The Aspiring Archivist

TAAron decided to try something new. He stopped struggling. Instantly, the thing began encroaching on his mind, touching his thoughts. It wanted to kill. Minutes later, it woke him up. He was careful not to resist, only obeying the Intent of whatever it was that controlled him. He walked around. His metals turned on and back off. It was like whatever it was was taking him for a test drive. It though it had more control that it really did. In a sudden burst of willpower, TAAron tore his body free of its control. He still couldn't access his metals, or even his metalminds. He could, however, yell. And so he did, pounding on the walls, hoping that something would be able to traverse whatever small connection in between his prison and the clinic had been made. The thing quickly began pushing down harder on his will. The imprisoned scholar cried "HELP!" one last time before he was put back to sleep. He hoped someone still cared enough to listen.

@Nameless

Many hours after knocking himself out, TAAron jolted back again into the strange state of almost-consciousness that he was growing familiar with. Reaching for his tin to try to wake up again, he found that he was unable to burn it. It was there, and it felt as though he should be able to use it, but he couldn't get it to respond. Apparently, the thing's control was becoming more absolute. While in the limbo state, he did notice something odd. A single thread, not unlike the ones he had seen start to weave themselves to his prison earlier, connected from his prison to the "where." Again, without knowing how he could tell, TAAron understood that this thread represented a physical connection. It wasn't a lot, but apparently whatever was keeping him here had let it slip in, and the room was no longer entirely disconnected from the spatial aspect of their universe. Maybe I can use it to communicate? But how? I can't move, and I can't burn metals. Someone else would most likely have to use it instead. Maybe if they could somehow use the spatial connection, they could distract the Intent of the thing. TAAron though back to his studies, trying to intuit what type of access the single thread could allow. He doubted the connection was sound enough to transport anything, but it was now associated with the place it was connected to and might respond to general occurrences there. The question was, would his friends have the same idea? It seemed that someone at least had a grasp of how this all worked down there. TAAron could only wait as he felt the strange force move about him. Move? It almost seemed like the thing was more present now, somehow.

Page 15: Frustration continues suggesting fire-related deaths for Shadow until Dom sends him to solitary confinement. Frustration eats his straightjacket and begins writing on the walls. Nameless gets scared of Shadow, and Shadow reveals his identity as Master Hivemind, a person who is allied with every government in the universe, to Dom. Nameless wants to get rid of Shadow, Frustration is still theorizing, and Random Fellow shows up again.

TAAron began trying to think of a way to escape his situation. He's using his own Intent to keep me just asleep enough that I can't move. And yet, I can burn metals. I would say it's instinct, like unconscious pewter-burning, but I've never burned cadmium before. So if I can burn metals... he reached for the source of power he knew he held at his fingertips, literally. Tapping zinc, his mental speed multiplied by more than a dozen. He tried to think his way out of the manipulation, but the traitorous cadmium persisted. He did, however, get a new idea. He burned tin as brightly as he could. To his delight, the shock of all his senses woke him up fully, making him lose contact with the strange sense of reality but allowing him to get up. Looking around, the room was the same as before. TAAron sighed. I don't know what I was expecting. He could feel the thing reaching out to command him to sleep again, but his quick mind beat it to the punch. On purpose this time, TAAron slammed his head against the wall as hard as he could one, two, three times. Then, he turned off his pewter, and passed out immediately.

Nameless receives a shock, seemingly from his own weaving, and the progress he made has suddenly disappeared. However, he was able to get an impression of TAAron asleep in the room, giving off magical signatures that indicate he is burning cadmium.

TAAron was having a lot of trouble waking up. It was easily one of the strangest experiences he had had in his life. While the forced sleep had started out normally, he eventually became more and more lucid, as through he were dreaming, then even more so, as though he were waking up. Now, he found himself lying down in the room with his eyes closed, unable to move but still seeing something. He could see reality, the little sliver of reality he existed in right now, and understand it. It existed in no universe, no dimensional plane, only following along the thread of time. It was certainly a room, but there was somehow no properties linked to it like location, whether relative, absolute, or even dimensional. TAAron didn't know how he knew this, but it was very clear to him, somehow. As he looked on, not really looking, he saw something odd. A few threads of light, like loose strands of spider's silk, attached to the room, connecting to a place that had a where. Gazing at it, he began to see different threads weaving their way up those connected to his room, forming an intricate network. TAAron felt excited, considering that there might just be a chance for his freedom. But just as they were about to reach his prison, they were repelled by an unseen force, suddenly being consumed as though they had caught fire. The flame rushed down back towards whoever or whatever had made the network, hitting the where with a huge impact. Only the few strands that had been there originally remained. I wonder who that was, he thought sadly. I shouldn't have let myself hope. Then something even stranger happened. TAAron felt himself begin to burn some cadmium, somehow, in his sleep. It was a light burn, only slowing time around him by about half, but it worried him. How much control can this thing get on me while I'm still asleep? It seemed like the amount of control it had was steadily increasing.

