The Sunlit Man

by Brandon Sanderson

Right. He’d barely reached the threshold for his last Skip, which would leave him nearly drained. His abilities relied on reaching or maintaining certain thresholds of Investiture, the mystical power source that fueled extraordinary events on most planets he visited. “How much?” he croaked. “How much do we have left?” Around fifteen hundred BEUs. So, in other words, under eight percent Skip capacity.

Damnation. As he’d worried, the cost to come here had left him destitute. As long as he maintained certain levels, his body could do exceptional things. Each cost a tiny bit of Investiture, but that cost was minimal—so long as he kept his thresholds. Once he had over two thousand Breath Equivalent Units, he could play with his Connection. Then he could Connect to the planet using his skills and speak the local language. Which meant Nomad wouldn’t be able to speak to the locals until he found a power source to absorb.

Nomad’s muscles unlocked, and he stretched his arms, feeling a sudden, sharp pain. “Damnation!” His Torment was getting worse.

He was the sole person on the field not wearing gloves, though he did wear a pair of golden bracers on his forearms. He was also missing most of his chest. Much of the pectorals, rib cage, and heart had been dug out—burned away, leaving the remaining skin seared and blackened. Inside the cavity, the man’s heart had been replaced by a glimmering ember. It pulsed red when wind stoked it—as did similar pinpricks of crimson light among the char. Black burn marks radiated from the hole across the man’s skin, extending as far as a few specks on his face, which occasionally glittered with their own much smaller sparks. It was like the man had been strapped to a jet engine as it ignited—somehow leaving him not only alive, but perpetually burning.

Miles...?

“I need a weapon, Aux!” Nomad snapped. Well, summon one then, my dear squire, said the voice in his head. I’m not holding you back. Nomad grunted, diving through a tall patch of grass that had sprung up in the minutes since he’d woken. He tried to make a weapon appear, but nothing happened. It’s your Torment, the knight helpfully observes to his moderately capable squire. It has grown strong enough to deny you weapons. As usual, Aux’s voice was completely monotone. He was self-conscious about that, hence the added commentary.

“I thought,” Nomad shouted, “that my oaths overrode that aspect of the Torment!”

Yes, I see, the knight muses with a conversational tone. Your Torment now attempts to prevent even minor physical altercations. He couldn’t so much as tackle someone? It was getting bad.

He slumped, the soreness in his side pulsing, though he doubted anything was broken. So long as he maintained around five percent Skip capacity—around a thousand BEUs—his body would be more powerful, more endurant. Where others broke, he bruised. Fire that would sear others only singed him. Healing engaged, the hero says with a confident voice to his humiliated valet. You’re under ten percent Skip capacity, so your healing won’t be as efficient as you’re used to.

At times he wondered if the enhancements he bore were a blessing or another part of the Torment.

Damnation. Damnation itself was rising over the horizon. That light, Aux said. It’s far too powerful for ordinary sunlight—at least on any habitable planet. “Think the light is Invested?” Nomad whispered. “Like on Taldain?” A plausible theory, the knight says with a musing curiosity. “Think you can absorb it?” Possibly. We’ll likely soon see…

Auxiliary was a shapeshifting metal tool that, in this case, he could manifest physically as a crowbar. It formed in his hands as if from white mist, appearing out of nothing. Nomad hooked it into the ring on the boulder, then threw his weight against it.

He wasn’t immortal. Most advanced weapons would be instantly lethal to him—storms, even many primitive ones could kill him if used persistently, running him out of Investiture. However, where an ordinary man’s arms would have been twisted from their sockets—their skin flayed as plant detritus became like razors in the high speed—he stayed together. And even managed to heal from the burns.

Nomad settled back on his heels, breathing in and out deeply. The newcomer proved to be a tall man in a black coat—with eyes that glowed. They simmered a deep red color, as if lit from behind. The effect reminded Nomad of something from his past, long ago—but this was less like the red eyes of a corrupted soul, and more like something that was burning inside the man.

