And yet, he didn’t let himself wallow in that failure. He moved on, working despite his regret. He was a harder man than he had once been. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The old Elend had been a man who was easily dismissed by many—a genius who had wonderful ideas, but little ability to lead. Still, she missed some of what was gone. The simple idealism. Elend was still an optimist, and he was still a scholar, but both attributes seemed tempered by what he had been forced to endure.
She watched him move along one of the storage shelves, trailing a finger in the dust. He brought the finger up, looking at it for a moment, then snapped it, throwing a small burst of dust into the air. The beard made him look more rugged—like the wartime commander he had become. A year of solid training with Allomancy and the sword had strengthened his body, and he’d needed to get his uniforms retailored to fit properly. The one he wore now was still stained from battle.
“This place is amazing, isn’t it?” Elend asked.
Vin turned, glancing into the darkness of the storage cavern. “I suppose.”
“He knew, Vin,” Elend said. “The Lord Ruler. He suspected that this day would come—a day when the mists returned and food would be scarce. So, he prepared these supply depots.”
Vin joined Elend beside a shelf. She knew from previous caverns that the food would still be good, much of it processed in one of the Lord Ruler’s canneries, and would remain so for years in storage. The amount in this cavern could feed the town above for years. Unfortunately, Vin and Elend had more to worry about than a single town.
“Imagine the effort this must have taken,” Elend said, turning over a can of stewed beef in his hand. “He would have had to rotate this food every few years, constantly packing and storing new supplies. And he did it for centuries, without anyone knowing what he was doing.”
Vin shrugged. “It’s not so hard to keep secrets when you’re a god-emperor with a fanatical priesthood.”
“Yes, but the effort … the sheer scope of it all …” Elend paused, looking at Vin. “You know what this means?”
“What?”
“The Lord Ruler thought it could be beaten. The Deepness, the thing that we released. The Lord Ruler thought he could eventually win.”
Vin snorted. “It doesn’t have to mean that, Elend.”
“Then why go through all of this? He must have thought that fighting wasn’t hopeless.”
“People struggle, Elend. Even a dying beast will still keep fighting, will do anything to stay alive.”
“You have to admit that these caverns are a good sign, though,” Elend said.
“A good sign?” Vin asked quietly, stepping closer. “Elend, I know you’re just trying to find hope in all this, but I have trouble seeing ‘good signs’ anywhere lately. You have to admit now that the sun is getting darker. Redder. It’s even worse down here, in the South.”
“Actually,” Elend said, “I doubt that the sun has changed at all. It must be all the smoke and ash in the air.”
“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.”