To more chapters into the book. Thanks to my laptop's treachery and my own incompetence, I was forced to write this blog twice, so I'm sorry if this one's even more poorly written that usual. Heh.

Part 2

Chapter 22

It is a dark and misty night. Ham finds himself leaving the the Venture keep. Walking out into the darkness without so much as a torch to light his way. His duty this evening is to check up on the guard towers surrounding the keep. Mere moments after he leaves the protective illumination of the lamps surrounding the building, a blood curdling, inhuman howling resounds in his ears. He spins, gasping in terror and alarm as Oreseur and Vin leap howling from the mists, Teeth bared. Daggers gleaming. Ham burns pewter, but is no match for their mad intensity. Inescapable ferocious canine teeth sink deep into flesh. Glittering glass knives cleave flesh from bone. Death comes swirling down.

Well, that's what might've happened had this not all been an elaborate scheme by Vin to figure out if Ham is the Kandra spy. In actuality, Oreseur lands harmlessly in the mists near Ham, and Vin waits to reveal herself until after she feels the allomactic pulsing reverberating from him. I guess I was wrong; Ham isn't the impostor after all. I'm not complaining, though. I like ham.

When he sees Vin, Ham asks her if she's seen unusual activity this night. She tells him she hasn't, and claims she'd let him know if there was. Really? Kind of like she informed him about the mist spirit that nearly killed her a while back? Or perhaps the mad bastard she's been sparring with every damnation night?

Now that she knows he's himself, Vin lets Ham know she's out of atium, and asks him if there's any way survive against a Mistborn who's burning atium. He tells her the only way he knows is to either kill them before hey get the chance to start burning, or to get them into an inescapable trap. She could also, y'know, use duralumin to rip the metals straight from their stomachs. Or is that too dishonorable?

After that enlightening exchange, Vin runs off with Oreseur. Once they're out of hearing range, She explains to Oreseur what the point of that ambush was. You mean she didn't tell him beforehand? Why the hell not?

Once they're safely on the rooftop, she asks Oreseur if her scheme to uncover the impostor will even work. He replies that if she senses allomancy coming from someone, that person is not a kandra. That doesn't necessarily mean kandra can't use allomancy, though, only that she wouldn't be able sense them if they did.

Oreseur then brings up the question I've been asking for a while, "why do you hate me?". It turns out his consumption of Kelsier isn't her true reason. No, the actual reason she hates him is because he knew all along what Kelsier had been planning, yet told no one. Does she honestly think he'd break his precious Contract for a bunch of rebellious skaa who see him as a "thing" and treat him like trash?

Vin asks Oreseur if he ever even cared for kelsier at all--why should he have? Kelsier was just another master to him, and Oreseur resented all of his masters. Vin tries to defend Kelsier's honor, but she soon realizes how unfair she, and all of the crew, have been to Oreseur since the moment they met him. Oreseur played what was possibly the most vital role in the rebellion, yet he got absolutely nothing for it. Instead he was given to Vin, who despised him and placed him in this ridiculous dog body.

Vin now begins to see how much the two of them have in common. Like Vin, all of Oreseurs previous masters feared, loathed, and abused him. He actually had it even worse than she did, though, because his masters didn't have to worry about killing him if they got a little carried away with the beatings. Sounds like he had it really rough. I can understand why he's so cynical after all he's been through.

Vin tries to tell Oreseur he doesn't have to hide any more; that he doesn't have to hate all humans for what his evil masters did to him, but she's not doing as good of a job as Kelsier would have. He tells her that she was able to fit in because she's human, but kandra are different. He goes on to explain that Kandra used to secretly dwell with humanity, but the Mistborn back then somehow found a way to uncover them. Once the humans learned of their existence, they began the extermination process. That's why the Kandra devised the Contract. By becoming completely subservient, they were able to convince the humans to cease hunting them.

I was quite is quite disturbed upon hearing this, and so was Vin. She offers to free Oreseur of his contract, but unfortunately that wouldn't do him much good, as according to kandra law he would just have to go find another master. So Vin just apologizes for her resentful attitude towards him. Good riddance. Maybe now he'll finally get the respect he deserves.

Now that the nastiness between them has finally been put to rest, Vin's mind begins to wander onto different matters. She thinks she could solve this whole siege problem by simply assassinating the two enemy kings.. Of course, there's no knowing what kind of chaos that might cause. Some even worse tyrants would probably rise in their places. Not to mention that without atium there's no way she'd ever get to Straff. Not while his crazy son is still breathing, anyway.

After a good deal of pondering, Vin begins to burn bronze. She hears a pulsing in the distance similar to that of the Misty Death, except more powerful and much farther away. It's actually kind of like the thumping Alendi heard...

