Stormlight Archive 2.5
Brandon Sanderson
1. Lift is on the run with her spren Wyndel (she calls a Voidbringer) begging her to stop. She uses her “awesomeness” (Stormlight) to slide around. Wyndel says they need to go back to the palace. Lyft is suspicious of the king letting her stay and feeding her. She thought they wanted something from her. They wanted her to learn how to read. She felt like they wanted to change her too much. She ate the king’s dinner to let him know she was leaving. She checks her pockets for more food, but is out. She chews on her handkerchief. Wyndel talks about how he would garden the souls of chairs in Shadesmar and wishes he could get back to the job. Lyft turns around to say goodbye to Azir. She doesn’t like to stay in anyplace long enough for people to get to know her.
2. The approach the shattered plains and see a city carved into the rocks. Lift suggests she needs to find a shardeblade, but Wyndel (cultivation spren) tells her he isn’t allowed to tell her about them. He lets it slip that he doesn’t want her to hit things with him, but she doesn’t understand the comment. She wants to try all ten types of pancakes they are said to have there. She says Darkness is there and she will avoid him. She is more afraid of him than Szeth because he kills little people instead of kings. She sees the line of people and figures the guards probably have food to be able to do their jobs. Wyndel suggests she use the spheres the king of Azir gave her, but she says she threw them away. She doesn’t like spheres because it gives people a reason to rob her. She gets under one of the chull carts.
3. Helga and … pull in a cart trying to bring in smuggled goods. The guard makes them fill out a form for suspected smuggling. When Helga complains about them not having any proof, the guard tells her that is why she isn’t in more trouble. When they pull back the tarp, they find Lift in their grain eating it. They give her a pancake (they type for prosperity) in hopes to get her to go away, but Lift avoids them. The guards try to stop her for immigration, but she hops away from them. The cart ends up being knocked away as they try to grab Lift. When they go to right the cart, Lift is gone. Helga wonders how she will report this.
4. Lift grabs Wyndl as she goes down the cliff to slow her fall. He grabs the wall and they still hit hard on the spilled grain. Lift starts walking around liking what she sees. There are a lot of people from all over. She wants to find food since she used up everything getting away from the guards. Wyndel thinks how nice it would have been if he had bonded with the nice old cobbler that took care of children and gave them shoes. She pulls out a book she stole and Wyndel takes a look at it. It is a log of the guards schedule. When Wyndel tells her it is not likely to be traded, she tosses it aside and it hits a woman. A guard yells at them and they run.
5. Wyndl asks why she has never been to the Reshi Islands, where her mother told her she was from. She tells him they left Azir because people started to know her and have expectations.
6. Lift talks with a little girl who gives her information for a handerchief. The conversation sounds like gibberish to Wyndel, but Lift was able to understand her. The little girl told her there is an orphanage where she can get food, but most of the children avoid it because they don’t like the woman who runs it. Lift goes there and a boy tells her she can wait for food to come along later. When the thin woman that runs the orphanage comes out, she doesn’t like the look of Lift. She tells her she can have three meals only and can sleep on the stone benches outside. When Lift goes outside, there is a man there. He says he will tell her a secret about how to get on the woman’s good side if she answers one of his questions. She agrees and he tells her the woman likes children who tell her where she can trade spheres. The man then asks her if she were only one body part, which one would she be. She tries to anger him with her answer of the nose, but he finds it honest and insightful. Lift takes off again
7. As they stroll down the street, Wyndel asks if Lift is going to try to get on the woman’s good side. She thinks the whole ordeal is a scam using the children for sympathy. Instead, she climbs on top of building and tells Wyndel to wake her if anyone goes in or out. When Wyndel wakes her up, it is because Darkness went inside. They climb down to the window and hear the Captain of the Guard tell Darkness about her encounter with Lift. He tells her to have her men tell him if they see her again. He has her sign a statement about her experience with Lift.
8. Lift follows Darkness through the market. She and Wyndel watch as a little girl steals a fruit from a vendor and takes off. She runs right into Darknesss. She pull out a knife, but Darkness runs his shardblade through her chest right there in front of everyone. The shopkeeper thinks it was too harsh of a punishment, but Darkness gives his reasoning saying any other punishment might just increase criminal activity instead of decreasing it. He has the shopkeeper sign a statement about the whole ordeal. When Darkness is gone, she tries to bring the girl back to life, but it is too late. She dashes after Darkness. He takes the path around the large well while Lift takes the bridge across. He goes to a better part of town and Lift follows. She uses the last of her stormlight to open the window and goes inside. She follows voices down a dark hall. She finds Darkness’ room and searches it. She eats all his food. Wyndel wants her to sneak off and start a farm, but Lift decides they will go spy on Darkness.
9. Down the corridor, Lift hides behind a door and hears Darkness talking to another man and a woman. He is disappointed in his companions in missing a surgebinder in town. Darkness tells them Ishar told them that if they have people becoming Knights Radiants like them they could join the wrong side and help the Voidbringers make the jump to other worlds and bring about another desolation. They will become more powerful if they speak the words. There is a boy by Lift she hadn’t noticed before. He says they are wrong before disappearing. Szeth is there and tells them the Voidbringers are already back. Darkness is not convinced of this or that the new storm with the red lightning means anything. He thinks Szeth’s questioning is a sign of weakness. The other two say they have leads on more of them. Lift leaves the building wondering if they are like him.
10. Back at the orphanage, the woman, called The Stump, watches the children as they play out in the opening of the alley way. She stands in line for a meal and The Stump makes her go last before telling her it is her second because she was given a first one, even though it wasn’t by her. She has noticed she has been growing even though she asked went to the woman with the old magic and asked to stop changing. The kid that was dropped off by his mother the previous day, Mik, is there. The Stump comes over and thinks Lift is planning to steal from her and Mik is faking his ailments. Wyndel asks if she has a plan for what they are going to do next, but she isn’t sure. The stronge old man asks what she thinks of the city.
