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preservationandruin · 7 years

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Oathbringer Liveblog Part Three, Chapters 77-82

Well, now that I’m somewhat recovered, let’s go on. (I wasn’t kidding about the last part upsetting me; I know I’m hyperbolic very often, but I was actually shaking and crying and couldn’t keep reading).

Anyway. That’s behind us and lives only in our nightmares. On with the book.

Kaladin learns more about Highmarshal Azure, who I remain very gay for; Veil attends the world’s least exciting orgy; I create bullshit memes; Kal gains an army, and Shallan gets some much-needed therapy and a heart-to-heart.

Kal is running into a shelter from the Everstorm, making it in. They blow in slower than highstorms, but are less easy to predict. Also, looks like Syl hasn’t given up her old windspren-esque trick of sticking people’s shoes to the floor. He’s meeting up with Adolin and Shallan, and he’s picked up on the fact that Shallan sometimes seems to have a thing for him and other times is totally happy with Adolin.

At some point Shallan is going to have to deal with all this persona shit. Anyway, Kaladin hates being in stormshelters, of course, and we get that Elhokar is working on his plans through the storm. Adolin even notes that he’s doing much, much better than anyone hoped.

I’m...I’m really proud of Elhokar. He’s dedicated himself to something--to reclaiming his city and rescuing his wife and child--and he’s actually managing to pull it off well.

Anyway, Kaladin has learned that the wall guard is somehow producing food, they might have a Soulcaster, and that they seized emerald stores in the city. Also, Kal notes that Azure is “tough to read” and I’m still very gay for them.

(my roommate, summing up my feelings on Azure: A woman who can kick my ass? Yes please!)

Anyway, Kal thinks she might have an honorblade. Adolin is looking at Kaladin’s issued side sword, and we get this:

“Longer...like Shardblades?” Kaladin asked. “Well, yes, they break all kinds of rules,” Adolin waved the sword through a few motions, then sheathed it. “I like this highmarshal of yours.” “It’s not even her weapon,” Kaladin said, taking it back. “You boys done comparing your swords?” Shallan asked.

I....I just.... Listen. What happens here is Adolin takes and expertly uses Kaladin’s sword and then Shallan makes an unsubtle dick joke. Retroactively making the exchange...much more suggestive. I’m just saying that’s literally the conversation.

(sorry, I couldn’t resist)

Anyway, back to the rational analysis. Shallan got a copy of the book Mythica, which attributes personalities to the Unmade. That could be useful. And, although I am attempting to deal with this without screeching, Brandon throws this brick at my head:

Yes, it was uncomfortable to watch [Adolin and Shallan.] Kaladin liked them both...just not together.

I’m JUST SAYING, KALADIN STORMBLESSED IS BI.

Shallan, back with the book, notes that the book speaks of nine unmade, although some sources recount ten. Shallan thinks that two, in fact, might be in the city-- Sja-anat, the Taker of Secrets, who corrupts spren--as we’ve been seeing in the city--and Ashertmarn, the Heart of the Revel.

They’re discussing their possibilities in the city, and Kaladin sees a weird cremling.

It had a multitude of legs, and a bulbous body, with a strange tan pattern on its back.

Me: thinks about Dysian Aimians Me:

Anyway, Adolin and Shallan go on a cute romantic walk...right after an Everstorm, which fucks with the ambiance, but it’s what they’ve got. Adolin was promised a viewing of Shallan’s sketches.

Other Alethi couples kept their distance in public, but Adolin had been raised by a mother with a fondness for hugs.

I’m so glad Adolin kept that quality even after Evi died. I’m so glad he’s remained a soft boy.

Unfortunately, Shallan is considering making a new personality--someone who is “good enough” for Adolin, a “perfect bride.” The idea scares her, and I hope that she doesn’t do it. She’s experimenting with how far she can go with her powers.

Nobody could see her. Had anyone ever seen her? She stopped on the street corner, wearing shifting faces and clothing, enjoying the sensation of freedom, clothed yet naked skin shivering at the wind’s kiss. Around her, people ducked into buildings, frightened. Just another spren, Shallan/Veil/Radiant thought. That’s what I am. Emotion made carnal.

This seems bad. Shallan is losing herself more and more. Could it be the influence of one of the unmade? Sja-anat corrupts men as well as spren.

