Guild Wars 2

In the brilliant light of noon, a petal moved. A pod opened. A sylvari rose, stretched, and hesitantly entered the world.

The twelve firstborn, called by their mother’s summons, stood breathlessly to greet their new brother. They had lived for so many years alone, believing that they were all the sylvari that would ever be. And now the awakening had begun again. Other pods in the garden moved softly, gaining ground but not yet ready to open. It was the first flowering of a new generation.

“Welcome, Brother.” Aife greeted him, always the first with a question or a smile. She approached the stranger, holding out a cloak so he could wrap himself.

“Do you know us?” another broke in. “Did you dream of us?”

“Hush, Dagonet,” Aife shushed her over-eager friend. “You’ll frighten him.” She turned to the sapling again and spoke in a gentle tone. “Like you, we are sylvari. I am called Aife. What is your name?”

“Name?” The newcomer considered the question for a moment. At last, he said, “Cadeyrn,” but his tone was uncertain. He took the cloak and pulled it about his shoulders to ward off the sun. “What is this place?”

Aife smiled and tousled the sylvari’s hair, sending soft, black-willow fronds dancing around his shoulders. “This is the Grove. And she…” Aife gestured toward the massive tree beneath whose branches they gathered, “…is the Pale Tree. Our mother. Your mother too.”

Cadeyrn regarded the tree curiously, finding no strangeness in the explanation. With a nod, he looked to Dagonet. “I did dream.”

The scholar brightened, snatching up a scroll and quill. “Tell me of your dream. I have studied all of ours, but yours will be the first new dream in many years.”

Standing taller, Cadeyrn offered him a smile. “The first?” He looked around at the other pods, as yet unawakened. “Yes, I am the first, aren’t I? None of the others in my dream have awakened. The Pale Tree must have wanted to see me right away. She knew that I was special.” He puffed up like a dandelion. “I am first!”

“No, Cadeyrn. You are secondborn,” a deeper voice intoned. Malomedies was a tall, slender sylvari, with smooth hair that shone in iridescent color like the wings of a dragonfly. His proud bearing was that of an ancient oak, massive branches unyielding against the storm.

“Second?” Cadeyrn frowned. “Why am I second? I have awakened before the rest.”

“We were here first.”

They gathered by the Pale Tree, and rain swelled upon her upturned leaves, dripping in slow sparks to the earth below. Her roots cradled the firstborn that lay among them, his body covered in a dark blanket like moss over a grave. Malomedies was only sleeping, struggling against exhausting nightmares. From time to time, he called out, and Kahedins soothed him, placing a damp compress to his forehead in the hope that he would find rest. The healer looked up to the others, face filled with worry.

“Will he survive? Or will he…die? As Riannoc did?” The question whispered in every heart, but it was Niamh that gave it voice.

“The Mother says he will live,” Kahedins murmured, but it was little comfort.

Malomedies had been beautiful, as graceful as a willow kneeling by a stream. Now his face bore the carved scars of ill-treatment, and the branches of his once- iridescent hair had been broken and pruned into splintered, colorless pieces. One leg was withered as if kept too long from the sun, and where his fleshlike bark still clung to the vines of his torso, there were a thousand small holes.

“We must kill them all.” Cadeyrn’s eyes flashed dark gold, and his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword.

“The asura have offered peace. They did not realize that he… They thought he was simply another of the strange plants of the deep Maguuma, mimicking sentience,” Aife told them. “When they realized he was truly aware, they returned him to us.”

“It is not enough! How will Malomedies find peace if he does not take revenge?”

Kahedins stared disapprovingly. “Revenge? Revenge is not our way. Have you not studied Ventari’s tablet?” As the secondborn lowered his head belligerently, Kahedins lectured, “It is written, ‘The only lasting peace is the peace within your soul.’ You should meditate on that, Cadeyrn, and consider its meaning.”

Cadeyrn glanced at Trahearne, whose expression was as black as his own. No soldier would say such things. No one who had ever lifted a blade to stop oppression, or placed themselves in danger to free innocents, would say that revenge was unfitting. If Faolain and Caithe were here, they would argue his side, he was sure of it.

Abruptly, Trahearne looked up toward the spreading boughs. “Yes, Mother,” he answered a whisper only he could hear. Chagrined, the necromancer unclenched his fists. “The Pale Tree says we need to concentrate on our true enemy: the dragons. Every ally will be needed.” Gritting his teeth, Trahearne finished, “We make peace with the asura.”

Cadeyrn was not sure what was more troubling, that Trahearne had given in or that the Pale Tree had spoken only to the firstborn. Following suit, he bent his head. “As the Mother wishes.”

Despite the signs of long-ago death, the slumbering ruins felt somehow alive; the hush and whisper of tide below the cliff rising and falling like a sleeper’s breath. Something low and shadowy, stinking of brine, cast a slender shadow among the crumbling rocks. Cadeyrn watched it pass between the tilted walls and fragmented arches that must have been a chapel. Saw it flicker where an altar once stood. Marked where the shadow vanished away.

“Are you prepared?” Niamh murmured softly behind him, her frond-like hair rustling in the cold breeze. She drew her sword and checked its edge, finding it keen. Eager silver eyes met his dark gold gaze. “It is time to strike.” Two others of an even younger generation than Cadeyrn stood with her; both, like them, members of the Cycle of Noon.