11. Lift decides she needs to find out what the words are so they can get to the other “awesome” people before Darkness and his people do. She asks a woman where she can find words and the lady points up at a large building Lift hadn’t noticed before, the Grand Indicium.
12. She tells Wyndel he needs to read all the words and find the right ones. He tries to explain to her that there is too much information contained in the building for him to be able to find anything useful, especially in time before Darkness gets to the other people he intends to kill. She jokingly tries to bargain with Wyndel as though he is a Voidbringer that eats souls. She agrees with him that they are going to have to approach this differently.
13. In a new set of soft clothes, Lift goes into the Grand Indicium and is overwhelmed by how much there is inside. Someone comes up to her and asks what she is doing there. She explains she is there on business from the Emperor in Azir. The man goes to conference with other scribes and Lift overhears him saying she fits the description of the girl the guards are after. She quickly goes over to the span reeds and has Wyndel help her right to Gox. The scribes and three guards come after her, but the reply from Azir comes in telling them she is there for him and to give her whatever she wants.
14. While the scribes are going through documents for her, Lift eats different kinds of pancakes and has another scribe talking to Gox through the spanreed. He tells her she is welcome to come back home. He then warns her of a storm that travels the wrong way with red lightning. She asks the scribes if they have found anything weird and uses her stormlight to make one of the seeds on her pancake grow into a plant. They have a few items, but all only have one witness and she can’t tell which is most likely to be from someone like her. Wyndel tells her to choose one at random, but she can’t decide. Suddenly, a guard bursts in and says the storm will hit them in a few hours. They have to get to shelters and throw any parshmen out into the storm. As a little girl is leading Lift to a shelter, Wyndel suggests that maybe Darkness’ apprentice had also had the scribes searching for things for her.
15. When they get back to the Grand Indicium, a woman tells her someone was hired to do research for the woman. They start heading up to the room, but Darkness’ apprentices and Szeth are also on their way to the room. Lift and Wyndel hide hoping they don’t see them. The two apprentices unlock and go into the room. Szeth waits in the hall. He talks to Nightblood, but lift cannot hear the swords side of the conversation. Wendyl goes to listen to the conversation. After a while of enduring the silence, Wyndel comes back. The others are leaving. Szeth is last and stops. Lift does everything she can to keep herself from glowing with Stormlight. Szeth tosses a lit sphere down the dark hallway and sees her. He starts to draw Nightblood, but stops and continues following the others. She asks Wyndel what he learned and he tells her they have found someone like her and are on their way to perform the execution now. They decide to follow.
16. Lift follows the trio out of the building and is shocked when the two apprentices suck in stormlight and fly off to kill the one they are looking for. Szeth comes to talk to Lift. He says Nightblood likes her and he won’t kill her. He thins her encounter with Darkness is what has spurred him to seek out the others like her more intently. She asks him where the others are going and he tells her there is a lightweaver that hangs out in an amphitheater near the orphanage. He tells her she will be up against two Skybreakers, but she says she doesn’t have much choice.
17. While running to the orphanage, Lift isn’t able to get herself to stick and slide like she normally does. She gives up and uses her stormlight to run the entire way there. When she gets there, she is out of stormlight and knows she doesn’t have any chance against two Skybreakers. She hears a scream. The Stump opens the orphanage door and pulls her in. The kids around her are scared of the storm. She goes to listen to what the Stump was saying, but she comes to Mik and he asks her what he is doing there. He says he doesn’t remember the last few weeks. Usually she can’t heal the ones that are not all there in the head, but she starts to wonder if she fully understands her powers. Lift eats what the Stump brings her. She gets to the door and slips out when the Stump isn’t looking.
18. Outside, Lift goes down an alley. She finds Darkness’ two minions dead there. The old man is there talking philosophies. She can see him in the lighting flashes. He is made up of cremlings. He tells her he killed the two because the challenged him. He will not kill her because they are fighting the same war. He tells her if she speaks to another sleepless, tell them she has spoken with Arclo. She asks him about the Radiants, Voidbringers, and what is going on, but he says he is not the one to ask. He is there to help her kind and breed what he can into himself. It is the only world that supplies him with enough cremlings to survive. He keeps calling her “Little Radiant” and tells her instinct will guide her. She thinks about all the people around her that have been asking questions. Suddenly, she realizes the Stump is trading dun spheres for lit spheres of lesser value because she is the one healing the children. She doesn’t realize she is doing it and that is why she thinks they are faking. Arclo says he will return to finish his task and Lift takes off.
19. Back at the Orphanage, Lift finds the door open, cut clean through with a shardblade. She calls out to Darkness and he comes for her. She runs towards the smell of spices and hides. She pops out behind him and he swings. She misses and keeps running. She plans to make him use up all his stormlight since he can’t make more on his own. She keeps moving, but he stops her by stabbing his dagger through her top shirt. The Stump appears and hits him over the head. He stabs her with his normal blade and tells Lift she is going to die if she doesn’t help her. Lift points out that he feels emotions, but some of them seem to be missing. He stops and realizes she is right. She rushes past them and to the roof. Out in the storm, Darkness (Nale) fights her. She speaks the words and Wyndel becomes a rod-like shardblade and helps fight him off. When they look out into the storm, Nale can see the Parshmen turning into Voidbringers and realizes he has failed. Lift gives him a hug before he takes off into the sky.
20. The next day, Lift has healed Stump and told her what she is and can do. Stump has brought her a stack of pancakes and she uses Wyndel as a shardblade fork to eat them. She writes to Gox to tell him about Darkness taking off and that she will be returning to the palace soon.