Ember burning at the center of her heart, light green eyes fixed solely on him, her lips snarling. She had short black hair streaked with silver, and her left cheek was scored by a vein of blackness with a glowing line down its center.

If he touched the spear tip to Nomad, he’d be able to absorb the power from it. It was one of the few useful aspects of his Torment. Nomad had gained an unusual ability to metabolize nearly any kind of Investiture, although he sometimes required Auxiliary’s help.

But he could still hear. And somehow, in shutting out the light—there within the blackness of his own design—he felt something. Something of the person he’d once been. Words once spoken. In a moment of glorious radiance. Damnation, he thought as the man’s terrified shouts shook him to the core.

Aux slammed into one of the pillars on the podium right next to Glowing Eyes’s head—a six-foot-long glittering sword, Auxiliary’s truest form.

He smiled at that thought. It was wordplay his former master would have liked. And maybe there was something to be said for the thinner air up here. Maybe he had been, after all, a little bit airsick… Nah. That was absolutely going too far.

Rock?

Nomad missed the days of inflection in that voice. Aux might have started their relationship hesitant to show his true self, but after decades together, his expressiveness had grown and grown. Until…that day.

Being able to feed on Investiture was an aftereffect of the burden he’d once carried, the thing that had given him his Torment. He needed a power source that was potential, not kinetic. Scientific terms that, in this case, meant he was extremely good at leeching batteries or other stable sources of Investiture. However, something like an energy blast being shot at him or—unfortunately—the power of that sun wouldn’t work. Too intense, too kinetic. It was also storming difficult for him to get Investiture out of a person or another living being, requiring very unique circumstances.

As they sped toward it, that sheet of rainfall reminded Nomad of another storm back home. A place he missed terribly but could never visit again, lest he lead the Night Brigade to people who loved him.

“Elegy,” Nomad said in Alethi. “Divinity. Zeal. Yeah, I did notice. Do you think…” Threnodites, the knight replies, modestly confident in his wise assessment. An entire offshoot culture. Didn’t expect that. Did you?

Threnodites. Don’t they…persist when they’re killed?” They turn into shades under the right circumstances, the hero explains to his dull-minded valet, who really should remember almost being eaten by one.

“Right,” he said. “Green eyes, then red when they want to feed. Complete lack of memories. I feel like we would have seen those already. Shades come out in the darkness, and we’ve been in nothing but darkness since getting here.” Perhaps this group split off before the Shard’s death—and the event’s aftereffects—took them.

“Come. We must petition to the Greater Good and supplicate them for your sake. Adonalsium-Will-Remember-Our-Plight-Eventually, please see to her the best you can.” The tall man nodded. Wait. His name was Adonalsium-Will-Remember-Our-Plight-Eventually? That was the best one Nomad had heard yet. He really needed to keep a list of these Threnodite names.

The short man reached into his pocket and withdrew something wrapped in a handkerchief. Outside, the wind was rising, the rain drumming more furiously on the metal ceiling and walls. The tapping on the ceiling was like nervous fingers on a bell, demanding service. All of them ignored that, however, as Zeal unwrapped a metal disc almost as wide as a man’s palm, with an odd symbol on the front. One that Nomad could read, but which he absolutely hadn’t expected to find on this planet. Storms. What were Scadrians doing here? “It’s real…” Contemplation said, resting her fingers on it, feeling the grooves in the metal.

This hadn’t simply been a rescue operation—indeed, the rescue might have been intended to cover up a more interesting heist: the theft of this item, which he knew for a fact to be a Scadrian authorization key. Plastic key cards were, of course, eschewed by them. They had a fetish for metal. This disc would open a door somewhere. And the people at the table seemed to know it, even if they didn’t understand completely what they were doing.

That was a modern device, borne by Scadrian surveyors, to let them be located and give them authorization to return to one of their small, exploratory starships.

