The Hero of Ages

'Which is another problem,' Vin said. 'The ash falls almost perpetually now. People are having trouble keeping it out of their streets. It blots out the light, making everything darker. Even if the mists don't kill off next year's crops, the ash will. Two winters ago-when we fought the koloss at Luthadel-was the first I'd seen snow in the Central Dominance, and this last winter was even worse. These aren't things we can fight, Elend, no matter how big our army!'

'What do you expect me to do, Vin?' Elend asked, slamming his can of stew down on the shelf. 'The koloss are gathering in the Outer Dominances. If we don't build our defenses, our people won't last long enough to starve.'

Vin shook her head. 'Armies are short-term. This,' she said, sweeping her hand across the cavern. 'This is short-term. What are we doing here?'

'We're surviving. Kelsier said-'

'Kelsier is dead, Elend!' Vin snapped. 'Am I the only one who sees the irony in that? We call him the Survivor, but he is the one who didn't survive! He let himself become a martyr. He committed suicide. How is that surviving?'

She stood for a moment, looking at Elend, breathing deeply. He stared back, apparently undaunted by her outburst.

What am I doing? Vin thought. I was just thinking about how much I admired Elend's hope. Why argue with him now?

They were stretched so thin. Both of them.

'I don't have answers for you, Vin,' Elend said in the dark cavern. 'I can't even begin to understand how to fight something like the mist. Armies, however, I can deal with. Or, at least, I'm learning how.'

'I'm sorry,' Vin said, turning away. 'I didn't mean to argue again. It's just so frustrating.'

'We're making progress,' Elend said. 'We'll find a way, Vin. We'll survive.'

'Do you really think we can do it?' Vin asked, turning to look him in the eyes.

'Yes,' Elend said.

And she believed him. He had hope, and always would. That was a big part of why she loved him so much.

'Come on,' Elend said, laying a hand on her shoulder. 'Let's find what we came for.'

Vin joined him, leaving her koloss behind, walking into the depths of the cavern as they heard footsteps outside. There was more than one reason they had come to this place. The food and the supplies-of which they passed seemingly endless shelves-were important. However, there was more.

A large metal plate was set into the back wall of the rough-hewn cavern. Vin read the words inscribed on it out loud.

' 'This is the last metal I will tell you about,' ' she read. ' 'I have trouble deciding the purpose of it. It allows you to see the past, in a way. What a person could have been, and who they might have become, had they made different choices. Much like gold, but for others.

' 'By now, the mists have likely come again. Such a foul, hateful thing. Scorn it. Don't go out in it. It seeks to destroy us all. If there is trouble, know that you can control the koloss and the kandra by use of several people Pushing on their emotions at once. I built this weakness into them. Keep the secret wisely.' '

Beneath that was listed an Allomantic compound of metals, one with which Vin was already familiar. It was the alloy of atium they called malatium-Kelsier's Eleventh Metal. So the Lord Ruler had known about it. He'd simply been as baffled as the rest of them as to its purpose.

The plate had been written by the Lord Ruler, of course. Or, at least, he'd ordered it written as it was. Each previous cache had also contained information, written in steel. In Urteau, for instance, she had learned about electrum. In the one to the east, they'd found a description of aluminum-though they'd already known about that metal.

'Not much new there,' Elend said, sounding disappointed. 'We already knew about malatium and about controlling koloss. Though, I'd never thought to have several Soothers Push at the same time. That might be helpful.' Before, they'd thought it took a Mistborn burning duralumin to get control of koloss.

'It doesn't matter,' Vin said, pointing at the other side of the plate. 'We have that.'

The other half of the plate contained a map, carved into steel, just like the maps they had found in the other three storage caverns. It depicted the Final Empire, divided into dominances. Luthadel was a square at the center. An 'X' to the east marked the main thing they'd come looking for: the location of the final cavern.

There were five, they thought. They'd found the first one beneath Luthadel, near the Well of Ascension. It had given the location of the second, to the east. The third had been in Urteau-Vin had been able to sneak into that one, but they hadn't managed to recover the food yet. That one had led them here, to the south.

Each map had two numbers on it-a five and a lower number. Luthadel had been number one. This one was number four.

'That's it,' Vin said, running her fingers along the carved inscriptions on the plate. 'In the Western Dominance, as you guessed. Somewhere near Chardees?'

'Fadrex City,' Elend said.

'Cett's home?'

Elend nodded. He knew far more about geography than she.

'That's the place, then,' Vin said. 'The one where it is.'

Elend met her eyes, and she knew he understood her. The caches had grown progressively larger and more valuable. Each one had a specialized aspect to it as well-the first had contained weapons in addition to its other supplies, while the second had contained large amounts of lumber. As they'd investigated each successive cache, they'd grown more and more excited about what the last one might contain. Something spectacular, surely. Perhaps even it.

The Lord Ruler's atium cache.

It was the most valuable treasure in the Final Empire. Despite years of searching, nobody had ever located it. Some said it didn't even exist. But, Vin felt that it had to. Despite a thousand years of controlling the sole mine that produced the extremely rare metal, he had allowed only a small portion of atium to enter the economy. Nobody knew what the Lord Ruler had done with the greater portion he had kept to himself for all those centuries.

'Now, don't get too excited,' Elend said. 'We have no proof that we'll find the atium in that final cavern.'

'It has to be there,' Vin said. 'It makes sense. Where else would the Lord Ruler store his atium?'

'If I could answer that, we'd have found it.'

Vin shook her head. 'He put it somewhere safe, but somewhere where it would eventually be found. He left these maps as clues to his followers, should he-somehow-be defeated. He didn't want an enemy who captured one of the caverns to be able to find them all instantly.'

A trail of clues that led to one, final cache. The most important one. It made sense. It had to. Elend didn't look convinced. He rubbed his bearded chin, studying the reflective plate in their lantern light. 'Even if we find it,' he said, 'I don't know that it will help that much. What good is money to us now?'

'It's more than money,' she said. 'It's power. A weapon we can use to fight.'

'Fight the mists?' he asked.

Vin fell silent. 'Perhaps not,' she finally said. 'But the koloss, and the other armies. With that atium, your empire becomes secure. . Plus, atium is part of all this, Elend. It's only valuable because of Allomancy-but Allomancy didn't exist until the Ascension.'

'Another unanswered question,' Elend said. 'Why did that nugget of metal I ingested make me Mistborn? Where did it come from? Why was it placed at the Well of Ascension, and by whom? Why was there only one left, and what happened to the others?'

'Maybe we'll find the answer once we take Fadrex,' Vin said.

Elend nodded. She could tell he considered the information contained in the caches the most important reason to track them down, followed closely by the supplies. To him, the possibility of finding atium was relatively unimportant. Vin couldn't explain why she felt he was so wrong in this regard. The atium was important. She just knew it. Her earlier despair lightened as she looked over the map. They had to go to Fadrex. She knew it.