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Brandon Sanderson / Re: Mistborn 3 Annotations Discussion *Spoilers*
« on: November 25, 2009, 06:52:20 PM »
I think it depends on where the spike is. Brandon explained once that a person has sort of a spiritual bloodstream, and that Hemalurgy could splice new spiritual patterns into this. I would guess that critical spikes are ones that completely sever or segment the original spiritual pattern. So the bind point in your ear doesn't kill by removal because it is relatively on the edge of your spiritual matrix, the one in the spine does because that must be a major focus for spiritual flow between head and torso, and eye spikes only do if you remove both, because one is redundant.