I'm pretty sure we do
So we know they go at least someware.
So we know they go at least someware.
We know they vanish. It seems likely that they go somewhere, and it does seem likely - given that the gods (allegedly) made souls in the first place - that that somewhere is the afterlife, but we don't know. They could be spontaneously fading out of existence, they could be being eaten by the Dragon Below - we don't know. All we know is that, a short time after the death of their owner, souls vanish; we have no way to directly verify where they go.
As I just said, it does seem likely that they aren't destroyed, because if they were there would be no obvious reason for the gods to bother making them store records of a person's life. Furthermore, it seems likely that they go to an afterlife, because (though we have no direct confirmation) it seems likely that the angels believe souls go to an afterlife and the angels seem unlikely to lie or be mistaken about that, but it's not certain, and regardless of all that we (the readers) know absolutely nothing about what that afterlife is like. For all we know, it could just be an indefinite storage for souls; we know souls can't think independently, so the default option is that they just sit around producing mana (which we have reason to believe the inhabitants of the spiritual planes like) and doing nothing forever. In fact, the fact that demons accept souls in payment suggests that this is at least possible; MoL demons aren't (I'm fairly sure) intrinsically evil, they're just spirits who aren't angels, so they're probably not taking the souls just to torture them, and I believe canonically what they want is the souls as a mana source; that's at least consistent with the idea that by default souls can't think in the afterlife any more than they can before it. This is especially true given that it's probably much harder to power stuff with souls if those souls can think and potentially cast magic (which doesn't strictly require anything but a soul).
Point is, nothing is certain about what happens to MoL souls after they vanish, and it's important to remember that.
Edit: Having read the piece that your quote comes from (for future reference, please include a link with your quote by putting an ="[link]" in the top quote), some things are enlightened - it seems clear, for example, that the afterlife is distinct from the spiritual plane(s) inhabited by angels and demons - but regardless, the existence of the afterlife remains uncertain.
https://motheroflearninguniverse.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/collected-snippets-angels-demons-spirits/ said:
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Probably not. The way I see MoL gods are like Greek gods, they abuse their power but take thier duties very seriously. Something like this would fling them from malicious to downright evil.
I also think that. I also think that the angles have some kind of weapon they can use against existential threats like the entities powers by the afterlife.
Also what would happen if Zorian induces soul damage on a soul?
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Doesn't follow; we know very little about the MoL gods, and even if they did conform to the contemporary understanding of morality, storing souls indefinitely instead of making an afterlife for them doesn't seem that bad. It's equivalent to death only if they're never reactivated, and even then, it's not obvious that the MoL gods would consider themselves responsible for that.
In general, we know very little about the MoL gods, and we therefore cannot assume anything about their motivations.
Don't know what you mean by "by the afterlife" here, but yes, it seems plausible that the angels have access to divine weaponry. We have confirmation from Quatach-Ichl, even, though what Quatach-Ichl considers "awe-inspiring" may well be totally insignificant to threats on the scale of a shard.
Whether the angels have any weapons that could meaningfully hurt a shard is an open question, but it doesn't seem totally implausible that they do.https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning/chapter/326370/91-a-path-paid-in-blood said:
Not sure what the context of this is, but assuming it's "what would happen to the soul in the afterlife" or "what would happen to the soul's capacity to act as a mana source", the answer is "probably nothing". The core of the soul, which is the bit responsible both for generating mana and for storing a record of a person's life, is indestructible with respect to everything people in MoL have tried; soul damage affects only the outer layers of the soul.
The use of the phrase "mana battery" here is slightly confusing, but I'm pretty sure it's meant to refer to "source of mana", not "storage of mana".https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning/chapter/321479/75-soul-stealer said:
This quote isn't proof of the idea that the core of the soul is what contains the record of a person's life - in fact, I don't think we strictly speaking know that there is a record of the person's life in a soul at all, but it seems very plausible given the kind of stuff souls can do and that the gods could supposedly do - but it demonstrates that the core of a soul at least contains information of some kind. If the record exists, whatever its purpose, the obvious place to put it would be in the indestructible bit of the soul, since that stops it from being destroyed or damaged (which, presumably, would be contrary to its purpose).https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning/chapter/311034/39-suspicious-coincidences said:
You would, of course, have to rebuild the outer portions of the soul, but if the soul core contains sufficient information to reconstruct a person's mind it seems nearly certain that it contains sufficient information to reconstruct the rest of the soul too.
I meant the they probably have some kind of weponen powered by the mana in the afterlife.
I meant shard.
If an Ersetu mage used a spell that inflicted soul damage on a parahuman, would their powers be affected?
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While the story itself never dwells on the topic, I'm pretty sure the Gate powers itself from a similar process. Every activation cycle at minimum, and possibly every iteration of the loop, it gains souls for everyone in the world except for the looper. By design, those souls never leave, and their souls are confirmed to be distinct from their originals outside the loop. So what happens to them after the loop? While it could be that the afterlife sees an instant influx of souls when the loop shuts down, which contain extensive information on what's intended to be absolutely private, I think it more likely that the Gate holds them indefinitely. And what happens when souls are contained indefinitely? Mana.
Oh, I see. Maybe? The core of the planet produces so much mana that I'm not sure this would be necessary, though. It is of course possible that the afterlife is at the core of the planet, which would explain why non-sapient souls go there (they must, or the world would be littered with animal souls), but I don't think we have enough information to tell.
RAFO, but Zorian is not confident enough that this wouldn't go catastrophically wrong somehow that he'd want to try it without first finding a way to better examine shard connections.
Personally, I always assumed that the duplicate souls were just destroyed. Soul cores are indestructible to everything MoL mages have ever tried, but it seems plausible that something that can create souls can also destroy them. As far as power goes, isn't the Sovereign Gate just powered by whatever primordial happens to be attached to it at the time? Panaxeth doesn't seem to have stated that it was powering the Gate, just that the Gate needed to be attached to a primordial to work (which could be solely to take advantage of their status as living universes) but to me the obvious assumption would be that the Gate makes the primordial do the work of powering the process.
I'd also point out there's no reason the Gate should be restricted to making souls only when it creates people for the souls to go with, and therefore the fact that it has a limited power supply at all suggests that there's a limit on the number of souls it can create. It then seems plausible that whatever resource it uses to create souls has the same capacity to generate mana, in which case generating more souls wouldn't make any difference to its total capacity.
Edit: Oh, another thing; the information we have suggests that the afterlife is totally sealed. That is, as far as we know, no one has any way to get things out of the afterlife; that's why we can't verify that it's there. So the souls ending up in the afterlife (which I doubt is what happens, but is possible) would only spill information to people in the afterlife, who as far as we know cannot leave or communicate with the outside.
Really? Where? I mean, I assumed that was the case, but I wasn't aware we had confirmation.
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I forgot, but it was in a post asking if souls can be destroyed, basically he Nobody said that if the universe in which the soul is in is destroyed, the soul also gets destroyed.
Chapter 24 - Multi
Multi
? days, ? hours, and ? minutes ago.
[DESTINATION]
[AGREEMENT]
Gods danced. The man had been here before, he knew.
[TRAJECTORY]
[AGREEMENT]
He watched one of the beings separate from the other, his view focusing on it as it broke up into fragments. It was a controlled destruction, every fragment released with purpose, falling to its destination somewhere in the worlds below.
The being broke and broke and broke, until there were only two fragments left to cast off. The first of them fell, but unlike the others, it grew bigger. Closer. Falling towards the man.
In the distance, he saw the final fragment separate.
Then the first fragment struck him, and there was only warmth.
Something incomprehensibly vast cradled him, melting away his despair like snow before a fire. Everything will be alright, it whispered, its voice like gentle fingers on his cheek. You made it through. The road ahead is clear.
The memory of the beings faded quickly, as the man knew it had before. Slowly, the warmth faded too, and bit by bit the man returned to himself.
Around him, he could feel glowing shapes, each one a story. Each one a parahuman. Each one a power.
The girl, whose power sang of blood and flesh and bone, finished sealing his skull shut, and untied his jaw.
"Are … are you alright?" she asked. "Did it work?"
She undid the remaining restraints, and the man stood, turning to face her.
"It worked," Jack Slash said, grinning, and he felt his power, his greater self, echoing his delight.
* * *
Kaladin Lashed himself sideways, cutting a wide arc with a spear that became a sword as he swung it. The naked, monochrome monster he was fighting slid underneath the blade without breaking stride, in an impossible motion that saw its long hair cutting furrows into the stone-like ground, but before it could reach its target Kaladin managed to slash his weapon back towards it and it was forced to jump to avoid the Blade, passing over the ghostly bear that it had been running for … only to leap back towards it the moment it touched ground, ripping through the projection and dissipating it. Kaladin, off-balance from reversing his swing a second before, wasn't able to bring his weapon to bear in time, and the Siberian sailed past unopposed.
Cloudy, opaque forcefields sprung up around her, and Kaladin took the brief second before the Siberian burst through to Lash himself into the air again. Bastion's forcefields didn't slow the Siberian at all – nothing did, though fortunately she seemed to be wary of his Shardblade – but they did block her vision, made it harder for her to target people. Unfortunately, Bastion was only sometimes able to do that, because he – along with most of the other fighters present – were occupied dealing with "Crawler". Despite his name, the beast – small compared to a chasmfiend, but still dwarfing the humans opposing it – could run and even leap, and the eight translucent bears clinging to its limbs weren't enough. Even as Kaladin dived to intercept the Siberian again, he saw another of the bears dissipate. And they weren't entirely alone; somewhere in the shadows, the Mannequin lurked, though so far it had only struck once before vanishing again.
Above him, nearly invisible against the night sky, a vast storm of shattered glass spun in the air. A couple of bodylengths above the rooftops, the fragments began to appear, and above that, the fragments glinted. Kaladin wouldn't have been able to see them at all, except for the near-constant, brilliant light as blue-white beams flashed across the sky. Almost as bright as lightning, Legend's duel against Shatterbird illuminated the battlefield even as far above as he was fighting, and revealed the glass as the light from his beams reflected off and bent through the shards. Shatterbird was losing that fight, enough that every so often one of Legend's beams – far dimmer than the ones he was fighting with above, thankfully – would connect to the ground and blast footing out from under the Siberian.
It was help that Kaladin sorely needed. Legend might be winning his fight, but down here, the Protectorate was losing theirs. Counting Kaladin, it was eight powered humans, along with more than twenty unpowered troops and four vehicles, against two members of the Slaughterhouse Nine, and they were barely holding them back. Of Boston's parahumans, only three – Bastion, Patchwolf, and Weld, the latter being a Ward who was close to adulthood and so difficult to kill that he'd been allowed to join the fight – had powers that made them suited to this fight, and they were tied up with Crawler, discounting the occasional obscuring shields Bastion managed to throw Kaladin's way. Armsmaster was here, also fighting against Crawler, though Kaladin hadn't been able to spare the attention to see what he was doing. Along with Kaladin himself, the remaining three had come with Legend from his city, New York; Prism was helping Kaladin distract the Siberian, splitting into three copies and letting the Siberian rip one apart before recombining with the remaining one and splitting again, while Ursa Aurora's bears – only twelve left now, of the twenty they'd begun with, and her single human duplicate destroyed by Mannequin in his only action so far – held Crawler down and stood ready to push humans out of the way of the Siberian. As for Cache, the man had tried to trap the Siberian, only for his dark geometry to shatter as soon as it touched her invincible flesh; he was still recovering with the lines of unpowered troops. Kaladin was barely managing to keep the Siberian from reaching them, and she'd already destroyed two of the four vehicles.
