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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 3 years

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The Structure of the Vigil

Shout-out to @rouxipanda who wanted to hear more about my OCs! I'm going to twine it into a headcanon post concerning the structure of the Vigil, which I imagine General Almorra came up with as a sort of twist on the warband system.

Let's start with our Warmaster Forgal; I imagine he'd have joined the Vigil early on. He seems to have a friendship with Almorra and isn't afraid to butt in with his opinion in the middle of diplomatic encounters, so he's not just a random Warmaster, and he told Efut that the player is "the kid he should've had" which means he has a fairly close relationship with other high-level Vigil members as well.

But then my future Commander, then going by Soulstrider, comes along, a few months after the Vigil's founding in 1320/21, at that time a representative of the Krytan throne, to negotiate with General Almorra concerning this random charr's interest in building a military keep on human soil.

Those negotiations went well, and Soulstrider was assigned to oversee the construction of the Keep. (Meanwhile, some random charr explains the concept of a warband and what exactly happened to Almorra's, causing Soulstrider to become self-conscious about her name.) Anyway, a while after that she joined the Vigil, changed her chosen name to Solestrider out of respect for Almorra, and was assigned to Forgal. (Almorra told her she totally didn't have to do that, but she did anyway. And she started going by her given name Tiffany.)

So Forgal and Tiffany went and did all sorts of missions together and Tiffany got promoted and by the time 1325 rolls around, Forgal and Tiffany are both Warmasters and have comfortably been working as each other's partners for four years or so.

Around this time, Eveanin, sylvari guardian, awakens from her pod and goes through the basic sylvari quests until level thirty. At this point, I stole a line from human Crusader Hiroki (from level thirty) and put it in the mouth of sylvari Crusader Branthyn (from level thirty). The line was to a new Vigil character about who their mentor might be; she said "hope you don't get Forgal; he's a real bear. Get it? 'Cause he's a norn?"

A human character replies with "I hope not! I couldn't bear it!" My sylvari Eveanin, however, knows nothing about norn. After the quest, since she had time before meeting General Almorra and her new mentor in Lion's Arch she hopped right along to Hoelbrak to learn about norn. There she met Pharlt and his wife Creepylaugh, and became their friend through assisting them with their level thirty norn questline. Pharlt joined the Vigil and Creepylaugh joined the Priroy (and promptly is almost never relevant again).

Eveanin and Pharlt, then, head to Lion's Arch to meet with General Almorra and their respective mentors.

Now, since Eveanin and Pharlt are already friends, General Almorra thinks it would be a good idea to keep them together, so she should assign them to a pair of mentors who are already partners. Pharlt is assigned to Forgal (because they are both norn) and Eveanin is assigned to Tiffany.

Now we have a little happy multiracial warband here, which was the whole point, and I have a future Commander who didn't have two-and-one-instance questlines before being promoted to top rank, while also keeping the original Vigil progression more-or-less intact.

Now, Eveanin and Pharlt's progressions through the Vigil system isn't exactly like in-game; they do all the racial sympathy quests at level 50 that are available to them, so we get quaggan and skritt and grawl and hylek and ogres storylines. So Eveanin and Pharlt spend quite a bit more time as Crusaders than the player normally does, and they still don't get promoted to Warmaster until after the whole Claw Island debacle, instead of just before (since neither of them become the Commander.)

Then Forgal dies.

Now, we kind of had a pyramid structure/Fibonacci sequence going on; Forgal was there first, and then came Tiffany, and then came two students; if things had been normal, then after the two students became full Warmasters, all four of them would retain their little warband-like structure and then take on four more students, and then there would be eight of them, and they would take on eight students, and then there would be sixteen - and so on.

But also, in a normal situation where the top of the pyramid (Forgal) died, that would shatter the pyramid. Tiffany would have become the top of the pyramid, but Pharlt's role doesn't necessarily have a deep connection with her, and he also doesn't necessarily have a deep connection with Eveanin, so now he's by himself and he has to start a new pyramid.

It wasn't like that - he was fast friends with Eveanin and had a respect for Tiffany, but he would have always felt very slightly left out - especially when Trahearne showed up and Eveanin knew him, and Tiffany had complicated backstory involving him, and Pharlt was just like 'who now?'

But I think this is really how General Almorra might've planned the structure of the Vigil, kind of based on the warband system but adapted for the needs of a recruiting military and without the stigma of a gladium; there are single-person roles and you can always be lumped in with another group, and groups can be lumped together, and so on for harder missions. And of course actual whole warbands that join the Vigil together stay together; General Almorra is a charr and she understands that kind of bond and tries to capitalize on it as much as possible - which is why she stuck Pharlt and Eveanin together when she saw that they were already friends. If they'd joined separately they'd have been assigned mostly at random the way the player kinda was.