“Kal?” he asked into the storm. The figure turned, revealing a hawkish face and an eminently punchable grin. “Aw, Damnation,” Nomad said with a sigh. “Wit? What the hell are you doing here?”

Oh, storms. That’s what had happened. Now that they had the proper threshold for it, Auxiliary had reached through the distance and let Wit Connect to Nomad.

“I don’t have time for you, Wit,” Nomad said. “The Night Brigade is out there. Hunting me. Because of what you did to me.” “You may have saved the cosmere.” “I absolutely did not save the cosmere,” Nomad snapped, finding a pebble in his pocket and throwing it through Wit’s head. The image rippled and then restored. “I might have saved you though.” “Same difference.”

“It’s not,” Nomad said. “It’s really not.” He stepped closer to Wit’s projection. “If they catch me, they’ll be able to connect the Dawnshard to you. And then they’ll be on your tail.”

“I never did get a chance to apologize for…events in Alethkar.” “Well, it’s not like you had the opportunity to,” Nomad said. “After frequently talking to my superior officer, asking him to pass messages to me. After living together in the same city for years and never stopping by. You left me to rot. And it ate you away from the inside, didn’t it? Not because you care. But because someone knew what you really were, then had the audacity not to die and simplify your life.”

“I was that boy,” Wit said from behind. “When I was young. On Yolen. Before this all began—before God died and worlds started ending. I…I was that boy.”

“I assumed I’d never know. The town philosophers had talked themselves hoarse arguing the matter, as was often their way. Talk until you can’t talk anymore, and then hope someone will buy you a drink to keep the words flowing.” He smiled at Nomad, eyes twinkling. “Yet here I am. Millennia later. Walking between the stars, learning each one. I got my answers eventually. Yet…I’d guess that, by now, you’ve seen more of the cosmere than I have.” “So it’s a blessing?” Nomad asked, gesturing to himself. “This Torment you’ve given me?” “Every Torment is,” Wit said, “even mine.”

“Thought I did,” he said. “Then my oaths ended, and I realized that destinations really are important, Wit. They are. No matter what we say.” “Nobody ever implied they lacked importance,” Wit said. “And I don’t think you do understand. Because if you did, you’d realize: sometimes, asking the questions is enough. Because it has to be enough. Because sometimes, that’s all there is.”

“Stone melts in the sunlight,” Zeal said. “The stones of the Sunlit People don’t,” Contemplation continued. “They are deep. The Cinder King believes this; that’s why he’s spent years trying to find a way through that door. And this man here, he came from the Refuge of Stone!” “Yeah, you’re wrong,” Nomad said. He’d expected outcries when he’d come barging in, maybe a fight. Not…whatever this was. “But I don’t particularly care what you believe. Do you know where this door is? The one the disc opens?”

And are you going to tell them? the hero asks sharply, voice laden with implication. Are you going to warn them what they’ll find inside? Not a refuge for outsiders, but a small alien installation, likely here to monitor the Investiture that sun is emitting?

“Adonalsium will bless us in this endeavor, I feel certain,” Compassion said. “It could lead at last to real rest for our people. No more relying on sunhearts to power our cities. No more outrunning the sunrise. No more…loss.” “Adonalsium, eh?” Nomad said. “By the way, how’d a bunch of Threnodites end up worshipping the father god of an entirely different planet?” “We learned before our exodus,” Confidence said. “We were those who believed the words of the first Lodestar. We lived in Hell itself and were led by our faith to a new land.” “One that’s perpetually on fire?” Nomad asked. “Adonalsium,” Contemplation said, “will remember our plight eventually…” The cynical squire wisely chooses not to explain to these people the sad reality of their god’s demise some ten thousand years before. Hint hint.

