Ashbringer

Cohesion should’t work on Aluminum - at least, I haven’t seen anything suggesting it does. And both Cohesion and Tension don’t work on Invested objects. Also, if you want to have combat skill it doesn’t need to be “skilled”. Characters can fight with their Investiture instead of weapons: ie Dustbringers can fight with weapons, but if they have sufficient Stormlight they can also just grab things and start disintegrating them. That would only require basic hand-to-hand combat.

...So does this mean I should stop writing in NPC 3rd Ideal Skybreaker warriors for Tyrian to massacre? ...Seriously, this does cause some power creep problems with Tyrian.

Bly watched as his Leecher friend kept his balance through that strange jolt. It was almost like an earthquake, twice in a row. Does Alleycity even have earthquakes? He'd never felt one before. Eh, he wasn't paid to think. He was a Thug; his job was to hit things. Particularly if this Leecher failed to keep his chromium-burning hands on that thing. Fortunately, Silas was still secure. He wasn't needed. So, he yawned and leaned against the wall of the van. Hopefully it would be smooth driving from here. If he had been a bit more focused, he might have noticed the smoke and little red glow emitting from the floor of the van, about three paces to his right. But Bly didn't notice. He wasn't paid to notice things. :-:-:-:-:-: Tyrian pulled himself up close to the bottom of the van. His instructions were simple - free the prisoner by any means necessary. And that's exactly what he planned to do. He drew in more Stormlight and kept burning a hole in the bottom of the van. Cinder caught up to him. He didn't say anything - Tyrian knew Cinder was a bit philisophical, but he loved a good fight. Unfortunately, from what he'd heard, this wouldn't be much of a fight. He felt the molten metal beneath his fingers. The circle was complete. So he tensed. Then punched the center of the weakened metal, making it fly up into the van. Tyrian lept up to follow, Cinder hiding in one of his pockets. There were two very suprised guards standing watch over one heavily bound prisoner. Silas. The closer guard let out a shout, rushing Tyrian, fumbling to draw a sword in these tight quarters. The other hesitated, glancing back and forth between his attacker and his prisoner. Tyrian reached behind his back and drew two long, aluminum crescents. Sickles. He was a competent fighter with knives, but he found that his sickles suited him better. They lacked the grace of the subtle kive, but they had a better attribute, in Tyrian's eyes. Ferocity. Tyrian lunged at the closer guard, sickles swinging. The guard managed to deflect one with his half drawn sword, and Tyrian let the hooked weapon grab the sword while he sent his other sickle at the arm drawing it. Somehow, the guard dodged his attack. Pewter. This man was a Thug. Are you anything else, Thug? Tyrian wondered. He yanked harshly on his first sickle just as the man finished drawing his sword, sending both weapons clattering to the floor. To the Thug's credit, he reacted quickly; rather than trying to stoop down and retrieve his weapon, which would have left him impaled on Tyrian's remaining sickle, he got in close and launched a pewter-flared punch. Tyrian caught his fist with his free hand. Stormlight burning and Blessing hurting, both giving him strength. Not enough to match the strength of a Thug, but enough to bear it. So he started Dividing. The Thug screamed in pain as his fingers within his fist slowly turned to dust. He flinched. Then Tyrian's sickle buried itself in his side. "Bly! NO!" he heard the other guard scream, footsteps pounding. Tyrian turned, Thug forgotten, sickle raised. He hadn't had time to properly Dustbring the man. He might even live. The second guard... did not appear to have that possibility. He held a solitary knife, and was shaking. Behind him, the man Silas was stirring. Still asleep and mostly harmless, but for how long nobody could know. "Give up. The end will be swift," Tyrian said, walking slowly toward him. The man started shaking more, but refused to lower his weapon or his gaze. He stood his ground admirably. Tyrian took another step forward and the guard charged. "So be it." Tyrian swung his sickle to meet the man's knife, but the guard didn't seem to care much about the bladelock. His other hand reached for Tyrian's wrist. As soon as the two made contact, Tyrian felt his Stormlight fade precipitously. Dustmother. A Leecher. Tyrian thrust aside the bladelock and punched the man square in the chest. He heard a door open behind him, and two other guards ran out behind him. He hadn't heard the van stop. Tyrian smiled. Now this was a fight.