But the Vigil feels like a cohesive system with a core identity, and I imagine this system would be a good conduit to that; encourage pyramid/warband/family system so you stick with your group and feel loyalty to them and as a whole you are loyal to the cause of the Vigil, and pyramids splinter all the time because people die, and bigger pyramids you don't always have that connection with everybody else on the pyramid, so you get splintered-off smaller pyramids being put together with other small pyramids on missions that need that many people and at some point the groups kind of merge.

And at some point technically you don't even have a pyramid, it's just a bunch of friends on a team who fight together. And maybe from an outside perspective it looks like a normal military with different companies and platoons and all that stuff, only how they got like that is cool and fun and dynamic.

And when someone dies there's always blame and grief going around, and maybe you didn't have the best relationship with some of the others anyway, so the pyramid-splinter enables you to break away from potentially toxic relationships and start over with just the people you feel comfortable with.

But anyway, this is just a theory I thought up when I wanted Eveanin and Pharlt to stick together and to stick with my Commander, and then at some point down the line they all pick up students and the pyramid grows.

#Vigil #general almorra soulkeeper #tiffanycommander #pharlt #eveanin #forgal kernsson #crusader hiroki #crusader branthyn #sylvari level 30 quest #norn level 30 quest #creepylaugh #priory

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 4 years

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The Heartrending Mind, Part I

TL;DR: Eveanin, the youngest and weakest of the Commander’s sylvari allies, only agrees to be the fourth member of the team going into Mordremoth’s mind because it is better for her to turn there... than out here where Trahearne is vulnerable.

~oOoOo~

“Mordremoth didn’t even try to cover its tracks,” Marjory Delaqua informs the group after a cursory glance around. “Either this is a trap, or the dragon’s getting desperate.”

Tiffany Commander, her mouth pressed in a thin line, volunteers a comment. “I’m going to vote for trap. Mordremoth is painless.”

Wait, what? Commander hadn’t mentioned that before. Commander had always felt intense pain around any kind of dragon corruption.

Eveanin glances around again - the jungle dragon surrounds them on all sides. She can feel it breathing… in sync with her own. Or maybe she is in sync with it. I’m the weak link here. If anyone turns, it’ll be me. The matching of the breathing - all by itself - makes her jittery and nervous. I’m the youngest, the weakest, the one with the worst secret. The easiest to manipulate. “Can we get going?” she asks. “I want to get away from here already.”

“Seconded,” Canach says dryly.

Mordremoth wants us gone, as well,” Marjory points out. “We’ve got company.”

“News to me,” Canach snarks back, even as he draws his blade.

Eveanin steels herself against the feeling that she is fighting allies. Other sylvari, corrupted - her sisters and brothers. Other Mordrem - her cousins from other Blighting Trees. Her kin. They’re Mordremoth’s minions. They are the enemy. They captured me. They took Trahearne.

Blue magic swirls around her fingertips, and a furious flame springs up in a ring around the small group of rescuers. She seizes the five nearest Mordrem with a magical hook and draws them into the fire, into the weapons of her allies. Commander falls back from melee range, nocking an arrow.

Thorns, she’s vulnerable back there! A protective blue dome flashes into existence around the Commander, knocking back a charging Mordrem. Eveanin is a frontline fighter. She can’t handle Mordremoth’s subtlety. She doesn’t have the time to question her every impulse, not in the heat of battle. But I have to. I’m a liability otherwise - a constant menace.

“We’re clear,” Rytlock announces, when the Mordrem are gone.

“Looks like there’s only one way forward,” Braham observes, gesturing toward the tunnel leading further south… and down.

“Let’s move, then,” Commander says with a resigned sigh. “Stick close - we don’t know what’s down here.”

Armies cannot stop me.

The dragon is focused on the battle outside,” Canach points out. “We’ll never get a better chance.”

Yeah, except since when do we hear its stray thoughts? Eveanin wonders, following Commander down the path. Mordremoth intended for us to hear that. It wants us to think we have an advantage.

More Blighting Pods. Eveanin glances away and hurries past them, trying to ignore the way the pulsing light inside the pods lines up perfectly with the rhythm of her own breathing. She’d already tried and failed to change it, but each breath requires intense concentration to time right. And it just makes her anxious.

Ahead of her, Commander inhales sharply. “There he is,” she whispers, hurrying forward. “Great gods, what has Mordremoth done to him?”

Eveanin glances up and sees him, too - physically bound to the dragon, Trahearne looks haggard and weak. Blue magic flares around her fingertips in anger. She wants to murder something. Mordremoth has no right to do this - any of this - to Trahearne. To anyone. The Marshal shouldn’t have sent her with the others to escape. She shouldn’t have let him.

