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

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"How about this, then. I'll have the Inquisitors spike me, so the materials don't need to spend time outside a body and nobody even slightly dangerous ever meets you. Then only the person who transfers them from me to you needs to know about your existence. It can be someone with no magic. You'd have your pick of trusting their promise of silence or of enforcing it but revealing your capabilities.

The secrecy problems all seem solvable, not to mention unimportant next to the ability to ignore orders."

[imeanforever]

"I'm weighing various options," she says. "Letting someone know I am a threat is not a dealbreaker, it's a drawback I'm weighing against other possibilities. I will want time alone to think and I am not yet sure I want to leave you alone, considering that left to your own devices you kill people and instantiate emotion bubbles and so on."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"As far as I can tell, the main difference between mass Soothing and ordering a kingdom's worth of vassals is that I can't do anything so effective. As enforced control goes, yours is the more invasive.

I'd be happy to fly off and collect the objects if you want to be alone for a bit. I am planning no significant actions other than things we've discussed and expect that you would have no cause for complaint when I return."

[imeanforever]

"All right. Go ahead and do just exactly that, navigating in such a way as to retain the expectation that I will have no cause for complaint."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Very well. I'll return in, oh, let's say an hour."

He exits through the secret door, closes it behind him, and launches himself out the nearest window. Retrieving some memories about exactly which Inquisitors have the spikes he needs, he forms some educated guesses about where in Luthadel they'll be. Soon he's floating above one such place, flaring iron to sense metal strongly enough to pick out human shapes.

Few people wear metal. Most show up only as thin outlines where there's iron in their blood. A few, soldiers or guards or suchlike, wear breastplates (easily removable in case they have to fight an Allomancer). Inquisitors look unique to this sense: They have the trace metals in the bloodstream, but there are spikes all around the outline of their bodies and most are carrying metalminds.

When he spots an Inquisitor, the Lord Ruler of the Final Empire dramatically drops from the sky. Surrounded by awed and more often than not terrified onlookers, he states, "You're not Yelbon, are you," and launches back up. The next Inquisitor he spots is the right one.

After collecting four relevant spikes from three Inquisitors, he returns to Kredik Shaw. He directs the first obligator he sees at the palace to wait outside the large domed room because she may be called on. It's intentionally not a high-ranking one whose name Promise might accidentally hear mentioned if she decides she doesn't want to know. Then he unlocks the secret door mechanism, and knocks before opening. The entire process has taken slightly over an hour.

[imeanforever]

Promise doesn't have any paper, and wouldn't want to commit her thought process to it even if she did. She's been writing in brief fairylights, doable after having been in the room long enough to know how all the little details sorcery depends on are lined up and prone to changing. She's going to take the deafness ability. Can't pass it up, not really, not when her name's out of her hands.

She opens the door.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Hello again," Alendi says. "Have you decided what you want to do?"

[imeanforever]

"I'll take it," she says. She's pretty sure she can turn invisible again in here if she needs to unless someone does something to affect light sources or draftiness or temperature, and they don't know enough about how sorcery works to try it. She turns visible.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Okay. I have someone who can do it on call, but I'd rather not show this place to anyone else. At least not the secret part of it."

[imeanforever]

"Is there anyone beyond the one person for the spikes out there?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No. And the outside of the secret door is behind an ordinary one, so it's not like we'll be in the open."

[imeanforever]

Promise nods. And goes out.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He follows her out, exits the next door, and returns in a moment with a minion. There are intricate tattoos circling around her eyes. She's a tall woman wearing a robe and a professionally neutral expression that doesn't change even when she sees Promise's wings.

Alendi stops himself from introducing them, and instead just tells Promise "I've made sure to emphasize that everything here is the highest level of secret and that she should not mention her name unless you ask for it afterward."

[imeanforever]

"Thank you," Promise says.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

He hands Promise some tin rings that won't remotely fit.
"This one is storing touch. Since it's partly charged, as soon as it works you'll feel a...an amount of a thing in it. A quality that tin ordinarily doesn't have. Try to increase the amount, and it'll decrease what you're feeling by almost a third.
That'll be more comprehensible when you have the extra sense for this.

Ready?"

[imeanforever]

"Yes."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Without any indication of whether or not it hurts him, the Lord Ruler pulls a pewter spike about an inch long out of his own arm. Two or three forms of magic conspire to make this only mostly as unsanitary as it ought to be.

He points out precisely where, and the obligator presses it in to Promise's arm just below the shoulder, deep enough to pierce through the layers of skin.

"Does the tin feel any different? If it works the same way on fairies, you should have the ability now."

[imeanforever]

"Yes."

Promise attempts the anaesthetic use of the tin. This isn't that bad compared to being creatively tortured, anyway, but she's glad of it regardless.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Two thirds of the pain from being spiked must be pretty uncomfortable. Normally someone in her position would be under the effect of magic making them not mind the pain, but Alendi thought she might react badly to that information. Besides, he's not going to go out of his way to comfort her. She's been giving him orders.

Rather than stick the spike further in immediately, he and the obligator instead pierce the skin with a second one, doubling Promise's Feruchemical ability. While he holds those two in place, his minion inserts the third on the other arm. If Promise is still filling the tinmind as quickly as she can, she's feeling only a small fraction of the pain. Now the minion presses the spikes deeper. And with the addition of the fourth, Promise has fully gained her new superpower.

This stops being relevant very soon, because seconds after the spikes are secure her arms heal around them.

[imeanforever]

She relaxes when the healing is over.

"Thank you," she says politely to the obligator.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

She responds only with a small bow, almost a nod, and then leaves.

"Obligators are careful with words," Alendi explains. "A laudable habit in people who speak for the Empire while on the job.

Do you want to test that the order prevention works?"

[imeanforever]

"Maybe. How much did you let yourself hear of my first order?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Only that I cannot give you any order you don't request."

[imeanforever]

"Revision: never give me an order that I do not expressly request of my own uncommanded will, or that you do not sincerely without mental contortion believe to be in my best interest as you genuinely understand it. ...The original had an exception to let you give me the same one but I don't think I'd better add that at this time. Please try ordering me to unfold my wings."

She is poised to put her hearing away as soon as she hears the first syllable of that order.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Unfold your wings."

He resists the temptation to insult her to her face. She might ask him what the extra syllables were.