"We're not mortals. By default, anyway."

Promise is very, very paranoid about her god of destruction. But when she's got some of her metalminds filled up (and her tinminds carefully plenty empty enough to deafen her for days and sharpen her sorcery if she needs that), it occurs to her to ask if it can just... give her Feruchemy. Entire. No extra spikes. It tries to convince her to take Alendi's spike instead, but she wants it before she gets there; so.

Now she's a Feruchemist.

She acquires a coppermind, a little one, which she wears as a discreet navel ring hidden under her dress; and with Yellow serving as a test master-de-jure, and Promise deafening herself with tin, they test the ability for Ruin to transcribe conversations into the coppermind while she taps it, receiving the words in real time but without any possibility that she will be ordered. It works; Yellow cannot make her flap her wings that way.

She also acquires a few toerings, hiding under her shoes, piercing the skin, filled up with free cheatery luck and speed and luck and health and luck luck luck.

This is important because she wants to have a conversation with Alendi. Before she kills him. She's probably going to have to make (let) Ruin kill him.

She doesn't want to have to call Ruin to do something suddenly, not with its penchant for improvisation; so she works out its initial orders and likely contingencies in advance.

She gives Yellow a set of instructions, and deafens him with sorcery she can reverse later; she only needs his voice, not his presence.

Spellwhip stands a safe several miles back, and waits, allowed to do sorcery again and cooling the air.

And Promise makes a gate where she expects Alendi to be.

She's seen his office before.

It settles. She motions to Yellow.

"Hold," Yellow commands.

And Promise peeks through, invisible and deaf and sped way up and very lucky indeed.

Alendi wishes he had detected this as soon as the gate opened, with his shiny new Allomancy, but no. Noticing a couple of people spontaneously appearing would be like paying attention to specific insects in a swarm. He's an emperor, not a god.


He makes that one surprised face and goes, "wuh?" At least to the extent permitted by the order.

Promise steps through.

"Obey Promise as if she were your master," continues Yellow.

And Ruin has a job to do now, too.

It depowers Alendi. Whee, destruction!
It rips out all those (and only those, for which Promise is to blame) pieces of Alendi's soul that give him Allomancy and Feruchemy. It even removes his Hemalurgic spikes, and offers those to Promise.

Although Ruin could just make more of the thing the spikes are for, Promise is deeply unsure that she wants to keep it in Fairyland with her as a general heuristic, and may as well hang on to the mindless version of giving-people-metal-powers. She lines them up neatly piercing her bare arm just enough to hold their magic.

"With the caveat that you may enforce no orders, trigger no prearranged contingencies, tell no lies of commission or omission, and achieve no volume that could conceivably attract attention from anyone who is currently unable or unwilling to act in my interests over yours," says Promise, "you may speak."

"And 'enjoy' translates to 'do at least three impossible things on your way to recapturing me'?"

He's visibly aging again.

Promise de-ages him a skosh with sorcery. Doesn't want him to fall apart while she might still need him for something.

"Clearly." She stalks forward. "So. What did you do, and why did you do it, starting from whatever you think will be most interesting to me?"

"I turned Arcane into a frog and left him underground somewhere, because he seemed to have figured something out and be acting against me. I thought I should take care of him while I was still omnipotent.
I brought some materials over that I thought would be useful. Nothing more important than atium, though.
I created some lerasium.
I replaced every plant I could see—which was quite a lot—with an identical one. I'll have virtually everyone as a vassal soon.
I remade things from old Scadrial. Especially the fluffy animals."

Damn this completeness order.

"Arcane is at the center of a city about ninety miles from here north by northwest, and another ninety down. Do you know, pressure doesn't seem to work the same way here.
The lerasium isn't hidden yet. You can find it in a drawer to my right."

He makes the mistake of trying to say something, which means he ends up forced to answer—

"Nope. I got nothing. There is absolutely no reason you shouldn't kill me."

She is still Promise.

"I'll give you a couple of minutes in case you think of something."

Before the time runs out, the best he can come up with is, "I have basically every fairy as a vassal, so you could send me somewhere you'll need to relay a lot of orders?"
He doesn't expect it to work.

"No. But you aren't a minion. You're a trap."

She shakes her head.

"Kill him," she whispers.