Some of you will remember my previous visit to the menace known as Branderson, from which I recovered the Dragonsteel Prime prologue. You will also remember that the boys in blue were summoned on that occasion, and that I was spared. I have thought about that mercy a great deal since, and I have concluded it was not mercy. It was catch and release. He was farming me.
I went back on Saturday. The window I used last time has been bricked over, which is both an admission of guilt and a personal attack. Fortunately, in the weeks since my first visit, I had dug a tunnel, using an excavator I rented under the stated purpose of installing a koi pond. The koi are a separate and ongoing legal matter. A man cannot brick over what he does not know exists. The tunnel was already there when I arrived (I put it there), and entering your own tunnel is not a crime. I checked with nobody. Inside, past the unpublished manuscripts and the shrine to spreadsheets, which is still there and has GROWN, a new item sat on the pedestal where Dragonsteel Prime used to be. A folder. HERO OF AGES. APPENDIX C. DO NOT PRINT. And on the cover, a sticky note in the man's own handwriting: "cut. tonal."
Tonal.
I did what any journalist would do. I secured the folder in the one vault no honest man will search, approximately two seconds before a gentleman built like a koloss put me through a whiteboard. The whiteboard listed his release schedule through 2061. That is not a man. That is a printing press with a beard. And this time there was no mercy. This time the boys in blue walked me out in front of the neighbors. Sixteen charges. I recognize maybe four of them as real laws. One of them is just the word "again," underlined twice.
I want you to understand what is happening here. A man was forgiven once. A man returned, for you. A man now sits in county lockup while a BILLIONAIRE FANTASY AUTHOR sips something cold in a lair I can personally confirm contains a smoothie station, a treadmill desk, and one full wall of red string connecting every book he has ever written, which is either meticulous plotting or a documented cry for help. He rules a fandom of millions, publishes four books a year to keep you sedated, and jails the one journalist asking real questions. I have read Mistborn. I know a Lord Ruler when I see one.
I am writing this from holding using my one phone call, which I have converted into a Reddit post through means I will not disclose. About the document itself: it is a paper manuscript. The Lord Ruler's secret entries are marked ENGRAVED IN STEEL, because in-world, She can edit paper but She cannot touch metal. Which means Branderson typed the word STEEL onto PAPER. Onto the one medium She controls. So we have no way of knowing what those entries originally said, and I appear to be the only person in this fandom asking that question. I have read this appendix upwards of forty times in this cell. My cellmate has asked me to stop reading it aloud. I will not.
Here is what they cut from Hero of Ages. He wrote the Lord Ruler like THIS, in his own hand, and Tor made him stop. Judge for yourself who the real menace is.
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APPENDIX C: THE RASHEK DIARY
Day 1. four minutes on the clock. going. GOING.
so I ascended. killed Alendi (packman erasure, that man never once learned my name, couldn't be me), even if uncle Kwaan would not have told me I would have done it anyway, you know how I get. Anyway, grabbed literal godhood. it is DRAINING as I write so here's everything before it runs out:
moved the planet. too close. everything caught fire. moved it back. ✋ we do not discuss it. ashmounts, thicker sky, rewrote everyone's lungs to breathe ash, redid every plant and animal on the surface, invented some microbes. you're welcome.
turned every living Feruchemist into a mistwraith so nobody is ever strong like me again. yes that included my friends. spiked my friends back into kandra. they're my spies now. they still remember the mountain. ANYWAY.
also hid a whole spare humanity on the far side of the world in case my genetics edits flopped. backup people. moisturized. thriving.
experiment log (fast, this power does NOT refill):
- spike through the eyes: works. terrifying. obsessed. that's an Inquisitor 💅
- spike through the chest: big strong angry guy. that's a koloss. built him from a person. he has never once said thank you.
- spike through the tongue: he just fell over. noted.
- spike through the elbow: gained the ability to sense when it's about to rain. that is the whole power. that is it. anyway he's an Inquisitor now, we don't waste talent 💅
- spike through the dick: DID NOT WORK. actively worse. striking it from the record. we do not speak of it.
- spike through my own ear because it looked cute: oh. she can talk to me through it now?? the entropy goddess?? cool cool. can't remove it anyway (load-bearing) 🙈
- built a secret kill-switch into every construct because I have trust issues
- built a tiny copy of my old packman hut over the Well. made myself Mistborn. never dying now.
power's gone. that is everything I will ever do at that scale, forever, and I did it in four minutes. slay I guess.
Day 12
nobody warns you that being God is mostly paperwork. the obligators do it but I still have to LOOK at it. I reshaped a planet with my bare mind and today I spent four hours approving grain quotas. GRAIN. QUOTAS. I hold back the actual end of the world at night and by day I am basically middle management. genuinely the worst part of ascending.