Worse, she was starting to ignore Prism. Kaladin himself hadn't been an effective distraction for her after the first ten seconds of the fight; he'd underestimated her, and she'd put a fist through his chest, shattering two of the gemstones on his back. He'd managed to recover their Stormlight and pull free, the gaping hole in his torso healing in seconds, but his skin was still exposed there, and his costume was soaked in his own blood. After that, she seemed to have lost interest in him, only paying attention when Syl's edge came close to her.
Relief came in the form of a voice in Kaladin's ears as Syl missed the Siberian's shoulder by a handspan and he Lashed himself up to avoid her backswing.
"Console to ground," the voice said. "Duša reports Mannequin is neutralized; expect assistance immediately. Repeat, Mannequin is under Duša's control, expect assistance immediately."
On cue, a white, detached limb shot out of an alley, a chain following after it. It gripped a streetlamp and the chain retracted, the rest of Mannequin following after it, a nine-foot tall being made from white ceramic. He began to run towards Siberian with an odd, off-balance gait; Duša couldn't expect that Mannequin would be able to do anything to the Siberian, so he must be intended as a distraction, a body that the Siberian couldn't just run straight through without killing one of her teammates.
The ploy didn't work. Siberian lashed out with a bare foot as she ran past, but instead of cratering Mannequin's torso the strike simply flung him into the air and out of the fight. She'd spread her invulnerability to him for just long enough to knock him out of the battlefield, though hopefully not out of Duša's range. Still, she'd slowed just a bit in order to deliver the hit, and Kaladin took advantage of that to swing at her again. It missed, of course, but it broke her stride, delaying her for a couple of seconds while she caught her balance.
Another voice in his ears, Duša's this time, though altered from the translation into Alethi. "Arriving now," the fourth summon said. "I have a few things to try against Siberian, don't want to risk Crawler, Shatterbird's out of my range."
Brief, but informative. The end of Duša's statement was punctuated by an impact as the Siberian ripped up a chunk of the road and tossed it at Kaladin, hard enough to crack his ribs and throw him backwards. Stormlight healed the wounds; he was using double and triple Lashings almost constantly, he'd had to regenerate half his chest earlier, and yet his reserves were barely dented. Whenever the storm inside him dipped a little, he just pulled in more power from the perfect gemstones in his armour. As long as his Stormlight lasted, Kaladin was nearly unkillable, and he had so much Stormlight that he felt like he could never run out.
Of course, that only applied as long as the Siberian didn't figure out that he needed the gemstones to store Stormlight. Kaladin couldn't hold anything like the amount of Stormlight he had on him; if the Siberian started specifically targeting the gemstones, he'd lose most of his Stormlight, and then he would be easy prey. Fortunately, she was treating him mostly as an irritation; she didn't seem inclined to bother thinking too much about how to get rid of him permanently.
Kaladin Lashed himself towards the Siberian and was about to hit her again when he noticed something falling. Immediately, he triple-Lashed himself backwards, though he needn't have bothered; the soundless, nearly invisible pulse the metal cylinder emitted washed over him harmlessly, its only effect a slight rippling of the Light steaming off his skin. One of Ursa Aurora's bears that was too close by fuzzed briefly, though it pulled itself back together after a moment.
The Siberian didn't even seem to notice.
"Next one is dangerous," Duša's voice came again. With Kaladin tossed away by his triple Lashing, the Siberian was running unopposed towards the line of unpowered troops where Cache was recovering; Kaladin threw himself after her, but, mindful of Duša's warning, stayed high as another cylinder, faintly glinting in the inconsistent lighting of the battlefield, fell from the sky.
This one was more dramatic. The air itself cracked, hair-thin fractures spreading in an instant from the point where the cylinder had been, completely enveloping the Siberian. A nearby wall collapsed into hundreds of pieces, and a moment later a chunk of the side of the building followed it. Fortunately, there was no one in these buildings; seeing the future, although Kaladin still distrusted it, wasn't associated with Odium here, and the combined efforts of the Protectorate's precogs had managed to foresee that the fight would happen here. If the fight moved even fifty metres away, though, the buildings wouldn't be unoccupied, though evacuation efforts were ongoing.
The Siberian ran through the cracks as if they weren't even there; they stretched and trailed behind her, like some kind of eldritch cloak, before they vanished a moment later. Kaladin managed to overtake her with a triple Lashing, a brandished Sylspear pressuring her into giving up her attempt to reach the unpowered troops, but he only barely managed it, and the Siberian kicked up the road into a hail of shrapnel as she turned, injuring several of them.
Duša's next attempt – Kaladin still didn't know where he was, but since he was probably invisible that wasn't much of a surprise – didn't come in the form of an object. Instead, the Siberian was suddenly hidden from view by a sphere of perfect blackness. For a moment, Kaladin thought Duša had banished her somewhere, but the sphere continued to move, and he realized the Mage's goal; it was an extension of Bastion's tactic, applied by someone with abilities actually suited for it. The sphere wasn't hampering the Siberian's movements, but it moved with her, keeping her from seeing the outside world. And if she couldn't see …
Kaladin dived towards the dark sphere. It was moving erratically, but not so much so that he couldn't track it. Before he could reach it, though, a piece of the road swept through the sphere and it wavered and collapsed, revealing the Siberian within; it was hard to see with the constantly-changing illumination, since the road was black already, but Kaladin thought he could see the distinctive absence of colours that was the sign of Siberian's power affecting it.
She glanced around, taking in her surroundings. That cost her a crucial second; by the time she noticed Kaladin, he was already swinging Syl, his feet slamming into the ground and giving him leverage.
She still managed to dodge it, crouching impossibly swiftly. Stormlight rushed through Kaladin's veins, quickening him, perfecting him; before the Siberian acted, he knew what her next move would be. If she jumped away, he would follow; if she stayed in place, he would bring Syl down on her. She had to hit him. And in that moment, an idea occurred to him.
The Siberian brought her arm up, hand knifed, and cut through his right arm, clipping the gemstone in his shoulder and shattering it. But in the brief moment of contact, Kaladin poured Stormlight into the Siberian, and Lashed her.
He was half expecting that it wouldn't work, that the Siberian would simply reject the Stormlight as she rejected everything else. But instead, the Lashing took, and the Siberian fell into the sky. Kaladin had Lashed her horizontally as well, in an attempt to avoid accidentally throwing her at Legend, but most of the Lashing was vertical; in less than a second, she was beyond the rooftops. He'd put a lot of Stormlight into that Lashing; she'd be falling for at least ten minutes, and without anything to push off she shouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Kaladin's severed arm hit the ground with a thud, the sword in its hand bursting into mist as Syl swirled around him. A new one was already regrowing from the stump; he flexed the fingers as they formed a couple of seconds later, allowing himself to relax a little as he redistributed the Light from his broken gemstone. He'd only been fighting for a minute and a half, but that fight had been among the most intense he'd ever had. Siberian was, if not dead, at least neutralized now, so …
Wait. She should have been further away.
Kaladin didn't bother trying to work out what had happened. Instead, he Lashed himself after her, feeling the wind rush against his now-bare right arm.
It only took him seconds to catch up, and as soon as he did he realized what the Siberian had done. Stormlight still trailed from her body, and she was still falling, but she wasn't getting any faster; she could ignore gravity, and apparently that also let her ignore Kaladin's Lashing.
Her counter wasn't perfect, though. She could avoid getting any faster, but she couldn't alter her trajectory. Kaladin had matched speeds with her, and that meant that from his perspective, she was standing still in the air.
Syl formed a spear in Kaladin's right hand, and he thrust it forward at the Siberian. It was a perfect strike; the Siberian was a stationary target, and Kaladin had long since learned how to fight in the air. It was, almost literally, like stabbing cremlings in a bucket … except that cremlings didn't have arms.
The Siberian's right hand flashed out and grabbed the haft of the spear, just behind the speartip. She squeezed, and the metal burst into mist, speartip vanishing just before it could make contact with her chest. Worse, in the moment before it did, she'd managed to throw herself downwards from her brief contact with the metal, plummeting towards the rooftops again.
No.
Syl responded to his will and formed a knife in his hand. Kaladin spun in the air and flung the Sylknife at the Siberian.
It spun once in the air, before the blade sank into the rooftop. The Siberian had made contact with the roof a moment before, and one step had taken her to the next one. She dropped to all fours and took up a hellishly fast crawling motion, hands and feet sinking into stone at each movement to keep her from flying into the air.
Kaladin bit back a scream of frustration; it might distract his allies. Instead, he said, knowing that his helmet would send his words where they were needed, "Siberian incoming. Lashed upwards, ignoring gravity to avoid it; she might start falling up without warning."
It was brief, but it carried the information his teammates needed to know. Syl flew up ahead of him, apparently undamaged by her contact with the Siberian; she met his eyes and nodded, expression determined.
"Duša, leaving to hunt down the rest of the Nine," Duša's voice said. "Taking Mannequin with me."
Fair enough – Duša had tried and failed. He'd be more useful trying to find the four members of the Nine who were unaccounted for. For some reason, there was no ninth member.
Kaladin arrived back at the battlefield, a few seconds ahead of the Siberian, and dove into the fight.
* * *
Vin landed on a rooftop, judging herself to be far enough from the last place she'd stopped. She reached into a pouch at her waist, pulling out a bead of bronze and swallowing it.
She ignited the metal, and extinguished her others, but not before waiting a few seconds to make sure there weren't any parahumans nearby. She might not be near a fight, but she still didn't want to risk someone getting the drop on her while she didn't have tin or pewter up, especially not at night when dropping tin hurt her vision so much.
Then, she burned duralumin.
The range at which she could detect parahumans with bronze varied depending on their power. For a Tinker, like Armsmaster, it was perhaps twenty metres if he was using his technology, though that distance could fluctuate a lot; Vin hadn't had any experience with Tinkers while they were actually building their equipment, but she suspected their pulses would be much louder then. For other parahumans, the range was usually longer – similar to the distance at which she could sense Allomancy, between eighty and a hundred metres. A rare few, Vin could hear from even further away; Vista, the Ward who could warp space, sometimes brought parts of Brockton Bay's coastline together to help her team get around, and when she did her power was audible from halfway across the city.
Of course, Vin could flare the metal. Doing that didn't increase her range as much as one would guess from its effect on the other metals, however; it was more useful for increasing precision, only pushing her range out by around a quarter. Similarly, burning duralumin with her bronze didn't let her hear pulses across an entire city; it was best used in the way Vin had done when she'd first combined the two metals, to shortcut the long process of learning to squeeze every last drop out of bronze. Despite that, though, it still provided an impressive range increase; for the brief moments the metal burned, her bronze covered nearly a kilometre from one edge to the other.
And in order to find the four missing members of the Nine, that was exactly what Vin needed it to do.
