The Well of Ascension

Clubs held up a hand, and the squad of two hundred men stopped. Breeze looked around. The street was quiet in the falling ash and snow. Everything seemed. . .dull. The sky was dim, the city's features softened by the blanket of black-speckled snow. It seemed so strange to have fled the horrific scene of scarlet and blue to find the city looking so lazy.



"Damn!" Clubs snapped, pushing Breeze out of the way as a raging group of koloss burst from a side street. Clubs's soldiers fell into a line, but another group of koloss—the creatures that had just burst through the gate—came up behind them.



Breeze stumbled, falling in the snow. That other group. . .it came from the north! The creatures have infiltrated the city this far already?



"Clubs!" Breeze said, turning. "We—"



Breeze looked just in time to see a massive koloss sword sheer through Clubs's upraised arm, then continue on to hit the general in the ribs. Clubs grunted, thrown to the side, his sword arm—weapon and all—flying free. He stumbled on his bad leg, and the koloss brought his sword down in a two-handed blow.



The dirty snow finally got some color. A splash of red.



Breeze stared, dumbfounded, at the remains of his friend's corpse. Then the koloss turned toward Breeze, snarling.



The likelihood of his own impending death hit, stirring him as even the cold snow couldn't. Breeze scrambled back, sliding in the snow, instinctively reaching out to try and Soothe the creature. Of course, nothing happened. Breeze tried to get to his feet, and the koloss—along with several others—began to bear down on him. At that moment, however, another troop of soldiers fleeing the gate appeared from a cross street, distracting the koloss.



Breeze did the only thing that seemed natural. He crawled inside a building and hid.



"This is all Kelsier's fault," Dockson muttered, making another notation on his map. According to messengers, Ham had reached Keep Lekal. It wouldn't last long.



The Venture grand hall was a flurry of motion and chaos as panicked scribes ran this way and that, finally realizing that koloss didn't care if a man were skaa, scholar, nobleman, or merchant. The creatures just liked to kill.



"He should have seen this coming," Dockson continued. "He left us with this mess, and then he just assumed that we'd find a way to fix it. Well, I can't hide a city from its enemies—not like I hid a crew. Just because we were excellent thieves doesn't mean we'd be any good at running a kingdom!"



Nobody was listening to him. His messengers had all fled, and his guards fought at the keep gates. Each of the keeps had its own defenses, but Clubs—rightly—had decided to use them only as a fallback option. They weren't designed to repel a large-scale attack, and they were too secluded from each other. Retreating to them only fractured and isolated the human army.



"Our real problem is follow-through," Dockson said, making a final notation at Tin Gate, explaining what had happened there. He looked over the map. He'd never expected Sazed's gate to be the last one to hold.



"Follow-through," he continued. "We assumed we could do a better job than the noblemen, but once we had the power, we put them back in charge. If we'd killed the whole lot, perhaps then we could have started fresh. Of course, that would have meant invading the other dominances—which would have meant sending Vin to take care of the most important, most problematic, noblemen. There would have been a slaughter like the Final Empire had never seen. And, if we'd done that. . ."



He trailed off, looking up as one of the massive, majestic stained-glass windows shattered. The others began to explode as well, broken by thrown rocks. A few large koloss jumped through the holes, landing on the shard-strewn marble floor. Even broken, the windows were beautiful, the spiked glass edges twinkling in the evening light. Through one of them, Dockson could see that the storm was breaking, letting sunlight through.



"If we'd done that," Dockson said quietly, "we'd have been no better than beasts."



Scribes screamed, trying to flee as the koloss began the slaughter. Dockson stood quietly, hearing noise behind—grunts, harsh breathing—as koloss approached through the back hallways. He reached for the sword on his table as men began to die.



He closed his eyes. You know, Kell, he thought. I almost started to believe that they were right, that you were watching over us. That you were some sort of god.



He opened his eyes and turned, pulling the sword from its sheath. Then he froze, staring at the massive beast approaching from behind. So big!



Dockson gritted his teeth, sending a final curse Kelsier's way, then charged, swinging.



The creature caught his weapon in an indifferent hand, ignoring the cut it caused. Then, it brought its own weapon down, and blackness followed.



"My lord," Janarle said. "The city has fallen. Look, you can see it burning. The koloss have penetrated all but one of the four gates under attack, and they run wild in the city. They aren't stopping to pillage—they're just killing. Slaughtering. There aren't many soldiers left to oppose them."



Straff sat quietly, watching Luthadel burn. It seemed. . .a symbol to him. A symbol of justice. He'd fled this city once, leaving it to the skaa vermin inside, and when he'd come back to demand it be returned to him, the people had resisted.



They had been defiant. They had earned this.



"My lord," Janarle said. "The koloss army is weakened enough already. Their numbers are hard to count, but the corpses they left behind indicate that as much as a third of their force has fallen. We can take them!"



"No," Straff said, shaking his head. "Not yet."



"My lord?" Janarle said.



"Let the koloss have the damn city," Straff said quietly. "Let them clear it out and burn the whole thing to the ground. Fires can't hurt our atium—in fact, they'll probably make the metal easier to find."