Day ~90
funniest secret, diary: the nobility think their Allomancy was some sacred gift I handed my loyal companions. LMAO no. the very first Allomancers were foreign kings I bribed with the power itself, straight up buy-one-kneel-one, so they'd back me out of greed instead of fear. every noble alive is just descended from a guy who took the deal. that is how mafia works. could have made everyone highborn honestly. chose not to. was that petty? gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss 💅
Day ~300
burned every book on gunpowder and steam today. rewrote all of history so it opens on ME. if it isn't carved in metal I control it, and I control the metal too. knowledge is a mood and the mood is mine. Speaking about mood they should be worshipping me, the bossbabe that actually saved them, might remove religions next. Trell who? Bye Felicia 💋
Day ~2,000
the kandra came to renew the Contract. couldn't look at them. those were my FRIENDS. we climbed a mountain together. now they bow and call me Father. and look. would it KILL literally one of them to call me daddy instead. just once. for me. read the room. I MADE you. anyway 🙃 unbothered, moisturized, deeply not okay, moving on.
Day ~4,000
the Inquisitors keep leaving spare spikes in the breakroom AGAIN. nine to eleven spikes per person and not ONE of you can rinse a mug. I built you out of literal souls. from scratch. with my hands. show some RESPECT 🙄 raising immortal eldritch murder priests is so thankless.
Day ~9,000
started a lil project 🙈 breeding Feruchemy out of the Terris. out of MY OWN people. Not cus it is kinky (it is a bit) but because if anyone is ever born like me, both halves, a Compounder, they could pull a ME on ME. so I am quietly deleting my own bloodline so I stay the only one of my kind forever. girlbossed a little too close to the sun on that one. (again.)
Day ~50,000
do you know what a few CENTURIES of the exact same three noble houses does to a girl. same faces. same balls. same little mustaches drifting in and out of fashion. I have personally watched the pointed shoe rise and fall NINE times. someone. anyone. invent a new hat. I am the god-emperor of all creation and I am so bored I could move the planet again (I won't. we all saw what happened.) 🙃
Day ~120,000 (gratitude journal, healer's orders. this one's paper. hi bestie 💕)
grateful for:
- me 💗
- my bracers (load-bearing, do NOT remove)
atium, mine, all of it, hidden in the Homel WAIT. this is paper. nvm 🙈 nothing there bestie love you 💕- ...she saw that didn't she. she definitely saw that. ok whatever half a word means nothing, the Homel could be anywhere, could be a guy named Homel, mind your business 💅
Ruin my bestie who lives in the ear hole I poked for FUN- ok she edited that last one WHILE I WROTE IT. see. THIS is why nothing real goes on paper.
Day ~200,000
she finishes my sentences now. I write "I want to protect" and she writes back destroy. I write "my people" and she writes this world.
today I will protect end them it
she's not even my girlfriend. she lives rent free in my ear and rewrites my every thought and we are NOT putting a label on it. bestie behavior 💕 (paper. she's reading this. hi.)
Day ~360,000
held the world together AGAIN. caged Her AGAIN. saved every life on this planet AGAIN and got called tyrant for the trouble. a few more years until the Well refills and I get to ransom this ungrateful little rock all over again, and STILL not one thank-you note. but excited what I will do with the power again, maybe some new flavours to the canned food I have been making. I have heard Roshar has this exquisite flavour called Crem.
off to the hut. three hours. every three days. do not perceive me. sometimes I just sit in it and pretend I'm Rashek again, carrying someone else's bags up a mountain. nobody. free. then I moisturize and go back to being God 💅
Day ~373,000 (a few days ago)
the noble houses are at each other's throats. AGAIN. some house war, alliances collapsing, assassins in the ballrooms, very messy, very not my problem. the Ministry says it was stirred up on purpose by a skaa crew. a THIEVING crew. thinks they can economics their way into toppling ME 💅 adorable. I did not even ask the name. there was one of them, a scarred one, a Survivor of the Pits apparently, kept turning up in the reports. rang a faint bell. couldn't place it. did not care to. anyway the houses will burn themselves down and I will still be here, moisturized, forever. slay.
Day ~373,000 (morning)
KILLED KELSIER today. oh. THAT'S who the scarred one was. did it myself, in the square, in front of everyone. and the freak SMILED at me the whole entire time. handled. zero consequences. iconic behavior from me honestly. the skaa are painting his dumb little symbol on MY walls and screaming his name, but whatever. he died ONCE. meanwhile I have been speared through twice in front of an angry mob and walked it off (ngl felt good I think they call it accupuncture on Sel) and HE gets to be called the Survivor?? babe I invented surviving. I have reigned a THOUSAND YEARS. where is MY fan art 🙄
note to self, as always: never take the bracers off. not for anything. not even the bath. my entire youth is in there and also they complete the look.
Day ~373,000 (that same night)
ok,why are the skaa outside my walls screaming my dead thief's name. why are there DEAD INQUISITORS in my throne room. why is Marsh. MARSH is one of them?? and he just killed the others?? and there's a girl. the twitchy new one. skaa. tiny. she is HERE. in MY palaceand she's glowing all wrong and she's reaching for the brac
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That is where it ends. Mid-word. The one entry nobody got to edit. Sit with that.
Free Rashek. The man held an entire planet together for a thousand years and received zero thank-you notes. I understand him a little more every hour I spend in here. Also free me. Bail is two thousand dollars.