Vathah, also, seems to have become one of Shallan’s squires--he puts a lightweaving on himself on accident. Vathah is almost overwhelmed by it all. Anyway, Veil is going to the revel, to try to infiltrate. She’s starting to forget that Veil is a persona--she says that it would be easier to discard Shallan than to discard Veil.

She’s heading up the steps to the Oathgate platform.

Anyway, Kaladin is on top of the wall. Usually he likes the air after storms--of course--but this one is all wrong.

More about Azure. She always keeps her gloves on; she looks Alethi, and the knowledge that light orange is an Alethi eye color has opened up whole new worlds of OC creation for me. He goes to sit next to Azure and we cut back to Veil.

I don’t trust when Brandon does quick cuts like this. It means something will go horribly wrong. It means that shit will go down. We’re a ways from the end of the Part, too, which means that a lot of shit might be going down between now and then.

I trust nothing and nobody.

All the people up here on the platform are “reborn,” given new names that they barely remember--Veil’s is Kishi.

A variety of people passed by, occasionally scooping food off the tables with their bare hands. They laughed and shouted. Many had been ardents, marked by brown robes. Others were lighteyes, though their clothing had...decayed? it seemed a fitting word for these suits with missing jackets, havah dresses whose skirts were ragged from brushing the ground. Safehand sleeves ripped off at the shoulders and discarded somewhere.

This sounds like the world’s most dismal feast and orgy.

Veil is hearing the voices again, but Pattern seems to be humming to counteract them. She notices--there are no visible servants. She’s also not allowed to go “inward” towards where the Oathgate control would be.

“Everyone wants to go inward their first time,” he said. “You aren’t allowed. Enjoy this. Enjoy the feeling. It’s not our fault, right? We didn’t fail her. We were only doing what she asked. Don’t cause a storm, girl. Nobody wants that...”

This is...this is the ardent who was supposed to train Pai, isn’t it. Also, this refrain--it’s not your fault, Moash, you only did what people do. It’s not your fault, you were only doing what she asked. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

Abdicating responsibility for peace of mind. Abdicating free will for comfort. Partying at the world’s worst revel while the city burns down around you. Nero fiddles while Rome burns and you can see so clearly where Sanderson got his inspiration, can’t you? You just have to look around at people. I’m not going to make this too real, but this apathy and excess--it exists.

I think Shallan’s idea about the Midnight mother is right. I think they were people once, these Unmade. It explains why they’re the things people do and want to do, but twisted even worse.

Anyway, the place that was once a prayer room is now used for “another sort of experience,” and honestly this book has had both Shallan and Dalinar impaled, I think we can say that people are fucking.

Shallan takes a new face--Kishi means mystery. Fitting. She ducks a man going for her safehand drunkenly, and slips into the outer ring and through it, heading inward. I hope Pattern is with her--she sent him off to distract her guard/guide, but it didn’t say he came back. I hope he did.

I don’t want her going into this alone.

Kaladin is sitting with Azure and have I mentioned that I don’t trust when Sanderson cuts between two characters in rapid succession through a chapter because I know what he’s doing here.

Kaladin asks Azure about her Shardblade, why she is so sure nobody will take it. She asks, in return, about his shash brand.

“How did you end up in the city?” Azure said. “Sadeas’s lands are far to the north. There are several armies of Voidbringers between here and there, by report.” “I flew. How about you, sir? You couldn’t have been in the city long before the siege began; nobody talks of you earlier than that time. They say you appeared right when the guard needed you.” “Perhaps I was always here, but merely blended in.”

Also, I love how Kaladin just blatantly tells the truth about how he got in here, but it sounds like he’s bullshitting. I suspect that Azure, too, is telling the truth in a way that sounds like bullshit.

Kaladin looked her in the eyes. “Why won’t you let anyone talk about the fact that you’re a woman, Azure? Noro, don’t faint. You’ll embarrass us all.”

Turns out, the officers came up with that all on their own--so Azure does refer to herself as a woman. Good to know. Also, this is what I suspected. Anyway, she asks if Kaladin was “chasing her” but before he can answer, drums sound. Attack on the wall.

Over to Shallan/Radiant/Veil/Kishi again. This inner ring is...unnerving.

A woman with long hair dragging on the ground looked toward her, grinning with clenched teeth and bleeding gums. She crawled, one hand after another, her havah shredded, faded. She was followed by a man wearing rings glowing with Stormlight, in contrast to his ripped clothing. He giggled incessantly. The food on the tables here rotted, and was infested with decayspren.

