Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension

only was Kredik Shaw too big to be properly defended, but it also reminded her of him. The Lord Ruler.
    She thought of the Lord Ruler often, lately—or, rather, she thought of Rashek, the man who had become the Lord Ruler. A Terrisman by birth, Rashek had killed the man who should have taken the power at the Well of Ascension and. . .
    And done what? They still didn't know. The Hero had been on a quest to protect the people from a danger simply known as the Deepness. So much had been lost; so much had been intentionally destroyed. Their best source of information about those days came in the form of an aged journal, written by the Hero of Ages during the days before Rashek had killed him. However, it gave precious few clues about his quest.
    Why do I even worry about these things ? Vin thought. The Deepness is a thing a thousand years forgotten. Elend and the others are right to be concerned about more pressing events .
    And still, Vin found herself strangely detached from them. Perhaps that was why she found herself scouting outside. It wasn't that she didn't worry about the armies. She just felt. . .removed from the problem. Even now, as she considered the threat to Luthadel, her mind was drawn back to the Lord Ruler.
    You don't know what I do for mankind , he had said. I was your god, even if you couldn't see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves . Those were the Lord Ruler's last words, spoken as he lay dying on the floor of his own throne room. They worried her. Chilled her, even still.
    She needed to distract herself. "What kinds of things do you like, kandra?" she asked, turning to the creature, who still sat on the rooftop beside her. "What are your loves, your hatreds?"
    "I do not want to answer that."
    Vin frowned. "Do not want to, or do not have to?"
    OreSeur paused. "Do not want to, Mistress." The implication was obvious. You're going to have to command me .
    She almost did. However, something gave her pause, something in those eyes—inhuman though they were. Something familiar.
    She'd known resentment like that. She'd felt it often during her youth, when she'd served crewleaders who had lorded over their followers. In the crews, one did what one was commanded—especially if one was a small waif of a girl, without rank or means of intimidation.
    "If you don't wish to speak of it," Vin said, turning away from the kandra, "then I won't force you."
    OreSeur was silent.
    Vin breathed in the mist, its cool wetness tickling her throat and lungs. "Do you know what I love, kandra?"
    "No, Mistress."
    "The mists," she said, holding out her arms. "The power, the freedom."
    OreSeur nodded slowly. Nearby, Vin felt a faint pulsing with her bronze. Quiet, strange, unnerving. It was the same odd pulsing that she had felt atop Keep Venture a few nights before. She had never been brave enough to investigate it again.
    It's time to do something about that , she decided. "Do you know what I hate, kandra?" she whispered, falling to a crouch, checking her knives and metals.
    "No, Mistress."
    She turned, meeting OreSeur's eyes. "I hate being afraid."
    She knew that others thought her jumpy. Paranoid. She had lived with fear for so long that she had once seen it as something natural, like the ash, the sun, or the ground itself.
    Kelsier had taken that fear away. She was careful, still, but she didn't feel a constant sense of terror. The Survivor had given her a life where the ones she loved didn't beat her, had shown her something better than fear. Trust. Now that she knew of these things, she would not quickly surrender them. Not to armies, not to assassins. . .
    Not even to spirits.
    "Follow if you can," she whispered, then dropped off the rooftop to the street below.
    She dashed along the mist-slicked street, building momentum before she had time to lose her nerve. The source of the bronze pulses was close; it came from only one street over, in a building. Not the top, she decided. One of the darkened windows on the third floor, the shutters open.
    Vin dropped a coin and jumped into the air. She shot upward, angling herself by Pushing against a latch across the street. She landed in the window's pitlike opening, arms grabbing the sides of the frame. She flared tin, letting her eyes adjust to the deep darkness within the abandoned room.
    And it was there. Formed entirely of mists, it shifted and spun, its outline vague in the dark chamber. It had a vantage to see the rooftop where Vin and OreSeur had been