The massed, discordant pulses of the fight hundreds of metres to the south washed over her, but they were distant; she could ignore them, even as their overlapping clangor blended into something that felt like standing outside in a storm. She could faintly hear Kaladin's strange rhythms in the mix of crackling, unmeasured beats, oddly calm despite the frenetic energy of his powers and the intensity of the battle Vin knew he was fighting.
Harder to deal with was the strange, omnipresent pulse that seemed to cover the entire city. Vin had first noticed it when she'd been woken by the alarm and had burned bronze as part of taking stock of her surroundings. It seemed to lack distinct beats entirely, more akin to the sound of wind rushing in her ears mixed with the crackling of a fire, with no origin she could pick out. It wasn't loud, at least not without duralumin; with it, though, it filled her head, made it difficult to pick out other pulses. She could deal with it, but she suspected it was cutting her effective range a little.
Vin had mentioned what she was hearing to the PRT – she was pretty sure they'd already figured out her ability to sense parahumans – and it had started a slight panic. Not that the PRT had had much room for more panicking, given the situation they were in, but there had been some. She hadn't heard anything more about it – she'd left the PRT headquarters less than ten minutes ago, along with everyone else who hadn't been on immediate standby. Which was most of the PRT's forces, since the consensus of the people with powers that let them predict the future had been that the attack wouldn't happen for at least a day. Thankfully, there'd been enough uncertainty in that pronouncement that they hadn't been caught completely flat-footed.
Besides that strange pulse, there was nothing else within the range of her bronze, or at least nothing that she could hear before it burned out. Vin ignited her other metals, feeling relief as tin-enhanced sight returned to her, and Steelpushed off towards the next area she needed to check.
She might be hunting the Nine, but they weren't the only enemies in this city. The Teeth, along with their leader, were on the march. From what Vin had gathered, there'd been some uncertainty as to whether the PRT should engage the Teeth; apparently the Slaughterhouse Nine being here meant that lesser conflicts might be suspended. A couple of minutes ago, though, she'd heard through her communicator that one of Boston's flying parahumans had gone to talk to the Butcher, and it hadn't gone well; the message had been light on detail, but supposedly the Butcher wanted to fight the Slaughterhouse Nine alone, with only the Teeth as support, and had said that she would fight anyone else who tried to interfere. The group was now being treated as hostile, regardless of exactly what had happened.
Speaking of her communicator, Vin heard a voice in her ear. The translation stripped it of much of its tone, enough that she wouldn't have been sure who it was, but the content narrowed down the options somewhat.
"Remnant," a man who had to be Director Armstrong said, "be advised that the Nine may have specific countermeasures against you. Duša captured Mannequin and has discovered that he was warned about the abilities of both Zephyr and Duša himself, by Jack Slash; Shatterbird's behaviour also suggests that she's aware of Duša. He didn't find anything about you, but Mannequin was aware of aspects of Sylph's blade form and details of Duša's abilities that are not public knowledge; be cautious."
"Understood," Vin replied, after taking a moment to remind herself how her microphone worked.
She was tempted to dismiss that as Jack Slash having simply done his research beforehand, but … when Armstrong said "aspects of Sylph's blade form", Vin had to assume he meant its effect on living tissue. Everything else – no, there was the fact that Kaladin had to make it, that wasn't public knowledge either, and it probably wouldn't be too difficult to guess. Still, she didn't think Armstrong would have bothered warning her about it if he didn't think it was more than guesswork. And then there was Duša.
Vin had mixed feelings about the cloaked, mind-reading stranger. On the one hand, he had – had admitted to, when she'd asked him in private – searching through her mind while she slept. She wasn't happy about that – he might not have been looking for private things, but he must undoubtedly have found some – but her anger was tempered by the fact that she knew perfectly well that she, in his place and with his powers, would have done exactly the same thing. It was difficult to blame him, given that. Besides, for the brief time that she'd spoken to him, he'd come across as fairly pleasant; he'd even agreed to make her the bronze beads she was using now, once it had become clear that he already knew how Allomancy worked.
She was distinctly aware that if Duša knew how Allomancy worked, and had learned it from her, he'd probably also picked up a basic understanding of how Hemalurgy worked. Fortunately – in this case – Vin had not come out of her contact with Preservation with knowledge of the locations of Hemalurgic bind points; she suspected it was something to do with her having died while holding the power. She'd had a few … intuitions, about Hemalurgy – some of which had been quite disturbing – but they'd been in the same category as much of the rest of the knowledge she'd had as Preservation; vague, imprecise, concepts without detail. Even if he'd wanted to, Duša wouldn't be able to start spiking people without some experimentation first, and that would – hopefully – be noticed.
Anyway, the point was that nearly all of Duša's abilities were secret. Vin was guessing that Duša – for obvious reasons – hadn't elaborated to Armstrong exactly which details Mannequin had known about his powers, but presumably they'd been ones that he didn't think could be easily guessed. It was worth considering that other members of the Nine might have information about her. She'd travelled far enough to stop again now, though; she'd continue that line of thought later.
She picked out a rooftop with a group of black shapes on it, which looked like they'd make an effective place to hide. As she got closer, though, the shapes resolved into the bags that were used for waste here; they were torn open, and garbage was spilling out, covering the rooftop. She considered landing there anyway, but then she got close enough for her tin-enhanced nose to pick out the smell, and … no. She wasn't going to stand there if she didn't have to.
Vin Pushed herself up again, taking a quick look around as she did, and used iron to guide herself to a neighbouring rooftop which also had things to hide behind. It had the additional advantage of being upwind from the waste-covered one.
Without wasting any more time, she swallowed her bronze, extinguished her tin, pewter, iron, steel, and copper, and burned it with duralumin.
She was out of range of the fight, finally, so that cacophony left her unbothered. That odd background pulse was still there, and didn't seem to have changed at all since her last check. Besides that, there was only one other pulse – standard parahuman, insofar as there was such a thing – within her range. It was quiet, right on the very edge of audibility, and -
Her bronze burned out, but she still remembered where the pulse had been; nearly the opposite direction to the garbage-covered building. Actually, given how quiet it was, if she'd landed on that building, she probably wouldn't have heard it.
Well, it might be nothing, but it was worth checking out just in case. Vin swallowed another bead of bronze, ignited it along with her other metals – barring copper, of course – and Pushed herself off the rooftop towards the parahuman.
It didn't take her long to find the source of the pulse, a vehicle like any of the countless others that sat in the streets of this city. There were no lights, nothing to indicate that anyone was in the vehicle; with the lights that lined the streets, someone without tin could have walked past without ever glancing at the windows. Vin, though, had tin, and could see the man inside.
She studied him from a rooftop for a few moments. To her normal senses, he didn't appear to be doing anything, just sitting there, eyes closed, a slight frown on his face. To her bronze, though, he was clearly using a power. Even now that she was closer, it was quiet, only a little louder than a Tinker using their technology would have been.
Maybe his power was purely mental? Vin didn't understand what made a power loud or quiet – Allomancy didn't produce variations like that – but powers like that being quieter seemed to match with her limited experience.
She should probably move on. The man's face didn't match any of the Nine's, at least as far as Vin remembered from the pictures she'd been hurriedly shown after she'd arrived, and he was unmasked; observing him like this was technically a violation of the Unwritten Rules that the PRT made such a big deal of. But … something in Vin objected to the thought. Why was he sitting alone in a car, doing nothing but using his power? Maybe he had a power that was always active, like Miss Militia's; maybe he was sitting there waiting for someone, despite the fact that it was a couple of hours after midnight. Or maybe he was one of the Nine. After all, at last count, they'd only had eight members; it wouldn't be implausible for them to have recruited a ninth recently. Come to think of it, it might explain how Jack Slash knew what he apparently did, if he had access some kind of information-gathering power.
Then again, if this man was Jack Slash's information source, he'd been remarkably lax in preparing countermeasures against her. Many of the vehicles in this city were made of aluminium, thanks to the technique – Vin had read enough now to have at least a basic understanding of how it worked – they used to extract it cheaply, but this one wasn't. Here, aluminium was by far her biggest weakness, and it would have been so easy to capitalize on had this man been aware of it that the fact that he hadn't strongly suggested he didn't know it.
Sparked by an idle thought, another piece of the knowledge she'd had as Preservation surfaced. As Vin had just wondered, aluminium would block bronze-pulses, although she wasn't sure if a person would have to be completely surrounded by it or just have some between them and the Seeker. That made it nearly certain that this man either wasn't with the Nine or didn't know about aluminium; if he'd been in an aluminium vehicle, most likely she would never have found him. He could still be with the Nine in another role, or perhaps be the Nine's information source and simply not have discovered aluminium's nature, but … neither of those were very plausible. The PRT knew about aluminium, and if he was in another role, what was he doing here?
She debated for a few more seconds. Then another thought occurred to her. She'd assumed the strange sourceless pulse she'd been hearing was to do with the Nine, but she'd only been in Boston once before, and only for a few hours. Maybe this man, with a constantly active power, was the person generating it.
Vin made her decision. She took a moment to pull out her translator – she'd left it off, relying on the PRT being able to translate her messages at their headquarters – and put it in place around her neck, hiding it beneath the collar of her mistcloak. Then she stepped off the roof, slowing her descent with steel so that she touched the ground lightly.
She was louder than she would have liked; the shoes she was wearing were soft-soled, more like footwraps than actual shoes, but it would still have been quieter to go barefoot. Sadly, the amount of waste – sharp or otherwise – scattered around the streets here had convinced her that that wasn't feasible. Ironically, Luthadel's streets, which had had to be constantly swept to keep them clear of ash, had been much cleaner.
The man didn't seem to notice her, however. Vin walked up to the car, keeping out of his line of sight; there was a risk that he'd be surprised and act violently, if he had a power that let him, but if he was with the Nine that would most likely be his first reaction regardless. This way, she'd be close enough that if she had to she could punch through the glass and grab him with chromium; flared pewter should keep her from being cut too badly if she did that, and while he might be injured, it was better than her other option to shut down an attack, which was killing him. She could Push herself away, of course, which would probably be the better option, but not all powers could be dodged.
Actually, on that note …
Vin extinguished her bronze and ignited copper. Then, after a moment's thought, she flared it; there wasn't normally any point in flaring copper, it didn't make the cloud much bigger, but there had apparently been a noticeable difference to Duša, so it might help against whatever the man's power was. It didn't burn all that fast even flared, so there wasn't much reason for her not to, at least for a short time. At the last moment, she decided to use brass as well, applying a gentle Soothing to the man's aggression.
That done, she stepped up to the window of the vehicle and knocked on it.
* * *
Kaladin swung Syl again. Controlling the Siberian's movements had become easier, since his Lashing was still affecting her, and the barbs along Syl's shaft stopped her from pulling the same trick of grabbing a blunt part of the metal, but she'd started using objects to knock the weapon aside; Syl would cut them if she was a sword and angled right, but otherwise it was a remarkably effective tactic.
On the bright side, Kaladin was now nearly certain that the Siberian could be hurt by Syl, if she was sharp. The first time the Siberian had used that technique, the piece of road she'd used had been imbued with the monochrome of her power; as soon as it touched the point of a spike, the effect had vanished completely, and the Siberian seemed to have been disoriented enough by it that Kaladin had almost been able to follow up and hit her. Even without access to gravity, though, she was just too fast; any human trying to pull off the things she could do would kill themselves from whiplash. So would any singer, for that matter. On top of that, since then, she'd been using unimbued pieces of material, which were nearly as effective and easy for her to replace.