Yet again, Pattern has to break her from the thrall of the Revel. She keeps going inward, noting that the voices are combining into a rhythm.

Into a heartbeat.

She stepped between the buildings and entered a moonlit square, colored violet from Salas above. Instead of the control building, she found an overgrown mass. Something had covered the entire structure, like the Midnight Mother had enveloped the gemstone pillar beneath Urithiru. The dark mass pulsed and throbbed. Black veins as thick as a man’s leg ran from it and melded with the ground nearby. A heart. It beat an irregular rhythm, bum-ba-ba-bum instead of the common ba-bum of her own heartbeat. Give in. Join the revel. Shallan, listen to me. She shook herself. That last voice had been different. She’d heard it before, hadn’t she? She looked to the side, and found her shadow on the ground, pointed the wrong way, toward the moonlight instead of away from it. The shadow crept up the wall, with eyes that were white holes, glowing faintly.

That’s in response to literally everything up there. Shadows independantly moving and talking? Heart buildings with veins going into the ground? No! No thank you!

Veil forcibly re-asserts control as the wall drums sound and jumps off the Oathgate platform.

The epigraph notes that the Unmade “can perhaps be captured like ordinary spren. It would require a special prison. And Melishi.”

Who’s Melishi?

Anyway, Kal’s headed up to the wall again.

“Damnation these creatures!” Azure muttered. “I’m missing something. Like white on black...”

Oh my god. Like white on black. The same term Zahel used.

She chose Azure as a name. She has a weird sword. She said she blended in...oh my god. I know who she is.

HELLO, VIVENNA!

Anyway, both Azure and Kaladin yell “Who are you???” at each other and then mutually decide to leave that conversation for another time because oh shit, the Fused. He rallies multiple squads, not wanting to call the screamers with his lashing or reveal his Radiance.

And then one of these motherfuckers tries to lash him.

(my memes are old and my humor is bad, put up with me gang)

Being Kaladin, of course, he’s totally used to directions that are not “the earth” being “down” and reorients himself not to crash into anyone and to be fine. He also manages to time it so he can crash the fuck into the Voidbringer before it attacks Beard and the others.

“Leave. My. Men. Alone!” Kaladin clung to the clothing of the monster, spinning in the air dozens of feet above the dark city, sparkling with the light of spheres in windows or lanterns. The Voidbringer Lashed them higher, falsely assuming that the more height it had, the more advantage it would gain over Kaladin.

Oh, buddy.

He’s pulled out Syl as a knife, but is refraining from drawing in Stormlight, not wanting to give himself away. Kaladin Stormblessed no-powers fighting a Voidbringer in the sky. This is kickass.

And he cuts into its heart, with Syl’s advice, and kills it; the pair of them slam into the wall.

Anyway, he heads down to talk to Azure. He’s sort of taken control of his squad.

He found Azure surveying the Eighth Platoon’s losses near their guard tower. She had her cloak off and held oddly in one hand, wrapped around her forearm, with part of it draping down below. Her unsheathed Shardblade glittered, long and silvery.

I’m in love with her. And she uses another distinct color metaphor-- “I’d bet my red life on it.” It turns out that the Voidbringers used the storm to march their entire army close--they’ll attack before the next highstorm. Kaladin summons Syl as a blade for Azure.

“I’m here,” Kaladin said, resting the Sylblade on his shoulder, “on orders from King Elhokar and the Blackthorn. It’s my job to save Kholinar. And it’s time you started talking to me.” She smiled at him. “Come with me.”

Back over to Shallan, of course, to prolong whatever Azure is going to say. We get an interesting note from the epigraphs:

Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow Connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her.

So that’s...interesting.

Veil goes back to visit Grund, the child she’s been feeding--she notes that he’s lying, and neither she nor Pattern can piece together why. She turns herself to look like a market guard and doubles back--and hears two men talking, and one of them hitting Grund.

It turns out that Veil giving food to Grund drew attention. Thugs killed his friends, then made him wait for her so they could take the food. It turns out--this is what’s been happening to everyone she tries to help.

It startles her so much that she falls from Veil into Shallan. She was being played the entire time, causing people pain when she wanted to help. Grund died.

Back over to Kaladin.

Apparently, they lined the walls of the room they use for Soulcasting with “metal”--going out on a hunch here, saying it’s aluminum--from Hoid’s recommendation. Ithi, the soulcaster, and her sister trade off the soulcaster, working constantly. She then demands to know how Kaladin alone is supposed to save Kholinar.