"That sounds like a deal," Cassie replied, beaming. "If you ever need something Soulcast, just come over to my shop. I should have a business card... somewhere..." No, she had given out her last ones out in the party. And she had turned her pencil into copper. She hunted through her satchel and found another, then quickly scribbled down an address. "Just come to here!" She shook Lord's hand, then hauled her new smoke-detector fabrial and small bag of amethysts out to where her cart was waiting. Hopefully Lord would have her two commissions done soon enough - neither were terribly important, but she was sure they would prove incredibly useful for a Soulcaster. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you!" she called out after him, then departed, humming happily to herself.

“It would be... nice to see the bonfire,” Byron replied. “And I am very hungry. I don’t think I’ve eaten in...” He’d lost track. It was hard to count time with his cadmium always fluctuating, even without the Alleys interfering. He didn’t even know how old he was anymore. Byron lowered his cadmium back to its 9/10ths level. “Shall we, then?”

I look forward to him meeting Byron

I think it makes sense. The thing is, none of Byron’s memories are really different, since nothing changed in his lifetime besides his mother’s heritage. He doesn’t remember much about her, and would be confused about a spren following him in either timeline. To him, it would be more learning about where the spren came from, and who his mother was, than whether or not the spren should be there. For now, the only thing that would be bugging him is the lightspren and a glimmer of the ability he secretly has, which he just thinks is a learned skill of his. So he isn’t experiencing flashbacks of another life he lived, he’s just stuck with a spren he shouldn’t be connected to in the original time and a power he shouldn’t have in the current time. It’s not his past that changed, but his connection to an Investiture. I’m not sure if that changes anything, but that’s what I was imagining.

Gotcha. Can I still get away with Byron being half-in and half-out of the false reality?

What I’m doing is having Byron’s mother (who’s probably dead at this point, I’m not sure yet) be from the Alleyverse, and have drastically swapped powers. So what abilities Byron inherited from her are “stuck” between the edited (Willshaping, and Connection to his mother’s old spren) and real (REDACTED) timelines. (His cadmium is from his father’s side.) Mainly I don’t want to miss out on the timeline plot just because I’m new and since my 3 are all from Scadrial>Roshar. But since Byron does a lot of time warping in his own right, he could be a key to “solving” the shift

Can someone give me a TLDR of what happened with the re-Spiking and the time jump? I’m trying to have Byron be sort of stuck between two powers, but I don’t know if the timeline is supposed to be a permanent or temporary jump.

Byron started a bit. Shardblade? Why would that matter? “No, I don’t have a Shardblade. My eyes are dark; I never got the chance to earn one except... someone was chasing me with it once. It didn’t work well with my bubble. It kept flying out of his hands and vanishing.” Aln certaintly had a lot of questions. Byron guessed that was what the Scholar’s Guild did. Find out things. He looked outside the bubble. There was a lot of people still moving about. He wasn’t sure when this... festival would end. So, he turned back toward the two. “Do you have any idea where to go? I don’t want to... steal the whole night away. If the watchers or the spren follow, we’ll know.” Right?

“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago. Before the Alleys and a lot of time. I’m fairly certain it was on Roshar. Yes, it was. It didn’t like the shadowed man. Nale, if that was his name. But no spren seemed to.” He turned toward where the spren was. He couldn’t see it: there where too many people blurring about, moving ten times the speed they were from their point of view. He could just... feel it. Behind a box, invisible to all but the strongest eyes, it was there. He knew it. “It just feels like it’s there. It’s like... a buzzing. Something ringing in my ear. I can tell where it is, no matter how slow my bubble is or what’s in the way. If it’s close, I just... know.”

"The spren... I don't think it was with anyone else. Definitely not with anyone nearby. Maybe it's bonded to a Radiant, maybe not. But... whoever it is followed me through the Alleys. Maybe even through Roshar." "I've only seen it once or twice. Sometimes I can sense it when it doesn't seem to be there. It looks like a blue ball. It flashes sometimes. But I only ever get a glimpse before it darts away or... vanishes. But it always followed." Byron gained a blank look. "It isn't easy to follow me. The bubble I have now... I can do much slower. I can outlast any Radiant. I... don't think it's bonded." Suddenly he had a realization. "But maybe it was. Once. Maybe it's trying to carry out a last order. To follow me." "I wish I knew why." He shook himself. "I guess to answer your question, I can't actually see it. But I can feel it. And I could never forget that feeling."