TAAron sat wondering when and if help might ever come. At this point, he would have preferred to be attacked then to wait around for any longer. By his estimation, it had been about a day since he had been trapped. Without anything to even write with, he felt like he was going insane. He had even tried writing on the walls, but they of course just magically healed seconds later. A few hours ago, he had almost fallen asleep while sitting staring at a wall, and when he regained composure of himself he found that even the jar that had contained marshmallows and the torn-off plaques had disappeared. He was now effectively sitting in an empty box. He had only just realized that there were no lights in the room to keep it illuminated, even though it was comfortably lit. Lying on the floor, apathetic, he suddenly felt something. It wasn't like the emotional effects that had been plaguing him on and off for hours now. He felt like he should know this feeling. It felt like how he felt when he wanted to get something done, but not a single thought in his own head had made him feel it. Then, he banged his head into a wall. At first, it felt completely natural to do it. Then, when he started thinking about, it, he was taken aback. He hadn't wanted to do that. And yet, he had? Suddenly, it clicked. Intent, he realized. Someone is enforcing their own Intent on me. That's pretty bad. But how... He looked down ad his own stomach. The Hemalurgic spike? But no, no record ever showed anyone being controlled by just one. As he pondered, he realized that he had been digging his own fingernails into his arm. With a yelp, he let go, but there were already many bloody marks where skin had been broken. This is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Then, TAAron heard a commanding voice that wasn't really a voice speak in his head. SLEEP. And so he did, collapsing to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

TAAron woke up in the room again. Apparently, nothing had changed. The walls were still blank, the plaques still on the floor. My bag... my bag! It was completely gone. He had been holding it when he fell asleep, hadn't he? "To rust with it!" He punched the wall over and over, doing nothing but denting it and making his knuckles bleed. That bag was too important for him to lose it. It contained all of his books, his metals, everything! He screamed furiously, his pewter burning brightly within him in response to his anger. He wanted to kill whoever had trapped him here. He wanted to tear them apart. His fury was an undying storm within him. And then it stopped. He sank to the ground, astonished at himself. He had never, in his life, been that mad before. About anything. He was generally quite calm and collected. What had made him flip out? Allomancy. Or something like it. As he realized it, he suddenly felt all of his emotion drain away, leaving him feeling terribly hollow. They're toying with me, aren't they? He tried to reach out with his own Allomantic brass, even burning it with duralumin to reach as far as he could. Although his emotions kept being manipulated, he sensed no one nearby. The same way with bronze. What is happening? Several minutes later, as though a pressure were lifted from his mind, the hollowness fell away. TAAron sat up, put his back to the wall, and cried.

I would join in here, but I really love both. I've only ever had a cats so I used to like them better but doggos are also very good. So bye I guess.

Ah... I think I might check out this cultclub. I'm still sort of unsure, hovering around F-Zinc, F-Steel, and F-Duralumin. I did make a post (I think on the Mistborn forum) recently trying to start a conversation about combat uses for F-Duralumin. Like, could you use it to detach yourself from emotional connections in a battle so you fight better? What consequences would that have (such as losing your connection with your affiliation with one side of the fight)?

Same. I always die pretty quickly, though, so I haven't played much of it recently. Hi. I've been playing Minecraft for a good deal over five, years, and I may be moderately obsessed. I like commands and technical stuff, but I'm no good at redstone or building. I've beaten the dragon once (in a speedrun, it took just under 1 hr 30 min), never the wither. I mostly play on a multiplayer survival server which I helped do some dev stuff for. I'm doing some lore/roleplay stuff in it right now. If you voted for the Glare I may disown you. Also Java is better. I'm very mediocre at pvp in both versions. Also, to give you an idea of how bad I am at this game that I have sunk a significant portion of my life into, the farthest I've ever gotten in a hardcore world was an iron farm, an enchanted netherite chestplate, and a full chunk that I mined out for fun. So yeah.