“So, Aux,” Nomad said in Alethi as they waited. “Are we going to talk about how you went against my explicit orders and contacted Wit?” The knight shuffles uncomfortably beneath his squire’s pointed question, Aux said. He tries to reply with confidence, but the nervousness in his voice betrays him. “What did you hope would happen?” Nomad asked. “Did you think Wit would sweep in here, prop me up with one of his little morality tales, and I’d just go back to whistling?” I remember…revelations in light. Transformation. “Those were rare days,” Nomad said, shifting his gun against his shoulder. “Most change doesn’t happen with a revelation in light, Aux. Most change happens as a slow, steady slide toward the pit. Like how we age, step by shuffling step toward the grave.” You don’t age anymore. “My body might not,” he whispered, “but my soul sure does. It’s been rounding that pit for years. Step by step, Aux. We wear away. Ideals are like statues in the wind. They seem so permanent, but truth is, erosion happens subtly, constantly.”

“How old do you think I am?” Nomad said, amused. “Older teens?” Confidence said. “No, older,” Contemplation replied. “Young twenties.” Storms. He knew that he looked a lot younger with the grey no longer appearing in his hair, but young twenties? He’d been thirty-eight when time had finally stopped tracking him, his soul bending under the Dawnshard’s influence—and that was by his planet’s accounting, which had longer years than most.

Among them stood strange rock formations, wickedly jagged and pocked with holes. They passed a plain with hundreds of them, like sculptures made by a madman. What do you think of those? the studiously serious knight asks, somewhat confusedly.

He’d been through many varieties of hell, though only the planet Threnody was literally called by the term.

Beyond that, a part of him whispered that something didn’t add up here. That he was missing a piece of the puzzle. Superheated light might make stone flow on the surface, but eruptions? He was no expert, but he thought those were usually caused by the opposite effect. Heat below and coolness above—with a generous helping of tectonic activity to create new pathways for that heat to escape. Highly Invested light would also make traveling in the system by starship nearly impossible. Yet he had evidence of Scadrians being here. So what was really going on with the mechanics of this planet?

Those prospectors were large machines for doing something as simple as sensing Investiture, but not everyone was lucky enough to have a Seeker on staff.

wasn’t unprecedented. Nomad hadn’t been to Nalthis—the place sounded nice, and nice places tended to be easy for the Night Brigade to find—but they bought, sold, and traded chunks of people’s souls like they were gemstones. BEUs as a measurement were based on this system—though at least there, the transaction left you alive. “That’s why there aren’t any ghosts here,” he said softly in Alethi. “Threnodites, they have this phantom echo to their souls. A sort of smoky shadow that lives on after they die. Here, there’s not a chance for that. Their souls are condensed, fused, turned into…” A power cell. One of which he’d consumed to make his Connection to this planet.

“So you leave people out to die,” he said. “They become these…power sources. How do you find them again?” “The prospector ships,” she said. “It’s why we have them. Sunhearts float near the top of magma for some reason. You can find them in roughly the same place you left the people, though you often have to pry them from the stone.” Her hand stilled. “My brother installed Mother’s sunheart here, in our quadcycle, so I could have it near me. Now that he’s…he’s gone, and Mother, and even Elegy…” This storming world, the knight says with a breathless voice. Indicating horror, not arousal, since that word is sometimes used both ways. Just in case you were wondering.

“I should be able to draw out your heat,” she said. “Some of your soul. As I initiated the touch, I should be able to pull it forth from your body, cooling you—it’s what the bracers do. They did work on you, though?” “Unfortunately,” he said. “What is being drawn from you is something we call Investiture. A different state of energy, and the removal of it cools you in the process. That’s a side effect, though. Because of your heritage, your people have an interesting type of Investiture—as do I, though mine is of a different variety.” “Why did the bracers work on you,” she said, “but my touch does not?” It was tough to say. Though he’d once made a study of this sort of thing, it had been decades since he’d given it much thought. And the various nuances of Investiture could be tricky even for an expert.

“Investiture is finicky,” he said. “Usually requires specific things—Intent, Commands, familiarity—to manipulate. It’s likely that the bracers were brutal enough to force through my protections, but your touch isn’t.”

That included his Torment. There was a physical component. A mental component. But the real shackles were spiritual—Investiture. So maybe…