The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)

by Brandon Sanderson

By the time she slowed she was breathing deeply, though not from exertion. She moved into an alley between two shops, standing in the shade, wrapping her arms around herself. She had spent her life learning to remain unnoticed, to be quiet and unimportant. Now she could be none of those things.

“Good men don’t become legends,” he said quietly. “Good men don’t need to become legends.” She opened her eyes, looking up at him. “They simply do what’s right anyway.”

Every scholar knew that one of the greatest dangers in research was the desire to find a specific answer.

Dockson met her eyes. “Because if I accept that Elend bears no guilt for what his people did to mine, then I must admit to being a monster for the things that I did to them.”

“It is not my position to judge truth, Lord Venture,” Sazed said, smiling. “I simply carry it.”

“At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different,” Sazed said. “Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet upon closer examination, he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then knows that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”

“Hope is never wasted,” Tindwyl said, eyes flashing.

“Why is Statlin City circled?” Elend asked, frowning. Vin shook her head. “This isn’t what we came for,” she said. “There.” A tunnel split off from the main cavern. “Come on.”