Spoliers/Theory: Why did Syl "die" when she did?

[Colateralwar]

I was re-reading WoR recently, and I was troubled by a question that popped up: namely, why did Syl "die" when she did? For those who haven't read it in a while, we are given to understand that Kaladin's uncertainty about what is right and wrong--as well as his involvement in the potential assassination of Elokhar--caused his bond with Syl to weaken. This led to his powers becoming intermittent, as well as Syl reverting to a non-bonded personality. However, the scene in which Syl actually "dies" is odd. It occurs when Kaladin is rushing to save Dalinar and prevent a disaster. He is PROTECTING. He is being a Radiant. So why is that the moment when his bond broke and Syl died? 

 

At first, I thought it was simply for dramatic presentation. By this point, Kaladin had already manifested his ability to fly, so dropping him off a cliff wasn't very dramatic--unless he was put in a  position where he couldn't fly. However, later on, I think I discovered another answer.

 

When Kaladin is in the process of "reviving" Syl while protecting Elokhar, he overhears an argument between Syl and the Stormfather. The Stormfather is attempting to forbid Syl from returning to Kaladin and Syl is screaming back at him and Syl says something important. She says something along the lines of "You cannot stop it if he says the words," implying, I believe, that he could stop the bond up to a  certain point. Given this, as well as the comment the Stormfather says to Dalinar on the battlefield ("A daughter disobeys") and evidence that the Stormfather has sort of cracked in the head following the death of Tanavast, I believe that Syl's "death" was less due to Kaladin's uncertainty and more cause by the Stormfather actually breaking the bond at a moment he knew would likely result in Kaladin's death. 

 

Thoughts anyone? I might be reading too much into this, but the timing of it all really bothered me. 

[Cemci she/her]

It seemed to me that Syl's 'death' at that point in time is that he needed Stormlight in order to save himself and Dalinar when he fell into the chasm, and because of his at that point extremely weak bond with Syl, forcibly drew in Stormlight. The fact that he did this while uncertain about right and wrong (his conflict regarding Moash and the king) seems to me to be the primary issue here: Kaladin can only use Stormlight if he stays true to his oaths. At the time when he fell, he wasn't staying true, and therefore killed Syl, saving himself with the last breath of Stormlight.

 

I don't think that the moment of Syl's death had anything to do with the Stormfather specifically, there has been some evidence showing that the Stormfather can only interact with humans during a storm - highstorm or otherwise (Dalinar receives all his visions during highstorms, he communicates with the Stormfather in the battle as it's raining heavily). The only exception to this would be the point when Dalinar establishes a Nahel bond with the Stormfather at Urithiru on the roof. However, since at this point, there has already been a long-term bond slowly building between Dalinar and the Stormfather, I would attribute their conversation to that. 

 

The Stormfather is only angry with Kaladin after Kaladin killed Syl. He's mistrustful of humans, certainly, but I don't think that translates to him actually killing one of his own in order to injure or kill a human. Syl is incredibly precious to the Stormfather, she (and presumably all honorspren) are referred to as daughters (or perhaps sons in the case of a 'male honorspren') and beloved ones. The Stormfather knows that severing a Nahel bond leaves the spren dead, since that's what he accuses Kaladin of doing, so killing one of his beloved in order to make sure one single human falls fatally seems a bit far-fetched.

[Oudeis he/him]

What he said, basically. If I could perhaps summarize: The bond was weak, and Kaladin was having trouble getting stormlight. In that moment, he needed a TON of stormlight. Like blowing an electric circuit, forcing too much power through the weakened bond transfered the power (saving Kaladin) but burning out the bond.

[ChocolateRob he/him]

My impression was that the Stormfather used the weakening of their bond to snatch her away 'for her own safety' and then tell Kaladin that she died. I assumed that she became especially vulnerable at that point (due to the sudden, urgent surge of stormlight) and the Stormfather overpowered her to hold her in Shadesmar away from Kaladin before it got any worse. To be fair Kaladin was killing her by degrees so the SF was pretty justified.

