty lord. He

needed someone who…

There.

He dashed through fading spirits and dodged between the glowing souls of creatures not yet dead,

making for a particular spirit who had just appeared. Bald, with tattoos circling his eyes. An obligator.

---

This man seemed less surprised by events, and more resigned. By the time Kelsier arrived, the lanky

obligator was already starting to stretch away.

“How?” Kelsier demanded, counting on the obligator to understand more about the koloss. “How did this

happen to you?”

“I don’t know,” the man said.

Kelsier felt his heart sink.

“The beasts,” the man continued, “should have known better than to take an obligator! I was their keeper,

and they did this to me? This world is ruined.”

Should have known better? Kelsier clutched the obligator’s shoulder as the man stretched toward

nothingness. “How? Please, how is it done? Men become koloss?”

The obligator looked to him and, vanishing, said one word.

“Spikes.”

Kelsier gaped again. Around him on the misty plain, souls blazed bright, flashed, and were dumped into

this Realm – before finally fading to nothing. Like human bonfires being extinguished.

Spikes. Like Inquisitor spikes?

He walked to the slumped-over corpses of the dead and knelt, inspecting them. Yes, he could see it. Metal

glowed on this side, and among those corpses were little spikes – like embers, small but glowing fiercely.

They were much harder to make out on the living koloss, because of the way the soul blazed, but it

seemed to him that the spikes pierced into the soul. Was that the secret? He shouted at a pair of koloss,

and they looked toward him, then glanced about, confused.