Above him, Legend was still fighting. His beams had grown even brighter; given how much damage they did to things they hit, and that they were impossible to dodge, Kaladin could only guess that he couldn't find Shatterbird, and was trying to light up the sky to make it easier for him. Closer to the ground, there were only two of Ursa Aurora's bears left, and Patchwolf had taken several major injuries and retreated. Kaladin knew enough about the man's powers to know that that wouldn't kill him, but he'd be out of the fight for at least a few minutes, probably longer. Bastion and the unpowered troops were picking up the slack, but that meant there were no longer any blinding forcefields coming Kaladin's way, which made his job harder. At least the Siberian couldn't jump around as she liked; without gravity, if she jumped her trajectory became completely predictable, and while she was fast enough that it was still a problem she was being very cautious about not getting hit with Syl.
The Siberian dodged Kaladin's spear slash, of course, but didn't strike back. That had been an unforeseen advantage of the stunt Kaladin had pulled with the Lashing; the Siberian no longer considered it worth the risk to hit him, except by throwing bits of building and road at him. That still hurt, of course, but it was far less dangerous than getting hit by the Siberian herself was, and also easier to dodge. Small pieces could be redirected with Reverse Lashings; larger ones, Kaladin could dodge directly.
Her next move, though, was unexpected. She launched herself sideways, towards a building. She'd done that before; Kaladin, expecting her to bounce off in a new direction, readied himself to intercept her.
Instead, the Siberian, still glowing from his Lashing, crashed straight through the building's wall – though this one didn't seem to be load-bearing, and the rest of the building remained intact – and vanished from sight.
Kaladin Lashed himself up and back, expecting the Siberian to re-emerge at any moment. She didn't appear.
In the absence of any obviously better options, Kaladin raised a hand to his helmet and activated his communication system. "The Siberian has … left?" he said. "She might be hiding, but she went into a building and I lost sight of her."
There was a moment's pause. Then Bastion's voice came back.
"Stay on guard, don't pursue her; it's probably a trap," Kaladin's temporary commander said. "Report this to Console; they'll follow it up."
"Understood," Kaladin said. He dismissed Syl, letting her float up beside him.
Maybe a trap was all it was, the Siberian getting tired of fighting Kaladin in the open and trying for an ambush. But, now that he hadn't followed … where was she?
* * *
The man didn't immediately attack her, so that was a positive.
He did jump in his seat, eyes flying open as his head slammed into the back of his seat, which fortunately appeared to be soft. His head jerked round to face the window, revealing a panicked expression; seeing Vin standing at his window didn't seem to calm him down.
Not that that told her anything. He was a parahuman out of costume, and she had powers and had approached him unexpectedly; if anything, him being calm would have been more suspicious.
"Who are you?" the man said. He sounded like he couldn't decide whether to be angry or terrified.
"Remnant," Vin said, giving the name Earth Bet knew her by. The man didn't seem about to attack her, so she let go of her Soothing; he might have a power that would let him notice, and she didn't want to unnecessarily provoke him. "I've been in Brockton Bay for the past few weeks, so you probably haven't heard of me." She waited a beat. "What are you doing sitting out here?"
The man's mouth twisted slightly. "What business is it of yours why I'm here?" he said, voice sharp.
Before Vin could respond, though, his expression changed and he backpedalled. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding contrite, "I just … I don't have anywhere to sleep. It's – I get touchy about it."
It was an excellent lie. Begin with a flat denial, then appear to cave and give another reason; one which made sense of the initial reaction, even. Vin suspected there might be some truth in it, as well; the man's appearance was certainly rough enough to be without a home. If she hadn't heard his power, she might have believed him.
Actually, now that the man hadn't immediately attacked her, it was probably more useful to be able to tell if he was using his powers than to have immunity to a limited class of powers that he might not even have. Vin extinguished her copper and ignited bronze. Immediately, the man's pulse returned – much louder now that she was so close – and so did the odd omnipresent one.
Still using his power, then, whatever it was.
Vin shook her head. "Let me clarify. Why are you sitting out here, and what are you doing with your power?"
It was blunt, and immediately the man's face tensed. It was a risk, as well – revealing to people besides the PRT that she could detect power use risked other parahumans getting scared and coming after her – but it wasn't like there weren't parahumans with powers that would let them dodge the Unwritten Rules pretty easily. Even without powers, it probably wouldn't be too hard to work out someone's identity if you tried hard enough. But Vin didn't feel like sweeping ash at every step; she needed to know who this man was and what he was doing, so that she could either take him out or keep looking for the Nine.
After a moment, the man slumped. "You can sense powers," he said, not making it a question. "I guess you're here because of the Nine?"
Vin nodded, flaring tin. This was the point where he might lie, and while using tin to judge if someone was being truthful was a tricky business, it was better than nothing. She ignited brass again and added zinc, Soothing the man's suspicion and wariness and Rioting his trust; gently, subtly, not enough for him to notice, but enough that he'd find it harder to lie convincingly.
Perhaps because of her Allomancy, the man rolled down the window slightly so that Vin could hear him more easily, although – noticeably – not enough for her to reach inside the car. After a moment, he continued talking.
"I'm watching them," he said. "My power – it's complicated, but I can see stuff from a distance." He shook his head. "I know I should be driving away, or sleeping, I just – I can't not watch when they're in the same city."
Hmm. He was definitely hiding stuff – of course he was, he had no idea who she was – but that was a plausible enough story.
"And you're still watching them now?" Vin asked. If he lied …
The man shook his head, and for a moment Vin tensed, but his answer defused that. "No, not while I'm talking to you, but – my power is complicated. If I stopped using it, it would take me time to find them again."
Convenient, but still plausible. What else was odd about him – oh.
"Aren't you worried about Shatterbird?" Vin asked. "We're in her range here, if she decided to scream."
Vin had asked the PRT for plastic vials before she'd gone to sleep; it was closer than she would have liked to telling them she needed metal, but she didn't want to risk Shatterbird depriving her of all her metals. Even if that decision seemed to have been unnecessary, Vin was still glad of it, knowing that Shatterbird could change her mind at any moment.
The man shook his head. "These windows are laminated glass. They shouldn't break."
… Vin had no idea what laminated glass was. Glass with some kind of layer on it? What would that do … oh, maybe the layer held the glass together. If the glass broke, the layer wouldn't, and you wouldn't get glass shards flying everywhere. She was just guessing based on the name, though.
Regardless of the details, if the man thought these windows were strong enough to resist Shatterbird, it was a good thing Vin hadn't tried to punch them. Hitting something that didn't give was a good way to make yourself give instead; she'd have been looking at bruises at least.
Those were all the questions she could think of to ask, and the man's story made sense. Though if he wasn't a member of the Nine …
"I don't suppose you could help us look for the rest of the Nine?" Vin asked. "If you have a -"
The man was already shaking his head. "My power wouldn't work for that. I only found the fight because I could see Legend up there, so I knew where to look." He jerked his head in the direction of Legend's duel against Shatterbird, which lit up the sky even from this distance.
Again, convenient but plausible. "Goodbye, then," Vin said. She stepped back, preparing to jump away -
"Wait!" the man half-yelled. "Wait," he repeated, as Vin stepped up to the window again. "Don't tell the PRT about me? I'm not a villain, but I don't – I don't want to get involved with all this."
Vin considered for a moment, then nodded.
"Thank you," the man said.
Vin didn't reply. Instead, she Pushed herself onto a nearby rooftop.
Then, instead of leaving to hunt down the rest of the Nine, she waited.
Maybe the man's story was what he said it was. But what he'd said at the end, about not wanting to be involved with parahuman affairs? That had been as insincere as Breeze telling someone he wasn't Soothing them. Not that Breeze had ever made much of a secret of how much he used brass.
Vin reached for her communicator, taking her translator off and stowing it away. "Command," she asked, "did anything unusual happen in the last …" she thought for a second "… minute and a half?"
Vin didn't get an answer for about fifteen seconds, during which she heard the man's vehicle start up and begin to drive away. Then Command replied, "The Siberian ran into a building about that time, and we lost sight of her. Nothing else notable."
The Siberian? What did the Siberian have to do with anything?
The man was getting further away, so Vin pushed herself off the roof to follow him. There were hardly any vehicles on the road at this time of night, and so tin made tracking him by sound easy. While she followed him, she thought.
The Siberian leaving at that time could be a coincidence; it had been a few minutes now, she might just have become bored and decided to try a different approach. Supposing it wasn't a coincidence, the man would have to be communicating with the Siberian somehow, which – presumably – would be what his power was doing. So, when Vin arrived … when Vin arrived, he would have contacted the Siberian and asked her to come and save him. Which meant the Siberian would be coming here. The indestructible, unstoppable parahuman, that Vin might be able to stop with chromium if she was willing to risk losing a hand, was coming here.
Vin landed on the next rooftop she came to, bringing herself to an abrupt stop with steel as her feet touched the ground. She didn't bother swallowing a bead of bronze; she already had one swallowed from when she'd gone to investigate the man in the first place. Instead, she simply ignited it, extinguished her other metals, and burned duralumin.
The man's bronze-pulse crashed into her awareness, still moving away. So did the sourceless, beatless pulse that she still didn't know the origin of. But she heard nothing else.
No Siberian, then. Vin didn't know how loud the Siberian's bronze-pulse was – she assumed it was one of the ones she'd heard from the fight, but there were far too many of those for her to know which – but given what she knew it seemed likely that it wouldn't be quiet. So either the Siberian was much slower than Vin had been led to believe, or she wasn't coming.
Again, she considered just giving up, moving on. Even if this man did turn out to be with the Nine, the four she was actually looking for would still be unaccounted for. Her instincts protested at the idea, though; the man's story was just too neat. Besides, she wasn't the only one looking; it wouldn't matter much if she spent a few more minutes here.
"Command," Vin said, raising her communicator to her mouth, "can you tell me if the Siberian reappears?"
If the man was communicating with the Siberian, then now that he was out of danger she should be returning to the fight – if it wasn't a coincidence, if she'd ever really left and there wasn't some other reason for her to hide, if she wasn't hidden from bronze somehow and tracking Vin now. It wouldn't be certain, but it would be another piece of evidence.
"Acknowledged," the voice spoke into her ear after a few seconds. Vin swallowed another bead of bronze and Pushed herself into the air.
Vin followed the man for perhaps half a minute more before he came to a halt in a side street. She flared tin, head just peeking over the edge of the roof she was on as she watched his face.
He looked around for a few moments, but didn't see her; it was dark, and she was concealed. Then, he closed his eyes again, and seemed to relax.
Not ten seconds after that, Vin heard a voice in her ear, telling her that the Siberian had rejoined the fight.
Vin took a breath. It still wasn't certain; there were pieces to the puzzle she didn't have. But, even if she didn't have the whole story, she was now nearly sure that there was some connection between the Siberian and this man. She didn't want to kill him; she still might be wrong, and if she was right, she'd want answers from him. But it couldn't hurt to shut off his power with chromium and see if the Siberian reacted.
