Jan 2, 2025
mistwraith
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mistwraith
Argents Lost - Summer Winds (part 3)
The former Ebon he’d met on the trail still hadn’t given him her name, but she’d told him enough to win enough wary trust for him to return to the outpost with her. The enterprise had been aided by a sudden ache that began somewhere deep inside his knee and a shift in the wind. He’d lived in Northrend long enough to know what those two things together heralded.
Stormclouds swept down onto K3 as they reached the inn, led by biting wind that stung his face and made his eyes water. The inn at K3 was decidedly worn, weather-beaten, but in good repair. The windows looked like they’d been replaced recently and the floors and tables in the common room were decidedly clean, though they still carried a timeworn, hard-used charm, battered and scuffed as they were. Its warmth and shelter—and the smell of venison stew and cider—were a welcome comfort after so narrowly dodging the storm.
The table his newfound companion led him toward was tucked into a shadowed corner and was already occupied by a figure tall enough that he guessed it must be another Kaldorei. The figure had both hands wrapped around a mug of something steaming, beringed—and there was something else, something he didn’t quite see until the figure lifted the mug to drink, a glint of silver.
His heart slammed into his throat and he stopped in his tracks. His companion put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.
“She won’t harm you,” she said softly. “You have nothing to fear from her.”
“There are—”
“Yes,” she said. “But something tells me your face will strike her familiar.”
“I’m not—”
“It has nothing to do with your resemblance to Ildanan Sunstar.”
He swallowed bile, but started walking again. The figure—a woman, and unless he missed his guess, the woman called the Mistwraith—was looking at them now, argent eyes gleaming in the shadows of a drawn hood. He swallowed again as he carefully drew one of the chairs out from the table and sank into it, glancing back over his shoulder to see where his companion was going to sit—and found her gone.
“She’ll be getting you something bracing,” the hooded woman said. There was a faint rasp to her voice but the familiarity was unmistakable. He nearly swallowed his tongue.
“I—”
“You’ll be needing it, Lord Kyvare.”
He rocked back, eyes widening. In the shadows of her hood, there was a flash of a smile, almost but not quite feral.
“Yes. I’m aware of who you are. I’m also aware of what you were taught.”
“How—”
“I’m not certain the answer to your question matters overmuch, but if you really want an answer, I’ll give you one in exchange for an answer to a question of my own, first.” She leaned back and he could feel the weight of her gaze hanging heavy upon him. “Why are you, of all people, seeking them when you have a family and responsibilities that should preclude a mission like this—one, I might add, that has been forbidden by the organization that saw you bound to them? Of all the sorts seeking those lost, you were among the last I would have imagined to see here.”
“What of you?” he blurted. “Why are you two looking for them?”
“Because she is my mother,” she said. “And they are her family and I should think, with all that’s happened, I should owe her that much. And you?”
“Because I didn’t think anyone else was and I wasn’t about to ask my family to come unless—unless I knew.”
“Whatever goes into that gully doesn’t come out,” she said. “But they’re not dead.”
“No,” he confirmed. “No, they’re not.”
“You’re certain?”
“Your cousin is.”
She fell silent. The former Ebon returned to the table, setting a mug slowly down in front of him as she looked between him and the hooded woman.
“Well,” she said dryly. “I see you’ve gotten started without me. I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t do that anymore.”
The hooded woman reached up to push back her hood, smiling up at the Ebon. “One time.”
“Near unmitigated disaster one time,” the Ebon said, seating herself. “And a lesson learned. What have you told him?”
“Likely no more than whatever you did to get him to come back with you.”
He coughed politely and wrapped his hands around the mug, letting the warmth bleed into his fingers. “My apologies, ladies, but I think we’ve missed a few things.”
“You already know who I am, Lord Kyvare, and I know who you are,” Mistwraith said, studying him. “Unless it’s not pleasantries you’re getting at.”
“I—well, it was, yes, but also no. How—how long have you been looking?”
“Long enough to know there are two sites of interest,” the Ebon said. “You stumbled across one. The other is a frozen waterfall and a river that don’t seem quite right.”
The mug between his hands shattered.
If I put the Lego skeleton and bones in a bit of clear slime, it would look like a mistwraith.
Hmmm tempting.
Kelsier says of mistwraiths, "their sense of smell--or, rather, taste--is quite acute." Vin observed them and thought, "tasting for scents." (Mistborn final empire chapter 8. Emphasis added.)
I find the swapping or melding of the two senses here, taste and smell, quite interesting.
Mmmm Melaan did this, too. It was in Bands of Mourning. (I'll have to paraphrase, because I don't have the book with me.) She opened her eye, knowing whose face she'll see, for she knew his flavor and had tasted him in the air.
Fun fact that it did not even occur to me ever that Mistwraith would be anything other than amorphous blobs. Some appendages but mostly just free-floating bones in jello. I googled them that day after I finished my painting to see how others interpreted them and was like ????!)*$&@)?????@?!?~!!!!!???????STRUCTURE??
New theory: Kandra exist, but they only take the forms of cats
They could probably take other forms, but they’ve learned that no one questions their weirdness if they act like cats
So much of cats make more sense if you think of them as a sentient entity of slime capable of forming itself around borrowed bones. A few notable examples:
Their bodies can turn liquid at any time because they sometimes forget to retain their shape
They like to sit in containers because they can stop having to keep up the ruse for a moment and just... relax into a slime puddle
They can fit into openings that seem too small for them cuz they can just give up and slurp through them before reforming on the other side
They like to hunt birds and other prey in order to replenish their bone supply
They like to steal interesting things from their humans to experiment with how to incorporate them into their bodies
Fellow Cosmere cat owners, please add examples of how your cat may actually be a Kandra
‘hey welcome to mistborning, lesson 1: wanna go check out some abominations‘ -Kelsier probably