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August 28 - September 15, 2023
The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”
Kaladin had cared when he fought. He’d never fought empty or cold. He fought to keep his men alive.
Protector
You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he knows how to use it.
Thats my boy
For a moment, it was just him. Him and the wind. He fought with her, and she laughed.
Come on, Kaladin thought. Remember why we live. Remember warmth, remember good food. Remember friends, and song, and evenings spent around the hearth. You aren’t dead yet. Storm you! If you don’t come out …
“It means to be twice as certain as someone who is merely arrogant,” Shallan said, “while possessing only one-tenth the requisite facts.”
Youthful immaturity is one of the cosmere’s great catalysts for change, Shallan.
If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study.
The key to fighting isn’t lack of passion, it’s controlled passion. Care about winning. Care about those you defend. You have to care about something.
Carry a sphere with you into the storm, the old saying said, and at least you’ll have light by which to see.
Sobbing
“I’m putting it all on the long bet,” Kaladin whispered. “If I die, then they’ll come out, shake their heads, and tell themselves they knew it would happen. But if I live, they’ll remember it. And it will give them hope. They might see it as a miracle.” Syl was silent for a moment. “Do you want to be a miracle?” “No,” Kaladin whispered. “But for them, I will be.”
Sweet Boy
Actions are not evil. Intent is evil,
‘You have eyes of red and blue,’ they say. Red for the blood dripping. Blue for the water. It is said that these two things are all the prisoners see. Usually they are attacked within one day. And yet, most still wish to take that chance. They prefer the false hope.” Eyes of red and blue, Kaladin thought, imagining the morbid picture. “You do a good work,” Sigzil said, rising, picking up his bowl. “At first, I hated you for lying to the men. But I have come to see that a false hope makes them happy. What you do is like giving medicine to a sick man to ease his pain until he dies. Now these men
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TEARS
He’d never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible.
‘Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.’ ”
Storm it all, why did he always survive? I can’t do it again, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. I can’t help them.
Traumatized
Death comes, they whispered. Death comes to all. But life comes first. Cherish it. Death is the destination. But the journey, that is life. That is what matters.
These days were dreary, and he found it difficult to get anything productive done. As if the lack of storms left him without strength.
BECAUSE IT DOES
They looked as if something very large had hit them at the center, sending rippling breaks outward. They too were larger than he’d expected; no wonder nobody had been able to find their way through the chasms. There was a large plateau at the center, but with the darkness and the distance, he could not see much. There were lights, though. Someone lived there.
This is certainly important
CHILD OF TANAVAST. CHILD OF HONOR. CHILD OF ONE LONG SINCE DEPARTED. The sudden voice shook Kaladin; he floundered in the air. THE OATHPACT WAS SHATTERED.
Well shit
MEN RIDE THE STORMS NO LONGER. The voice was thunder, crashing in the air. THE OATHPACT IS BROKEN, CHILD OF HONOR.
“It will be different this time, Kaladin,” Syl said. “I can feel it.” “That sounds like something Tien would have said. His death proves that words don’t change anything, Syl. Before you ask, I’m not sinking into despair again. But I can’t ignore what has happened to me. It started with Tien. Since that moment, it seems that every time I’ve specifically picked people to protect, they’ve ended up dead. Every time. It’s enough to make me wonder if the Almighty himself hates me.”
“Have you ever heard of something called Odium? I don’t mean the feeling, I mean … a person, or something called by that name.” Syl suddenly hissed. It was a feral, disturbing sound. She zipped off his shoulder, becoming a darting streak of light, and shot up underneath the eaves of the next building.
BBEG
He’d sent word to them via Amaram’s scribes, a terse note that had cost him a week’s wages. They knew he’d failed, and they knew he didn’t intend to return. There had been no reply.
</3
Besides, surgery was his old life. In a way, he didn’t deserve it anymore.
My boy deserves peace
Kaladin felt a flash of recall. Another lad, one with a familiar face, holding a spear he wasn’t supposed to need. Two promises broken at once.