Cadeyrn stepped away from the little ledge on which he’d been crouched. “They are ready for us. We must move cautiously.”

Together, they crept down onto the beach and into the ruins, and there, they found their quarry. Cadeyrn’s sword cleaved a krait in two with a single stroke. He spun the weapon expertly behind his back, blocking another creature’s claw before snapping down to slice away the extended hand. A krait sorceress’s unblinking eyes widened as she wove a thaumaturgic web of slaughter, and two of the sylvari died in her flame. Fiercely, Cadeyrn leapt toward her, his blade tearing through the krait’s flesh.

He left nothing behind but scale and scream.

When the krait were dead, Niamh and Cadeyrn stood in the center of the ruined chapel, blood on their blades and fierce smiles lighting their faces. A sound caught his attention, and he raised a hand for silence, slipping forward to the place where he had seen movement from above.

Cadeyrn tilted the altar aside, and the sound grew louder. Beneath the stone lay a cave, long ago flooded by the advance of the sea. There, in a sea-cavern below the ruins, krait lay in hiding, unperturbed by the icy waters. But these were not warriors. This was a hatchery, filled with krait eggs and terrified young.

He raised his sword to continue the extermination—

“Cadeyrn!” Niamh said sharply.

Cadeyrn paused, looking up at the leader of his Cycle in confusion.

“Leave them.”

“But…they are krait.”

“They are children.”

“Children.” He frowned, for the word had little meaning. “You mean ‘they are small.’ They are small, but they are krait. They will grow up to be large krait, and then we will kill them. Why not kill them now, when it is easy and they are undefended? It seems the wisest course of action. Otherwise, we risk losing more sylvari lives when these return fully grown.”

“We must take that risk, to give them a chance to change their ways,” the firstborn said. “All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed.” Soberly, she put away her sword and pushed the altar back. Beneath it, Cadeyrn could hear the snakes scrambling, splashing away into the ocean tide.

“Again the firstborn quote the Tablet when I ask for logic.” He growled beneath his breath. “I do not agree.”

Cadeyrn stood high on a limb in the center of the Grove, listening to the stillness of night. Crickets chirruped here and there, and night birds uttered lonesome cries, each calling to their own, even as he called to something greater than himself.

“Mother,” Cadeyrn murmured, raising his hands in gentle supplication. “I need you.”

The wind soothed the leaves at the top of the Pale Tree, and Cadeyrn felt her presence. Softly, the Mother murmured, “Son of my bough, what do you seek?”

“Wisdom.” Tears touched his eyes, and he rubbed them roughly with the back of his hand. “I see the evil in the world; 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?”

The Pale Tree rustled softly. “The most effective path is not always the best one, sapling. As the firstborn have done, you must strive to be good.”

The words stung. “Who defines ‘good?’ You? Ventari? Some dead human?” Cadeyrn retorted. “The firstborn are not perfect.”

The Pale Tree paused, and for a while, Cadeyrn thought she might not reply. Mist had risen upon the nearby brook before she spoke again.

“Would you do evil in my name?” The Pale Tree sighed. “Would you cause devastation, as the charr do? Or justify wickedness in the name of knowledge, as the asura do? No, Cadeyrn. We come into this world to destroy the dragons. We must not lose ourselves in that challenge.”

“Have we not already lost ourselves, Mother? We are not centaurs or humans. Let me destroy the tablet, and we will see what it truly means to be sylvari.” There was no answer. As dawn rose and bathed the clearing in gold, Cadeyrn realized that the tree would say no more.

“She will not hear you.” The quiet voice was feminine, but it was not the tree who spoke. Spinning, Cadeyrn readied himself for battle but froze when he saw Caithe, cold and still, standing in the last shadows of night. “She will not hear you,” Caithe repeated.

“I am the first of my generation—” he began, raising his voice in argument.

Caithe shrugged and interrupted, “Why should she care? She has thousands of children now, Cadeyrn. You are either firstborn…or you are simply sylvari.”

A storm gathered upon his features. “I will never be one among many, Caithe. Not even to the Pale Tree,” he vowed, storming away. “I will make you hear me, Mother, like it or not. When I am finished and you are free at last, then I will be first in your heart!”

Caithe lingered in silence and watched him go.

“…we gather in nightmare. We look to the darkest part of our spirits. The covetous hand, the lying heart, the knife that betrays a friend: we call upon these, and we see their power. For what are we, in the end, if not creatures of power? It will take strength to defeat the dragons, and strength does not come by turning away any weapon, no matter how vicious or how cruel. We will use them all.” Cadeyrn lounged on his throne with a careless, prideful slouch. A crown of golden vine glittered on his forehead as courtiers bowed and whispered before him, hanging on Cadeyrn’s every word, their eyes as lightless as the space between the stars.

“We, the sylvari, are the future. It is our time. We must leave behind the fears of awakening. Let go the stone that weighs us down. We were born to be more than this. We were born with a darkness in our Dream and in our heart that we could embrace…if only the Mother were not so afraid of the night. It is time to show her that her children are more than even she has dreamed we could be.

“If the sylvari are to survive, we must learn from the poison thorn and the stinging nettle, the vine that crushes the very sapling which holds it to the light. We will raise the nightmare. We will see Tyria remade in our image.

“We will grow until nightmare swallows the world.”