Hello fellow humans with fewer rights (and brain cells) than average.

TAAron had been stuck in the room for several hours. He had tried pretty much everything he could think of to escape. Digging a hole into the wall did nothing. No matter how deep he went, there was just more plaster, and eventually, solid stone. There was also nothing above or below the hall. Whenever he stepped out of a hole he'd made, it repaired itself instantly in a blaze of heatless light. He had tried looking for metals with his steel, and all that came of that was a bunch of mangled number plaques on the floor that he had torn out in frustration. He had tried yelling to Haly or Nameless, or even Lark, Thaidakar, or Calano for help. Eventually, he was just yelling because it was better than sitting quietly. How could I be so stupid? Why did I go into that doorway? His regret tormented him until he finally passed out on the floor, bag clutched tightly in hand.

Idly wandering through the halls, TAAron only realized he was lost 10 minutes after he had left the library. He looked at the nearby doors. D89, D91, D93, D95... D34? What? I'm gonna have to have a talk with whoever came up with this room layout. Turning around, he saw something odd. An open doorway stood at the beginning of the hallway, where he had just come from. He could have sworn it wasn't there before. Behind it, it seemed like the normal hallways just continued. How odd, he thought. pproaching the doorway, he could see the numbers on each door. And there it was! D55. It didn't make a lot of sense that his room would be there, but he wasn't complaining. He stepped through. Instantly, all of the doors beyond the hallway began glowing with a bright white light. Backing away, TAAron bumped into something behind him. The doorway he had used to enter was consumed with the same light, and it seemed to be solid. Pushing hard, he just barely got his hand a few inches into the light before it dissapeared, fading as though it had never been there. In its wake, it left a solid wall. Now burning pewter, TAAron managed to pull his hand out of the wall, revealing nothing but solid plaster where there had once been an open doorway. Shocked, he turned around. Every door that he had seen seconds earlier was gone, leaving only the numbered plaques that they had been next to. TAAron began running down the hallway, towards where he knew the library should be based on the location of what once was his room. The first turn he reached wasn't a turn at all. It was another solid wall. Sinking to the floor, he took a few minutes to come to terms with a frightening fact. He was completely trapped.

"I... just try not to set the bookshelf on fire or something. I can push on metals and stuff, but I can't jump on a fire to stop it from burning." He walked out, muching on marshmallows.

"Ah. I guess it must help to be able to pull various foods out of thin air. Well, I guess I'll go back to my room, then. Maybe I can get a hold of someone in charge here and ask them to set up a food system."

TAAron burst into the library with a large jar. Seeing the marshmallows, he smiled. "I was hoping you had those. I'm really hungry and I'm pretty much out of actual food." He scooped up as many marshmallows as he could in the jar and began eating. "Is there a cafeteria here or something?"

Back in room D55, TAAron was sitting still on the floor in front of the six remaining Hemalurgic spikes. He still had to test them for the metal they were using, although he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to proceed. Each of these spikes had killed someone to be made. TAAron felt an overwhelming guilt at the thought of the spike that pierced his abdomen right now. It was the only reason he had been able to fight Karden, true, and having an infinite supply of mental speed was nothing to scoff at. But the cost of it had been a life. I'm using it for good, he told himself. And yet, would he always? He knew that an excess of certain Hemalurgic traits had serious consequences. He might be opening himself up to manipulation by disrupting his spiritweb if he encountered another Investiture user. He could tell that one of the spikes was made of gold. That meant it provided Feruchemical gold, electrum, cadmium or bendalloy. Stolen, he reminded himself. That power was stolen from someone to be put in that spike. Hemalurgy wastes the potential of the power, and kills the person who once had it for selfish gain. To charge a Hemalurgic spoke, you need Intent. Whoever made these spikes wanted to kill that person, and take what they had. Sighing, he put the spikes away. Maybe another day. That fight had been satisfying, but it had really shaken him. I need to get something to eat.

"You are very welcome! I guess I'll head back to my room." He smiled, turning and walking down the hall.

"Well, I don't think you'll need too know, really. If you want, you can test it some other time. Here." TAAron handed Haly two vials filled with Allomantic metals. "Once you've used the bead, you should theoretically be able to burn all of these metals."