Byron couldn't quite tell if Althea and Aln got his secret message, but they seemed to see that he was trying to convey something. It had beeen a fairly bad attempt at communicating. So he took a risk and flared his cadmium, slowing time to about 1/10th of normal and letting the motions of the people around them blur. If they had any appointments to attend in the next hour, they would have to wait. "Sound is affected by my bubble, even though light isn't. If I slow time enough, nobody can hear what we say unless they find some way to record it and play it back. And even that will take time." He turned toward where he'd seen that strange spren. It had followed him through the Alleys, even through his own timeskipping. It may have even been on Roshar - he couldn't remember. Parts of that time were... fuzzy. He shook himself, remembering he didn't have time to waste. "So if you have a better plan to draw any followers out, now would be a good time." :-:-:-:-:-: "Easy," Cinder said, watching as Tyrian slowly edged down the building. "This isn't easy," he replied. He moved brick to brick, constantly using Stormlight to help his grip. "I've seen you go down things faster. I've seen you jump off a building twice as high as this one," Cinder said. He was sparking a bit now - he was frustrated. Not as frustrated as Tyrian was, but quite frustrated as spren went. "I move quick when I have to move quick. I don't when I don't," Tyrian growled, as he scrambled down the last four inches. He turned in the direction that the van had been sighted, sprinting down the alleyway, Cinder following behind. The pair reached the end of the street. Cinder darted out, looking just like one of the sparklers a few partygoers carried. "You have a minute before the van arrives. It's going pretty fast, so be ready." Tyrian ran a few strides back into the alley. He checked his equipment. His two aluminum sickles, chromium vials, and a vast Stormlight reserve in his bandolier and cloak pockets. His last reserve was full, as always, but he didn't think he would need it. He never did. "How can you even take this job? Those people are law-keepers, not savages. How do you see them as evil?" Tyrian grunted. "Why do you care? They are evil. Simple." Cinder didn't seem to appreciate that. "If you see them as evil, that's what matters, but how?" "They serve the law," Tyrian replied, crouching in a runner's position. "The Skybreakers serve the law, and they are evil. So any who serve the law are evil." He tensed, waiting. "And I will destroy those who stand for evil." Tyrian burst into a sprint, relying on Cinder's timing to get him to the right place. Wait... now. He shot his legs out and hit the ground, pulling in Stormlight to Slick his legs, shooting out of the alleyway into the street, just as the van passed the entrance. Tyrian ducked his head under the axles, then grabbed a hold of the van's underbelly, letting his frictionless body drag underneath the vehicle until he got a good grip. Then he placed his finger on an open patch and started Dustbringing. :-:-:-:-:-: Cinder watched as Tyrian ran off, reply still on his lips. "I... don't think that logic is sound." Then he shrugged and flew after him. If he had wanted a logical companion, he wouldn't have bonded to Tyrian. That being thought, he had little choice.

Cassie reached for a gem that looked like it would fit, carefully pulling it from its fabrial. She akwardly transfered it to her gloved left hand, then replaced the empty amethyst in her caster. She reached out over the pencil she had discarded, shut her eyes, and took a breath. And focused on the ideal of Copper. She felt the pencil change, and she opened her eyes to a metal orange pencil. She grinned. "Oh, I think this will be a very profitable arrangement." Cassie looked back at Lord. "What was our original agreement? A regular supply of amethysts from you, a regular Soulcasting commission from me? I believe that will do just fine. Perhaps we can add this-" she gestured to the smoke-detecting fabrial "-and some other special fabrials and a Soulcasting you'd like done to celebrate a deal?"

Eiran nodded and left, not answering Byron's question. He hadn't really expected him to - it was rather personal, and the question was more to be saying something than for actual information. However, it was hard to tell if Aln and Althea had gotten his message - Aln seemed to be deep in thought, while Althea was as unreadable as she'd been all night. "I won't lose it again. I promise. I'm just a little... wobbly some times," he said. Then he sighed. That made no sense. He looked expectantly at the pair. Anyone watching would see his cadmium-exaggerated movements, but hopefully Aln would get what he meant before the watchers did.

Cassie stretched out her arm, showing the large Soulcasting fabrial wrapped around her hand. "It has various sizes of crystals, but generally I can make anything shaped like a clip, mark, or broam work just fine." The gemstones he had certainly looked real enough. "By the way," Cassie asked, gesturing with her free arm toward the strange fabrial on the wall, "What do some of these do?"

"Alright," Cassie replied, watching Lord run to fetch a fabrial. She hoped that he could find something interesting; she knew little about the actual design behind fabrials, but she'd heard that they could do almost limitless things. Soulcasting was just a piece - a very important piece, yes, but just a piece. And fabrials run with Epic-made gems. Interesting. That means Soulcasting with it should actually work. Nothing much else to do, Cassie looked at a shelf of what seemed to be more fabrials, careful not to touch any by accident. A small one with two rubies strapped to a smokestone caught her eye. It didn't seem to have much of a function, but fabrials often looked that way. I'll have to ask Lord about it when he gets back.

