Revisiting Kaladin's "sprenicide" at Kholinar in OB

[+robardin]

In Rhythm of War, Raboniel and El (both of who have seen a lot of action, to put it mildly) think they've "finally discovered" a way to kill spren with anti-Voidlight and anti-Stormlight.

Raboniel uses anti-Voidlight to kill the Odium-infused portion of her daughter's soul in her gemheart so that she would be released from the Fused cycle of rebirth, and then gives Moash a dagger primed with anti-Stormlight to perma-kill Teft's honorspren Phendorana. (And then once more, we saw El "test" this new technology by perma-killing Lezian.)

This is going to be hard for me even to cut and paste, but when Phendorana is killed, it's described as:

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...Moash pulled a strange dagger from his belt and slammed it down—right where Phendorana was kneeling.

She looked up with surprise and took the knife straight in the forehead. Then she screamed.

Teft leaped for her, howling, watching in horror as she shrank, writhing as Moash’s dagger pinned her to the floor. Her essence burned, flaring outward like an explosion.

And when Raboniel uses the anti-Voidlight dagger to free her daughter from being Fused,

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Raboniel loomed over the other Fused, pushing the weapon in deeper. The younger Fused began to spasm, and Raboniel held her, ruthless as she pressed the weapon into her daughter’s flesh.

There was no explosion. The Voidlight inside the Fused wasn’t under pressure as it was in a gemstone, perhaps. There was a stench of burning flesh, and the skin blistered around the wound. The younger Fused trembled and screamed, clutching at her mother’s arm with a clawed hand.

Then her eyes turned milky, like white marble. She went limp, and Navani thought she saw something escape her lips. Smoke? As if her entire insides had been burned away.

And at the end, when El does the same to The Defeated One,

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“I think this might hurt,” El said, then grabbed the Pursuer by the front of his beard. “Enjoy this final Passion, Defeated One.”

He plunged the knife down as the Pursuer struggled.

And his soul ripped itself apart.

With all those descriptions of what is this "sprenicidal" technology never having been known before in any previous Desolation, it's easy to forget that this actually was NOT the first time we'd seen this happen in SA! Because back in Oathbringer, when Kaladin finds little Gavinor being tormented by voidspren at the palace in Kholinar:

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Kaladin reacted with swift, immediate rage. He growled, seizing the Sylblade from the air, forming a small dagger from mist. He drove the dagger forward and caught one of the spren, pinning it to the wall’s wooden paneling. He had never known a Shardblade to cut a spren before, but this worked. The thing screamed in a soft voice, a hundred hands coming from its shape and scraping at the Blade, at the wall, until it seemed to rip into a thousand tiny pieces, then faded.

At this point, Kaladin was not all "Rhythm-of-warlike" as he becomes while going HAM in Urithiru with yellowish-red (instead of blue) glowing eyes and howling something that "vibrated with a hundred discordant rhythms". He was just an I-3 Windrunner with a Blade... Right? But he did something even Syl didn't think was possible.

Was he already a little bit "RoW-like" at that time already? But the voidspren he killed didn't "burn" at all - it struggled and screamed, but then simply "ripped into a thousand tiny pieces, then faded".

[Frustration]

22 minutes ago, robardin said:

At this point, Kaladin was not all "Rhythm-of-warlike" as he becomes while going HAM in Urithiru with yellowish-red (instead of blue) glowing eyes and howling something that "vibrated with a hundred discordant rhythms". He was just an I-3 Windrunner with a Blade... Right? But he did something even Syl didn't think was possible.

Was he already a little bit "RoW-like" at that time already? But the voidspren he killed didn't "burn" at all - it struggled and screamed, but then simply "ripped into a thousand tiny pieces, then faded".

They say early on in RoW that you can stab spren with a blade and they will disipate before re-forming later.

[+robardin]

Just now, Frustration said:

They say early on in RoW that you can stab spren with a blade and they will disipate before re-forming later.

Is that what happened with that voidspren in Kholinar? I don't remember this being mentioned in RoW... Will comb through later to see if I can catch it, because that would imply they (the KRs) had done more things like Kaladin had done, only to realize it wasn't permanent (and I am not sure how they would know that).

[ScadrianTank]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Is that what happened with that voidspren in Kholinar? I don't remember this being mentioned in RoW... Will comb through later to see if I can catch it, because that would imply they (the KRs) had done more things like Kaladin had done, only to realize it wasn't permanent (and I am not sure how they would know that).

RoW Chapter Two:

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Stormwinds. This thing seemed more spren than singer. The discarded body tumbled through the fog, and Kaladin followed it down, his wounds fully healing. He breathed in a second pouch of spheres as he landed beside the fallen corpse. Could he even kill this being? A Shardblade could cut spren, but that didn’t kill them. They re-formed eventually.