Szeth - Division

There was one way to make sure she emerged. It was time to see if his spren was guiding him correctly. He gave a glance upward and saw that Kaladin had leaned out to watch. Then Szeth closed his eyes and landed.

Stone surrounded him. Swallowed him. Shadows became his entire world as the liquid stone hardened, capturing him. A tomb, created in exactly his shape. It even held each finger in place around his Blade. He couldn’t inhale. Not only was there no air, there was no room for his chest to expand.

Stone. Cold. Pressing against his cheeks, trapping his eyelids closed. So he held his breath, and heard a clicking tremble on the stone as Rit emerged. Walking across the rock.

I see her directly in front of you, the spren said. She has emerged as you hoped.

Yet the spren did not give him permission to use Division. The voices grew louder.

He would die here. Encased in stone. He would run out of Stormlight and suffocate in a place black and terrible. Death did not frighten him, but dying here … failing in his quest …

That legitimately terrified him.

Hold, the spren said.

His Stormlight was running out. He could feel it trickling away, and the voices condemned him for his murders. He could touch the second power, access it—and in so doing, free himself in an instant.

Hold, the spren said.

Sweating, trembling, almost whimpering, he held.

Some of the others said that you were not diligent or worthy, the spren said, because you did not choose the law as your guide. But now … now I prove them wrong. Well done, Szeth.

It was still. Not. Permission.

You may use your second Surge, the spren said. Fight. As a full Skybreaker.

Finally. Szeth swelled with a power that was immediately familiar. The stone had captured him, holding him, but that allowed him to touch it. Time to burn.

He exhaled Stormlight in a rush, infusing the stones around him with a mounting destruction. The column became char, the stone itself set alight. Szeth ripped from it, trailing ash like a second—no, third—shadow, pieces of it crumbling from his face. He forced his eyes open and lunged, Blade pointed forward, at something moving in front of him. Rit walking close to inspect her handiwork.

He set the very air alight as he moved.

Skybreaker.

Rit opened her mouth to scream, and he plunged his Blade straight through, out the back of her skull, into the next column of stone.
Her Blade dropped from her fingers.

She fell forward on his Blade, the top of her mouth catching on the rear edge of the weapon and holding her pinned—until Szeth commanded that edge of the Blade to become sharp. Then the corpse fell straight past it, leaving a slice this time—because the body was dead.

There was no blood.

Wind and Truth Chapter 41