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.

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[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is mostly concerned with watching his borders expand and scaring away the occasional fairy who looks at them wrong. The humans are multiplying much faster than fairies do, and expand fast enough that they aren't likely to be considered good neighbors anyway.

Over the centuries, the numbers of Inquisitors decrease. (Nobody's being killed for Hemalurgy, and there are only so many useful spikes to be passed on when existing ones die or retire.) But since some of the humans are learning sorcery, and much more collaboratively than most fairies, moving to Fairyland comes with a net gain in minion usefulness.

Alendi even finds out that his immortal minion, a man going by Dorian, was the donor for one of Promise's spikes. And that she has used tinminds he filled. And while that charge could theoretically be replaced, it can never be returned.

[imeanforever]

This has not occurred to Promise, or she probably would have taken some action about it.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Eventually the one thousand and twenty four years are up. The Lord Ruler directs anyone currently on Scadrial to evacuate, and sorcerers to close all gates. In case he can't put down the Shard in time, he explains to Promise, it'll only be an empty world being Preserved.

A Queenscourt sorcerer makes a gate to the hidden room under the now empty palace.

[imeanforever]

Promise approves of letting Alendi handle this. He's done it before. And if he doesn't come back most of his useful features can be taken over by some other mortal.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi goes through and approaches the Well.

And then Promise hears a voice she probably doesn't recognize say "No tin. No sorcery. Go through the gate. And quiet—but tell the Lord Ruler he can act freely."

[imeanforever]

Zinc is not tin or sorcery. Think think -

But she's already going through the gate, quietly -

There was no one with her -

No no no no -

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi is standing at the edge of the pool. His metal jewelry is off, but he's still holding some of it.

"Don't bother trying to get to the Well first. If that would even help. I've got more charge in my metals than you, and am using enough zinc that I'm thoroughly bored. Now, the order?"

[imeanforever]

"You can act freely."

She isn't technically his master. If she were technically his master the wording would have let her not enforce that when she said it. But he is only obeying her as though she were his master; there's no distinction she can make. She speaks or doesn't; and when she speaks it works.

Back to being quiet and thinking furiously.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"And now I end the world. You and those fairies who've fed me are the only ones on it, of course, and this was the only way I could get Allomancy to work in Fairyland. The rest of it, that is; lerasium and atium had their connections to Preservation and Ruin anyway, but somehow I don't think you're concerned with exactly what I am or am not gaining from this. Enjoy being stuck on the world with the god of destruction."

He enters the pool, and his body burns away as he ascends.

[imeanforever]

As an obvious check, just in case Alendi has been conveniently stupid for once, Promise tries going back through the gate. Arcane, she needs Arcane, or Veracity would do, Whisper to undo her orders, hell, if only Alendi had been careless enough to put her in a room with Thorn she could even use him, beak and all -

But the sorcerer has closed it. She doesn't know how long this takes; she'll be noticed missing but not for hours, damn her introversion.

Fuck. Fuck. She's not certain Ruin can kill fairies. But if she can't do sorcery... and without access to at least one of the other four, she can't - if it wrecks the planet under her feet then even when Alendi inevitably loses hold over someone who wants her back they won't know how to fix a gate on the rubble or void or slag. It might not leave her conscious to come up with more plans. She needs a plan now.

She sears through her zinc. What do I have. What do I have. What do I have.

Okay. The thing that's going to destroy the world is a mind. They were trying to reason with it. It wouldn't talk to them, but it can theoretically be talked to. She can't get to the place the other sorcerers were writing to it without opening the door (not an Allomancer) or walking through the wall (no sorcery), but maybe later it will be able to hold a conversation from here too.

It's called "Ruin" for a reas-

...It's called Ruin.

She's called Promise, but that is not her name.

And Ruin is not a fairy.

This is the longest long shot.

What is its name? If she has its name it can't destroy her so WHAT IS ITS NAME?






She runs out of zinc.

She thinks as the swirl of dust through the air accelerates.

Probably Alendi has already gone home through some other gate.

Okay. What does she know?

