Chapter Text
Dalinar wondered if this strange occurrence, for there was nothing really normal about reading books (well, listening to them) but if this was possible, without stormlight (storms, how could that be, but it was true, he’d checked) then he wasn’t crazy. He could not be. He refused. War would come. The codes must be followed.
Kalak rounded a rocky stone ridge and stumbled to a stop before the body of a dying thunderclast. The enormous stone beast lay on its side, riblike… The eyes were deep red spots on the arrowhead face, as if created by a fire burning deep within the stone. They faded.
Shallan was curious. She’d never even heard of a creature like that, and racked her brain to figure out what they were, if she’d ever seen anything like that before. She looked towards Jasnah Kholin, and saw the woman was deep in thought, eyes narrowed.
She looked like she knew, but didn’t at the same time. It wasn’t an expression Shallan would have imagined on Jasnah’s face before this. And what was- Kalak? The herald? How long ago was this? Jasnah looked disbelieving. Which, like, made sense, because she was a heretic, but she wondered what the scholar would say about this.
The same thought rang through everyone’s head. A herald? A monstrous creature they had never heard off before?
Even after all these centuries, seeing a thunderclast
“Thunderclast?” Shallan muttered to herself. Jasnah looked at Shallan out of the corner of her eye and Shallan got the message and took out her notebook and scribbled the word. Research.
Dalinar and Adolin both looked curious. They’d never fought a creature called the thunderclast.
up close made Kalak shiver.
Navani, sitting on one corner, focused carefully. A creature that could make a herald feel fear? She glanced at Dalinar, then looked away. Too soon, not yet. She had no reason either, to look, since he clearly held no answers.
The beast’s hand was as long as a man was tall… and it hadn’t been pleasant. Of course, dying rarely was.
“What?” Adolin said. Okay, so he was pretty sure, (like, completely certain) that this was a herald, but if they’d died once, and came back, they should still be there. He looked towards Renarin, and saw that he didn’t look as confused as Adolin, but at least a little bewildered at the same time.
Teft looked at Kaladin. He was pretty sure the man would agree, though he hadn’t died yet. Come really, insanely close, yes, but still alive.
He rounded the creature, picking his way more carefully across the battlefield. …Some were shattered, blasted-out sections where Surgebinders-
“The knights radiant,” Dalinar muttered. His dreams, bringing other rulers into them, he was certain he was right. It was time, though the Knights Radiant had abandoned them.
Adolin looked at his father, and wondered if this was about his dreams again. He knew Renarin was thinking of the same thing. The obsession with the Code, everything about Dalinar Kholin recently, he wondered if this would solve whatever was storming going on.
Navani saw the determined set of Dalinar’s mouth. He was clearly more set about his dreams, and that was worthy of admiration. Seeing things like he could see in his dreams? Navani could only imagine.
Kaladin heard the whispered words, and he couldn’t help but wonder. Syl sat on his shoulder, head cocked to the side. She was curious about what was happening, he knew. He was too, Teft as well, right next to him. Kaladin wondered if he was right to believe in the radiants.
had fought. Less frequently, he passed cracked, oddly shaped hollows… Blood mixed. Red. Orange. Violet.
“What?” Shallan said and heard her whisper echo from others. From the darkeyed bridgemen and from the Kholin brothers as well. She absentmindedly wrote that down. Jasnah leant back like she knew what was going on. Shallan would try to decipher it, but she wasn’t sure if that was possible right now. Pattern stayed on her safehand, blending in, and she knew Pattern was curious.
Though none of the bodies around him stirred… I actually survived this time. That was dangerous.
“Why would survival be dangerous?” Adolin asked, instinctively glancing at Jasnah for a second, though he knew she would not have answers. Not this time, which was curious enough on its own. He wasn’t used to it. Jasnah, not having answers? He could almost imagine how out of her element she was possibly feeling, though maybe he didn’t know her as well now. How long since they last talked?
Kaladin glanced at the princeling. Storms, the man was infuriating. A valid question, but rhetoric, and he did not trust anyone here. As someone who fought in a war, the man should know. Kaladin let the bitterness fester. The man looked unaffected by his surroundings, with perfect hair and a casual air around him. Unconcerned, with what they had been warned would happen if they didn’t fix mistakes from the future.
When he died, he was sent back, no choice. When he survived the Desolation,
Jasnah nodded, though Shallan couldn’t figure out why. She knew the ardent, that man who had been sent to assassinate Jasnah (which, what? Shallan was still confused on how someone could be so casual about it) insisted Jasnah was trying to prove that everything was made up, but with this, she wondered, what exactly was Jasnah researching?
he was supposed to go back as well… were weapons of power beyond even Shardblades.
Adolin’s eyes widened. Shardblades, prized, precious, powerful beyond telling, it was unimaginable that anything would be more powerful than them. He loved swords, he truly did, and he’d never heard of any that existed like them, and eight existed? More than eight? Anyone who owned even one would be a target, Adolin acknowledged, but something so grand even existing was hardly believable.
But if they belonged to the heralds- it made sense. But what had happened to them?
These were unique. Precious… Only one of us died this time.”
“Only one,” Shallan muttered sarcastically. Well, the herald had made it sound like he’d died a pretty large amount of times, so she supposed it made sense. Still, disturbing. Not that was disturbed, to say, but it was sad.
“Talenel,” Kalak said. His was the only Blade unaccounted for. “Yes. He died holding that passage by the northern waterway
And what had happened to him? He would come back, from what they had heard, Shallan thought, they had all come back, had never stayed dead because they were heralds. Except this time, she thought, since they’d never come back, visibly anyway. She wasn’t sure how they would notice if they had come back, though she couldn’t imagine missing it.