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

NOTE: Many, many apologies for the delay. Yes, it's been six months since my last entry. Don't worry, we're in the home stretch now. The end is in sight!

Chapter 113 (Emotion)
Icons: Compassionate Taravangian at the top. Chach and Nale as dual herald icons, but not mirrored. Weird. What’s this intended to mean?
Epigraph: Best guess is that El is going to be Odium’s champion. I don’t think we’ve met him yet, though.

Navani having a sensory awareness of the tower’s mechanisms is a cool thing, even if I’m still a bit unhappy about how this whole Sibling bonding thing went down. At least their relationship is still explicitly a work in progress.

Raboniel is alive? Woah. Aww, they get to say goodbye! And she asks Navani to perma-kill her so that she can finally rest (and also avoid the inevitable madness that would ensue from her injuries). I love this dynamic between the two scholars.

Quote

“I never thought I would be sane at the end.”

And then they sing the Rhythm of War together again, to send Raboniel off to the Beyond. Ow, the feels!

***
Vargo is having a very emotional day. It’s sweet that he still feels Dalinar is a true friend.

A note from Renarin: “I’m sorry.” And it’s accompanied by two gems worth of stormlight. 
Vargo’s first thought is “What had the boy seen?” 
He’s right to be afraid. You never want to get an apology from a precog. (Admittedly, I’m also coming at this as a member of the Worm fandom, where the main character gets a similar note from a precog at a pivotal moment, so maybe I’m reading more into this than I should.)

Oh, right. It’s been long enough since I was in this story that I forgot about the Sja-Anat spren that were being delivered. It’s not just stormlight in there.

Szeth’s father is dead, Ishar having killed him to reclaim his Blade. And now he wants answers from Taragangian.

Taravangian is too dumb to manipulate Szeth… but it’s okay, because he asks for the wrong thing, which becomes reverse psychology, so the right thing happens. That’s quite the coup.

Taravangian is on his deathbed, injured again by Szeth, and Odium is arriving. Feels like a suitably dramatic moment for something. 

Wow. Go Taravangian! Nine parts dead, brain of the nine fools, and he still manages to slam Nightblood through Odium’s chest!

What.

WHAT??

What the what? Vargo’s plot worked so well that he ascended as the next Odium? I did not see this coming at all.

I am trying to type out my thoughts and keep getting stuck with inarticulate screaming. Gah!

Okay, so, here’s what we’ve got. 
Taravangian’s soul gets sucked into the vessel-shaped hole left by Nightblood eating Rayse.
And it could only happen today, on his day of 100% passion, since that is what resonates with the Shard’s mandate.
Taravangian is Odium. Gaaa! This could be very good or very, very bad, or more likely both at once, but this absolutely, fundamentally changes the game.

And to think, two chapters ago I was feeling disappointed in the number of end-of-book reveals.

Right now I’m wondering what Szeth noticed, if anything, from Nightblood suddenly devouring Rayse. We’ve seen before that Nightblood doesn’t retain memories from when it is drawn, so he won’t be able to learn what happened, but surely he noticed something going on.