Isles of the Emberdark

by Brandon Sanderson

Frost saw the best in people, and people became their best because of it. That’s what he’d always said.

Tuka was a boisterous, stout woman. She had long black hair and wore orange. Always. Orange was practically a religion to Tuka. It made her look like a fruit.

What were those odd pieces of metal stuck to their cheeks? Ribbed, like ripples of waves, those didn’t seem like armor. More ornamental.

This creature stood seven feet tall, and was encased entirely in steel. Armor, thick and bulky, with smooth, rounded edges—and a smoky grey light glowing at the joints. The helmet likewise glowed from a slit-like visor that appeared to have glass behind it. An arcane symbol—reminding Dusk vaguely of a bird in flight—was etched into the front of the breastplate.

AYYO?!

“Tell me. Is there a place on your planet where people vanish unexpectedly? A place, perhaps, where an odd pool collects something that is not quite water?”

you do not accept my protection, you will become a vassal of the Scadrians, these ‘Ones Above.’ Your planet will become a farming station, like many others, used to feed their expansion efforts. Your birds will be stripped from you the moment it becomes possible to do so.”

The alien thrust out his armored hand, and smoke—or mist—coalesced there out of nowhere. It formed into a gun, longer than a pistol, shorter than a rifle. Wicked in shape, with flowing metal along the sides like wings, it was to Saplings’s pistol what a shadowy deep beast of the ocean was to a minnow. The alien raised his other hand, snapping a small box—perhaps a power supply—to the side of the rifle, causing it to glow ominously.

One could revere the past without pretending everything about it had been better.

She tried to imagine them out there, walking the lonely obsidian expanse. Or worse, straying into regions where the ground went incorporeal and turned into the misty nothing they called the unsea. Or…the emberdark, people sometimes called that vast emptiness—the Rosharan term for the unexplored parts of Shadesmar.

Rosharan antigrav technology, aether spores from the Dhatrian planetary network for thrust and engine power, a Scadrian composite metal hull. Never mind that all three technological strains produced their own viable starships without the others. The Dynamic, like her crew, had picked up a little here and a little there. All it was missing was an Awakened metalmind, but those were expensive—and Starling had never trusted them anyway.

Most cities were in the Physical Realm, not in Shadesmar, but you could transfer between the two dimensions with ease—if you had a special kind of portal. They were called perpendicularities, and most major planets had them. To travel, you popped into Shadesmar on one planet, traveled easily to your destination, then popped back out.

She was finally starting to feel like she understood this crew and how to be a leader, just like Master Hoid had been trying to teach her. Before he’d vanished, of course. It was…his way.

The person presented for Starling was actually hundreds of insects holding together, like the proverbial three children in a long coat.

“Leonore,” Starling said, moving her hand to the pilot’s shoulder. “I know you can do this. I know you can save them.” Leonore banked again, unable to get in. “I’ve seen you running simulations when we’re in dock,” Starling murmured. “I’ve seen you take this hunk of metal and make it soar. I know what it is to fly, my friend. From one winged soul to another, I promise you this: you are a maestro.”

Sak let out a squawk and began pecking him on the back of his head. Rokke landed beside her a moment later, and gave a few hesitant pecks herself. A clear message. What do you think you’re doing, stupid human? Don’t scare us like that.

One of which was hidden, shadowed: the planet of Yolen. For millennia, the dragons had kept the secret that it was the source of nearly all life in the cosmere and the origin of the Shards, though that news had been revealed quite dramatically a few decades back.

“Don’t you literally worship a Scadrian?” Nazh asked. “That’s different,” Ed said. “He is nice. Plus, he’s the only known living Shard who has performed the—”

“Each planet in the Physical Realm has a profound effect on Shadesmar,” Ed said. “Near Nalthis the surface is painted colors, wet with pigment and flowers that drip ink. Roshar? Glass beads, like the gemstones they use for light, and inverted land and sea—which is common for some regions, but not all of them.”

“The more aware of the cosmere the people on a planet become, the larger the space between their planet and other planets grows in Shadesmar.

That was a whole pile of words. The kind that heaped atop one another, smothering the ones before. Really, all Dusk took from it was that Dajer felt the need to brag about his fighters.

Interesting, the things you could learn without questions if you let someone fill the air with their thoughts.

“I like you, Sixth,” Dajer said. “I like your bluntness. Your uncivilized, simple sense of pure morality.” Did Dajer…think people were honest because they were less advanced in technology? Did he think that people on Dusk’s planet were somehow nicer than ones from the stars?

Some hours later, Dusk awoke to insistent squawking. Not screeches, not yet. Not unless he kept on sleeping instead of doing his first duty—that of being a diligent bird-food-preparing machine.

You can’t fix every problem for every person you run across.

It was like…he knew the rules of ordinary conversation, but chose to live outside them, like a verbal conscientious objector.

“A shallow pool of water,” he agreed. “I believe the portal is somehow at the bottom. There is real water in it, and fake water too.” “Like used to exist on Roshar,” Dajer said, triumphant. “Same thing.”

OH????

“They can do more than you’re letting them, Star. Every mortal can. It’s our failing, with the gifts we’ve been given, to assume that everyone around us is incapable.”

“Intimidated,” Ed noted, “by my good looks. Sorry, all. I keep earning us enemies that way.”

He was the dusk, and this was his sunset—his last time among the deadly plants and animals of Patji.

“The Dakwara,” Vathi said. “Dusk, that’s a myth.” Starling felt vindicated that one of his own had that initial reaction too. “A myth,” he said, “will be what saves us. Are you coming? I bonded an ancient god of destruction to my will, and she wants to meet you.”