Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [791]
To Marsh, the mansion was a place of pristine whiteness and bright blobs of expensive color. Marsh searched through it, burning pewter to enhance his physical abilities, allowing him to walk much more lightly than would otherwise have been possible. He killed two more servants in the course of his exploration, and eventually moved up to the second floor.
He found the man he wanted sitting at a desk in a top-floor room. Balding, wearing a rich suit. He had a petite mustache set in a round face, and was slumped, eyes closed, a bottle of hard liquor empty at his feet. Marsh saw this with displeasure.
“I come all this way to get you,” Marsh said. “And when I finally find you, I discover that you have intoxicated yourself into a stupor?”
The man had never met Marsh, of course. That didn’t stop Marsh from feeling annoyed that he wouldn’t be able to see the look of terror and surprise in the man’s eyes when he found an Inquisitor in his home. Marsh would miss out on the fear, the anticipation of death. Briefly, Marsh was tempted to wait until the man sobered up so that the killing could be performed properly.
But, Ruin would have none of that. Marsh sighed at the injustice of it, then slammed the unconscious man down against the floor and drove a small bronze spike through his heart. It wasn’t as large or thick as an Inquisitor spike, but it killed just as well. Marsh ripped it out of the man’s heart, leaving the former nobleman dead, blood pooling on the floor.
Then, Marsh walked out, leaving the building. The nobleman—Marsh didn’t even know his name—had used Allomancy recently. The man was a Smoker, a Misting who could create copperclouds, and the use of his ability had drawn Ruin’s attention. Ruin had been wanting an Allomancer to drain.
And so, Marsh had come to harvest the man’s power and draw it into the spike. It seemed something of a waste to him. Hemalurgy—particularly Allomantic imbues—was much more potent when one could drive the spike through the victim’s heart and directly into a waiting host. That way, very little of the Allomantic ability was lost. Doing it this way—killing the Allomancer to make a spike, then traveling somewhere else to place it—would grant the new host far less power.
But, there was no getting around it in this case. Marsh shook his head as he stepped over the maidservant’s body again, moving out into the unkempt gardens. No one accosted, or even looked at, him as he made his way to the front gates. There, however, he was surprised to find a couple of skaa men kneeling on the ground.
“Please, Your Grace,” one said as Marsh passed. “Please, send the obligators back to us. We will serve better this time.”
“You have lost that opportunity,” Marsh said, staring at them with his spike-heads.
“We will believe in the Lord Ruler again,” another said. “He fed us. Please. Our families have no food.”
“Well,” Marsh said. “You needn’t worry about that for long.”
The men knelt, confused, as Marsh left. He didn’t kill them, though part of him wished to. Unfortunately, Ruin wanted to claim that privilege for himself.
Marsh walked across the plain outside the town. After about an hour’s time he stopped, turning to look back at the community and the towering ashmount behind it.
At that moment, the top left half of the mountain exploded, spewing a deluge of dust, ash, and rock. The earth shook, and a booming sound washed over Marsh. Then, flaming hot and red, a large gout of magma began to flow down the side of the ashmount toward the plain.
Marsh shook his head. Yes. Food was hardly this town’s biggest problem. They really needed to get their priorities straight.
Hemalurgy is a power about which I wish I knew far less. To Ruin, power must have an inordinately high cost—using it must be attractive, yet must sow chaos and destruction in its very implementation.
In concept, it is a very simple art. A parasitic one. Without other people to steal from, Hemalurgy would be useless.
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