The Hero of Ages

"What do you expect me to do, Vin?" Elend asked, slamming his can of stew down on the shelf. "The koloss are gathering in the Outer Dominances. If we don't build our defenses, our people won't last long enough to starve."



Vin shook her head. "Armies are short-term. This," she said, sweeping her hand across the cavern. "This is short-term. What are we doing here?"



"We're survivi1ng. Kelsier said—"



"Kelsier is dead, Elend!" Vin snapped. "Am I the only one who sees the irony in that? We call him the Survivor, but he is the one who didn't survive! He let himself become a martyr. He committed suicide. How is that surviving?"



She stood for a moment, looking at Elend, breathing deeply. He stared back, apparently undaunted by her outburst.



What am I doing? Vin thought. I was just thinking about how much I admired Elend's hope. Why argue with him now?



They were stretched so thin. Both of them.



"I don't have answers for you, Vin," Elend said in the dark cavern. "I can't even begin to understand how to fight something like the mist. Armies, however, I can deal with. Or, at least, I'm learning how."



"I'm sorry," Vin said, turning away. "I didn't mean to argue again. It's just so frustrating."



"We're making progress," Elend said. "We'll find a way, Vin. We'll survive."



"Do you really think we can do it?" Vin asked, turning to look him in the eyes.



"Yes," Elend said.



And she believed him. He had hope, and always would. That was a big part of why she loved him so much.



"Come on," Elend said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Let's find what we came for."



Vin joined him, leaving her koloss behind, walking into the depths of the cavern as they heard footsteps outside. There was more than one reason they had come to this place. The food and the supplies—of which they passed seemingly endless shelves—were important. However, there was more.



A large metal plate was set into the back wall of the rough-hewn cavern. Vin read the words inscribed on it out loud.



" 'This is the last metal I will tell you about,' " she read. " 'I have trouble deciding the purpose of it. It allows you to see the past, in a way. What a person could have been, and who they might have become, had they made different choices. Much like gold, but for others.



" 'By now, the mists have likely come again. Such a foul, hateful thing. Scorn it. Don't go out in it. It seeks to destroy us all. If there is trouble, know that you can control the koloss and the kandra by use of several people Pushing on their emotions at once. I built this weakness into them. Keep the secret wisely.' "



Beneath that was listed an Allomantic compound of metals, one with which Vin was already familiar. It was the alloy of atium they called malatium—Kelsier's Eleventh Metal. So the Lord Ruler had known about it. He'd simply been as baffled as the rest of them as to its purpose.



The plate had been written by the Lord Ruler, of course. Or, at least, he'd ordered it written as it was. Each previous cache had also contained information, written in steel. In Urteau, for instance, she had learned about electrum. In the one to the east, they'd found a description of aluminum—though they'd already known about that metal.



"Not much new there," Elend said, sounding disappointed. "We already knew about malatium and about controlling koloss. Though, I'd never thought to have several Soothers Push at the same time. That might be helpful." Before, they'd thought it took a Mistborn burning duralumin to get control of koloss.



"It doesn't matter," Vin said, pointing at the1 other side of the plate. "We have that."



The other half of the plate contained a map, carved into steel, just like the maps they had found in the other three storage caverns. It depicted the Final Empire, divided into dominances. Luthadel was a square at the center. An "X" to the east marked the main thing they'd come looking for: the location of the final cavern.



There were five, they thought. They'd found the first one beneath Luthadel, near the Well of Ascension. It had given the location of the second, to the east. The third had been in Urteau—Vin had been able to sneak into that one, but they hadn't managed to recover the food yet. That one had led them here, to the south.



Each map had two numbers on it—a five and a lower number. Luthadel had been number one. This one was number four.



"That's it," Vin said, running her fingers along the carved inscriptions on the plate. "In the Western Dominance, as you guessed. Somewhere near Chardees?"



"Fadrex City," Elend said.



"Cett's home?"



Elend nodded. He knew far more about geography than she.



"That's the place, then," Vin said. "The one where it is."



Elend met her eyes, and she knew he understood her. The caches had grown progressively larger and more valuable. Each one had a specialized aspect to it as well—the first had contained weapons in addition to its other supplies, while the second had contained large amounts of lumber. As they'd investigated each successive cache, they'd grown more and more excited about what the last one might contain. Something spectacular, surely. Perhaps even it.



The Lord Ruler's atium cache.



It was the most valuable treasure in the Final Empire. Despite years of searching, nobody had ever located it. Some said it didn't even exist. But, Vin felt that it had to. Despite a thousand years of controlling the sole mine that produced the extremely rare metal, he had allowed only a small portion of atium to enter the economy. Nobody knew what the Lord Ruler had done with the greater portion he had kept to himself for all those centuries.



