POV: marasi
Summary
In the hidden chamber under Entrone's Wayfarer mansion, Marasi stands waist-deep in the perpendicularity pool with two Allomantic grenades in her hands, charging from raw Investiture so hard the grenades shake hard enough she thinks they'll rattle her bones loose. Around the rim of the pool the Community Allomancers kneel with their hands plunged into the white-gold light, drawing it into themselves. Their skin glows. The pool shrinks as they drink.
She can feel the army on the other side. Distant and impossibly near at the same time. Waiting. *She needs this power gone. Now.* She keeps charging the grenades — she has no idea how much they can hold, she has never held anything like this before, but she does not stop.
*It's too much!* a man cries out. *What do I do with it?* *Burn it!* Marasi shouts. *Use it!* For what? *It doesn't matter — we only need to get rid of it!* Bursts of Rioted emotion wash over her as Armal dumps the supercharge into the only Allomancy she has — confidence in great waves. Metal in the radio room vibrates and rips loose. The Allomancers around her pour every scrap of strength they can manage out through their abilities.
The pool shrinks further. Through the gusts of Armal's Rioting Marasi senses the troops on the other side beginning to fidget — and then she feels something different. They are coming through. The portal requires want; you have to command it to let you through, and they are commanding. She understands the mechanism in a flash, and feels the response begin to gather on the far side.
*No you don't,* she thinks. She drops both grenades into the diminishing pool, and uses the same mental command back at them — *opens the portal to them.*
The movement on the other side stops. Wholly. Frozen in time, while the Community Allomancers around her keep on with their work — wide-eyed now, but unbroken — siphoning the awesome power down and out of the world. The glow fades. The room becomes a normal ballroom again, and where the pool had been is just a rough-hewn rock pit some three feet deep in the floor.
She is left with one final impression from the other side, before the portal closes: shock. Given how much power she had been forcing into those grenades, it will take the army a while to work out what just happened to them.
The other Allomancers slump against one another, exhausted. She had never thought using their powers would feel like this — like a day of physical labour — but she feels wrung out too. Not just from what they did here. From all of it, the whole of Bilming crammed into a single day. She limps to the edge of the pit and lets the Wayfarer townspeople help her out.
*…Now what?* Armal finally asks, beside her. Marasi lies back on the rock and tells her: *now we hope my friends have had an easier time of it than I have.*