“He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn't beaten.”

“What? Is that boy crazy?""Most young men his age are somewhat crazy, I think," Sazed said with a smile. "However, this is hardly unexpected. Haven't you noticed how he stares at you when you enter a room?""I thought he was just creepy.”

“I bring you a message from a friend of ours," she said quietly. "He wanted you to know that he's not dead. He can't be killed.""He is hope."The she raised the spear and rammed it directly into the Lord Ruler's heart.”

“People with passion are people who will destroy—for a man's passion is not true until he proves how much he's willing to sacrifice for it. Will he kill? Will he go to war? Will he break and discard that which he has, all in the name of what he needs?”

“Spook smiled. "Elend is a forgetful scholar - twice as bad as Sazed ever was. He gets lost in his books and forgets about meeting he himself called. He only dresses with any sense of fashion because a Terriswoman bought him a new wardrobe. War has change him some, but on the inside, I think he's still just a dreamer caught in a world with too much violence.”

“Ham smiled. "Cett's going to be furious."Elend shrugged. "He's a paraplegic. What's he going to do? Bite us?”

“Breeze chuckled. "He was completely insane, you know. The worse things got, the more he'd joke. Iremember how chipper he was the very day after one of our worst defeats, when we lost most of ourskaa army to that fool Yeden. Kell walked in, a spring in his step, making one of his inane jokes.""Sounds insensitive," Allrianne said.Ham shook his head. "No. He was just determined. He always said that laughter was something theLord Ruler couldn't take from him. He planned and executed the overthrow of a thousand-yearempire—and he did it as a kind of . . . penance for letting his wife die thinking that he hated her. But, hedid it all with a smirk on his lips. Like every joke was his way of slapping fate in the face.""We need what he had," Elend said.”