Guild Wars 2

The Thorn Vine watched whilst the human tucked her away into it’s satchel. Although the husks were closing in, the human was too quick for them – they only ever followed in his footsteps. With the seed in his bag, the human was gone and with him the heart of the Vine…

But love never forgets, nor hate. It was out of love that the Vine went in search of his lost passion; out of hate that he sought the life of the human who stole her from him. They would be together forever and no one would ever come between them again. At first the pursuit seemed fruitless, if only because the Vine’s growth was so slow. But the hare’s racy dash cannot compete with the methodical plod of the tortoise. Eventually, the forest floor yielded memories of the human’s retreat, to her.
He found her, at long last. They were together again: entwined…

She flowered in his embrace and their progeny began the long cycle of their development. He whispered sweet words to her, crooning softly into the depths of her being. “Dearheart.” The human had planted her upon the graves of his family before joining them in death. A centaur had tended her into maturity and now the Vine had found her. Though she did not recall him, his touch was familiar to her – she knew he was the one.

In those tentative years the Maguuma flourished and with it the Dream – her Dream. Everything was as it should be. The centaur had carved his teachings onto a tablet – it was a precious reminder to her of her formative years and of the Tyria she wished for her children to inherit. Aware of this, the Vine grasped it in his tendrils and drew it up before her, so that it was always suspended before her gaze. With each day, she cast her sights upon it and then upon him. He had never been happier.

But something stirred within the continent’s bowels – something which changed everything. She noticed it one day: Seemingly overnight, he had changed. The slack grasp of the vines had tightened to a frigid lock. He squeezed her trunk so tightly that he opened sores; for the first time she experienced pain. “What is it, my love?” she breathed quietly. He did not respond. In the distance, birds took to the sky in flight; the creatures of the ground rushed by. A faint thunder pressured the air. He was poised in concentration, straining to discern the source of the disturbance.

The wave heralded the return of the reptiles and with them, the humans who had taken her from him. The fierce hate of his youth which had consumed him in his quest to recover her suddenly and uncontrollably welled up again – he strained against her girth. “You cannot have her!” He saw it all – the dead weight slouching in his grasp portended every evil end of which he was petrified: She would be lost forever and all of his efforts at the utopia they enjoyed would be gone. He hated the slab of rock then as much as he hated the human – indeed, all humans – he even hated the centaur. Who were they to steal her affections away for themselves, to serve their own designs? What right did they have to turn her against him?

And she was against him, in spite of his pleading and imploring she would not listen. The reptiles threatened others whom she loved and she could not abandon them any more than perfect love abandons those it to whom it is shown. It was not as though her concerns were ignored. He gingerly eyed their progeny, terrified for their wellbeing. And so in his maddened state he grew his thorns stronger and tougher than ever before – he became something more than even he believed that he could be: Her shield, the shield of their children, a bastion in the Maguuma, protecting them all from the reptiles and the meddling races. Indeed, he was powerful – so powerful that she could not bear his entwining any longer. So she shut him out.

Thus began the war between them…

An amazing, beautiful work. Thank you so much for sharing this. It provides an excellent backstory for the origin of the Nightmare, and it is as sad as it is wonderful. I look forward to reading more of your tales.

~Selana Firestone

It began with Cadeyrn: The sylvari civil war. The secondborn’s term was troubled; his mother felt a terrible sense of foreboding as he formed. It chilled her to a shiver, a solemn warning that her search for solace from the entwining of the Thorn Vine would never cease.

For his part, the Vine ceaselessly hounded his secondborn son from the pod, befuddling his mind with premonitions of the tribulations awaiting an awakening of subservience to the tenets of the Tablet. When Cadeyrn finally emerged from his slumber, his father’s voice had become such a commonplace presence within his mind that he could not distinguish it from his own. Moreover, the Vine’s insidious work was so thorough that when the secondborn opened his mouth to address his mother and siblings, they heard not only Cadeyrn, but it too.

“Mother, I need you.” The tree, usually delighted to hear these words, shuddered. He was here, she could no longer ignore him; the twisted growth had coiled it’s way throughout Cadeyrn’s being, using him to command her attention. As she looked upon her newly-vivified child, the Maguuman midday monsoon rains began to fall, concealing her tears. “Son of my bough, what do you seek?” “Wisdom,” Cadeyrn replied. Again the great tree shuddered, this time from a biting quickening as the vines gripping her tightened. “I see the evil in the world," he continued, “I am told to fight it, but the lessons of the tablet shackle me. They prevent me from doing what is right. We put down our weapons when we should go to the slaughter. We turn away from vengeance when we are wronged, even though our spirits cry out for it. We do not take what we desire, or kill whatever we wish, or use our strength to force the world to hear us! These things are within us when we awaken. Why do we turn away from those impulses? Why do we do not follow our instincts? Always, we justify our actions with this tablet. Why do we not do whatever we want? Let me destroy the tablet, and we will see what it truly means to be sylvari.”

Death, destruction and destiny. These three things he now worshiped in the place of the love they once had. The Vine plucked his son like a dexterous musician the strings of the harp; she recognized his voice in her son’s polemic. Steeling herself, she answered, “Would you do evil in my name? No, Cadeyrn." A blast of ice bombarded her, whittling away at her extremities even as Cadeyrn’s expression fell from the hopes of the misguided to the reservations of the resigned. The Vine’s anger smote his son’s heart open; the sylvari collapsed to his knees, a fist raised in fierce defiance: “The human separated us! The centaur bewitched you! Now you hold their Dream dearer than you hold me! And you have sent our offspring against the reptiles in your futile crusade to aide the descendants of the dead! Be assured that I will not rest until this madness is extirpated from your heart!” In that moment, the Vine sought to release the tablet but his tendrils had gripped it for far too long; in that moment, the tree and her lover freely shed their tears together.

Beside himself with grief, the Vine compelled Cadeyrn’s hand to the handle of it’s sword. The secondborn’s golden gaze browned with renewed vigor. He unsheathed the blade and strode toward his father’s deadened brambles and the stone slab suspended within them. The edge dripped with the waters of the wet-season and the weeping of the lovers. Cadeyrn’s hand was steady as he brought it to bear against the outermost fibers of the tablet’s restraints. With sleight of hand, a subtle stroke, the centaur’s philosophies would slip from the consultation of the tree’s wonder, the wonder of her children, and the world of the sylvari. The Thorn Vine and the Pale Tree would finally be fully united; mother and father, Cadeyrn mused, freed to pursue the procreation of a vision of utopia in the Maguuma, carefree despite the reptiles, assured of their permanence into eternity.

But Cadeyrn the bold did not anticipate Caithe the lithe…