#Misty Night

WC 794

Settled in the luxurious bedding prepared for her, Gloinda stretched across the bed to snuff her bedside candle. The caliginous mists swirled around outside, as if calling her into their blackness.

Instead of answering that call, she nestled under the covers. Her marriage to Egart the next day would demand her full attention and she needed rest before the hustle and bustle of preparations she would be obligated to go through.

As she glanced at the window, she felt a chill as a shadow flew into the air and seemed to land on the roof. Instinctively, she downed a vial of liquid kept in her night stand drawer, and then slipped off the covers to investigate.

Because of the tin, she was able to make out subtle footsteps on the roof above her. They crept closer to a skylight above her bed. Was nothing sacred? The night before her wedding, and someone had magically zipped up to the high roof of her family’s keep for an ambush.

A hand rested on the glass of the skylight and a mask peered down into the darkness of her bedroom. Gloinda hid behind an armoire, breathing slowly and quietly. The hand raised as if to knock.

To her shock, the hand breached the glass as if it were ash. Shards splattered around the room from the powerful blow. This was not mere human strength. That was tempered glass. Nor was the leap from above that of an ordinary man. The intruder pounced with the agility of a cat. They wore a cloak of streaming tassels that fluttered around their body like the night mists themselves.

Flying through the night sky, super-human strength, and when the intruder looked around the room, the darkness seemed to mean nothing to them. Gloinda knew what this was. It was a Mistborn assassin.

House politics were a game that everyone played in the Final Empire, but every now and then, it came to the point of war. Secret assassinations and covert plots were part of the ruthless life the nobility lived.

The assassin crept closer. They thought they had the element of surprise still, since only those who could burn tin would be able to see in the darkness. But Gloinda had her own set of surprises.

With a burst of enhanced strength, she burned pewter and threw the armoire at the intruder. The shocked assassin screamed and pushed on the metal fasteners in the furniture, causing it to divert its path in midair.

Gloinda pulled on some coins from a desk nearby, by using iron, and then used steel to push them at the intruder. They zipped through the air because of her magical ability to manipulate the metal. But then the intruder dodged them all. They were burning atium.

A Mistborn could swallow metal flakes and then access the power of individual metals to manipulate the world around them. Tin enhanced the senses, pewter gave one strength, steel pushed metal objects away from the Mistborn, and iron pulled on them. But the ultimate tool was atium. It allowed a Mistborn to see a few seconds into the future. It had allowed this assassin to dodge the deadly coins “pushed” at them while Gloinda was using steel. And it would allow this assassin to outmaneuver her easily.

“Mistborn too?” the assassin said.

“I saw right through you, Intruder.”

They smiled in reply. They wore a hood covering the majority of their face, but the mouth was free to taunt her.

“In the right situation ,we are all capable of the most terrible crimes, aren’t we, Gloinda?”

That voice. She recognized that voice.

“Egart?”

“You didn’t think my family would actually let me marry a filthy rat like you, did you?”

“But, why?”

“This is part of a trade agreement between our fathers. Now that my father has control of your family’s granaries, we no longer need to put up with this charade of a relationship.”

Gloinda let the sinking feeling drain all of the vitality out of her. If this was who she was proposed to, then what was the point of fighting on?

Yet something solidified in her. A resolve to fight back and not let this wicked man have his way.

She burned atium.

Suddenly, the world blurred into a myriad of possibilities. She saw him swipe with a glass dagger and she easily moved out of the way. He stepped back and realized that he was out of atium and she wasn’t.

It was her turn to smile.

By afternoon the next day, a message arrived declaring the wedding was off due to the disappearance of Egart. Gloinda sipped her tea, pondering the dangerous world she lived in. She had never really liked Egart all that much anyway.

r/TheTrashReceptacle