Fuck
Kaladin’s squad was all accounted for, their wounded protected at the center. All except the new boy. Tien. Cenn, Kaladin thought. His name is Cenn.
Shit
He was like water running down a hill, flowing, always moving. Spearheads flashed in the air around him, hafts hissing with speed. Not one hit him. He could not be stopped, not when he felt like this. When he had the energy of defending the fallen, the power of standing to protect one of his men. Kaladin snapped his spear into a resting position, crouching with one foot forward, one behind, spear held under his arm. Sweat trickled from his brow, cooled by the breeze. Odd. There hadn’t been a breeze before. Now it seemed to envelop him.
A protector and his spren
More and more over the last few years, each and every one of these petty lighteyes had come to represent Roshone in Kaladin’s eyes. Only Amaram himself stood apart. Amaram, who had treated Kaladin’s father so well, promising to keep Tien safe. Amaram, who always spoke with respect, even to lowly spearmen. He was like Dalinar and Sadeas. Not this riffraff. Of course, Amaram had failed to protect Tien. But so had Kaladin.
Oh the rage and hatred
If we kill an officer that high, we’re all but guaranteed to be in the next group sent to the Shattered Plains. We’re taking him. Imagine it, Dallet. Real soldiers. A warcamp with discipline and lighteyes with integrity. A place where our fighting will mean something.”
WRONG AGAIN
“You will find wise men in any religion, Shallan, and good men in every nation. Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error. All others—heretic, Vorin, Ysperist, or Maakian—are equally closed-minded.”
“It’s not a game, no matter how the stories try to put it. The Nightwatcher doesn’t trick you or twist your words. You ask a boon. She gives what she feels you deserve, then gives you a curse to go along with it. Sometimes related, sometimes not.”
“What are you?” the man whispered, eyes watering with pain. “Death,” Szeth said, then drove his Blade point-first through the man’s face and into the rock below.
COLDBLOODED
“Leadership is rarely about what we want, son. I think too few among the Alethi elite realize that fact.”
Period pooh
The visions never showed him episodes of idle peace; they threw him into times of conflict and change. Turning points.
The others began to follow suit. Hundreds of men and women, driving Shardblades into the stone and then removing their Plate. The sound of metal hitting stone came like rain. Then like thunder.
WUT
They glowed softly in a way his own Shardblade never had, but as he dashed among them, their light started to fade. A terrible feeling struck him. A sense of immense tragedy, of pain and betrayal. Stopping where he stood, he gasped, hand to his chest. What was happening? What was that dreadful feeling, that screaming he swore he could almost hear?
People spoke of betrayal, of the day the Knights Radiant turned their backs on their fellow men. What were they fighting, and why had they stopped? Two orders of knights were mentioned, Dalinar thought. But there were ten orders. What of the other eight?
“They are the first,” the Radiant said, turning to Dalinar. Dalinar recognized the depth of that voice. It was the voice that always spoke to him in these visions. “They were the first, and they were also the last.” “Is this the Day of Recreance?” Dalinar asked. “These events will go down in history,” the Radiant said. “They will be infamous. You will have many names for what happened here.”
The empty place in his memories where his wife had once existed had never seemed as obvious to him as it did at that moment. He tended to ignore it, with good reason. She’d vanished completely, and it was sometimes difficult for him to remember that he had been married.
Despair was a luxury.
“Winds are changing,” Wit whispered. Dalinar glanced at him. Wit’s eyes narrowed, and he scanned the night sky. “It’s been happening for months now. A whirlwind. Shifting and churning, blowing us round and around. Like a world spinning, but we can’t see it because we’re too much a part of it.” “World spinning. What foolishness is this?” “The foolishness of men who care, Dalinar,” Wit said. “And the brilliance of those who do not. The second depend on the first—but also exploit the first—while the first misunderstand the second, hoping that the second are more like the first. And all of their
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Hoid my man
The cosmere, unfortunately, takes precedence over free food. Watch yourself, Dalinar. Life becomes dangerous, and you’re at the center of it.”