"Now, don't get too excited," Elend said. "We have no proof that we'll find the atium in that final cavern."



"It has to be there," Vin said. "It makes sense. Where else would the Lord Ruler store his atium?"



"If I could answer that, we'd have found it."



Vin shook her head. "He put it somewhere safe, but somewhere where it would eventually be found. He left these maps as clues to his followers, should he—somehow—be defeated. He didn't want an enemy who captured one of the caverns to be able to find them all instantly."



A trail of clues that led to one, final cache. The most important one. It made sense. It had to. Elend didn't look convinced. He rubbed his bearded chin, studying the reflective plate in their lantern light. "Even if we find it," he said, "I don't know that it will help that much. What good is money to us now?"



"It's more than money," she said. "It's power. A weapon we can use to fight."



"Fight the mists?" he asked.



Vin fell silent. "Perhaps not," she finally said. "But the koloss, and the other armies. With that atium, your empire becomes secure. . . . Plus, atium is part of all this, El1end. It's only valuable because of Allomancy—but Allomancy didn't exist until the Ascension."



"Another unanswered question," Elend said. "Why did that nugget of metal I ingested make me Mistborn? Where did it come from? Why was it placed at the Well of Ascension, and by whom? Why was there only one left, and what happened to the others?"



"Maybe we'll find the answer once we take Fadrex," Vin said.



Elend nodded. She could tell he considered the information contained in the caches the most important reason to track them down, followed closely by the supplies. To him, the possibility of finding atium was relatively unimportant. Vin couldn't explain why she felt he was so wrong in this regard. The atium was important. She just knew it. Her earlier despair lightened as she looked over the map. They had to go to Fadrex. She knew it.



The answers would be there.



"Taking Fadrex won't be easy," Elend noted. "Cett's enemies have entrenched themselves quite solidly there. I hear a former Ministry obligator is in charge."



"The atium will be worth it," Vin said.



"If it's there," Elend said.



She gave him a flat stare.



He held up a hand. "I'm just trying to do what you told me, Vin—I'm trying to be realistic. However, I agree that Fadrex will be worth the effort. Even if the atium isn't there, we need the supplies in that store. We need to know what the Lord Ruler left us."



Vin nodded. She herself no longer had any atium. She'd burned up their last bit a year and a half ago, and she'd never gotten used to how exposed she felt without it. Electrum softened that fear somewhat, but not completely.



Voices sounded from the other end of the cavern, and Elend turned. "I should go speak to them," he said. "We're going to have to organize things in here quickly."



"Have you told them yet that we're going to have to move them back to Luthadel?"



Elend shook his head. "They won't like it," he said. "They're becoming independent, as I always hoped they would."



"It has to be done, Elend," Vin said. "This city is well outside our defensive perimeter. Plus, they can't have more than a few hours of mistless daylight left this far out. Their crops are already doomed."



Elend nodded, but he continued to stare out into the darkness. "I come, I seize control of their city, take their treasure, then force them to abandon their homes. And from here we go to Fadrex to conquer another."



"Elend—"



He held up a hand. "I know, Vin. It must be done." He turned, leaving the lantern and walking toward the doorway. As he did, his posture straightened, and his face became more firm.



Vin turned back to the plate, rereading the Lord Ruler's words. On a different plate, much like this one, Sazed had found the words of Kwaan, the long-dead Terrisman who had changed the world by claiming to have found the Hero of Ages. Kwaan had left his words as a confession of his errors, warning that some kind of force was working to change the histories and religions of mankind. He'd worried that the force was suborning the Terris religion in order to cause a "Hero" to come to the North and release it.



That was exactly what Vin had done. She'd called herself hero, and had released the enemy—all the 1while thinking that she was sacrificing her own needs for the good of the world.



She ran her fingers across the large plate.



We have to do more than just fight wars! she thought, angry at the Lord Ruler. If you knew so much, why didn't you leave us more than this? A few maps in scattered halls filled with supplies? A couple of paragraphs, telling us about metals that are of barely any use? What good is a cave full of food when we have an entire empire to feed!



Vin stopped. Her fingers—made far more sensitive by the tin she was burning to help her eyesight in the dark cavern—brushed against grooves in the plate's surface. She knelt, leaning close, to find a short inscription carved in the metal, at the bottom, the letters much smaller than the ones up above.



Be careful what you speak, it read. It can hear what you say. It can read what you write. Only your thoughts are safe.



Vin shivered.



Only your thoughts are safe.



What had the Lord Ruler learned in his moments of transcendence? What things had he kept in his mind forever, never writing them down for fear of revealing his knowledge, always expecting that he would eventually be the one who took the power when it came again? Had he, perhaps, planned to use that power to destroy the thing that Vin had released?

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