Well, you had to work with what you had. “You’ve got to have some kind of idea what I could try, Fuzz.”

“What did you call me?”

“Fuzz. I’ve got to call you something.”

“You could try ‘My Lord,’” Fuzz said with a huff.

“That’s a terrible nickname for a crewmember.”

“Crewmember…”

“I need a team,” Kelsier said, still striding through the shadowy version of Luthadel. “And as you can see, my options are limited. I’d rather have Dox, but he’s got to go deal with the man who is claiming to be you. Besides, the initiation to this particular team of mine is a killer.”

“But—”

Kelsier turned, taking the smaller man by the shoulders. Kelsier’s arms were blurring further, drawn away like water being pulled into the current of an invisible stream.

“Look,” Kelsier said quietly, urgently, “you said you were here to comfort me. This is how you do it. If you’re right, then nothing I do now will matter. So why not humor me? Let me have one last thrill as I face down the ultimate eventuality.”

Fuzz sighed. “It would be better if you accepted what is happening.”

Kelsier held Fuzz’s gaze. Time was running out; he could feel himself sliding toward oblivion, a distant point of nothingness, dark and unknowable. Still he held that gaze. If this creature acted anything like the human he resembled, then holding his eyes—with confidence, smiling, self-assured—would work. Fuzz would bend.

“So,” Fuzz said. “You’re not only the first to punch me, you’re also the first to try to recruit me. You are a distinctively strange man.”

“You don’t know my friends. Next to them I’m normal. Ideas please.” He started walking up a street, moving just to be moving. Tenements loomed on either side, made of shifting mists. They looked like the ghosts of buildings. Occasionally a wave—a shimmer of light—would pulse through the ground and buildings, causing the mists to writhe and twist.

“I don’t know what you expect me to tell you,” Fuzz said, hustling up to walk beside him. “Spirits who come to this place are drawn into the Beyond.”

“You aren’t.”

“I’m a god.”

A god. Not just “God.” Noted.

“Well,” Kelsier said, “what is it about being a god that makes you immune?”

“Everything.”

“I can’t help thinking you aren’t pulling your weight on this team, Fuzz. Come on. Work with me. You indicated that Allomancers last longer. Feruchemists too?”

“Yes.”

“People with power,” Kelsier said, pointing toward the distant spires of Kredik Shaw. This was the road the Lord Ruler had taken, heading toward his palace. Though the Lord Ruler’s carriage was now distant, Kelsier could still see his soul glowing up there somewhere. Far brighter than the others.