Chapter Text
When Ben was 6, he dreamed of flying.
He remembered, vaguely, how he had first come to know of the Knights Radiant. Living in their tiny house, in the most rundown area of the slums of the city he'd been born in, he had come across a book, yellowed with age.
How it had come to be there, he never did find out. He always assumed that it was his mother somehow, that she had gotten it for him. She’d encouraged his imagination, his flights of fancy, but then, that still didn't explain it. She wouldn't have bought it: there were few enough spheres to go around to pay for food in their house, nevermind something with as little practical purpose as a book. Maybe it had simply always been there.
It couldn't have been a more basic version of the story, really more pictures than words, describing a long lost order of knights with godlike abilities. They could turn dirt to gold, and stone to dust, it was said. They could create illusions you could touch and heal the sick from the brink of death. And, most amazing to his young mind, they could fly.
He’d returned to the book, again and again, night after night, obsessed in the way only small children with an endless amount of curiosity could be. Some nights he couldn’t sleep, brain buzzing and tried to read it in the dark, much to his mother's chagrin. “You'll go blind.” she had warned and he had laughed, thinking she was joking. He wondered sometimes if that was why he’d ended up short-sighted.
The knights had been the protectors of humanity, heroes of ancient times, and the last desperate line of defence against the voidbringers. Those nightmare creatures, who threatened to tear apart their world, were depicted as swirling blacks and reds in monstrous, ill-defined shapes on the book’s pages, more of an all consuming presence than singular figures. The Knights Radiant were locked in battle with them, shining bright against the darkness in silver, in shardplate, suits of armour that were practically indestructible, holding aloft the shardblades, legendary swords that never dulled, that could cut through anything.
The armour and blades were real, still existed but he'd never seen one in person. Some lighteyes families had them, he'd been told, a symbol of status. That made sense to him, even at that age; after all, the lighteyes were the upper echelons in their city and their society. In his book, the Knights Radiant had vividly blue eyes. Perhaps all of them had been lighteyes too. Maybe they'd been passed down, century after century, father to son. Regardless, while the swords were amazing in their own right, it was the abilities of the Radiants that really held his attention. The Radiants had used those tools and triumphed, locking away the Voidbringers back to the hells that they came from, never to return.
Vorinism, which his mother believed in, taught that the Knights Radiant abandoned humanity when they needed their guidance most, that they were traitors. She told him, voice kindly and gentle, as she always was with him, that she believed that too. Why else would they have disappeared, when they had such capacity to help, to do good. Their powers must have been false, according to her faith. But she sees no harm in letting him read and reread the tale. Just a story, she explained. “It's up to us to do good now.”
His father did not believe in Vorinism, nor in heroism. If he believed in anything, it seemed to be wine and spheres, both of which always seemed in too short of a supply for him. But his interest in Ben was limited and if he grimaced or complained to his wife when Ben would spread his arms like wings and jump from chairs or his bed, Ben was too young to really notice.
—
When Ben was 7, he lost his mother.
The illness came on quickly, much too quickly, leaving her pale and bedbound. He was old enough then to understand what was going on but not quite old enough to comprehend why there seemed to be nothing at all that they could do about it.
When he asked for the first time if there was any medicine they could buy for her, it earned him a derisive snort from his father. When he asked again, suggesting they try to have a surgeon visit too, he received a hard clip against his head that made the room spin for an hour. He tried to resist asking those questions again.
Instead, he threw himself into helping his mother, cooking with what little materials they had, scrounging up whatever he could find that might supplement those meagre options. His mother was able to pass on advice on where it was best to look around the city, what locations held the best chance of not-quite-rotten ingredients.
She taught him to check the schedule of the massive highstorms that screamed across the continent too, for when they'd hit their city; you had to stay indoors during them when they arrived every few days, but the best time to forage, out passed the last buildings at the city's edge, was immediately after, in the wake of the highstorm, when nature enjoyed the waters left behind and it was quiet. She must have been keeping food on the table with those strategies for a while.
She reminded him to put a few spheres out in a locked cage too, during those storms, that they would infuse with light from the weather and could brighten the house in darker months. They were dimmer than a proper fire, and held no heat besides, but still could help with reading at night. She had laughed when she said it.
She didn't teach him how to steal, but Ben had picked that up quickly, watching another young pickpocket operating in the markets. He'd been caught observing, and pressed against a wall with an arm to his throat, Keanu delivered a warning, some small measure of pity in his eyes because really, he could have just jumped straight to beating the life out of him. Instead, he had said ‘You don't grass and you learn to run. We split everything fairly or the next time you try stealing in this square you'll leave with less eyeballs.”