"If you need to go, go ahead, Eiran," Byron said. "But I have an idea that could help..." he didn't want to say it out loud. That would ruin the point. "Where is it you need to go?" he asked offhandedly, reaching into his coinage pocket. "It does appear we need to go somewhere, and-" His arm spasmed. Hopefully it looked realistic enough - he'd felt enough of them to know what they were supposed to be. A single sphere flew from his palm, landing with enough force to bounce. Clink. Clink. Clink. "Storms!" Byron cursed, chasing the rolling firemark. However, he deConnected his bubble as he did so - no need to alert any watchers how his savantism affected him. Hopefully this would dispel any illusions of his wealth. And give his companions his message. He hesitated as the firemark neared the edge of the bubble, then started intently at it. He didn't want to pop the bubble - he could reach outside it a bit, but turning off his cadmium did... nasty things. The sphere kept bouncing. Clink. Clink Cli- The sphere hit the bubble, turning the rhythm of the sphere into high-pitched nonsense. Clikclikclikclikclikclikclik. It was enough to just barely make out what the individual sounds are. Byron reached through the bubble and grabbed his firemark. Then he turned back to the rest, hoping they understood what he meant. :-:-:-:-:-: "They're only one story high. And you can't be walking on foot around so many people. You know what happens." "I don't care," Tyrian responded. "I'm not climbing a building. That wasn't in the job." Cinder put his hands on his hips. "Then the job isn't happening. Not until we can actually find it. Which we can't do unless we get the high ground and look around." "Then why don't you look around," Tyrian replied. "You can hide. And fly. And-" "And as soon as I get to far from you you'll forget I told you to stay and go hunting the first thing you see that looks remotely like a Skybreaker," Cinder interrupted. "And, I'll be too far to help you with Stormlight. We know almost nothing about this world besides the power within it, and we have no idea what kind of power is out there. And we're in the middle of a festival, for the Sibling's sake. Attack someone in the open and you'll bring the whole city down on our heads." Tyrian merely growled. Cinder was, as far as he could see correct. That didn't make him right. "I can handle myself. I've killed Skybreakers without Surges or Chromium. I can do it again." "From what I've seen, Surges are only a fraction of the Investiture on this planet. If we don't-" Cinder stopped himself. "Can we please just do the job? If you just get up to the building, I can go higher and find the thing. Then we go down and we're done. Then you can destroy things." Tyrian sighed - a long, grumbling noise. "Fine," he said, reaching toward the top of a nearby windowsill. He drew in a bit of Stormlight, trying to maximize the friction in his fingertips. He didn't want to lose his grip. Then he pulled, forcing himself up off the ground, forcing himself not to look down. A Dustbringer's place was on the ground, not the sky. Especially for Tyrian. He grabbed the edge of the roof, then lurched up again, scrambling to the roof's top. Cinder followed, hovering behind him. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Tyrian growled again, trying to stand tall. He didn't mention that he'd maximized the friction in his feet. He was not sliding off. He'd never hear the end of it. Cinder nodded, seeing the Dustbringer was secure, then shot up into the sky. After a few second's of searching, he came back down. "I see it," he said, pointing. "Past that building with the broken wall." Tyrian looked, trying not to focus on the ground below. Yes, that was the target. Just as described. An Alleycity moving van. @bees?

“I think there’s a spren hiding behind a box across the street,” Byron offered. “It’s... been following me for a while. From the Alleys. I felt it before. But it was always alone.” He looked up at the two women. “And why would somebody follow me?”