She glances away. Canach might want to pound the dragon into the dust for its crimes, Commander might want to defy Mordremoth to the Underworld and back, Caithe might just want to ensure freedom, even at the price of death… but Eveanin just wants to run far, far away. Or just surrender, give up, let the inevitable happen and let myself die. I don’t have to care. Eveanin shivers. Stop it. Every second that passes, surrender becomes more and more inviting.

“Commander?” comes Trahearne’s tired voice. “The Pact… is it…”

You’re an admirable fool, Trahearne. Asking after the Pact, and you in this condition?

“All but gone, Marshal,” Commander says quietly. “But once we get you out of here, we can regroup and finish the dragon once and for all.”

Trahearne shakes his head slowly. “It’s too late. I know - I am part of the jungle dragon now. It is everywhere.”

“Oh, Trahearne,” Commander whispers, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, his voice slightly creaky. Commander, her own shoulders slumped, opens her mouth to protest, but Braham speaks first.

“So how do we kill it?” Braham asks, drawing attention back to the main point. “Burn every field and fell every forest?”

“No,” Trahearne replies with a sigh. “It can’t be defeated that way. It’ll just grow back. Its roots have spread too far, too deep.”

“Then… we destroy the root,” Commander says slowly, in that thinking-out-loud manner she does when figuring things out. “Mordremoth’s mind! Its strongest attacks come from its mind, from the Dream. That’s our target.”

Not only from the Dream. Scarlet and Aerin were Soundless, and they fell more easily than anyone. Eveanin glances around, wondering what else Mordremoth uses as a tool to broadcast its Call.

“Sound strategy, Commander,” Canach says approvingly. “Turn the tables and attack the dragon the same way it’s been attacking us? Brilliant.”

But we are barely strong enough to hold it off ourselves. How can we be strong enough to counterattack effectively? And then, a crushing, impending cloud descends on her mind, stifling all thought. A low rumble rolls through her, and every part of her being fixates on the sensation - it is all she can sense, all she can imagine - and her breathing in time to the discordant beat of Mordremoth’s thoughts.

Eveanin blinks, looks around frantically; dimly, she hears Canach scoffing at the dragon’s dislike of the idea, the strain of the pressure invisible under thick layers of sarcasm. Eveanin casts around desperately for some outside influence to focus on, to help separate her mind from Mordremoth’s.

“Yes…” Trahearne says, and his voice sounds distant and far-off, as if from down a long tunnel. “Strike at the dragon’s mind… through the Dream.” It’s not the Dream, it’s not - Eveanin clings to the thought, to Trahearne’s voice, to the terrifying plan ahead of them. “It can work. And my connection will provide the access you need.”

“The Rata Novans said each Elder Dragon has a weak spot. We just identified Mordremoth’s,” Commander says, sounding confident and sure. Why now? Why now, of all times, to be the stronger person, the one I’ll have to rely on?

“I’m ready,” Trahearne says after a moment. “If I concentrate, I can open a path into the Dream… into Mordremoth’s mind.” That’s where we’re going, not the Dream - we’re going into Mordremoth’s very mind. Trahearne knows. Oh, curse the day I let him send me away. Curse the day I carried that message to Commander. Trahearne goes on; “your minds will make the journey, but your bodies will remain here in the cavern.”

Rytlock growls. “I’ve seen enough metaphysical landscapes lately. I’ll stay behind to keep the Mordrem at bay.”

“I’ll stay too,” Marjory speaks up. “If something goes wrong… or Trahearne isn’t what he seems to be… I’ll be standing by.”

You absolute idiot! Eveanin wants to scream. Now is not the time to go sowing distrust and suspicion! You’re as bad as Mordremoth! Eveanin pauses. No, no call for that, either. ‘Blame will get us nowhere.’ Eveanin glances at Caithe, who hadn’t said a word since Faolain. What she thinks of this whole situation, Eveanin can’t guess.

“I’ll be more useful out here,” Pharlt speaks up, his voice tinged with sadness, as it had been since Creepylaugh’s death. “I don’t… I don’t trust myself in fighting Mordremoth mentally.”

“Alright,” Commander says slowly. She glances through the group of those who hadn’t spoken. “Canach, Braham - you’re with me. Eveanin?”

Eveanin pauses. She wants to say no. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to hold up inside Mordremoth’s mind itself. But if I stay, and I turn, that puts Trahearne in danger. Commander can deal with me if needs be… but those who are staying out might not even notice. She finally nods.

“I swear by the Pale Tree,” Caithe says firmly, “none of you are being taken by the dragon on my watch.” She turns and eyes the tunnel they had come through. “Taking on an Elder Dragon and all its hordes. Just like old times, eh, Rytlock?”