Her original plan of punching through the windows wouldn't work, if the man had told the truth about the glass not breaking. She was confident that she could smash through them with duralumin – steel or pewter, either would work – but she was less confident that she could do it without killing the man inside. She took a moment to see if she could think of a plan that would leave the man's vehicle intact – if he was telling the truth about not having anywhere to sleep, destroying it might hurt him a lot – but no ideas came to her.
So, instead, Vin jumped. Steel carried her into the sky above the man's vehicle, and she looked around to make sure no one else was nearby. If she got this sequence wrong, it might get … messy.
Bronze, off.
Vin focused on the vehicle, letting the blue lines multiply as her perception separated the components. She reached out with iron and steel, gently Pushing on the frame at the bottom of the car and Pulling on the upper sections.
Tin, off.
She added brass, hitting the man with a general Soothing. Gently; she didn't want him to notice just yet. With her right hand, she pulled a vial out of her belt, loosening the cork with her left; she wanted to be ready to drink as soon as possible after this stunt.
Pewter, on.
Vin let go of her other anchors. Briefly, she intensified her Push on the frame of the vehicle, sending her soaring upwards. She'd need the momentum for what she was about to do. She took a breath, then let it out, readying herself for the final step.
Duralumin, on.
* * *
The Siberian stumbled mid-lunge, drifting almost leisurely forward as one of her feet carved a furrow through the ground. Kaladin was surprised enough that it took him a moment to adjust his trajectory; once he had, he began to worry that it might be a trap of some kind, but kept going regardless. Even if it was a trap, he couldn't pass up the opportunity.
He reached out with his Sylspear, preparing to drive its point into the Siberian, but before the weapon made contact the Siberian … vanished. Her body flickered for a moment, and then she was gone. His spear passed through empty space. Kaladin looked around in case she'd somehow tricked him, but there was no sign of her.
What just happened? Syl said in his mind.
Kaladin didn't know.
* * *
The gentle burn of her metals became a bonfire, and Vin felt the opposing forces of her Steelpush and Ironpull nearly tear her apart. Beneath her, audible even without tin, there was a horrible shriek as the metal of the vehicle gave way; most of the top half tore away, taking with it the shatterproof windows, and flew straight up. Directly towards her.
In the fraction of a moment between the roof coming free and her steel running out, Vin reached out to other metal sources and Pushed, tossing herself up and away from the car roof. Then her metals ran out and she was flying upwards.
Immediately, she downed the vial in her right hand; it took a second for her metals to return, and she hoped her Soothing – duralumin-empowered, deadening all his emotions and leaving only apathy – would stun the man long enough for her to get in touch range. Then new reserves appeared within her, and she ignited all four physical metals, feeling pewter's strength and coordination return to her as tin stripped away the darkness once more.
She reached out with iron and Pulled on the roof of the car, bringing it up towards her even as she was pulled down to meet it. A brief pulse of steel combined with flared pewter took the impact as her feet touched the metal, and as soon as she had contact she threw herself sideways, flipping so that she was below the shattered roof, her iron holding her in place on its surface. Then, she kicked off it, burning steel and launching herself to the ground below.
The man still seemed disoriented. As Vin fell, though, his head turned up, and his eyes focused on her.
There was a flicker in the ruin of the car next to him, and suddenly the Siberian was there.
Immediately, the naked, black-and-white striped woman leapt at her. Iron and steel moved Vin out of her path, and she spun to track the Siberian as the woman shot past her -
The Siberian vanished in midair. Vin scanned the area, looking for her, but found nothing, and – movement, blue lines from below her, out of her field of vision. She Pushed, and the pieces of metal flew back towards the ground; spinning, she found the Siberian carefully lifting the man out of the car. She pulled something else out of the ruins of the vehicle – a blanket? - before picking the remains up one-handed and tossing them at Vin as easily as if the mass of warped metal was a simple brick. The wreckage shot towards her at a shocking speed, nearly as fast as an arrow.
Vin Pushed on the improvised projectile, slowing it down – though not stopping it; it was too heavy and going far too fast for that – and tossing herself into the sky. On her way up, she passed the falling roof; she Pushed it in the Siberian's direction. The man, whoever he was, was clearly working with the Nine; she no longer had any reservations about trying to kill him.
The Siberian's projectile occupied her for a few seconds; people lived in these buildings – she could already see a couple of lights appearing in response to the noise, people who hadn't yet evacuated to the tunnels – and she didn't want to let the heavy frame hurt anyone. She matched its velocity and Pulled it down, barely within range of the anchors on the street; she let it crash to the ground, only slowing it enough to be sure it wouldn't bounce. Then she gave chase to the Siberian, igniting bronze.
As she'd guessed, the Siberian's bronze-pulse was much louder than the man's. Right now, she was running away, with the man wrapped in the blanket and slung over her shoulders. Vin caught up easily – the Siberian wasn't going nearly as fast as she'd been told she could. Maybe she didn't want to hurt the man? But the briefing on the Siberian had included the information that she could spread her invulnerability to things she touched – Vin was pretty sure that was how she'd picked up the car; its metal lines had briefly vanished when the Siberian touched it, though they'd come back as soon as she'd let go – and that supposedly included people. Why not just make the man invulnerable and carry him that way?
Then Vin got close enough to hear the man's bronze-pulse as well, and immediately she noticed the anomaly. The two pulses, the Siberian's and the man's, weren't identical, but the beats were in the same place, the rises and falls in volume were nearly the same; they were synchronized in a way that Vin had never seen parahuman powers be before. Combined with what she'd seen before – the Siberian appearing next to the man, leaping at her and vanishing only to appear at his side again – the man wasn't just communicating with the Siberian, he was some kind of anchor for her, maybe something like what Taylor could do but in reverse. Or maybe the man simply was the Siberian, one parahuman with two bodies. Whichever option it was, it clearly came with a weakness; the blanket. The price of being the Siberian's anchor must be that she couldn't make her anchor invulnerable, or there would be no purpose to covering him in something.
Experimentally, Vin Pushed some coins towards the man. They bounced off the blanket harmlessly; it was black, probably specifically to make it hard to see the monochrome of Siberian's power, but she must be extending her invulnerability to it. She hadn't really expected that to work, but that was fine. She had plenty more tricks up her sleeve.
Vin allowed herself to grin. Alone, the Siberian would have been terrifying, even for her; an unstoppable, implacable threat that she had no way to hurt save for an ability that she didn't even know would work. Now, carrying her master, unable to move too quickly for fear of squashing him against the sides of his invincible cocoon … now, she was just another monster.
First, terror. Before she'd come here, Vin hadn't normally bothered using emotional Allomancy in combat. For most of her career, she'd either been fighting Mistborn or Inquisitors, who had copper, or koloss, for whom zinc and brass were all-or-nothing; you either took control of them or you didn't. The times she had been fighting normal soldiers, she'd usually considered emotional Allomancy pointless, given how easily they died without it. In the weeks she'd spent here, though, the PRT's rules and her own morals forcing her to fight to subdue instead of to kill, she'd learned the value of putting an opponent off their game.
Vin flared zinc and brass, their effect washing over a wide cone in front of her; she wouldn't have the concentration to spare to focus the Allomancy on the man alone. With zinc, she Rioted the man's fear and panic, not bothering to hold back, letting him feel as every nerve in his body screamed at him to flee. With brass, she washed away courage, and – purpose? Will? Focus? It was right on the edge of what could be affected with emotional Allomancy, barely an emotion at all, but it was within her reach. She wanted the Siberian's master – creator? Controller? Whatever the man was – too busy drowning in terror to think of any plans more concrete than running.
The Siberian sped up, run becoming visibly less coordinated; either the man was controlling her directly or she herself wasn't immune to the Rioting. Vin's grin had faded as she focused on her task, but she felt a twinge of satisfaction nevertheless.
Second; metal. The man really had done an appalling job preparing for her; he had metal on his body, and while the Siberian covering something with her invulnerability cut off its metal lines, it evidently didn't block the lines connecting to metal behind it. Vin dropped to street level, hitting the ground in a pewter-fueled run before coming to a halt and bracing herself. She reached out to metal behind her with iron in preparation, and forward to the metal objects on the man's body.
Then she Pulled on that metal. Hard.
Instinctively, she'd expected to rip the Siberian's blanket-wrapped master out of her hands. But that wasn't how the Siberian worked. The reason the Siberian was so dangerous, the fact that had been emphasized the most in the short briefing she'd been given, wasn't just that she couldn't be harmed; it was that she couldn't be stopped. It didn't matter how much force you used, it didn't matter what the Siberian's footing was, it didn't even matter if she had any footing at all; unless she chose otherwise, she would simply carry on moving as if the impact or the barrier or the body wasn't there. So the bundle, its outer layer made invulnerable and unstoppable, kept moving at exactly the same speed as before.
At least, it did for the brief second before the Siberian flickered out.
Without anything holding it in place, the bundle rapidly reversed direction, tumbling across the ground as it was pulled back towards Vin. As it did, the blanket unrolled and the man was revealed.
As soon as he came into sight, Vin released her Pull on the metal he was wearing; even from here, she could see the blood. She let up on her zinc and brass as well; she was fairly sure she'd won now. It wasn't certain yet, but -
The Siberian reappeared, proving Vin's optimism wrong. Her face looked … desperate, and it took a moment before her eyes managed to focus on Vin.
In that time, Vin – iron still burning – Pulled on the man's metal again.
The Siberian didn't vanish this time, though she let out an anguished scream; it was the first time Vin had heard her make a sound. Even as the metal on his body pulled the man towards her, the Siberian rushed at her, heedless of the health of her master. Her creator and controller, Vin was now certain; the Siberian reacting to the man's pain had confirmed that.
This time, though, Vin almost felt pity for her. A moment's attention restored the Rioting and Soothing, but even without that the Siberian's controller was injured, in pain, and – since his power would have kept him far from any fighting, and the Siberian was invulnerable – probably had little experience dealing with either. The woman was as fast as ever, but her run was uncoordinated; even as Vin leapt into the air with steel, she stumbled, her tumble gouging holes in the street.
Vin reached out with iron and Pulled herself towards the man. Carefully guided steel brought her to a stop, standing over the Siberian's controller. Before he could summon his living weapon back to him, she lunged down, gripped his bleeding neck – one of the pieces of metal he'd had on him, a necklace with a thin silver chain, had dug into his flesh – and, for the first time that day and the second time in a fight, burned chromium.
The man's bronze-pulse fell silent. So did the Siberian's; a glance down the street revealed that there was no trace of the striped woman. Vin waited a few seconds, but she didn't reappear.
It would appear that she'd won. Vin allowed herself some time to breathe, letting the adrenaline of the fight leave her. Then she took stock of the man's injuries.
It wasn't as bad as it could have been. The worst injury was from two rings, both on the same finger; combined, the force had nearly torn the finger free of the hand. His neck was bleeding, as she'd mentioned, but it seemed that most of the injury was to the back of his neck, not the front where he might have been choked or opened veins. The rest looked like simple bruises. Certainly, none of it was anywhere near as bad as the injuries the Siberian could have inflicted on Vin.
The realization struck her that, through the whole fight, she hadn't even considered using atium. She'd become so used to fighting without it, so used to not having the metal available, that even now that she had some she hadn't reached to use it. It had been more than a year since she'd last burned the metal, she realized, perhaps even two; the last time she'd used it had been in her final fight against Zane, when she'd been tricked by the bead of atium-coated lead he'd given her. That was before she'd even released Ruin; she'd fought that whole war without burning atium once.