"I. . ." Janarle seemed shocked. He didn't object further, but his eyes were rebellious.



I'll have to take care of him later, Straff thought. He'll rise against me if he finds that Zane is gone.



That didn't matter at the moment. The city had rejected him, and so it would die. He'd build a better one in its place.



One dedicated to Straff, not the Lord Ruler.



"Father!" Allrianne said urgently.



Cett shook his head. He sat on his horse, beside his daughter's horse, on a hill to the west of Luthadel. He could see Straff's army, gathered to the north, watching—as he watched—the death throes of a doomed city.



"We have to help!" Allrianne insisted.



"No," Cett said quietly, shrugging off the effects of her Raging his emotions. He'd grown used to her manipulations long ago. "Our help wouldn't matter now."



"We have to do something!" Allrianne said, pulling his arm.



"No," Cett said more forcefully.



"But you came back!" she said. "Why did we return, if not to help?"



"We will help," Cett said quietly. "We'll help Straff take the city when he wishes, then we'll submit to him and hope he doesn't kill us."



Allrianne paled. "That's it?" she hissed. "That's why we returned, so that you can give our kingdom to that monster?"



"What else did you expect?" Cett demanded. "You know me, Allrianne. You know that this is the choice I have to make."



"I thought I knew you," she snapped. "I thought you were a good man, down deep."



Cett shook his head. "The good men are all dead, Allrianne. They died inside that city."



Sazed fought on. He was no warrior; he didn't have honed instincts or training. He calculated that he should have died hours before. And yet, somehow, he managed to stay alive.



Perhaps it was because the koloss didn't fight with skill, either. They were blunt—like their giant, wedgelike swords—and they simply threw themselves at their opponents with little thought of tactics.



That should have been enough. Yet, Sazed held—and where he held, his few men held with him. The koloss had rage on their side, but Sazed's men could see the weak and elderly standing, waiting, just at the edge of the square. The soldiers knew why they fought. This reminder seemed enough to keep them going, even when they began to be surrounded, the koloss working their way into the edges of the square.



Sazed knew, by now, that no relief was going to come. He'd hoped, perhaps, that Straff would decide to take the city, as Clubs had suggested. But it was too late for that; night was approaching, the sun inching toward the horizon.



The end is finally here, Sazed thought as the man next to him was struck down. Sazed slipped on blood, and the move saved him as the koloss swung over his head.



Perhaps Tindwyl had found a way to safety. Hopefully, Elend would deliver the things he and she had studied. They were important, Sazed thought, even if he didn't know why.



Sazed attacked, swinging the sword he'd taken from a koloss. He enhanced his muscles in a final burst as he swung, giving them strength right as the sword met koloss flesh.



He hit. The resistance, the wet sound of impact, the shock up his arm—these were familiar to him now. Bright koloss blood sprayed across him, and another of the monsters fell.



And Sazed's strength was gone.



Pewter tapped clean, the koloss sword was now heavy in his hands. He tried to swing it at the next koloss in line, but the weapon slipped from his weak, numb, tired fingers.



This koloss was a big one. Nearing twelve feet tall, it was the largest of the monsters Sazed had seen. Sazed tried to step away, but he stumbled over the body of a recently killed soldier. As he fell, his men finally broke, the last dozen scattering. They'd held well. Too well. Perhaps if he'd let them retreat. . .



No, Sazed thought, looking up at his death. I did well, I think. Better than any mere scholar should have been able to.



He thought about the rings on his fingers. They could, perhaps, give him a little bit of an edge, let him run. Flee. Yet, he couldn't summon the motivation. Why resist? Why had he resisted in the first place? He'd known that they were doomed.



You're wrong about me, Tindwyl, he thought. I do give up, sometimes. I gave up on this city long ago.



The koloss loomed over Sazed, who still lay half sprawled in the bloody slush, and raised its sword. Over the creature's shoulder, Sazed could see the red sun hanging just above the top of the wall. He focused on that, rather than on the falling sword. He could see rays of sunlight, like. . .shards of glass in the sky.



The sunlight seemed to sparkle, twinkling, coming for him. As if the sun itself were welcoming him. Reaching down to accept his spirit.



And so, I die. . ..



A twinkling droplet of light sparkled in the beam of sunlight, then hit the koloss directly in the back of the skull. The creature grunted, stiffening, dropping its sword. It collapsed to the side, and Sazed lay, stupefied, on the ground for a moment. Then he looked up at the top of the wall.



A small figure stood silhouetted by the sun. Black before the red light, a cloak flapped gently on her back. Sazed blinked. The bit of sparkling light he'd seen. . .it had been a coin. The koloss before him was dead.



Vin had returned.



She jumped, leaping as only an Allomancer could, to soar in a graceful arc above the square. She landed directly in the midst of the koloss and spun. Coins shot out like angry insects, cutting through blue flesh. The creatures didn't drop as easily as humans would have, but the attack got their attention. The koloss turned away from the fleeing soldiers and defenseless townspeople.