Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

“Great power,” Ulim said. “You’ve been chosen. You’re special. But you must embrace this. Welcome it. You have to want it, or the powers will not be able to take a place in your gemhearts.”

Venli had suffered so much, but this was her reward. She was done with a life spent wasting away under human oppression. She would never again be trapped, impotent. With this new power, she would always, always be able to fight back.

The Everstorm appeared from the west, returning as it had before. A tiny village in the near distance fell into the storm’s shadow, then was illuminated by the striking of bright red lightning.

Venli stepped forward and hummed to Craving, holding her arms out to the sides. The storm wasn’t like the highstorms—no stormwall of blown debris and cremwater. This was far more elegant. It was a billowing cloud of smoke and darkness, lightning breaking out on all sides, coloring it crimson.

She tipped her head back to meet the boiling, churning clouds, and was consumed by the storm.

Angry, violent darkness overshadowed her. Flecks of burning ash streamed past her on all sides, and she felt no rain this time. Just the beat of thunder. The storm’s pulse.

Ash bit into her skin, and something crashed down beside her, rolling on the stones. A tree? Yes, a burning tree. Sand, shredded bark, and pebbles washed across her skin and carapace. She knelt down, eyes squeezed closed, arms protecting her face from the blown debris.

Something larger glanced off her arm, cracking her carapace. She gasped and dropped to the stone ground, curling up.

A pressure enveloped her, pushing at her mind, her soul. Let Me In.

With difficulty, she opened herself up to this force. This was just like adopting a new form, right?

Pain seared her insides, as if someone had set fire to her veins. She screamed, and sand bit her tongue. Tiny coals ripped at her clothing, singeing her skin.

And then, a voice.

WHAT IS THIS?

It was a warm voice. An ancient, paternal voice, kindly and enveloping.

“Please,” Venli said, gasping in breaths of smoky air. “Please.”

YES, the voice said. CHOOSE ANOTHER. THIS ONE IS MINE.

The force that had been pushing against her retreated, and the pain stopped. Something else—something smaller, less domineering—took its place. She accepted this spren gladly, then whimpered in relief, attuned to Agony.

An eternity seemed to pass as she lay huddled before the storm. Finally, the winds weakened. The lightning faded. The thunder moved into the distance.

She blinked the grit from her eyes. Bits of cremstone and broken bark streamed from her as she moved. She coughed, then stood, looking at her ruined clothing and singed skin.

She no longer bore stormform. She’d changed to … was this nimbleform? Her clothing felt large on her, and her body no longer bore its impressive musculature. She attuned the rhythms, and found they were still the new ones—the violent, angry rhythms that came with forms of power.

This wasn’t nimbleform, but it also wasn’t anything she recognized. She had breasts—though they were small, as with most forms outside of mateform—and long hairstrands. She turned about to see if the others were the same.

Demid stood nearby, and though his clothing was in tatters, his well-muscled body wasn’t scored. He stood tall—far taller than her—with a broad chest and powerful stance. He seemed more like a statue than a listener. He flexed, eyes glowing red, and his body pulsed with a dark violet power—a glow that somehow evoked both light and darkness at once. It retreated, but Demid seemed pleased by his ability to invoke it.

What form was that? So majestic, with ridges of carapace poking through his skin along the arms and at the corners of the face. “Demid?” she asked.

He turned toward Melu, who strode up in a similar form and said something in a language Venli didn’t recognize. The rhythms were there though, and this was to Derision.

“Demid?” Venli asked again. “How do you feel? What happened?”

He spoke again in that strange language, and his next words seemed to blur in her mind, somehow shifting until she understood them. “… Odium rides the very winds, like the enemy once did. Incredible. Aharat, is that you?”

“Yes,” Melu said. “This … this feels … good.”

“Feel,” Demid said. “It feels.” He took a long, deep breath. “It feels.”

Had they gone mad?

Nearby, Mrun pulled himself past a large boulder, which had not been there before. With horror, Venli realized that she could see a broken arm underneath it, blood leaking out. In direct defiance of Ulim’s promise of safety, one of them had been crushed.

Though Mrun had been blessed with a tall, imperious form like the others, he stumbled as he stepped away from the boulder. He grabbed the stone, then fell to his knees. His body coursing with that dark violet light, he groaned, muttering gibberish. Altoki approached from the other direction, standing low, teeth bared, her steps like those of a predator. When she drew closer, Venli could hear her whispering between bared teeth. “High sky. Dead winds. Blood rain.”

“Demid,” Venli said to Destruction. “Something has gone wrong. Sit down, wait. I will find the spren.”

Demid looked at her. “You knew this corpse?”

“This corpse? Demid, why—”

“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!” Ulim coursed across the ground to her. “You— You aren’t— Oh, bad, bad.”

“Ulim!” Venli demanded, attuning Derision and gesturing at Demid. “Something is wrong with my companions. What have you brought upon us?”

“Don’t talk to them, Venli!” Ulim said, forming into the shape of a little man. “Don’t point at them!”

Nearby, Demid was pooling dark violet power in his hand somehow, studying her and Ulim. “It is you,” he said to Ulim. “The Envoy. You have my respect for your work, spren.”

Ulim bowed to Demid. “Please, grand of the Fused, see passion and forgive this child.”

“You should explain to her,” Demid said, “so she does not … aggravate me.”

Venli frowned. “What is—”

“Come with me,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground. Concerned, overwhelmed by her experience, Venli attuned Agony and followed. Behind, Demid and the others were gathering.

Ulim formed as a person again before her. “You’re lucky. He could have destroyed you.”

“Demid would never do that.”

“Unfortunately for you, your once-mate is gone. That’s Hariel—and he has one of the worst tempers of all the Fused.”

“Hariel? What do you mean by…” She trailed off as the others spoke softly to Demid. They stood so tall, so haughty, and their mannerisms—all wrong.

Each new form changed a listener, down to their ways of thinking, even their temperament. Despite that, you were always you. Even stormform hadn’t changed her into someone else. Perhaps … she had become less empathetic, more aggressive. But she’d still been herself.

This was different. Demid didn’t stand like her once-mate, or speak like him.

“No…” she whispered. “You said we were opening ourselves up to a new spren, a new form!”