[hoser he/him]

My impression was that the Stormfather used the weakening of their bond to snatch her away 'for her own safety' and then tell Kaladin that she died. I assumed that she became especially vulnerable at that point (due to the sudden, urgent surge of stormlight) and the Stormfather overpowered her to hold her in Shadesmar away from Kaladin before it got any worse. To be fair Kaladin was killing her by degrees so the SF was pretty justified.

IIRC, Kaladin perceived screaming when he was trying to reach Syl, so I think her cognitive functioning was impaired similarly to spren death.  If the Stormfather had "saved" her, then Kaladin wouldn't have perceived the screaming, would he?

[Colateralwar]

IIRC, Kaladin perceived screaming when he was trying to reach Syl, so I think her cognitive functioning was impaired similarly to spren death.  If the Stormfather had "saved" her, then Kaladin wouldn't have perceived the screaming, would he?

 

He only heard the screaming once. All other times he thought he was communing with her, she was crying. Not sure if that is significant, or indicative of a different level of disconnect or "death"

[maxal she/her]

I am personally doubtful Syl was "as dead" as the dead-Blade sprens... 

[ChocolateRob he/him]

I assumed she screamed because the Stormfather pulled her away from Kaladin and she was sobbing because she was unable to get back to him. Just a theory though really.

[mirahound she/her]

Then again, Syl did tell Kaladin that he nearly killed her after she came back. Does that mean he didn't actually kill her, or that it didn't count because she did come back?

[Herald he/him]

There is WoB related to this.

 

QUESTION

How did Shallan rescue Kaladin when they fell in the chasm?

BRANDON SANDERSON

She did not, it was actually Syl. But he was in the process of breaking the bond, and so she was able to get some stormlight to him, but that is what really — Like you can imagine, this bond was really a strain for her to use at that point, so it was her, but doing what she did just about destroyed her, which is why you don't hear from her after that.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Jezerezeh

[mirahound she/her]

There is WoB related to this.

Aw, this just makes me love Syl even more!! She was trying to save him even though she knew it could kill her? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

[Yata he/him]

I am personally doubtful Syl was "as dead" as the dead-Blade sprens... 

I think is the same "scale" of Dead.

 

In an WoB Brandon stated that also the Dead-Blade could be resurrect, but for this is needed the Human who had the Bond with the Spren.

 

It's not impossible think that Kaladin did "just" this, with his will to save the Stupid-King at all cost,he began to regenerate the bond and heal Syl's mind.

[maxal she/her]

I think is the same "scale" of Dead.

 

In an WoB Brandon stated that also the Dead-Blade could be resurrect, but for this is needed the Human who had the Bond with the Spren.

 

It's not impossible think that Kaladin did "just" this, with his will to save the Stupid-King at all cost,he began to regenerate the bond and heal Syl's mind.

 

As far as we know, she was not stuck into a cycle of agony while being restricted to Blade form... She was chatting with the Stormfather as he tried to prevent her from going back... 

 

I am not sure it can be compared, but I could be wrong.

[Yata he/him]

As far as we know, she was not stuck into a cycle of agony while being restricted to Blade form... She was chatting with the Stormfather as he tried to prevent her from going back... 

 

I am not sure it can be compared, but I could be wrong.

I thought that the syl-Stormfather chat take place, just after the resurrection of the little Honorspren. The Oaths repaired and the Stormfather who want her to undo the bond with Kal before he could kill another time.

[DreamEternal]

Yes, to ressurect her he risked his life for the king. The third oath was only needed because the Stormfather was holding her back in shadesmar.

[Oudeis he/him]

Yeah, by the time Syl had her "chat" (which is an odd way to describe that interaction) Kaladin had fully made the choice of honor; even if she wasn't "back in the physical realm" revived yet, she was not as dead as she was in the interim.