Not having to use atium was good. But the Siberian had been a legitimately dangerous opponent, and atium would have removed almost all the risk from the fight. She shouldn't forget about the metal again, as much as it tickled her pride that she hadn't needed to use it.
Being sure to keep contact with the man – who was still conscious, but appeared to be in shock – Vin reached down with her other hand and ripped off a strip of the man's shirt. Transferring her grip to the man's left hand, Vin bound the man's finger, hopefully enough to stop the bleeding. Then she hoisted him onto her shoulder, taking hold of his right hand and gripping it, and leapt onto a nearby rooftop; people were starting to look out of windows nearby, and she wanted to get out of sight.
Only once she was hidden did she raise her communicator to her mouth and announce, the faintest trace of satisfaction creeping into her voice, "I've captured the parahuman who was creating the Siberian. Some support would be appreciated." She paused. "Bring something to knock him out, please. I'm going to have to do it the hard way otherwise."
Chromium burned fast. Vin had taken to putting more than the standard amount in her vials, since she had plenty – she did the same thing with pewter – but that still only took her up to about two and a half minutes of burn per vial. With the chromium from the second vial she'd taken after ripping the car apart, that gave her five minutes of chromium in total, and she was already nearly a minute into that. She had more vials, of course – she'd made a full set of a dozen mixed vials before going to sleep last night – but she'd prefer not to have to take them, since it would be a waste of metal if she needed to use duralumin later.
It took Command a few seconds to reply. "A PRT team is en route to your location. Repeat; the Siberian has a creator?"
Vin took a breath to reply -
- and the world stuttered as her metals went out -
- she felt some of her reserves vanish, steel, pewter -
- and then her brass vanished as well and the discontinuities stopped. All of her metals were out; her steel, pewter and brass were gone. More significantly, the Siberian's master wasn't on her shoulder any more. She looked down, and spotted a tube of paper on the ground, only a few steps in front of her.
Before she could pick it up and see what it was, though, Taylor appeared. The girl materialized on the rooftop wearing the hooded cloak and mask that was her temporary costume, a weak pulse of light announcing her passengers, Assault and Battery.
"What happened?" Taylor asked.
Vin wanted to know that herself. First, though, she reignited her tin, bronze and iron; she couldn't see a way to drink a vial without Taylor and the two other parahumans seeing her do it, so she did without steel and pewter.
The noise of Taylor and Battery's powers – Assault wasn't using his, it seemed – was distracting, but bearable. A moment later, Battery's pulse vanished as well.
Taylor was looking impatient, so Vin answered her. "The Siberian had a master. I – wait." That was a bronze-pulse, approaching quickly. "Someone's coming." She moved over to a box, using the motion to disguise pulling out a vial and downing it; if this wasn't Velocity, she didn't want to face them with two of her most critical metals gone.
Only a few seconds later, a red blur crested the metal stairs at the edge of the rooftop. Vin relaxed; she'd thought she'd known who it was, but she hadn't been completely certain.
"Remnant?" Velocity asked, not seeing her. Then, as Vin stepped out from behind her cover, she noticed Assault, Battery and Taylor. "What -"
Vin cut him off. "Not sure. I was about to explain."
Velocity nodded after a moment. "Sure, just let me tell Command you're alright."
Once he'd done that, Vin carried on where she'd left off. "The Siberian had a master. He controlled her directly enough that she screamed when he was hurt. Their -" how to explain bronze "- what I heard from their powers was similar and he could call her back to him." She didn't mention that the Siberian had vanished when Vin had shut down the man's powers; she might have let the PRT know about bronze, but chromium was a tool she'd like to keep secret as long as she could. "I captured him and took him up here, but then there was … the world jumped a few times." Vin gave a one-shoulder shrug. "You arrived a few seconds later."
There was silence for a moment. Then Taylor stood up straight suddenly, coming out of the slight slouch she'd been in. It wasn't from laziness; Vin had seen it enough times to recognize someone trying to hide. She'd been like that herself, before Kelsier found her.
"I think I know what happened," Taylor said.
* * *
Zorian had a feeling he was being played.
More precisely, simulacrum two had a feeling he was being played. Simulacrum one shared his opinion, though, and he was sure that if the original had been awake he would have thought so too. They had woken the original when the Nine had first appeared, but they had a limited supply of vigilance potions – to be exact, they had three – and for now, this wasn't worth the original being awake. Three Zorians weren't that much better than two when only one of them was in the right city, and unlike the simulacrums the original was on a normal sleep cycle; the simulacrums had shifted theirs so that there were two Zorians awake as often as possible.
Anyway. There were too many things that didn't make sense. The Nine knowing about his abilities, for one; Mannequin had known not just about his mind magic but about its effective range, a detail that as far as Zorian knew no one should have been able to pick up on. And yet despite that, he'd still agreed to operate in an area he had to have guessed Zorian would be. Jack Slash had suggested that Mannequin's modifications might make him resistant, and had reassured him that Zorian couldn't permanently mind-control him even in the worst case – and that was another thing; the PRT knew that, but the Nine shouldn't have done – but Mannequin had still seemed too certain of what he needed to do.
More than that; why were only four of the Nine fighting? Yes, Siberian, Crawler, and Shatterbird were the Nine's heavy hitters, but that didn't explain Mannequin. Given what Jack Slash apparently knew about Zorian's abilities, the simulacrum suspected that that group had been assembled specifically to counter him: Siberian, who Zorian couldn't affect, Shatterbird who could stay out of his range – which, according to Mannequin, was why she hadn't screamed like she would normally; she needed large, intact pieces of glass to push off in order to stay that high – and Crawler, who he didn't want to risk trying to control for fear that the monster would become psychic in response. It shouldn't be possible, without mana, but Zorian wasn't sure his intuitions applied when parahumans were involved.
But then there was Mannequin. Yes, Jack Slash had said that Mannequin might be resistant to Zorian's mind magic, but … well, he wasn't. His mind was oddly arranged, compartmentalized and ordered in a way that Zorian had never seen before, and that had slowed the simulacrum down for a few seconds, but he'd had enough experience with Princess and with the cranium rats that it had never stood a serious chance of stopping him.
Maybe it was just a mistake. Maybe Jack Slash had just been wrong. But as far as anyone knew, the Nine didn't have any Thinkers of the kind they'd need to find out the things they knew. Lisa could have done it, without a doubt, but Zorian had come to understand that Lisa was a remarkably powerful parahuman; powers like hers didn't grow on trees. That meant that Zorian didn't know where Jack Slash was getting his information. And as long as he didn't know that, he couldn't assume that anything Jack Slash had had input in was simply a mistake.
No matter how he felt, though, he still needed to find them. After the Siberian had ignored his prototype anti-parahuman grenade, walked off dimensional fractures, and swept away a gods-damned incorporeal illusion with a rock, the simulacrum had decided that there was nothing more he could do in that area – he could have tried to find Shatterbird, but he didn't know how high she was and there was too much glass in the air for him to think flying up was a good idea – and gone off to cast the parahuman location ritual.
Unfortunately, the ritual hadn't found any suspicious clusters of four parahumans, so either the remaining Nine members had split up further or they were outside the range of the ritual. Which, given its range, would mean they weren't in the city at all, so almost certainly they'd simply split up. The simulacrum didn't have any good way of finding them; there were too many lone parahumans for tracking them all down to be time-effective, and he didn't have anything he could use for more specific divinations. He'd considered asking the PRT if they had any hairs Jack Slash had left at crime scenes, but while he suspected they did, he also suspected that they wouldn't have them somewhere he could get them in the next ten minutes, and even with a focus like that to use, the range of the divination would have been limited. The parahuman location ritual Zorian had made, which was essentially a soul location ritual, only worked as well as it did because so few people here had anything for it to notice; if he'd tried to cast it back home, where every person and every animal had a soul, the spell would have had a far shorter range. In a city filled with people any one of which could be the hair's match, the range of any locator spells the simulacrum could cast would be substantially reduced, two or three kilometres at best; it just wasn't worth the effort, not to mention that as far as Zorian knew the PRT didn't know he could track people like that.
So the simulacrum was doing the next best thing. He was going to find the Butcher.
The way the simulacrum saw it, there was definitely some kind of connection between the Butcher and Jack Slash. Tattletale had confirmed that much. It might, therefore, be possible for the simulacrum to use the Butcher as a divination focus to find Jack Slash; he'd need to keep the Butcher still and unresisting, but even according to Zorian's most pessimistic estimates he should have at least a minute of control before the Butcher's power resistance grew enough to push him out of her mind, and that was plenty of time to cast locator spells.
Of course, that assumed that there was some kind of ongoing connection – if Jack Slash had been doing the mundane thing and just sending the Butcher letters, then the simulacrum's plan wouldn't work. Furthermore, it assumed the connection would be of a kind that Zorian could figure out how to piggyback on in the short time he would have before someone else found Jack Slash and the whole thing became irrelevant, which seemed like a pretty long shot. But the beauty of this plan was that if it didn't work, the simulacrum could just fight the Teeth, which someone needed to do; the PRT was apparently having trouble with it, since so many of their parahumans were tied up either fighting the Nine or looking for them. The last Zorian had heard, their unpowered soldiers were setting up barricades to slow the Teeth's advance – the Butcher might be able to teleport, but her soldiers couldn't – but that only worked so well in the face of someone with five different kinds of strength enhancements. Six, if you counted Butcher XI's adaptive power resistance, which granted increasing strength – along with speed and regeneration – as the Butcher was exposed to powers.
After only a few more seconds, the Butcher and her accompanying Teeth crossed the boundary of the simulacrum's mind sense. The simulacrum considered whether to try to be subtle for a moment.
No, the Butcher could tell if he was reading her mind. There was no point in subtlety. His mana reserves weren't full – he'd drained a chunk doing the parahuman location ritual earlier – but unless something went wrong this shouldn't take much mana. He reached out to the Butcher and, without warning, seized control.
The voices in her head screamed at him, of course, but he ignored them. He had the Butcher teleport away from the barricade she'd been beating down, jumping onto the rooftops and then towards him, taking a slightly roundabout route to throw off anyone who might be following.
It took longer than the simulacrum had hoped for her to get there; her teleportation had a cooldown and a limited range, and he'd seized control of her while she was still hundreds of metres away. Fifteen seconds had already passed by the time she reached the simulacrum, and he could feel the resistance begin to appear, shrouding her mind in gentle static.
The simulacrum was still disguised, but he made sure the Butcher appeared facing away from him anyway. If she managed to use one of her powers – and given that she was the Butcher, the simulacrum couldn't rule it out – best that she didn't know where to target.
Up close, the Butcher's pseudo-soul was distinctly unusual, even with the simulacrum's limited capacity to perceive it. It looked like a tree smothered in vines, with the original core nearly eclipsed by the density of the side growths. Sadly, it didn't contain a convenient arrow pointing to Jack Slash, so the simulacrum turned its attention to the Butcher's mind.
At first, nothing seemed amiss. The Butcher was furious, at the Slaughterhouse Nine and at the figure she thought of as the Mage – Zorian, in other words. She wasn't able to form coherent thoughts over the voices screaming in her head, which was irritating.
