Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension

failed. And, stubbornly lawful as always, Elend continued to accept his failures. He still thought he had a chance to persuade the Assembly to choose him as king—or at least not vote anybody else to the position.
    So he worked on speeches and planned with Breeze and Dockson. This left him little time for Vin, and rightly so. The last thing he needed was her distracting him. This was something she couldn't help him with—something she couldn't fight or scare away.
    His world is of papers, books, laws, and philosophies , she thought. He rides the words of his theories like I ride the mists. I always worry that he can't understand me. . .but can I really even understand him ?
    OreSeur stood, stretched, and placed his forepaws on the wall's railing to raise himself and look north, like Vin.
    Vin shook her head. "Sometimes, I wish Elend weren't so. . .well, noble. The city doesn't need this confusion right now."
    "He did the right thing, Mistress."
    "You think so?"
    "Of course," OreSeur said. "He made a contract. It is his duty to keep that contract, no matter what. He must serve his master—in his case, that would be the city—even if that master makes him do something very distasteful."
    "That's a very kandralike way of seeing things," Vin said.
    OreSeur looked up at her, raising a canine eyebrow, as if to ask Well, what did you expect ? She smiled; she had to suppress a chuckle every time she saw that expression on his dog face.
    "Come on," Vin said. "Let's get back to the palace."
    "Excellent," OreSeur said, dropping down to all fours. "That meat I set out should be perfect by now."
    "Unless the maids found it again," Vin said with a smile.
    OreSeur's expression darkened. "I thought you were going to warn them."
    "What would I say?" Vin asked with amusement. "Please don't throw away this rancid meat—my dog likes to eat it?"
    "Why not?" OreSeur asked. "When I imitate a human, I almost never get to have a good meal, but dogs eat aged meat sometimes, don't they?"
    "I honestly don't know," Vin said.
    "Aged meat is delicious."
    "You mean 'rotten' meat."
    "Aged," OreSeur said insistently as she picked him up, preparing to carry him down from the wall. The top of Keep Hasting was a good hundred feet tall—far too high up for OreSeur to jump, and the only path down would be through the inside of the abandoned keep. Better to carry him.
    "Aged meat is like aged wine or aged cheese," OreSeur continued. "It tastes better when it's a few weeks old."
    I suppose that's one of the side effects of being related to scavengers , Vin thought. She hopped up on the lip of the wall, dropping a few coins. However, as she prepared to jump—OreSeur a large bulk in her arms—she hesitated. She turned one last time, looking out at Straff's army. It was fully visible now; the sun had risen completely above the horizon. Yet, a few insistent swirls of mist wavered in the air, as if trying to defy the sun, to continue to cloak the city, to stave off the light of day. . ..
    Lord Ruler ! Vin thought, struck by a sudden insight. She'd been working on this problem so long, it had begun to frustrate her. And now, when she'd been ignoring it, the answer had come to her. As if her subconscious had still been picking it apart.
    "Mistress?" OreSeur asked. "Is everything all right?"
    Vin opened her mouth slightly, cocking her head. "I think I just realized what the Deepness was."

But, I must continue with the sparsest of detail. Space is limited. The other Worldbringers must have thought themselves humble when they came to me, admitting that they had been wrong. Even then, I was beginning to doubt my original declaration .
    But, I was prideful .

30
I write this record now , Sazed read, pounding it into a metal slab, because I am afraid. Afraid for myself, yes—I admit to being human. If Alendi does return from the Well of Ascension, I am certain that my death will be one of his first objectives. He is not an evil man, but he is a ruthless one. That is, I think, a product of what he has been through .
I am also afraid, however, that all I have known—that my story—will be forgotten. I am afraid for the world that is to come. Afraid that Alendi will fail. Afraid of a doom brought by the Deepness .
It all comes back to poor Alendi. I feel bad for him, and for all the things he has been forced to endure. For what he has been forced to become .
But, let me begin at the beginning. I met Alendi first in Khlennium; he was a young lad then, and had