Oreseur interrupts her thoughts to alert her to the sound of footsteps coming down the street. When Vin goes down to investigate, she finds a tall dark stranger. When she sneaks up behind the man, she finds that he actually isn't a stranger at all. Sazed has finally returned, and he bears dark tidings.

size="4"]Chapter 23[/size]

Elend had been up working on a proposal to present to the parliament explaining his "informal" meeting with Straff when they brought Sazed to him. So he's seriously going through with that? The Assembly won't take kindly to this at all.

Sazed is having a late dinner with the Crew, telling them all about his travels. When he alerts them to the approach of the Mad King and his formidable koloss army, he also mentions that twenty thousand koloss is apparently worth more than 50,000 ordinary men. Sounds about right to me; those things are freaking huge!

Unfortunately, no one has any idea how Jastes is controlling them. The Lord Ruler's hold over the creatures was probably somewhat supernatural, as Ham says that shortly after his death the koloss in the south went berserk, slaughtering without mercy or discrimination. Breeze backs this up, telling them about how Cett's koloss garrison went mad as well, and managed to kill four times their number before they were subdued.

Oddly enough, Sazed doesn't even mention the inquisitors who are traveling in this direction. Did he forget? Did the fact that several of the most dangerous beings on the planet are headed this way slip his mind?

Breeze thinks they should just wait for him to arrive, as the koloss might lose control and attack one of the other armies. If Jastes does come and they end up fighting each other, the battle would be brutal. Who knows, it might even weaken their armies enough for the Luthadel garrison to stand a chance.

Dockson says they should worry About what's happening now, and continue with the plan. Who knows, maybe the imminent threat of Jastes's koloss army will make them more willing to accept an alliance.

Sazed moves on to his darker premonitions. When he informs the group of his investigation into the mist-related deaths, Elend notices Vin listening intently. While the others are skeptical of Sazed's claims, she doesn't say anything at all. Wouldn't this be a pretty good time to tell them about her encounters with the Misty Death?

Allriane chooses this time to show up. She claims she heard voices, although she shouldn't have been ably to hear anything from where she was sleeping. Plus they're having a pretty small dinner so they probably made even less noise preparing it than usual.

When she asks what's going on, Breeze just tells her to go to bed and not to disturb the king. Elend notices that she was obviously eavesdropping. Here's a crackpot theory. What if she's actually a tin eye, or worse, Mistborn. Wouldn't it be something if this whole thing with Breeze, and her running off to be with him, was all just some elaborate scheme by Cett to get her into the cty? Doubtful, I know. But still...

After those rather discomforting words, Sazed proceeds to eat his meal, and most of the group separates. Elend notes that Vin brought Oreseur to the meeting this time. I notice that even he refers to the kandra as "it". Pity. Elend then asks Vin what she thought of Sazed's stories. She simply replies with, "I'll tell you later", which means "I'll tell you when I feel like it", which actually means "You'll never get a word out of me!"

Vin basically tells him the night is dark, and full of terrors, and returns to her night vigil. As Elend watches her go, he wonders why Vin was so interested in Sazed's stories. Wonders what she's hiding from him. If only he knew. If she would only tell him. If only he didn't brush off everything says him when she does talk to him of these things! What a mess.

Here it switches to Sazed's PoV as he's led to his rooms. He's starting to regret mentioning the mists, as he may have troubled Elend over a mere delusion. Of course, he wouldn't be doubting himself if Vin had just told him about the bloody mistwraith she's been seeing!

When he enters his rooms, he finds Tyndwyl waiting for him inside. She mentions that he ignored her request. Others consider her hard, When he sees her, he wonders how she can be so confident after all she's been through. What does this mean? Is he implying that she's suffered even more that the other Terris people have?

She asks him why he came back here instead of obeying the Synod and teaching the peasants. What's the Synod? Are they like, the rulers of the Terris people? She makes it sound like they've been around for a while, though.

She knows about his study of the mists. too, so he must have been doing this for a while. Did he get any real teaching done in the past year? She thinks he can't be content with mundane work after all he's done, and Sazed doesn't deny it. Is it possible? Could Sazed be developing an...ego? Impossible!

He tells her he thinks there is something up with the mists, and he will investigate it until he is convinced it isn't a threat. He reminds her that his last disobedient phase resulted in the collapse of the Final Empire. He apparently worked ten years on that. Ten years of disobedience, and they couldn't even punish him for it! Brilliant!

After telling Sazed how he could be so much more than he is, Tyndwyl rises to take her leave. Before she walks out the door, though, she takes his hand and gazes into his eyes. What was that? Was there something between these two? I mean, of course there wasn't! What with him being...because he's...you know. Agh!

End of Chapter 23