Fortunately, that problem was solvable. The minds of the dead Butchers might be beyond his reach, but their voices were just sensory input. There was a little more to it than that – they lay somewhere between intrusive thoughts and true sounds – but not enough to make it a challenge for the simulacrum. He silenced them, and in the quiet left behind, he projected his own voice into the Butcher's mind.
[Where is Jack Slash?] the simulacrum asked, in English.
Confusion. That was the Butcher's genuine response; unless she could manipulate her own mind somehow, and do it even under Zorian's control, she didn't know. [I don't know,] she thought, and then a moment later, [Get out of my head!]
Thirty seconds. The interference was still fairly weak, but getting stronger every second; the simulacrum estimated he had another minute of control, with perhaps fifteen seconds after that if he was willing to sink a sizeable chunk of his mana reserves into pushing through the resistance. Of course, he could wait until the resistance faded in another minute and a half and try again, but he'd prefer not to have to do that.
The Butcher didn't know. But Tattletale had been certain there was some kind of connection …
[Are you allied with Jack Slash?] the simulacrum asked. He was fairly sure she wasn't, but her answer – since he couldn't access her memories – might be informative.
Fury. She wasn't, as the simulacrum had thought, but – what was that?
It took the simulacrum a moment to place the sensation. Then he recognized the strange twinning; it was stronger here that it had been the first time he'd seen it, much stronger. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought someone was projecting their emotions onto the Butcher. He supposed, in a sense, someone was.
The last time he'd seen this had been in Olivia Leoren, the woman he'd rescued from Heartbreaker with the power to make blood expand into ice. There, the second gratitude had been faint, barely recognizable as separate. Here, it stood out to Zorian as obviously inhuman; less filtered through the Butcher's mind, closer to whatever it had been originally. The Butcher wouldn't notice anything – wasn't noticing anything, he could tell – just as Tattletale perceived her power as integrating naturally into her thoughts where Zorian saw it as a blatant intrusion, but while the Butcher had plenty of fury of her own at that question, her power was contributing significantly to her overall reaction.
Well. That was interesting.
[You're not,] the simulacrum sent, ignoring the Butcher's mental imprecations. The Butcher couldn't help him, clearly, and he hadn't found any kind of mental connection to Jack Slash – he'd been looking, at the same time as he'd been talking to the Butcher.
A wild thought dropped into the simulacrum's head, and he frowned behind the concealing darkness of his hood.
Zorian had drawn comparisons between the source of powers here and the angels of his home before. In particular, it seemed likely that whatever entities provided parahuman powers were operating under restrictions. They were clearly capable of more than they displayed, and from his interaction with Olivia and now with the Butcher he knew – or, at least, it seemed likely to him – that they had emotions. They cared about things in the world, and yet they didn't use their presumed greater abilities, acting solely within the confines of a power. That implied, if the chain of logic was sound and if none of his assumptions were wrong, that there were things they could do, but weren't allowed to.
The question of what was enforcing those restrictions was one for another day. The relevant thing now was that it seemed that the Butcher's power also disliked Jack Slash.
Not all parahumans had divination abilities, so presumably powers either couldn't see the world around their user or were restricted from sharing it. Given the kind of stuff they appeared to be capable of, the simulacrum was betting on the second one. So the Butcher's power might know where Jack Slash was, but not be able to tell the Butcher …
… but it might be able to tell Zorian.
If the original had been awake, he might have told the simulacrum to stop. At the least, he probably would have wanted to consider the implications more. But the original wasn't awake, time was running out, and the simulacrum was a simulacrum.
He dove into the Butcher's mind, pushing past the strengthening barriers and following the trail of that twinned fury. It took him long seconds to make headway; he'd tried to follow the trail of the information that parahumans got when they used their powers before, and he hadn't got anywhere. But then he felt something, something pushed towards his probe.
[Greetings/Alliance]
Inhuman. If it had been obvious before, it was more now. The simulacrum had to actually try to make sense of the concept, and he felt as if he was missing subtext.
[Can you tell me where Jack Slash is?] the simulacrum pushed back at what had to be the Butcher's power. The original was going to yell at him for this, but that was a problem for future temporary-ectoplasmic-copy-of-Zorian-on-a-golem-frame.
[Uncertain/Confusion], the Butcher's power answered immediately. [User-secrecy-necessity]
[I'm not the Butcher,] the simulacrum sent. [Do you have to keep it secret from me?]
There was a pause. Then, as the resistance began to grow to the point that the simulacrum had to exert actual effort to hold the connection in place, he got an answer.
[Permitted/loophole], the Butcher's power sent. [Information].
A direction and a distance came from the Butcher's power. Not too close, but not too far away either; perhaps a couple of minutes of flight away. The simulacrum grinned in triumph.
[Thank you,] he said, and let go of the connection. He ordered the Butcher to teleport away and hopped onto his floating disc.
The original was going to give him hell for this. But his plan had worked.
It could, of course, be a trap. But, well, he was a simulacrum. If it was a trap, he was happy to walk into it.
* * *
Vin considered what Taylor had said as the girl finished speaking. Tracking Vin with her power, Taylor had noticed her jump into the air, and then suddenly vanish and reappear where she'd been. The second time, Vin had supposedly launched herself much more quickly, only to return to the rooftop much more quickly; on the third, she'd fallen to the ground before launching herself again a moment later. That final reappearance was the last time; Taylor had arrived a few seconds later, having taken that long to get hold of Assault and Battery and get ready for the teleport.
Vin didn't remember any of this, but despite that it was clear something had happened. Besides her vanished metals, Command claimed that she'd contacted them briefly, saying "Under attack, don't recognize the -" before cutting off. On top of that, Vin's communication device had registered a mismatch in its internal clock a couple of times – or something like that, anyway, she wasn't sure of the details.
Put together, Taylor's suggestion seemed to be correct. Someone or something with the power to … revert people, Vin supposed, send them back to where and how they'd been before, had taken the Siberian's master. Putting that together with the order she'd noticed changes to her metals, Vin could approximate what had happened. She would have fought whoever it was normally at first, and been sent back; for whatever reason, the process put her metals out, and noticing that, or maybe for another reason, she must have launched herself away with steel and duralumin.
Normally, that would have been a sensible idea. In this case, it just meant that when Vin had been reverted again she'd been missing her steel, as well as the pewter she used habitually with duralumin and steel to hold herself together against the force. It seemed that the reversion power couldn't restore expended metals. So she'd lost steel and pewter, and presumably she'd then turned to a backup weapon, duralumin and brass. Obviously, that had failed, and by the time she'd been reverted again whoever's power it was had taken the Siberian's master and left.
"It makes sense," Vin says. She didn't want to tell the PRT about her need for metals, so she couldn't go through the chain of logic she'd just used, but she could confirm that nothing she knew contradicted it. "Are they with the Nine, though?"
She wasn't using her translator, since Taylor was there; it was much nicer to talk using the girl's power. In particular, it meant she got to hear people's actual voices, which made it much easier to hear nuances in them with tin.
"Probably not," Battery said, after a moment. "A Nine member wouldn't have left you unharmed.."
Vin decided not to comment on that, mostly because she wasn't actually confident she would have survived that kind of attack. Her attacker clearly could leave things behind, they'd shown that with the letter; if the letter had been something more dangerous and Vin had been taken by surprise, she very well could have been injured or died.
"Should we read the letter, then?" Taylor asked, and Vin could hear shades of trepidation in her voice. She was trying to hid it, but Taylor was worried that the letter might be somehow dangerous.
It wasn't an entirely unfounded fear. "Let's," Vin said, "but I won't touch it."
She pulled out her knives – it still felt odd to have metal ones instead of glass, but they were much more durable even if their sharpness suffered a little from the change – and carefully unrolled the scroll with their points. If it was poisoned, the worst thing that would happen would be her knives would get a little more dangerous.
The paper didn't immediately explode, and Taylor and the others crowded around to see.
Vin Venture, the note read.
Well, it was a good thing everyone here knew about her already.
I apologize for the hostile approach, it continued, in that regular, machine-made text that was ubiquitous here. Sadly, I was unable to intervene earlier. The Siberian is dangerous, even for me.
So whoever had written the letter had waited for Vin to do all the work. That wasn't making her feel positively towards them.
The being you know as Duša could not be allowed to gain control over the Siberian. That was fair enough; Duša was dangerous enough already, and Vin only knew a fraction of his full capabilities; with the Siberian under his control as well, his threat would only grow. We will contain the Siberian's master appropriately, but the Siberian is too useful a tool to discard to death. Battery, we would appreciate it if you would convey our apologies to the Protectorate; I'm sure you agree that you would be a better choice than your partner.
So the letter-writer had known that Battery and Assault would be here. That was interesting, but didn't mean as much as it might seem as first; the letter could have been written only a few minutes beforehand, when someone with a spy in the PRT or an appropriate parahuman power would have known who Taylor could have brought with her. Vin kept reading.
On the subject of Duša, don't try to interfere with the trial ahead of him. Legend might perhaps be able to provide assistance, but no one else can; attempting to will waste your time at best and result in your death at worst. You'll understand why shortly. Focus on the Teeth instead; we have reliable information that if the Butcher is allowed to reach Jack Slash too soon, the consequences will be … undesirable.
Sincerely yours,
T-1177
At around the time Vin read the last line, she heard a quiet intake of breath from Battery. That wasn't too surprising, though; there was a lot of stuff in the letter that could cause that.
"Whoever wrote it seems to like you, Puppy," Assault whispered to Battery. It was a stage whisper, intended to be audible even without Vin's tin to help her hear it.
Battery nodded jerkily after a moment. She seemed unnerved, more than Vin would have expected, but then again she didn't know the other woman well, or at all, really.
Velocity was the one who acted first. "Console," he said, "we have a letter here from an unknown source. It claims that the Butcher getting to Jack Slash 'too soon' would be bad, no clarification on what that means, and that Duša is about to face some kind of trial that only Legend has a chance at helping with." He paused a moment. "Whoever wrote the letter took Siberian's master, but if they're not with the Nine, she should be out of play for the moment. It's signed with a letter and four numbers, Tango One One Seven Seven"
"Understood," Console – Armstrong's voice, in fact – said after a moment. "Shatterbird retreated a couple of minutes ago; I'll notify Duša and Legend. Don't trust the letter. Did it give any reason why only Legend would be able to help?"
"It said we would understand shortly," Velocity replied.
There was a moment's pause from Armstrong. "Then either it's telling the truth or it isn't, we can decide then. Taylor, go back to Brockton and take Assault and Battery with you. Remnant, head to the Teeth; don't engage until you have support. Velocity, bring the letter to your nearest decontamination station, just in case. Armstrong out."
Vin expected Taylor to protest the orders, given what she'd heard about the fight the girl had put up to stay before, but instead she nodded and took hold of Assault and Battery. A flare of light later, they were gone, Velocity rushing off a moment later with the letter.
Vin pulled out her communication device, which conveniently came with a map that told her where to go to find the Teeth. She Pushed off the rooftop and bounded towards the cluster of red dots on the device. Towards a fight that, if the letter was to be believed, might be the most important thing she'd yet done in this world.
Vin smiled. It might be dangerous, it might have serious consequences, and yet still, she found herself looking forward to it.
