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"What's that?"
Venture met his eyes "You have me"
"My lord ehted!"
They already call to hiht Fatren wasn't certain whether to be insulted or impressed
Venture i his Allomancy to cross the distance in a quick bound Most of the soldiers stooped or hid behind the top of the fortification, keeping a low profile despite the distance of their enemies Venture, however, stood proud in his white cape and unifor toward the horizon
"They're setting up ca "Good Lord Fatren, prepare the men for an assault"
"An assault?" Fatren asked, scra up behind Venture
The e, and will be distracted bycamp We'll never have a better opportunity to attack them"
"But, we're on the defensive!"
Venture shook his head "If ait, they'll eventually whip theainst us We need to attack, rather than just wait to be slaughtered"
"And abandon the bulwark?"
"The fortification is impressive, Lord Fatren, but ultimately useless You don't have the nuenerally taller and more stable than h ground as they push down into the city"
"But--"
Venture looked at hiaze was fire now There would be noover ers to pass the orders
Venture stood 1watching as the er boys dashed off There see to attack More andtall atop the bulwark
He really does look like an eht despite himself
The orders moved down the line Ti Venture pulled out his sword and held it high in the ash-scattered sky Then, he took off down the bulwark in an inhu toward the koloss ca hi nerves and followed
The bulwark exploded withtoward death with their weapons held high
Holding the power did strange things to my mind In just a few moments, I became familiar with the power itself, with its history, and with the ways it e was different from experience, or even ability to use that power For instance, I kne to move a planet in the sky Yet, I didn't knohere to place it so that it wouldn't be too close, or too far, from the sun
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AS ALWAYS, TENSOON'S DAY began in darkness Part of that was due, of course, to the fact that he didn't have any eyes He could have created a set--he was of the Third Generation, which was old, even for a kandra He had digested enough corpses that he had learned how to create sensory organs intuitively without a model to copy
Unfortunately, eyes would have done hiood He didn't have a skull, and he had found that ans didn't function ithout a full body--and skeleton--to support the way, and it would be very difficult to turn the to look at TenSooninside his prison cha of translucent s, all connected, somewhat more malleable than the body of a mollusk With concentration, he could dissolve one of thenew Yet, without a skeleton to use, he was all but iain His very skin had a sense of its own--a kind of taste Right now, it tasted the stench of his own excrement on the sides of the chamber, but he didn't dare turn off this sense It was one of his only connections to the world around hirate-covered stone pit It was barely large enough to hold his mass His captors dumped food in from the top, then periodically poured water in to hydrate hie hole at the bottorate above were too sh--a kandra's body was supple, but even a pile of muscles could be squeezed only so soneso confined forhe didn't even kno long it had been Months? But TenSoon had the Blessing of Presence His ive in easily
So him from the blissful relief of madness
Focus,1 he told himself He had no brain, not as humans did, but he was able to think He didn't understand this He wasn't certain if any kandra did Perhaps those of the First Generation knew hten everyone else
They can't keep you here forever, he told hiinning to doubt the First Contract--or, rather, that the First Generation paid any attention to it But, could he blame them? TenSoon was a Contract-breaker By his own ad another instead This betrayal had ended with his master's death
Yet, even such a shameful act was the least of his cri was death, and if TenSoon's crimes had stopped there, the others would have killed him and been done with it Unfortunately, there was iven to the Second Generation in a closed conference--had revealed a erous, much more important, lapse