Its metal is called "atium". Not "ruinum."



Ati.



The name

snaps

into

place.

Promise is still trapped and still very much constrained. She can't even talk in case it can hear her; she must be quiet.

But she has its name and it cannot destroy her and that means she has more time to think.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Alendi feels his body disappear and his mind expand. He sees all of the planet, and decides (against the intent of the Shard, while he still can) that it isn't worth saving. Instead, he grabs onto the few things that look useful—notably including any atium that's solid but has not been mined; sorcerers still haven't been able to duplicate that—and rushes it through his second gate. He tells Ruin, "Pits of Hathsin. Have fun," and follows into Fairyland.

Once on the other side, he starts recreating some of the things he missed from classical Scadrial. Everything from buildings to fruits and animals. (Especially the fluffy ones. Tell no one.) He also takes the trouble to replace every plant within his large but interestingly finite perception with an identical one. May as well collect an enormous number of vassals.

A fairy—he recognizes Arcane—seems to be angrily sorcering at the gate. He really shouldn't have been able to figure out what was going on. So Alendi turns him into a frog and drops him off several miles underground beneath a completely different city.

Then he lets go of the Shard. He leaves the power in a familiar glowing pool beneath a (new) hidden tunnel in his (new) capital, and leaves himself with some beads of lerasium on the off chance he wants them later. His sorcerer closes the gate at his order.


Meanwhile, Ruin leaves its prison. The room has gone dark when the pool disappeared, and now the walls and ceiling are audibly falling apart. It rushes off to the Pits of Hathsin, and finds a darker metallic pool full of most of its power. Finally, it can begin destroying.

[imeanforever]

Promise flings her hands over her head. This is not good for her hands, but it keeps her conscious until there's enough of a gap in the wall to slip through. She needs to get into open air or she won't be able to command Ruin when it finds that it can't destroy her. She knows the place, if at a bit of a remove and in a less collapsing state. Out she goes. She's allowed to fly, so she flies.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Things continue to collapse. At first in a quickly-moving straight line, following Ruin's position, then earthshakingly.

She hears a voice coming from all of the air around her, Why can't I destroy you?

[imeanforever]

She was told to be quiet, not silent. Alendi didn't blink when she produced footsteps and breaths and heartbeats. She can murmur. Right?

"Hold," she whispers. Queen's phrasing, not Thorn's, not Alendi's. Work. Work work work work work -

[nemoconsequentiae]

It works. The world goes quiet, except for the last few crashes. The voice doesn't say anything.

[imeanforever]

She has to get this absolutely right. She cannot misphrase, cannot get things in the wrong order. She should probably assume that Ruin has all the powers of this world and just for safety's sake also Fairyland.

She lands on the still ground.

"Listen to me," she says. "You may, truthfully and completely and without attempt to deceive me or drown out my voice or distract me from tasks, and without via any mental circumlocution permitting these things to happen as a side effect, answer my questions. Are there any other people left alive in this world?"

[nemoconsequentiae]

The voice crashes again. Two. The other two were...difficult to destroy. I actually had to expend effort.

[imeanforever]

"What do the living two look like?"

[nemoconsequentiae]

Like you, tiny being. One with white spots on its blue wings, and the other excruciatingly yellow.

[imeanforever]

So Thorn and Nighteyes are gone (oh poor Nighteyes, Nighteyes was nice). Yellow and Spellwhip are all right. Well, maybe harmed, but alive, recoverable. "Where are they?"

[nemoconsequentiae]

One is four thousand miles that way—the wind rustles in an identifiable direction—and the other is two in that one. I can take you to them.

[imeanforever]

"How would you do that?"

[nemoconsequentiae]

Pick you up and carry you, with as much acceleration as your body can stand, pushing the air out of the way ahead of you.

[imeanforever]

She doesn't think Yellow's smart enough to figure out "Ati", but Spellwhip might be. And she should figure out in the general case - "Can you avoid hearing voices which are not mine, and avoid looking at text I am not writing?"

[nemoconsequentiae]

Yes.