 

Also, most people seem to be talking about "dead" in a mostly human way, even if they think they're describing it in a not-fully-human way. Syl herself says a dead spren is like a dead rock; it's broken in two and isn't the same rock anymore, but can be put back together and be the same rock. Humans don't do that; something within them leaves when the rock is broken.

 

Syl was dead, not simply comatose or "regressed" or unbound, but dead. She wasn't a computer that had been switched off, she was a computer that had been chucked into a wood chipper. Kaladin's revelation, and his acceptance of the course honor demanded, magically reconstructed the computer, and the Oath flipped the switch.

 

Eh. I'm also not sold on the Stormfather "keeping them apart." I know what she says, and I don't agree with the interpretation. I think they're apart because he has yet to heal the bond the last bit it requires. I think the Stormfather was clearly against the bond, and basically showed up to tell Kaladin to stuff it, but Syl stood up to him.

 

There's a line from Firefly; River says, "No power in the 'verse can stop me." The line doesn't imply that every power in the 'verse is currently trying to stop her, just that it would be futile if they did. This is just my interpretation, and maybe I'm 100% wrong, or maybe the real answer is a mix of both ideas, or a third idea none of us have yet expressed. But I see it as her saying to Kaladin, "Ignore him. You're never going to convince him, and as long as you say the words, his opinion is irrelevant." But that's just me.

[Moogle]

I'm not sure Syl was dead, in any sense of the word. Syl claims, early on, that she could give up the bond to Kaladin and she'd go back to being a mindless windspren. My interpretation of the whole thing is that, if a Knight breaks their oaths before their spren has been bonded strongly enough to be a Shardblade, then the spren can just go free (and end up back in Shadesmar or whatever as the case may be).
 
WoB related:

Question
When does a person become a Surgebinder? Because Kaladin talks about when he was a child, about it being a familiar feeling, and Shallan obviously was younger. Or is it when they speak the Words?

Brandon Sanderson
The bond starts forming before the words are spoken, but if the words are never spoken that bond will eventually evaporate and get broken. But the bond will start forming before. Just like an emotion attracts a spren, acting in the way that the spren you would eventually bond will start drawing them toward you and that will start to create that bond.
(source)

[hoser he/him]

We have two apparently contradictory stories:

1. Syl is some level of dead and Kaladin's figuring out the third oath revives her.  The Stormfather tries to intervene, but Kaladin actually saying the oath makes his intervention impossible. 
2. Kaladin's honorable behavior inspires Syl to disobey, and the Stormfather tries to intervene.  The implication being that Syl has been obeying the Stormfather and voluntarily staying away and is not dead.  This would mean that the Stormfather lied to Kaladin when he said that Kaladin had killed her.  This also seems to be contradicted by the WoB quoted above. 

There may be a way to reconcile them.  Syl being with Kaladin has always been forbidden by the Stormfather.  The near-death separated them.  With Kaladin's renewed Honorable behavior, she revives and tries to return to him.  The Stormfather sees her disobeying again and makes the comment about the daughter disobeying before story 1. plays out. 

[Moogle]

I doubt Syl was voluntarily staying away. As the WoB above says, she was just about destroyed by giving Kaladin that last bit of Stormlight. Our previous example of a weakened bond shows that Pattern ended up back in Shadesmar, and despite his best attempts had a hard time coming back until Shallan actively pulled him back into the Physical by drawing him. In a similar way, Syl could have had problems returning to Kaladin after she recovered.

[Yata he/him]

I'm not sure Syl was dead, in any sense of the word. Syl claims, early on, that she could give up the bond to Kaladin and she'd go back to being a mindless windspren. My interpretation of the whole thing is that, if a Knight breaks their oaths before their spren has been bonded strongly enough to be a Shardblade, then the spren can just go free (and end up back in Shadesmar or whatever as the case may be).

 

WoB related:

There is some confusion about the end of the bond. "give up" and "broken" are two different thinks.

