The following is commentary, written by Brandon, about one of the chapters of MISTBORN: THE HERO OF AGES. If you haven’t read this book, know that the following will contain major spoilers. We suggest reading the sample chapters from book one instead. You can also go to this book’s introduction or go to the main annotations page to access all annotations for all of Brandon’s books. For those who have read some of MISTBORN 3, any spoilers for the ending of this book will be hidden, so as long as you’ve read up to this chapter, you should be all right.

Demoux Survives

Yes, Demoux lives. He’d have died, save for a promise I made. If you’ve read the other annotations, you’ll know that he was named for my former roommate Micah DeMoux. I always thought his name was cool, and wanted to use it for a character. He said I could, but made me promise two things. 1) His character had to get a girl eventually, and 2) His character had to survive to the end of the series.

So Demoux couldn’t die here. He’s protected by a magical shield known as the author’s promise to his pal.

Elend’s White Uniform

Another interesting item to note is that Vin mentions how Elend’s uniform was as white as they could get it. Some readers ask how it would be possible to keep clothing white in such circumstances.

My answer is much along the lines of what Vin says here. If you, from our world, were to go and look at Elend’s uniform, I doubt you’d call it white. Probably a light grey. However, compared to the world around it, it’s very white. This is all relative. What the characters see is a brilliant white uniform, even though we would describe it differently.

A Happy Obligator

If you’re up for trivia, we’ll have a lot of it in this particular set of annotations. I’ve been living Mistborn for some five years now, and I’ve read each of the books around eight or nine times. So I’ve filled this one with allusions back to the first two.

When Vin mentions that she’d once thought a happy obligator was always a bad sign, she’s referencing a scene from the first few chapters of book one. She, with Camon—her crewleader at the time—visited a Ministry building to try scamming the obligators. They walked in to meet with the official there, but were confronted by a high prelan they didn’t expect. He was smiling, and Vin’s narrative mentioned her belief that smiling obligators were bad signs.