this is taken from the short story about what scarlet saw when she underwent the device which was said to let her see the eternal alchemy.
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Inside Omadd’s machine, the universe stretched out before her, an endlessly vast star-flecked sea. She moved through it, struggling against its currents, floating effortlessly above them, or standing perfectly still as strange lights and magical energies swirled around her.
She saw Tyria as a life-sized globe, fixed in place among cosmic storms and massive clouds of potentiality. She wondered if she would see herself in Omadd’s lab when Rata Sum rotated into view, but then impatiently went on, plunging deeper into the churning void.
Stop, my child.
Ceara paused. She hadn’t heard the Pale Tree’s voice in years.
Please: go no further. In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them. Society cannot withstand that.
Ceara felt an electric tingle and she wondered if her body was smiling back in Omadd’s lab. Deliberately and with great glee, Ceara thought, Shhh. I’m thinking, and then pressed on.
She soon saw a vague, glowing shape ahead. A tree, she thought…the Pale Tree. Its great off-white trunk connected a broad network of branches and leaves to a root system below. Instead of nuts or berries beneath its leaves, there were sylvari. Thousands of her people hung from the tree’s boughs like ripe fruit ready to fall. Their bodies did not move, but their eyes shifted and rolled, eagerly taking in their surroundings.
Some dropped like autumn leaves, slowly drifting down to root level. There they stood, stretched, and then set out into the void, disappearing as they cleared the spreading canopy. Some never made it that far, staggering, falling, and withering within the shade of the great tree.
Disappointment soured Ceara’s fascination. Was this it, then? Were the lives of all sylvari so easily encapsulated? Birth, travel, experience, death, all played out under the dictates and philosophies of the godlike entity that created them?
She refused to accept that. Everything she had learned said that no system, no matter how complex, can perpetuate itself indefinitely. Those that did not evolve inevitably failed.
It was then Ceara saw the thorn vine. It emerged from the roots at the base of the tree and began to climb, wrapping itself around the trunk and scoring the bark with its dusty red barbs. Green-black ichor oozed from these wounds, and the great tree shuddered.
Then Ceara was the vine, squeezing the great tree’s trunk like a desperate lover. The tree struggled against her: she was meant to be part of it, to participate in its grand purpose. Instead, she was no more than an irritant, a provocation.
Now do you see? The Pale Tree’s voice was faint and distant, but it snapped Ceara back to viewing the tree from a distance. If you are not one with what you were born to be, you are lost. Worse, you are dangerous.
Sheer joy surged through Ceara. Dangerous, you say? Her thoughts boomed loud as thunder across the void. So be it.
With the Pale Tree’s desperate words and her own raucous laughter growing echoing across the void, Ceara plunged through the vision of the great tree and beyond.
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While it doesn’t explain what or why she is doing things like trying to kill the queens, work with the molten, secret base under Lions Arch, in Twilight arbor, etc.
From what i can tell. The pale tree told her, you either die being part of the dream or live to be the nightmare (dark knight reference?). And essentially it told her that she could not change the outcome regardless of what happens.
Scarlet disagreed and wanted to prove that you are not stuck indefinitely in a system where you can only be one thing.
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Her actions aren’t “good.” but it does state she was mentally unstable after undergoing the device. However, couldn’t it be possible that she is just standing up against the norm/society?
It almost seems like she is an anti-bullying figure put off in a negative light.