Vin’s Climax Begins

I set a high bar for myself with the previous books in this series. I knew I would need a climax to this one which would match the fight between Kelsier and the Lord Ruler in book one, which is undoubtedly the best action sequence I’ve ever written.

So, these next eight chapters are an attempt to match all of that. I’m not sure if I pull it off, to be honest, but I’m much more pleased with these than I am with the ending of book two. It was good, but it was just faintly lacking. Vin’s arrival at the walls was too expected, and the fighting too chaotic and brutal to be poetic.

This chapter and the next are filled with references tying the entire series together. We’re back in Luthadel, back to the Lord Ruler’s palace itself. In each of the previous books, the final climactic scenes happened in this building. It feels good to get us back there again.

And, of course, this fight between Vin and the Inquisitors is analogous to the first book, where she nearly died doing the same thing at Kredik Shaw. The line “She fell with the rain” is a direct quote from book one where Vin loses her strength after fleeing the Inquisitors and falls down to the ground. Sazed saved her that night. He’s not around this time, as she points out.

Vin Versus the Inquisitors

Vin fights the Inquisitors, hoping to put herself in a situation where she can draw upon the mists. It’s a reckless plan, but I hope it feels exactly like something Vin would do. She’s tired of being manipulated; she knows the end is very near (less than a day away) and knows that she needs to do something. This is all she could come up with, and I think it’s a good plan. (At least if you’re Vin.) It’s a final attempt to save the world or go out in a blaze, fighting down thirteen Inquisitors at once.

This is my favorite fight in the book. The previous ones are all too warlike. I prefer the beauty of a couple of Mistborn fighting in the rain and the mist, as opposed to the characters taking out hundreds of koloss. This fight between Vin and the Inquisitors is the kind of thing I developed Allomancy to do in the first place.