He had never been as terrified, but the fear proved motivation because he showed himself to be adept, fast fingered and light on his feet. The rest of the gang thought it was because he looked so innocent, escaping much notice, but as their shares improved and recovered from having a new boy to split with thanks to his quick progression, they were happy enough to have him. They showed him how to sweep quickly for older sphere cages in the immediate aftermath of the storms too, how to take them fast, without causing too much noise. It never amounted to high values, as anyone putting out the higher currency spheres could well afford proper fixings to keep them there, but it supplemented their takings.
If his mother suspected, she never let on. Perhaps she had thought the extra spheres appearing were from his father finally committing to providing. He overheard her, one night, telling the man that he needed to be there for Ben, that the boy didn't have anyone else.
She was dead a few weeks later. Ben had almost saved up enough for a visit from a surgeon. He knew now it probably wouldn't have helped anyways. He didn't recall exactly how long his father had stuck it out in the end.
When Ben was 7, his father left. Ben moved to the streets full time.
—
When Ben was 9, he learned to fight.
He'd been caught more than once and beaten for daring to steal by that stage. No matter how good you were, no matter how innocent looking, it was a miserable reality that eventually, someone was going to be too aware, too fast for you. One of the benefits of being a child thief, though, was that people often pulled their punches. Make no mistake, the beatings could be harsh and left a map of bruises, but if a bone was cracked or muscle sprained then it was almost definitely accidental. Well, that or you'd picked the wrong target.
The first time he was caught, he'd been getting cocky, so confident in his own skills, ignoring warning signs just so he could impress the others, and stealing bigger hauls of spheres. It had paid off until it hadn't; he'd been caught before he even took a step away, dragged to an alley and thrashed. Army tattoo, he realised, seeing the tell-tale glyph on the back of the man's fist. He sobbed from the pain through to midnight, when Keanu, frustrated, decided that the way to find his own sleep was to punch Ben in the arm and warn him he would finish the job that Ben's intended target had started if he didn't shut up.
They were getting older now, was the pressing thing. They'd be given less leeway. And they hadn't taken on any new members for fear of diminishing their split, so there was more competition around, a younger group, eager to move in on their territory.
He couldn't remember feeling bad about stealing; their market was a large one, a fair way into the city, not quite in a lighteyes majority area (trying there was a good way to get jailed or worse if you were caught) but well off enough that a few spheres or a handful of lifted fruit were not the difference between eating and starving. Their victims were hardly victims at all, when it was all measured up.
In comparison, he just couldn't bring himself to like fighting. He practiced his punches, throwing his fists into his mates’ open palms and accepting some to his gut, to toughen up they said, and he learned to work easily through aches and bruises. But when a confrontation in a back alley had actually happened and his hook had connected with a crack to a jawline of a rival gang member, he didn't feel especially good about it. Wasn't that kid laying in the puddle just like him in the end?
His mates disagreed, called him a legend; not everyone knocked someone unconscious in their first proper fight. One Bash Ben, someone laughed. Teach us that left hook. The praise felt good, and he resolved to get stronger.
—
When Ben was 11, he did his first ‘proper’ job.
It had felt exciting at the time. To be acknowledged by an adult gang, respected for their survival, for their growing reputation. They'd gotten brave too, occasional trips into the center, bigger pay-offs from lighteyes purses. They feared the potential closer attention of the city guards, but they had resolved it was worth it.
They were lighter, quicker, quieter, it was explained by the man who approached them. They could pass as stable boys, scullery boys, roles that lighteyes barely even noticed, the faces of darkeyed children most interchangeable of all, he said. It would only be very occasional, but those men would provide the plans, the layouts of the buildings, the times to strike, and the distribution of whatever was stolen was more than fair.
The fact that the man who approached them was his father probably made an impact on the decision too.
He'd sized Ben up, said he'd been keeping an eye on him. He remarked on how he'd grown, seemed impressed with the wiry, harder son who faced him now, looking closer to his teens than he should, even if he was still short for his age. The words shouldn't have worked on him, Ben knew later, but then, it had been the first time he thought he was seeing something other than contempt for him in his father's eyes.
The gang hadn't needed convincing. They hadn't really noticed they were taking on all the risk.
By the fifth successful run, his father gifted him a switchblade, for when fists weren't enough.
—
When Ben was 12, a job went wrong. Horribly wrong.
He hadn't meant to hurt anyone. It was just panic, things had spiralled out of control and then he'd decided to run. He had been holding the blade in his hand at the ready, that he could admit, and that had been his mistake, but it had only been for the comfort of the thing, not with any real intention to use it.
