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his powerful grip throwing a shock of pain up her already wounded arm. She cried out as he threw her to the side .
    Vin hit the ground and rolled, throwing herself back up to her f eet. The world spun, and she could see Elend swinging his dueling cane at the Inquisitor. The creature blocked the swing with an arm, shattering the wood, then ducked f orward and rammed an elbow into Elend's chest. The emperor grunted.
    Vin Pushed against the koloss who were now only a few feet away, shooting herself toward the Inquisitor again. She'd dropped her knife but, then, he'd also lost his axes. She could see him glancing to the side, toward where the weapons had fallen, but she didn't give him a chance to go for them. She tackled him, trying to throw him back to the ground. Unfortunately, he was much larger and much stronger than she was. He tossed her down in front of him, knocking the breath from her. The koloss were upon them. But Elend had grabbed one of the fallen axes, and he struck for the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor moved with a sudden jolt of speed. Its form became a blur, and Elend swung only at empty air. Elend spun, shock showing on his face as the Inquisitor came up, wielding not an axe, but oddly a metal spike, like the ones in his own body but sleeker and longer. The creature raised the spike, moving inhumanly fast faster even than any Allomancer should have managed. That was no pewter run , Vin thought. That wasn't even duralumin . She scrambled to her feet, watching the Inquisitor. The creature' s strange speed faded, but it was still in a position to hit Elend directly in the back with the spike. Vin was too far away to help.
    But the koloss weren't. They were cresting the hill, mere f eet from Elend and his opponent. Desperate, Vin f lared brass and grabbed the emotions of the koloss closest to the Inquisitor. Even as the Inquisitor moved to attack Elend, her koloss spun, swinging its wedge-like sword, hitting the Inquisitor directly in the face. It didn't separate the head from the body. It just crushed the head completely. Apparently, that was sufficient, for the Inquisitor dropped without a sound, falling motionless.
    A shock ran through the koloss army.
    "Elend!" Vin said. "Now!"
    The emperor turned away from the dying Inquisitor, and she could see the look of concentration on his face. Once, Vin had seen the Lord Ruler affect an entire city square full of people with his emotional Allomancy. He had been stronger than she was; far stronger even than Kelsier. She couldn't see Elend burn duralumin, then brass, but she could feel it. Feel him pressing on her emotions as he sent out a general wave of power, Soothing thousands of koloss at once. They all stopped f ighting. In the distance, Vin could make out the haggard remnants of Elend's peasant army, standing in an exhausted circle of bodies. Ash continued to fall. It rarely stopped, these days . The koloss lowered their weapons. Elend had won.
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    This is actually what happened to Rashek, I believe. He pushed too hard. He tried to burn away the mists by moving the planet closer to the sun, but he moved it too f ar, making the world f ar too hot f or the people who inhabited it .
    The ashmounts were his solution to this. He had learned that shoving a planet around required too much precision, so instead he caused the mountains to erupt, spewing ash and smoke into the air. The thicker atmosphere made the world cooler, and turned the sun red .
    4
    SAZED, CHIEF AMBASSADOR OF THE NEW EMPIRE , studied the sheet of paper in front of him. The tenets o f the Canzi people , it read. On the beaut y o f mortalit y, the importance of death, and the vital function of the human body as a partaker of the divine whole . The words were written in his own hand, copied out of one of his Feruchemical metalminds where he had storages containing literally thousands of books. Beneath the heading, filling most of the sheet in cramped writing, he had listed the basic belief s of the