“There’s a device in Kholinar,” he said, “of ancient design. It can instantly transport large groups of people across great distances.” He turned toward Azure and the others. “The Kholin armies wait to join us here. All we need to do is activate the device--something that only a select few people can do.” The soldiers looked stunned--all but Azure, who perked up. “Really? You’re serious?” Kaladin nodded. “Great! Let’s get this thing working! Where is it?” Kaladin took a deep breath. “Well, that happens to be the problem...”

Don’t it always seem to go. Anyway, back to Shallan.

She huddled someplace. She’d forgotten where. For a while she’d been...everybody. A hundred faces, cycling one after another. She searched them for comfort. Surely she could find someone who didn’t hurt. All the nearby refugees fled, naming her a spren. They left her with those hundred faces, in silence, until her Stormlight died off. That left only Shallan. Unfortunately. Darkness. A candle snuffed out. A scream cut off. With nothing to see, her mind provided images. Her father, his face turning purple as she strangled him, singing a lullaby. Her mother, dead with burned eyes. Tyn, run through by Pattern. [...] The lie that was Veil became suddenly manifest. She hadn’t lived on the streets and she didn’t know how to help people. Pretending to have experience didn’t mean she actually did.

It’s all come crashing down at once, hasn’t it. Wit comes to find her with a sphere, sitting in silence. He says that the murderer of the child was seen to; he helped make sure of it.

“You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I’ve practiced.” She sniffled, looking away. “I have to become Veil to escape the memories, but I don’t have the experience that she pretends to have. I haven’t lived her life.” “No,” Wit said softly. “You’ve lived a harsher one, haven’t you?” “Yet still, somehow, a naive one.”

I’m--I’m really glad that Hoid seems to have fallen haphazardly into a strange mentor role for Shallan. That he cares about her and will find her when she’s curled up in a building in the middle of a panic attack and help talk her through it. It’s a human side to him that we don’t see often--but he’s had it around her since she was a child and he tried to get her to start Lightweaving again.

I think it might be, in part, because as he’s said--trying to help people is hard. But she’s someone that he can help.

Shallan knows she needs to go back to the shop; she knows she’ll just repress this with everything else she ignores. And Wit tells her a story.

“Have you heard the story of the Girl Who Looked Up?” Shallan didn’t reply. “It’s a story from long ago,” Wit said. He cupped his hands around the sphere on the floor. “Things were different in that time. A wall kept out the storms, but everyone ignored it. All but one girl, who looked up one day, and contemplated it.” “Why is there a wall?” Shallan whispered. “Oh, so you do know it? Good.” He leaned down, blowing at the crem dust on the floor. It swirled up, making a figure of a girl. it have the brief impression of her standing before a wall, but then disintegrated back into dust. He tried again, and it swirled a little higher this time, but still fell back to dust. “A little help?” he asked. He pushed a bag of spheres across the ground toward Shallan. [...] “Hmmm,” Wit said. “Not bad. But it’s not dark enough.” “What?” “I thought you knew the story,” Wit said, tapping the air. The color and light bled from her illusion, leaving them standing in the darkness of night, lit only by a frail set of stars. The wall was an enormous blot before them. “In these days, there was no light.” “No light...” “Of course, even without light, people had to live, didn’t they? That’s what people do. I hasten to guess it’s the first thing they learn how to do. So they lived in the darkness, farmed in the darkness, ate in the darkness.”

He goes on with the story--the girl being told she shouldn’t go beyond the wall or she’ll die. He asks Shallan if the girl is brave or stupid--says she’s both. Shallan says it’s not stupid to ask questions and try to learn things; Shallan asks what he’s trying to teach her, and he says he’s an artist, not a teacher.

“Weren’t we in the middle of a story about a girl climbing a wall?” Shallan asked. “Yes, but that part takes forever,” he said. “I’m finding things to occupy us.” “We could just skip the boring part.” “Skip?” Wit said, aghast. “Skip part of a story?” Shallan snapped her fingers, and the illusion shifted so that they stood atop the wall in the darkness. The girl in the scarves finally--after toiling many days--pulled herself up beside them. “You wound me,” Wit said. “What happens next?” “The girl finds steps,” Shallan said. “And the girl realizes that the wall wasn’t to keep something in, but to keep her and her people out.” “Because?” “Because we’re monsters.” Wit stepped over to Shallan, then quietly folded his arms around her. She trembled, then twisted, burying her face in his shirt. “You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered. “Oh, child. The world is monstrous, at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.” “I am.” “No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”

I’m taking a break here because--holy shit, gang, this is so important. The world can be awful and brutal and hard, and sometimes being in the world is awful and brutal and hard, but you make it better.