The woman he'd run into was a servant, a darkeyes. She probably wouldn't have tried to stop him, maybe would have let him go running right past if he had only spotted her from a distance,if he could have swerved around instead of colliding. She had looked kind, he thought. It had been an accident, he swore, but that couldn't be explained to the people who saw him run out of the building with blood on his hands.
Well, a death kicked the city's guards into overdrive. Theft was one thing, murder entirely another. He'd managed to find a safe hideaway, avoiding being picked up as his description was circulated. Long hungry days in the dark, he spent, trying to stop picturing that woman's face. Many other boys around his age weren't so lucky, and were dragged off by the guards, including some from his group. A few appeared again, worse for the wear; a few others didn’t. When he finally surfaced again, eyes red in the glare of the sun, he saw resentment from those who’d managed to stick it out. The fact he’d somehow kept a hold of stolen trinkets from the house to pawn for spheres seemed to do nothing to ameliorate it.
He didn't know how to apologise or to explain; those weren’t words in his vocabulary. So he treated it as nothing. It wasn’t long before he overheard people saying that maybe it hadn't been an accident. It was suggested that he had always been a little on the bloodthirsty side, that Mad Mitchell. Did it on purpose, tired of sharing profits.
People stopped talking to him then, when it wasn't about plans, about making spheres, and the hurt of that pissed him off. He had always contributed more than his share, and never groused when others were short. When he did speak to them now, it was usually to mock them. His smart mouth started to get him in trouble, and he found himself in fist fights far more often too, which, as far as gossip was concerned, only confirmed the worst of the rumours in the first place.
The jobs from his dad trickled to almost nothing, then stopped altogether. Keanu said they'd aged out, but Ben liked to think it was a kindness to him, that his Dad was helping him keep it together from afar.
It was a long time before he heard from him again.
—
When Ben was 15, he made his last real mistake.
“Sorry mate, but no one trusts you no more. You're poison.” Keanu had said, all faux-sympathy as he dropped to the other side of the wall. He was supposed to pull Ben up and over; Ben had just given him the boost he'd needed to make it. He could hear footsteps, voices, echoing down the alleyway, catching up to him.
A last job. One final one, and then they were leaving, that’s what they had all decided, to Alethkar or Thaylen or some other major city, away from this dying backwater to where they could make real moves, land big scores. Leave behind their reputations, build new ones, probably ones that were even worse. Ben was the one who had suggested it in the first place. How had he ended up the one they turned on?
Hands grabbed the back of his jacket. The beating that followed… he still doesn't know how he survived. Mostly, it's a blur in his memory and he'll live with that happily, but he can still picture a strong boot swinging towards his face, turning his head at the last moment before impact, the bright stormlight-infused spheres he'd managed to grab pressed in a satchel against his face as he tried to protect his skull with his arms. Too late.
He managed to drag himself to a backstreet surgeon, who patched him up, stitched the worst tears, reset his arm, told him he was lucky to be in such good shape. The doc had expected broken ribs, maybe even a skull fracture. Ben had swore over his pain on the operating table that he was going to find and kill Keanu as soon as he was standing again. He’d think about what to do to the rest in time. They had all been pooling their money for the oncoming journey, but he'd at least had the foresight to keep a private stash; the medical costs barely made a dent. They couldn't have known about it, otherwise it wouldn't have been there anymore when he went looking. Somehow that just made the betrayal worse.
The ringing in his ears eventually faded, but the hearing on one side never came back. He never told anyone. There was no one he trusted to tell anymore. He knew he would just have to learn to work around it.
When he finally re-emerged on the street, the remainder of his gang was long gone. The rumour started that he'd killed them, every single one. Criminal deaths didn't exactly get investigated much anymore; the guards had enough to be worrying about without trying to ‘solve’ something that was taking problems away, so the gossips said. Ben Mitchell was mad as a rabid axe-hound, and it was a matter of time till he made someone else disappear.
He’d had a temporary immunity to do whatever he pleased in any territory he felt, no one considering a confrontation worth the risk when such a dangerous individual was involved. He was smart enough to never press too hard in any one gang's land, made sure to put on a hard front that didn't betray how his body still ached and by the time anyone thought to test his reputation, he'd recovered enough to send new business to the surgeon who'd patched him up.
No one really messed with him for a long time after that.
—
When Ben was 21, the Voidbringers returned and war began.
It came without warning, the great storm, the Everstorm, that heralded their arrival to Roshar. The storm was darker, angrier than the ones they were accustomed to. Worse, it blew the wrong way, crashing into the side of the city that normally faced away from the worst of the winds and rain. It didn't infuse spheres with normal stormlight either; the result was smoky, made his stomach lurch when he looked at it. There was an innate sense of wrongness to that oily dark. Infused or dun, spheres had always been spheres and had the same value, but no one wanted to handle those dark ones.
