Idea for burning or tapping real atium

[Sythrin]

While we know that burning atium allows one to glimpse into the spiritual realm, like Elend did, I have to say that, that I dont lime how he did it. He used the alloy with a-duralumin and now had access to atium? Kinda not fitting how it previously fitted.
Now recently I had read a story, where one character had very similar ability to feruchemy but a bit different and with a twist. That character could tap their future strengh! They could take strengh, speed, durability and other abilities of for example for a day and compress it into 15min usage. Which made them extremly powerfull. But when the timelimit that they emposed on themselfs ran out, they had to sleep for a duration that they took. And they could not stop that.
It kinda fitted ruin in my opinion. You get access to great strengh but ruin your life by sleeping through it. Loosing precious time.

So what if this is an ability you gain from burning atium or a full feruchemist gets if they tap pure atium?

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Sythrin said:

While we know that burning atium allows one to glimpse into the spiritual realm, like Elend did, I have to say that, that I dont lime how he did it. He used the alloy with a-duralumin and now had access to atium? Kinda not fitting how it previously fitted.

Atium-electrum alloy uses Fortune to see glimpses of the Future through the Spiritual Realm. But there are interferences in between you and the Spiritual Realm. Burning a lot of that alloy with duralumin allows you to overcome those interferences and peer directly into the Spiritual Realm - basically step into it. Pure Atium is powerful enough to push through those interferences on its own. It always allows you to look directly into the Spiritual Realm. Eland kind of hacked the system because pure Atium, Atium-electrum alloy and electrum itself all work in the same way. You could do the same thing with electrum and duralumin.

So Elend didn't suddenly gain access to Atium, but because all those abilities work based on the same mechanism, he just got the same effect.

Spoiler

Wigginns

What would a Hemalurgic spike granting atium do for an Allomancer already able to burn atium? Does it function similarly to bronze, granting enhanced atium-ing? Along this line of thought, would enhancing electrum burning via spike be of any advantage?

Brandon Sanderson

A spike of something you have would enhance your ability, giving your more strength. With atium, more strength makes for a minimal edge--the length you can push out the atium shadows. However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the [Spiritual Realm], and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment.

Electrum could reach this same moment, potentially, though there's more interference to fight through. Extra strength in electrum isn't going to be terribly useful up to that point.

Alsadius

Is that what happened when atium was burned with duralumin?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Footnote: In his original response Brandon mistakenly said burning atium and duralumin would cause the Allomancer to peer into the Cognitive Realm, rather than Spiritual Realm. He has since confirmed that this was a mistake.
/r/books AMA 2015 (Aug. 1, 2015)

 

5 hours ago, Sythrin said:

So what if this is an ability you gain from burning atium or a full feruchemist gets if they tap pure atium?

Unlikely. Atium is the pure essence of the god - it's the power that you gain when you burn it, unlike what's happening when you burn regular metals, which are only a filter for the power coming from the Spiritual Realm. Atium itself is the power. You gain nothing from the future self, because you have no need for that. 

As for the pure Atium Feruchemy, we don't know what it does, but Feruchemy doesn't work in reverse - you can't tap investiture you don't have, you have to first store that investiture, use your body's attributes to gain investiture. You can't do it in reverse. That would be time travel and time travel in Cosmere isn't a thing. Also, your future isn't set in metal, it's not deterministic, it's probabilistic. You don't even know if in the future you would be alive to transfer that power into the past (which is impossible). This kind of power doesn't really work in Cosmere in my opinion (but I must say, it's a cool power).

[Sythrin]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

This kind of power doesn't really work in Cosmere in my opinion (but I must say, it's a cool power).

Thanks. Thought it could be cool, as atium has some influence over spieitual realm and reading fortune.

So i thought this was an interesting bridge