By living, by talking, by making art, by surviving one day at a time, you make the world a better place--it doesn’t make you worse. And that’s true no matter what you’ve lived through or had to do.

“What do I do, Wit?” She whispered. “I know...I know I shouldn’t be in so much pain. I had to...” She took a deep breath. “I had to kill them. I had to. But now I’ve said the words, and I can’t ignore it anymore. So I should...should just die too, for having done it...” Wit waved to the side, toward where the girl in the scarves still overlooked a new world. What was that long back she had set down beside her? “So you remember,” Wit said gently, “the rest of the story?” “It’s not important. We found the moral already. The wall kept people out.” “Why?” “Because...” What had she told Pattern before, when she’d been showing him this story? “Because,” Wit said, pointing, “beyond the wall was God’s Light.” It burst alight in a sudden explosion: a brilliant and powerful brightness taht lit the landscape beyond the wall. Shallan gasped as it shone over them.

So the girl took the light, and brought it back to her people, and it brought the storms--but each storm in turn renewed the light. And people, even though it was harder now, didn’t want to go back--because now, they could see.

Wit makes illusions of Shallan, saying that a lot has happened to that poor girl--Shallan says that other people have suffered more and get along “fine,” which is. God, that’s so relateable. I have to be okay because other people have it worse and they’re fine.

But they’re not, and that’s not what it’s about.

“Poor fool,” Shallan whispered. “Everything she tries only makes the world worse. She was broken by her father, then broke herself in turn. She’s worthless, Wit.” She gritted her teeth, found herself sneering. “It’s not really her fault, but she’s worthless.”

I’m glad even Shallan, even here at her most self-loathing, recognizes that her father was a horrible person. Yeah, he had to go through some shit too, but that doesn’t justify the immense amount of abuse he visited on others.

Anyway, Wit asks about the other illusory Shallan--Shallan says it’s the same, gives it the same memories--and it forgives itself. And Shallan recoils from that feeling of forgiveness as though she was burned.

“It’s terrible,” Wit said, stepping up beside her, “to have been hurt. It’s unfair, and awful, and horrid. But Shallan...it’s okay to live on.” She shook her head. “Your other minds take over,” he whispered, “because that look so much more appealing. You’ll never control them until you’re confident in returning to the one who birthed them. Until you accept being you.” “Then I’ll never control it.” She blinked tears. “No,” Wit said. He nodded toward the version of her still standing up. “You will, Shallan. If you do not trust yourself, can you trust me? For in you, I see a woman more wonderful than any of the lies. I promise you, that woman is worth protecting. You are worth protecting.”

THIS! IS! SO! IMPORTANT!

Accept the pain, but don’t accept that you deserved it. That’s what he leaves her with.

And she walks back, Veil’s outfit but Shallan’s body, and Adolin sees her--immediately hugs her while kind of rambling about how worried he was although he knew better than to be worried because he’s unkillable and have I mentioned that Adolin Kholin is a pure ray of sunshine and light--and then looks at her outfit.

“Nice,” Adolin said. “Shallan, that’s sharp. The red on white.” He stepped back, nodding. “Did Yoska make that for you? Let me see the hat on.”

And, of course, he loves it. Starts offering suggestions. Suggests her wearing a sword with it.

And then Kaladin shows up with, uhhhhhhh, the ENTIRE WALL GUARD.

Adolin sighed softly. “Of course. He’s probably their leader now or something. Storming bridgeboy.”

I love that Adolin is just like well, of course. Leave Kaladin alone for a few days and he has somehow gathered an army who listens to him. Typical. It’s even funnier because it’s honestly true.

The soldiers grew hushed as they saw Adolin, then the king, who was already dressed.

I...I’m dying a little over the fact that the narration decided it needed to specify that Elhokar had clothes on.

Like, we could have probably assumed that, but it’s Elhokar, so it was like. We’d better reassure them that yes, Elhokar does look like a presentable human being.

Well, anyway, they have an army now.

#oathbringer spoilers #stormlight archive liveblog #veil doing ghostthings #to be unmade you have to be made #one does not simply lash kaladin stormblessed

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