Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.

Chapter 104 (Full of Hope)
Icons: Three, and in a different configuration than before. We have Chach, Vev, and two Nale… but the Nale icons aren’t mirrored. What’s going on?!
Epigraph: “Humans are a poem. A song.” I’mma need some more context to see where he’s going with this one.

Rlain is reprimanded for carrying water to the basement…but it’s the carrying water part that he’s doing wrong. Make the humans do that menial labor. Nice subversion there.

Oh, wait. He was recognized. He and Dabbid are both detained. Not sure how they’ll get to Navani or the Sibling now.

***
Now that he’s set the stakes, Kal is smack talking loud enough to put on a show. This fight became about the audience and reputation in their eyes, more than the contest itself. Nice move. 

And it works. The Pursuer (now a.k.a. Defeated One, apparently) is psyched out and starts to retreat to fight more cautiously.
***
I love that Leshwi is cheering for Kaladin. And she may be speaking softly, but she’s doing it to Exultation. It’s definitely cheering.

***
I’m disappointed that Moash misinterpreted Teft here. I was expecting him to say, “We both know who the better man is. If I were a better man I wouldn’t win this.”

Nice, Teft. Advancing to the next oath in dramatic fashion, manifesting a blade. Well, spear really. Is he going to get a glyph of power when he actually says the oath? Will that make it through the tower’s suppression, and if it does will it make a difference?

Oh, nope. He was just forcing the connection to bring Phendorana through a little bit.

I was expecting Teft to get killed directly, rather than tortured with the loss of Phendorana. Her death is a gut punch. There’s a reason we all hate you, Vyre.

Oh, Teft is getting killed too. I’m rather surprised that Vyre didn’t leave him as evidence of what had been done to his bound spren. Especially since the wound he received at her death sounded like it would preclude forming another bond for a long time at least.

Lift’s not gonna be happy about this, though, which is going to matter to Moash in a minute.

The "full of hope" line and title are interesting in context of Jasnah's vehement denouncement of the topic. Is hope worth anything here? Did it do more harm than good? It's constructed as a rebuttal, but in a form that her arguments are still potentially valid.