A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[imeanforever]

Promise did not have time to pack a hat in her sudden flight.

Perch perch. Eavesdropping. She's going to want to stay until she's almost too hungry to fly back to the gate; she may as well listen to public conversations.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Nobody complains about the ash. It's taken for granted. Nor do they mention the Lord Ruler. So is he.

Promise will hear quite a bit against the nobles. Over the course of eavesdropping, she'll hear that they allegedly treat the non-nobles as essentially tools useful mainly for enriching whatever House they work for. The speakers, sharing drinks and complaints, aren't advocating doing anything about it, of course. Just commenting on how they're worked to the bone and barely paid.
According to one person, "we city skaa" are actually the lucky ones. The plantation workers get beaten if they don't work and killed if they can't. Thirdhand rumors say that some skaa halfway across the empire are allowed to own land.

[imeanforever]

Promise tentatively suspects that she doesn't much approve of this place. She listens more anyway, because she is not yet accustomed to the conditions of this windowsill to make an ash-shooing spell before she flies out in the sky again.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Further rumors about the hated Them suggest that some have superhuman powers, and that you never know which of them might be able to fly into the air or stab you from behind while standing six feet in front of you. Promise will have to decide how credible the rumors are, but most everyone else seems to believe them.

[imeanforever]

Well, she has superhuman powers and can fly into the air and could probably figure out how to pull off the stabbing trick if motivated; the interesting question is if these Them are supposed to be non-fairies.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Nobody suggests that the nobles aren't human, but if Luthadel is ruled by an upper class of fairies then the population might not have to know about it.

[imeanforever]

Yes, she's gathering that.

When she has figured out a way to repel ash from herself as she flies, she casts that, and then takes off and goes to sit somewhere else and hear different gossip.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

At the next conveniently open window, some better-dressed people are talking about news from outside the city. Apparently House Elarial lost another shipment of something-or-other from Fadrex City because of bandits; this is speculated to be the cover story for an act of a rival Great House. To the people who aren't up to date on party politics (which is most of them), the event matters only because the ongoing problem means more demand for local goods. Anyone who actually cares about which Great House scored against which is likely to be doing their talking nearer one of the castles.

[imeanforever]

She tries a castle next.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The nearest occupants are engaged in a popular sport among higher nobility, speculation on who might be a Mistborn. House Elarial has invited some members of an otherwise unimportant family of lesser nobles to Luthadel, so the outsiders are immediately suspected of having something nonobvious to offer them.
Consensus is that House Buvidas has one, but as required by etiquette no speculation about who it is has any facts behind it. A group of skaa thieves including several Mistings tried to raid that keep, but got mysteriously captured and the Mistings turned over to the Lord Ruler's people.

[imeanforever]

Alendi didn't mention a Lord Ruler. Not even when the Queen came up in conversation.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Aside from a brief reference to his palace being at the Hill of a Thousand Spires, the Lord Ruler isn't mentioned again. Very little about him is news.
The eavesdropees are back to speculating. If the Elarials are getting a new Allomancer, is it going to shift any important power balances? What is their allied House getting out of it, if anything other than improved social standing? Nobody has actual answers to these, but they can easily entertain themselves with crackpot theories along the lines of Salmen Elarial hiring a Mistborn assassin to eliminate Chanil Urbain over a romantic rivalry.

[imeanforever]

The nobles quibbling over power balances with each other sounds familiar, unfortunately -

Promise realizes that since sorcery is working as normal she can probably close her gate and then reopen it later from this side. She goes and does that. If her pursuers do figure out where she went they won't be able to come after her.



She looks fro a hill with a thousand (or some lesser, exaggerated number) of spires on it.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

One of the castles is mostly a collection of towers, spires, and even just vertical rods of metal. It's very insistent about its architecture. It's at the center of the city and easily visible from above her current castle.

As she approaches it, she may or may not consciously notice that she's becoming slightly calmer, happier, less angry, and a little bit afraid.

[imeanforever]

Why would she be afraid?

That doesn't make sense.

Actually, several things don't make sense, even if fear is the strangest. She counts them.



She turns around back the way she came, frowning invisibly at the thousand spires.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

After she backtracks a little bit, the effects abruptly disappear.

[imeanforever]

Yeah-huh.

New plan: Promise is going to map the circumference of the thing. (Eugh.)

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The thing has a fixed radius. It's perfectly circular—spherical if she changes height enough to check—and the center is somewhere inside the castle.

[imeanforever]

She cannot exactly go back home and get more books right now to read up on sorcery enough to figure out a counter. It'll have to be freeform, or for that matter nothing.

She finds an out-of-the-way place right at the edge to land and leans just far enough in to feel the effects and figure out their edges. If she can shut it down without magic, so much the better, but maybe it's not that simple.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

She can't shut it down. It's not so strong that she can't act against it, but without magic it wouldn't stop affecting her.

[imeanforever]

Damn. Sitting through it until she can push back with the right finesse via sorcery it is, then. Ugh ugh ugh this is gross this is gross this is gross. She takes four breaks (one of which includes dry heaving) over three hours of leaning into the sphere and learning the exact dimensions of its grossness.

And then she casts.

And now her principal emotion is pissed off.

She flies towards the very middle of the sphere.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Finding the center will point her to the right tower in the mass that is Kredik Shaw. The emotion manipulation doesn't get any more gross than what her defense is already prepared for.

At the tower, there are only a few occupied rooms with open windows. One of them contains Alendi.

[imeanforever]

She would approach him and ask him to explain - they did have a perfectly civil interaction before; he even trusted her enough not to bother reciprocating her no-orders order despite clear invitation - but here he is, sitting right in the middle of the gross.

She perches in his window. Invisible. Protected. Suspicious and seething.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He's just reading a book.
If he were to pay more attention, he might notice that one of the people he's Soothing and Rioting happens to be in his window instead of down in his city, but that would be like paying attention to one insect in a swarm. He doesn't even notice that that one person is managing to seethe.

[imeanforever]

This is her only angle that might be safe. If people here can do this, they can do other things that might be even worse; she does not dare be absorbed into some greater pit of emotional tar or more scalpel-shaped attacks that she wouldn't have time to force back. Of people who might know what's going on, one of them is her vassal and therefore probably safe to interact with.

Maybe he's uninvolved, innocent, a victim himself. If that's the case she can apologize and rescind extraneous orders and go sit on a mountain waiting to get hungry enough to be forced back through the gate and then find a new place to live, again. He won't be permanently damaged. Certainly she isn't planning to fuck with his mind; she is loosely aware that some people might consider gently phrased orders from a nervous master worse than emotional manipulation but she is not at all sure what it would be like to be one of those people.

And maybe he's participating. Maybe he's doing it. He had magic, that she remembers; she knows little enough about how this world does non-sorcery that she has no reason to believe they're separate kinds or specialties, though she can't rule it out. Maybe it's him doing it.

In which case she'd feel no guilt to speak of.



In a low but sufficiently carrying voice:

"Take no new action."