* * *
Simulacrum two slowed and came to a halt, standing invisibly on a floating disk above a wide crossroads.
This was where the Butcher's power had told him to go, he was fairly sure. But there was no sign of Jack Slash. The simulacrum had dipped into all the minds in the immediate area; none of them were Nine members. Most people had retreated below ground, in fact; the PRT had sent out a warning about Shatterbird's presence, despite her not having screamed, once the fight had started and it didn't risk making her reveal herself early.
[Looks like a trap,] he sent to simulacrum one and the original. He'd been half-right; the original was very annoyed with him for communicating with the Butcher's power without checking with him first, but had decided to refrain from shouting at him about it at least until this situation was over.
[They could have been here and left,] simulacrum one pointed out. [You haven't checked everyone, just the people close by.]
That was true enough. It was one thing to use mind sense to find someone in an open wilderness, quite another to do it in a city filled with people.
One of the rings strung around the simulacrum's neck buzzed. It had turned out that at least one of the simulacrum's divination wards interfered with the signal that the PRT's communicators used, so after some deliberation Zorian had decided to give them a telepathic relay rather than risk losing some of his protection against powers. He wasn't thrilled about the PRT having something he'd made to study, even temporarily, but he could take it back afterwards, and it was better than the alternative.
Besides, they weren't likely to learn much about it. The simulacrum had used alteration to wrap the whole thing up in metal, with the only break being for the activation trigger. To learn more about it, the PRT would either have to use more complicated examination methods than looking at it, or cut it open; given that when Zorian had told them it would let him extend his mind powers through it they'd promptly sent it to a communication station far away from anything important, he doubted they were going to do that.
The simulacrum reached out through the relay and connected to the person sitting at the communication station. A few moments later, he had the news they'd wanted to give him.
According to someone who'd attacked Vin Venture and kidnapped the Siberian's creator – and that the Siberian had a creator was interesting enough – he was about to face a "trial". One that supposedly no one would be able to help him with. The simulacrum normally would have dismissed a claim that suspicious, but since he was actively looking for four of the worst parahuman killers this world knew, he should probably take it more seriously.
[Does Lisa have anything?] simulacrum two sent. Simulacrum one was in the same room as the parahuman; she was tired, and had a headache from using her power earlier that night – yesterday, technically, the simulacrum supposed – but she had still insisted on helping.
There was a pause while simulacrum one asked the question. Then, [Not much,] he reported. [She still thinks Jack wanted the Butcher to tell you where he is, but she's not getting anything from the trial thing.]
Hmm. That wasn't great. If Jack was close by, then divinations might have better luck, but the simulacrum didn't have a good focus; he was kind of regretting not having asked the PRT for that hair now. Maybe if he -
In the street to the simulacrum's left, a string of explosions rang out, smoke-filled flames illuminating the darkness. Burning liquid splashed across the road, and as the simulacrum watched, the flames spread improbably, rising higher when they should have been burning out. From places that had to be alleys – the fire blocked the simulacrum's view – he could sense four minds stepping into the flame.
The simulacrum reached out to their minds, intending to take control of them and use Burnscar – it had to be her power that was strengthening the fire – to douse the flames. There was a brief moment of connection -
- and then something pushed Zorian out, severing the mental link in a burst of static. For a moment, he couldn't even perceive the minds in the fire; they returned to his awareness, but fuzzy, shrouded. Shielded from his mind magic.
The simulacrum's estimate of the threat he was facing ticked up several notches.
A few seconds passed, and then the area of the fires closest to the simulacrum pulled apart like a curtain, revealing a man dressed in trousers and a white shirt, several buttons undone and exposing his chest. At his side stood a girl of perhaps twelve, wearing a dress that made her look far more innocent than the simulacrum knew she was.
Immediately, the simulacrum fired a volley of ten magic missiles at the man, all invisible, homing, and following spiralling trajectories. A second passed, which the simulacrum used to move away from his previous position, and the missiles closed in.
The man didn't even bother to dodge. Nine of Zorian's ten missiles veered off course, blowing chunks out of the burning road. The last one was intercepted by a lazy swing of the knife in the man's right hand, detonating in midair without even coming close to him.
"Well," Jack Slash, Bonesaw at his side, said, projecting his voice to be heard across the distance and over the sound of the fire, "that was just rude."
The simulacrum didn't bother replying. Instead, he reached out through the telepathic relay on his necklace, connecting to the person on the other side. Jack Slash was not only here, but somehow able to interfere with magic; the PRT needed to know, because that almost certainly extended to powers too.
"Oh," Jack Slash said, "by the way, the people who sent that letter? They were right." He paused. "You probably noticed that Shatterbird didn't scream earlier."
The simulacrum had intended to ignore whatever Jack Slash was saying, but then the words sunk in. On a hunch, he cast his modified mage sight spell, and every window in sight lit up with the sign of power use.
"Part of that is because she needed to stay high enough that you couldn't get to her," Jack Slash continued. His voice seemed louder than it should have been. "You already knew that, of course. But the other reason -"
A fifth mind rushed into the burning street, flying towards Jack before rising above the flames. The simulacrum tried to stop her, tried to take control of her mind, but Jack – it was him doing it, the simulacrum could see the pulse of light that shot up from him as he did – slapped him aside as easily as before.
"- is so that she could do it now," Jack Slash finished.
There was a moment's pause.
Then every piece of glass in sight exploded.
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Have a chapter!
So here we get the payoff of all those thinly-veiled Jack Slash forewords. We'll see more of Jack next chapter, but hopefully you can already tell roughly what's changed about his power. We also see some interference from Cauldron the letter-writers (honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone hadn't guessed who they were, but it is possible), along with, of course, the fight itself. (If anyone's interested, Ursa Aurora's power is in the Original Parahumans document; she's canonical enough that we have some idea what her power is, but I've expanded on that significantly. Cache will also go in there, but not until after next chapter.)
Unrelated to anything in this chapter; I've discovered that Allomantic bendalloy is probably just bismuth and cadmium, rather than bismuth/lead/tin/cadmium as in reality, so I've changed the ratio in Chapter 4 to reflect that. Nicrosil's composition remains unchanged for now.
Next chapter, the battle continues ...
Update: does anyone know how to say [information] without triggering an automatic [/information]? I'm using plain to do it here, but that doesn't work if I also want it to be italicized. I've fixed the problem for now by using "lnformation" instead of "Information" (lower-case L instead of upper-case i) but I think the lower-case l is slightly thinner, and I feel like there should be a way to fix it properly. Update: resolved with [i][plain]text[/i][/plain]; I just had to use the actual italic bb code and put it around the plain brackets, it turns out.
So here we get the payoff of all those thinly-veiled Jack Slash forewords. We'll see more of Jack next chapter, but hopefully you can already tell roughly what's changed about his power. We also see some interference from Cauldron the letter-writers (honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone hadn't guessed who they were, but it is possible), along with, of course, the fight itself. (If anyone's interested, Ursa Aurora's power is in the Original Parahumans document; she's canonical enough that we have some idea what her power is, but I've expanded on that significantly. Cache will also go in there, but not until after next chapter.)
Unrelated to anything in this chapter; I've discovered that Allomantic bendalloy is probably just bismuth and cadmium, rather than bismuth/lead/tin/cadmium as in reality, so I've changed the ratio in Chapter 4 to reflect that. Nicrosil's composition remains unchanged for now.
Next chapter, the battle continues ...
Update: does anyone know how to say [information] without triggering an automatic [/information]? I'm using plain to do it here, but that doesn't work if I also want it to be italicized. I've fixed the problem for now by using "lnformation" instead of "Information" (lower-case L instead of upper-case i) but I think the lower-case l is slightly thinner, and I feel like there should be a way to fix it properly. Update: resolved with [i][plain]text[/i][/plain]; I just had to use the actual italic bb code and put it around the plain brackets, it turns out.
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- Location
- Over the hill and far away
…and it was all a cauldron plot in the end anyway.
I mean if they could do all this why even bother doing any of it?
I mean if they could do all this why even bother doing any of it?
Bear in mind there hasn't been time for him to say much here; I don't think he said anything that would imply he doesn't know.
QA definitely knows about the simulacrums. No comment on Jack's information source ...
Actually, there was at least one thing in the chapter which I've explicitly marked in my head as "Cauldron interference" (besides the letter thing, obviously). The fact that you got that impression suggests to me that you didn't spot it, which means it was subtle enough not to be spotted.
Can't parse that last sentence, and a lot of the answers to the questions it might be interpreted as are spoilers. That said, Cauldron's part in this is fairly minor; most of these events are not of their making. They're just nudging things a little.
Oh don't be coy. We all know jacks shard is a lil cheater.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Perhaps, though to be fair to me I read the chapter first thing after waking up this morning so I wasn't at 100%. I might go back and see if I can spot it later, but I have work to do today so I might not. Depends on if I can get through 11 smallish books today.
Also I really liked that Cauldron's letter implied that Zorian cannot be trusted to capture the Siberian because he's evil and not because reading Manton's mind will spill Cauldron's secrets.
I'm surprised Zorian is being predicted so well by Shards even while under all of his shields. I'm guessing Shards already figured out a way past them. Probably Tattletale's fault.
I'm surprised Zorian is being predicted so well by Shards even while under all of his shields. I'm guessing Shards already figured out a way past them. Probably Tattletale's fault.
Actually, the way I'm running it, Broadcast isn't cheating at all; the whole Trump/Thinker/Master thing is explicitly part of Jack's power. That's why his primary power seems so weak, it's because most of his power is actually that.
It's very subtle; it is signposted a bit, so you might spot it, but I wouldn't necessarily expect you to even on a reread knowing it was there, let alone on a first read. I'm mostly just happy I didn't signpost it too much! The point is just that Cauldron is capable of being subtle, and did in fact act in subtle ways as well as the obvious one.
Yes, I enjoyed writing that bit! I'm glad you liked it, and I'm also glad you picked up on the actual reason; I was pretty sure people would, but not completely sure. In fairness, they aren't saying Zorian is evil - that wouldn't fly, not after Heartbreaker - just that he's not entirely good. The intended implication is more or less "this guy is already way too powerful, do you want to trust him with the Siberian too?".
How are the shards predicting Zorian particularly well? Not going to comment on whether they are, but what gave you that impression? I'm interested.
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- Pronouns
- He
I assume it was which roof Vin landed on. The fact that her original roof would be out of range to detect Siberian but her new one which she chose in order to avoid the smell was just in range was very convenient. I thought it might be at the time but with the letter seemed guaranteed. I guess they wanted Siberian alive, out of Zorian's hands and not interfering in Zorian's trial. Not sure what other reason they could have.
What was the power used on Vin though? Sounded a bit like that guy from the Travellers which got sold to the Yanban.
You win a cookie! (I mean, not actually, but you can consider yourself to have won a metaphorical cookie.) I'm very happy now, because this means I managed to hit the sweet spot between "everyone spots it immediately" and "no one spots it at all".
And, in fact, you're two for two here; it sounds like that guy because it is like that guy. Same vial, just without any Balance in it. Remember Coil's interlude?
(I do actually have the missing bits there written up from Vin's perspective, as well as a full description of the power used. I'll probably post them at some point, just not right now.)