[ truthfully, there's more to the sword than a party trick.
and not just because it can, in fact, cut and thrust. how? don't worry about it. mumbles in One Power nonsense. but to a novice channeler like rand, to someone with the ability to touch the True Source and draw on the Power — to a channeler with very little instruction, because even for all the help he's gotten in horos, there's no one who fundamentally understands what it is to use saidin —
it gives him an anchor.
once he has the One Power in his hands, what does he do with it? if he'd been found younger, if he'd been born in another turning of the Wheel where he could be a candidate for aes sedai, he would've been taught how to channel, step by step. how to reliably 'find' saidin, how to open himself to Power, how to control and guide it. he doesn't have any of that, or time to learn besides, so he has to stumble in the dark to find what works. channeling a sword into existence gives him something palpable, and makes it easier for him to then spin other weaves. learning how to split flows of the Power into independent weaves is usually a skill that requires a lot of instruction and patience, but he has yet to find the upper limit of how many he can make without thought. he's tried, by necessity, nearing half a dozen...and he can do at least twice that without breaking a sweat, as he'll one day discover.
nevertheless. that's one day; this is today. he hates ciel, but it's more than that. she's yet another obstacle standing between him and the pyres, and as with gen, he doesn't see her as anything more than that. getting abel and himeka down before they die is paramount. whatever he has to do to get there, whatever happens to him in the interim, is meaningless.
so he rushes her, sword brandished and ready to take a slash at her. and at the same time, he sends a weave of Power into the earth — he's learning from gen, see — to set the earth around them rumbling. he moves the same as if he's on steady ground, unaffected, but the ground shakes, and chunks of sidewalk start to tear off in an attempt to make her lose her balance. ]
subjects you to a tl;dr abt wot powers soRry
and not just because it can, in fact, cut and thrust. how? don't worry about it. mumbles in One Power nonsense. but to a novice channeler like rand, to someone with the ability to touch the True Source and draw on the Power — to a channeler with very little instruction, because even for all the help he's gotten in horos, there's no one who fundamentally understands what it is to use saidin —
it gives him an anchor.
once he has the One Power in his hands, what does he do with it? if he'd been found younger, if he'd been born in another turning of the Wheel where he could be a candidate for aes sedai, he would've been taught how to channel, step by step. how to reliably 'find' saidin, how to open himself to Power, how to control and guide it. he doesn't have any of that, or time to learn besides, so he has to stumble in the dark to find what works. channeling a sword into existence gives him something palpable, and makes it easier for him to then spin other weaves. learning how to split flows of the Power into independent weaves is usually a skill that requires a lot of instruction and patience, but he has yet to find the upper limit of how many he can make without thought. he's tried, by necessity, nearing half a dozen...and he can do at least twice that without breaking a sweat, as he'll one day discover.
nevertheless. that's one day; this is today. he hates ciel, but it's more than that. she's yet another obstacle standing between him and the pyres, and as with gen, he doesn't see her as anything more than that. getting abel and himeka down before they die is paramount. whatever he has to do to get there, whatever happens to him in the interim, is meaningless.
so he rushes her, sword brandished and ready to take a slash at her. and at the same time, he sends a weave of Power into the earth — he's learning from gen, see — to set the earth around them rumbling. he moves the same as if he's on steady ground, unaffected, but the ground shakes, and chunks of sidewalk start to tear off in an attempt to make her lose her balance. ]