Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

itself as well, altering them so that they could survive .
    5
    ELEND KNELT BESIDE THE FALLEN INQUISITOR , trying to ignore the mess that was left of the thing's head. Vin approached, and he noted the wound on her forearm. As usual, she all but ignored the injury.
    The koloss army stood quietly on the battlefield around them. Elend still wasn't comfortable with the idea of controlling the creatures. He felt . . . tainted by even associating with them. Yet, it was the only way.
    "Something's wrong, Elend," Vin said.
    He looked up from the body. "What? You think there might be another one around?"
    She shook her head. "Not that. That Inquisitor moved too quickly at the end. I've never seen a person—Allomancer or not—with that kind of speed."
    "He must have had duralumin," Elend said, looking down. For a time, he and Vin had held an edge, since they'd had access to an Allomantic metal the Inquisitors hadn't known about. Reports now indicated that edge was gone.
    Fortunately, they still had electrum. The Lord Ruler was to be thanked for that, actually. Poor man's atium. Normally, an Allomancer who was burning atium was virtually invincible—only another Allomancer burning the metal could fight him. Unless, of course, one had electrum. Electrum didn't grant the same invincibility as atium—which allowed an Allomancer to see slightly into the future—but it did make one immune to atium.
    "Elend," Vin said, kneeling, "it wasn't duralumin. The Inquisitor was moving too quickly even for that."
    Elend frowned. He had seen the Inquisitor move only out of the corner of his eye, but surely it hadn't been that fast. Vin had a tendency to be paranoid and assume the worst.
    Of course, she also had a habit of being right.
    She reached out and grabbed the front of the corpse's robe, ripping it free. Elend turned away. "Vin! Have respect for the dead!"
    "I have no respect for these things," she said, "nor will I ever. Did you see how that thing tried to use one of its spikes to kill you?"
    "That was odd. Perhaps he felt he couldn't get to the axes in time."
    "Here, look."
    Elend glanced back. The Inquisitor had the standard spikes—three pounded between the ribs on each side of the chest. But . . . there was another one—one Elend hadn't seen in any other Inquisitor corpse—pounded directly through the front of this creature's chest.
    Lord Ruler! Elend thought. That one would have gone right through its heart. How did it survive? Of course, if two spikes through the brain didn't kill it, then one through the heart probably wouldn't either.
    Vin reached down and yanked the spike free. Elend winced. She held it up, frowning. "Pewter," she said.
    "Really?" Elend asked.
    She nodded. "That makes ten spikes. Two through the eyes and one through the shoulders: all steel. Six through the ribs: two steel, four bronze. Now this, a pewter one—not to mention the one he tried to use on you, which appears to be steel."
    Elend studied the spike in her hand. In Allomancy and Feruchemy, different metals did different things—he could only guess that for Inquisitors, the type of metal used in the various spikes was important as well. "Perhaps they don't use Allomancy at all, but some . . . third power."
    "Maybe," Vin said, gripping the spike, standing up. "We'll need to cut open the stomach and see if it had atium."
    "Maybe this one will finally have some." They always burned electrum as a precaution; so far, none of the Inquisitors they'd met had actually possessed any atium.
    Vin shook her head, staring out over the ash-covered battlefield. "We're missing something, Elend. We're like children, playing a game we've watched our parents play, but not really knowing any of the rules. And . . . our opponent created the game in the first place."
    Elend stepped around the corpse, moving over to her. "Vin, we don't even known that it's out there. The thing we saw a year ago at the Well . . . perhaps it's gone. Perhaps it left, now that it's free. That could be all it wanted."
    Vin looked at him. He could read in her eyes that she didn't believe that. Perhaps she saw that he didn't really believe it either.
    "It's out there, Elend," she whispered. "It's directing the Inquisitors; it knows what we're doing. That's why the koloss always move against the same cities we do. It has power over the world—it can change text that has been written, create miscommunications and confusion. It knows our plans."
    Elend put a hand on her shoulder. "But today we