They were lucky with this storm, he heard some lighteyes opine later as Ben sat nearby, cigarette hanging between his lips. They lived far enough from the origin of it that they did not experience the worst of the damage as it passed through, they say. It was brutal, certainly, but other towns and cities have suffered degrees of magnitude more, and it seemed to have lost a lot of ferocity as it travelled over land. There was flooding and some broken structures, yes, but it could have been so much worse.
They neglected to consider what it had done to the badly-built slums, but he's not surprised. By the time they turned, furious, to try and find who had thrown a cigarette butt at them, he was already gone.
The Everstorm came again and it was clear this was to be a new normal, waiting for a bright storm from one direction, a dark storm from another, both fatal to be caught out in. Then the Voidbringers arrived. They were closer to humanoid than he had expected, more alike to normal people than the illustrations suggested, their outside carapace mottled red and black in distinctive patterns and Ben thought he could almost tell one from another. They were bigger, stronger than normal humans too. They crushed some small misguided attempts at resistance from the guards, killed the leaders (good riddance), and declared their territory theirs.
At least you could see they were monsters on the outside, he supposed.
Their numbers were surprisingly small. The city was not strategically important, he surmised. Wrong location, population too far from other, more significant resources to be truly useful. He'd certainly never planned a war but that sounded about right to him. A few days had passed when he heard word on the street that the Knights Radiant had returned too, that they were in the city, that they were fighting.
It was late into the evening and the sky was already dark, a patter of rain hitting the cobbled streets, as he hurried towards the site of conflict. If he listened carefully, he thought he could hear shouting and somewhere over the buildings, a few streets away, there were flashes of a brilliant light. He just wanted to see, even if it was a glimpse. An old curiosity that needled him in a funny way.
By the time he got to the square, the fighting was over. The place was almost devoid of people, most sensible enough to keep their necks in till they're sure it's safe, so it was not hard to spot the Radiants. There were two, a man and woman, not much younger than him, he'd have guessed. Both lighteyes, not that he was surprised. They're in uniform, he saw, clean and crisp looking even in the damp of the evening. The woman was holding a shardblade; he eyed it and wondered just what someone would pay to get their hands on one of those.
He caught snatches of the conversation as he approached, straining to hear. “... could have been worse. Any chance to stop them expanding, Lo, you know that.” The man said and he was cut off by the woman, who shook her head. “It's a waste of time. This was a distraction, they know we're spread thin already and there’s none of their seniors, no one really dangerous. We have to start hitting the proper garrisons…”
It's the man who spotted him, nodded at him, then looked back to his compatriot. ‘I'll fly ahead. Give it a few, till there's enough to make sure the word is spread. I'll see you back there, yeah?” The woman nodded and without even a warning, the man lifted from the ground and was gone.
Ben's lips parted in surprise. “... so you can fly.” He was sure he should feel some sense of wonder, some excitement, at the fact that a legend has come to life before him. Instead, he just felt… tired.
The woman watched him, saying nothing, adjusting her grip on her shardblade. Ben recognised the discomfort and considered if he just naturally had the hardened look of a criminal or if she could feel something in him inherently. Could Radiants sense his lack of scruples? Was that one of their powers? He didn't think so. He must have one of those faces.
More people started cautiously entering the square, a few spilling from the pub now that the mysterious light show had ended, and she raised her voice. “The Voidbringers have returned. So have the Knights Radiant. We will stop them, if we can. The Everstorm is going to keep coming. Prepare against it, if you can.” She paused, took a heavy breath, running a hand over the smooth pale blonde hair she had tied up. “We'll send someone to help. If we can.” Silence followed. He wondered if they were meant to cheer.
That was far too many ‘if someone can's for Ben's tastes.
“That's it?” He was surprised at the sound of his own voice as it came, and more so how contemptuous he sounded. “That's all you've got?”
He probably shouldn't offend someone holding a blade that could cut through solid diamond more easily than he could bite through his own nails. Someone from the bar crowd tutted, audibly sucked their teeth and took a step back, probably recognising him. The price of fame.
He was regarded by the Radiant’s impassive eyes for a moment that stretches, and he thought perhaps the blade was going to be used, for his impudence. He made a point of meeting the stare, chin tilting up proudly. Then hers flicked off, into the dark of the streets behind him and when Ben glanced back, there was nothing to see. “Your name?” he heard her ask. “Ben Mitchell.” By the time he looked back, the Radiant was gone; if he looked up, he thought he saw a glimpse of her as she ascended into the night sky.
He stared up into the dark a few seconds more, then spat on the cobblestones.
“Legendary heroes. What a load of shit.”