POV: taravangian
Summary
Odium sits with the question. Could he, in fact, destroy the unhosted power of Honor? He considers it perhaps a little too long. The power is sheltering Dalinar in the Spiritual Realm, and if he attacks it he might at last get at his friend through the same opening. A smaller fraction of his attention keeps batting at other rats in the walls — trying to break them, occupy them, keep them off his real work — though he cannot really spare them his focus while the larger question is open.
He watches the permutations and finds them clouded. Power, in the end, cannot be destroyed outright; that is one of the rules he has come to know intimately since his Ascension. But there are options around the edge of the rule, and his predecessor Rayse had used several. Twice Rayse had bound the power of two Shards in the Cognitive Realm — cataclysmic, and to this day what makes that land so difficult to reach. Once he had struck a Shard directly; the clash had left him wounded and shattered planets in the doing.
The third option, the one his predecessor had avoided, was Splintering — spreading the power thin enough that it could not congeal into anything able to resist him. His own power likes the idea. It wants the conflict; it wants, after centuries of compaction, finally to be free of restraint. But to clash with Honor's power would violate his predecessor's oath not to strike first against another Shard, would leave him bleeding and vulnerable in the same way past clashes have, and could lose him the whole cosmere to a Cultivation who is now openly hostile. Odium cannot conquer the cosmere if he dies. So he refuses his own power and feeds it other emotions to keep it placated, weighing his next move carefully.
He is still weighing it, the question of Honor still open, when Honor simply spits Dalinar back out — straight into the Physical Realm, on exactly the time he had planned for Dalinar to return. Relief floods him; if his friend had not made it back at the appointed hour, it might have been counted his fault. He allows himself a moment of peace and lets himself feel Roshar's rhythms.
He feels the singers, so long abused. He glories in the prospect of bringing them what he calls due vengeance. And — surprise — the unhosted power of Honor vibrates along with him. On this one point the two of them are aligned: these people deserve more. He accepts the burden of legitimately caring for them, not just using them, and discovers himself capable of more tenderness than he had thought. The cosmere is full of similarly abused peoples; the conflux of all Shards, he thinks, would want to help them. He revels for an extended moment in the picture: peace, a universe without pain, one god — him. Because if you want to see things turned out correctly, you must do it yourself. Taravangian as Odium will rule all, and all will recognize what he has done in their name. It is time.