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« on: October 12, 2010, 04:53:37 AM »
So I was rereading Elantris, and I think I have an idea as to what Aona and Skai's shards were. Although we know not all shards come in pairs with polar opposites, some like Ruin and Preservation do, and I think its a pretty safe bet that Aona and Skai were a pair of opposites, from Brandon's annotation that Skaze are like evil Seons, little things dropped here and there in the book about Jaddeth, and just the nature of the monks and their power. Anyways, after rereading, I think Aona is Harmony and Skai is Discord. Harmony fits with the nature of the Seons, the relationship between the land and the Elantrian's power, the fact that the medium through which the Elantrians use the Dor is the alphabet or language, a means of promoting harmony and unity, and the way the pool of Dor urges Elantrians to relax and let go....I'm betting that it doesn't actually kill the Elantrians, it more dissolves their corporeal form and individual identity, and their energy becomes one with the res of the Dor. They live on as spiritual energy, part of the land, but with no further need of consciousness. Skai, then, would be Discord, or the disruption or perversion of Harmony. Brandon said somewhere that Odium did not cause the Reod, at least not directly, and I'm inclined to take him at face value. I think the Reod was caused by Skai, disrupting Harmony and breaking the Elantrian's tie with the land and the Dor as part of a power play against Aona, and Odium merely seized on that opportunity to take Aona and Skai out. We know that even polar opposite Shards can work together, as Ruin and Preservation did to create life, and I'm assuming the threat of Odium could have gotten even Aona and Skai to work together to fight him, so he waited until they were already fighting and there was no possibility of them allying.