 

If you give up the bond, it's a trauma for the spren but the Oaths was intact end there is'n anything like a Dead-Spren.

 

If you break the bond, you have to go aganist your Oaths and in ths way, you could kill your Spren.

 

A god example are (from the WoT) the Warden-Aes sedai bond, they could give up voluntary without problems, but if the bond is broken by force (the death of one of them) there are big problem.

 

PS: I know that isn't exactly the same thing

[Oudeis he/him]

Moogle: I disagree with your premise. You're providing us with evidence to suggest that there is a way to end the bond without the spren's death. Nothing about that suggests that this is the only way a bond can end. Knowing that I can take an elevator safely to the ground floor of a building doesn't mean there's no way to get to the street from the roof without harming myself.

[Moogle]

Moogle: I disagree with your premise. You're providing us with evidence to suggest that there is a way to end the bond without the spren's death. Nothing about that suggests that this is the only way a bond can end. Knowing that I can take an elevator safely to the ground floor of a building doesn't mean there's no way to get to the street from the roof without harming myself.

 

I don't disagree with anything you say here. But we only know for a fact that spren are dead when we have a corpse to show us, ie. Shardblades. I think it's a massive assumption to say that Syl died when we did not see her make a dead Shardblade.

 

Their bond did not break (and I don't think it was quite broken - again, we have the example of Pattern being pushed away to Shadesmar when Shallan almost-but-not-quite broke her oaths) because Kaladin broke any oaths (in fact, at the moment when it broke, Kaladin was attempting to save people), it "broke" because they overpowered the bond by providing more Stormlight than it could hold. My WoB was posted merely to show that not all ways of breaking the spren bond result in spren death, and that people assuming Syl is dead are making an unsupported jump. We only know that spren can die if their Knights break their oaths, and Kaladin never broke any oaths.

 

I myself think that most likely Syl was not dead and was merely recuperating (WoB even says that her being "almost destroyed" by stressing the bond was "why you don't hear from her after [Kaladin falls in the chasm]" - this hardly speaks of her as dead). Syl speaks to both Kaladin and the Stormfather while he's lying bleeding on the ground before he speaks the Third Ideal - definitely not a sign of being dead to me.

 

But I'm not saying it's a guaranteed fact or anything. I certainly think it was possible that Syl was dead in the exact same way as a dead Shardblade.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

I think someone referenced this, doesn't the Stormfather tell Kaladin, you killed her? That seems pretty definite. I'm gonna look that up when I get home... or maybe on the commute...

 

As I've referenced, "just before he says the ideal" is after the huge revelation when he makes the choice to act like a Windrunner. Just as the bond weakened before it broke, I contend that this point is when the "rock broken in two" that is dead!Syl is slowly being put back together; when she's trapped out of the physical realm but starting to get conscious is part of this mending process, a process completed (but absolutely not begun) when he says the Ideal. By the time she speaks to Kaladin, in those last few seconds, she's practically alive; he's clearly made the decision to live by this Ideal, and that's the important thing, but vocalizing it will realize the Intent and complete the process.

[Moogle]

The Stormfather is not what I would consider a trustworthy source. If she were alive, I would expect him to lie so that Kaladin wouldn't try to bring her back to him and risk genuinely killing her. Perhaps the Stormfather can't lie, being Honor's Cognitive Shadow, but he says enough questionable things that I would take anything he says with an ocean's worth of salt.

 

As to Syl, she herself gives what might be the strongest point in favor of her actually being dead:

Syl lived. Syl lived. He still felt euphoric about that. Shouldn’t she be dead? When he’d asked on their flight out, her response had been simple.

I was only as dead as your oaths, Kaladin.

 

That said, she doesn't outright said it. I hate to over-analyze things which are up to interpretation, but Kaladin's oaths were never dead. And, as Brandon says, she was only "almost" destroyed.

 

You may be correct on your second point. Certainly there's not enough evidence either way for me to feel confident regarding it.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

C'mon, he's at least as reliable a source as Teft.