A job. Byron had hardly worked a day in his life. Even within Thaylen City, he didn't fit in enough to be trusted by merchants, although he had better luck than living as a darkened Alethi. But... Althea and Aln seemed at odds about this. Byron wasn't sure why. He would have to think about it some. He looked at the two of them. "I'd... I'd love to have a job, but... I think learning more about this place is the better place to start. I need to know what this place is before I can start a job. And maybe I can figure out this-" he waved at the bubble "-a little better." He paused. "There was... one thing I noticed. About Roshar. Everytime I flared, everything became different. Everyone's faces were different. Except... there was always one man who stayed the same. Never getting close, never staying around, but always showing up in the city. Watching. Dark skinned with a mark on his face. He was like a hunter. A shadow. A... darkness." Byron's face grew a little distant. He shuddered. "I don't think he was hunting me. I think he was after... something else." :-:-:-:-:-: It was a night of festivities in the Alleycity, but festivities generally led to drunken fools wandering about, getting themselves into trouble. Chekar was on patrol tonight, looking around for anyone causing mischief. He was fairly bored; he only had three more hours left on his shift, then he could hang up his badge for the night and let someone else in his small security detail do the perimeter checks. Chekar had heard of wonderful stories from the people leaving the main city; storytellers, street vendors, wonderful foods, and that special brand of chaos only the Alleyplanet and large crowds could produce. Focus. You’re on patrol. You can go to all the parties in the world so long as you don’t get yourself court-martialed for desertion. A can clanked from behind him. He whirled around, instinctively inhaling a touch of Stormlight. He watched as two people stumbled out of a small alleyway, another man with darting eyes raising a second can and shouting something Chekar couldn’t make out. He ran over to the group, mentally calling his highspren from her own patrol. “And don’t come back!” the man was yelling, drunkenly throwing another empty can at the couple. Fortunately, he had terrible aim. “I don’t want anyone disturbing my home! MY home!” Chekar approached the group cautiously, nonchalantly sticking out his hand, readying his Shardblade in case any of the individuals were more dangerous than they appeared. “What appears to be the trouble here, citizens?” he shouted over the man, letting his security uniform show. The couple didn’t even seem to notice his presence; they just kept walking back toward the city, most likely to find another place to drink. The angry man was another story. “I don’t want ANYONE in my home! I live here! No one else! So, LEAVE!” he screeched at him. Chekar’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want any trouble, sir, I just want-“ The crazy man interrupted him. “Don’t want any trouble? I don’t want ANYTHING! What gives you the authority to tell me what causes trouble?” That does it. Chekar mentally summoned his Shardblade, snapping it into existence before the man’s open eyes. “I am a Skybreaker of the Third Ideal. I serve the laws of this city, to the letter, even if it’s as security for the wall. You, on the other hand, have no power to tell me where my jurisdiction begins or ends. So, stand down.” The man’s eyes seemed to double in size as he considered this, but he said nothing. He took a single step back. Then he toppled over forward, dead. Chekar rushed forward toward the man, Shardblade at the ready. He heard a scraping sound from behind the A thin trail of smoke was rising out of the back of the man’s head. He was dead, alright. Suddenly a red spark shot out from under the man’s corpse, shooting down the alleyway. Chekar rushed after it – anything that could do this to a man couldn’t be let go free. He would have to- A fist shot out of a nook and slammed into his skull. Chekar looked up, dazed, Shardblade falling from his grasp. He felt his spren pulling on him, almost panicking, but his body wouldn’t respond. He could only watch as an impossible figure stood above him. It looked like someone had painted a man, but had only one color to do it. Everything was just… gray. Dead. Except the eyes. “Skybreaker,” the thing growled. In a flash he had pulled something from his jacket and held it over Chekar’s chest. A long piece of metal. A spike. Chekar could only watch as it fell, almost lazily, into his heart. Then the creature turned his eyes toward him. Red eyes. Burning, red, mismatched eyes. Those eyes were the last thing he ever saw. :-:-:-:-:-: “Find the spren,” he growled. His ashspren, Cinder, whirled around over to the corpse on the ground, whizzing into pockets. The figure crouched, waiting, hand still on the spike buried in the Skybreaker’s chest. “He had a Blade. He was powerful. You did well,” he whispered to the spark of light. He heard a slight pop from under the body. First Cinder shot out, looking like a tiny flamespren with tendrils of ash and smoke shooting from his arms and legs. Those tentacles soon dragged out a small, starry rip in existence. The figure moved, twisting the top of the spike, taking out a pencil-wide core. Unlike the gray metal it came from, this core was a deep black crystal. The highspren shook, bolts of energy darting from its core, but Cinder held it fast. And the man plunged the gem into the spren’s center. It vanished, trapped within the now-glowing smokestone, dead to the world. “That makes six,” the figure said, placing the core back into the spike. Then he ripped the bloody metal out and returned it to his jacket’s small bandolier. He reached out, cupping the face of the being he had slaughtered. A young face. But a tainted one. He pulled Stormlight from the stones in his pocket and turned the man to dust and ash. Beautiful dust. Beautiful ash. The creature stood up, looking out the alleyway, then started moving toward the city’s center. This had been a fun excursion, but he had an appointment to make. Prepare yourself, Alleycity, he thought. Tyrian has arrived.