“Exactly like old times,” Rytlock grumbles. “Which means you stay where I can see you.”

Eveanin meets Caithe’s eye and gives a little nod. She doesn’t blame the older sylvari, nor distrust her. And a little trust goes a long way in helping against Mordremoth.

“Whoa - “ Rytlock says suddenly. “Three out of four going into Mordremoth’s mind can already hear its voice? Does anyone else - “

Rytlock’s words dwindle to nothing as the world around Eveanin dissolves into blackness and vines and jungle tendrils and Mordremoth’s voice.

You should not have come here. I am everywhere. I am all.

An answering thought - Only in your mind. And I will reduce your mind to ashes before I’m done! That’s Commander. She’d sounded quite ferocious - angry - vengeful.

You are not me. Eveanin herself feels small and tiny, but the words ring true. You may have your claws in my mind and your corruption in my body, but I still walk free.

Stupid dragon doesn’t even have the ability to see beyond its own domain. I don’t think it’s even capable of corrupting non-plants. That’s Braham, probably rolling his eyes and being all overconfident. And unaware of the fact that this is a conversation, not a private thought.

Your ability to be in control of everything seems greatly lacking when you alone of all dragons find it difficult to control your own minions. Canach’s scathing insults - accurate as always and elaborate to the core - are more along the lines of what Eveanin can identify with. Sharp wit and dry humor are probably Mordremoth’s worst enemies.

Bold words, Mordremoth replies at last, his thoughts full of intent - but empty ones.

The vines and tendrils around her writhe into an arena, a battleground, in a form more familiar to Eveanin’s senses than the empty void of pure mindspace. Eveanin glances around - her allies are all here, all still apparently themselves.

“Thanks to you, my legend ended in failure,” the familiar voice of Eir Stegalkin speaks up, scathingly, disappointedly angry. “Fallen, forgotten, and far from home.”

Eveanin opens her mouth to speak - Eir had always belittled herself and said her time had passed - but Braham beats her to it. “I’m done listening to these lies. You’re not my mother - you’re Mordremoth’s toy!”

Eir snaps her fingers.

“Watch out, she’s calling - “ Eveanin throws magic out in front of her to stop the dire wolf from knocking her over. She turns and sprints away, Garm hot on her heels. A domed barrier, pushing him back. Eveanin pauses, gathers herself, and turns on the wolf, blade in her hands. She doesn’t want to fight Garm - she’d fought beside him too often for that - but she forces herself to as she had for the Mordrem. It’s all fake.

“I can’t pin her down,” Commander calls. “She’s too quick!”

“Focus on Garm!” Braham calls back. “Believe me, if you down him, she’ll come running.”

And, just like that, the other three are at her side, kiting Garm away and staying out of Eir’s range, until he falls prone, injured and unmoving. Eir teleports - since when can Eir teleport? - to his side and kneels down.

Eveanin is shocked to see the wolf healing, flesh knitting together far more quickly than any magic she had ever seen before. Eveanin throws Eir back with magic. “Keep her away from Garm!” she says urgently. An arrow from Commander, charged with magic, forces Eir back even further, and Eveanin darts forward with her blade on fire, spreading it to the ground around them and Garm, in case Eir gets back to him.

Eir is finally incapacitated, standing in place in disoriented confusion.

“She looks normal - is this another trick?” Braham asks suspiciously.

“Look there,” Commander calls, pointing across the arena. “A rift opened. Maybe now we can break Mordremoth’s illusion. Let’s widen the rift.”

Canach and the Commander pull the sides of the glowing rift, forcing it open. A huge sucking starts up, like an unplugged drain, drawing Eir and Garm and all corrupted things to it, peeling a layer off the mindscape.

Where is it going? Where did the rift come from? Is that something Trahearne did? I knew ‘mind’ was too vague of a ‘weakness.’ There’s something else at play here.

“Commander, at the end there…” Braham says slowly. “She seemed like herself again.”

“That’s because we overcame Mordremoth’s illusion,” Commander explains. “And the real Eir would be proud of how you did it.”

Eveanin tries not to think resentful thoughts at the Commander. It will only interfere with the mission.

Suddenly, a new illusion appears - a towering vision of Canach, glaring sullenly at them.

“Who are you supposed to be?” real-Canach asks, sounding disgusted.

“Oh, I’m you,” Blighted Canach says, sounding delighted in a mocking sort of way. So this one might be corrupted, but it’s still Canach… that’s terrifying. “What you were meant to be, what you will be: Mordremoth’s loyal servant, and gladly so.” He’s as bad as Faolain! Eveanin sighs, as the corrupted sylvari goes on. “You are strong, but lack focus. So you seek a master. Mordremoth is that master.”

“Is this a joke?” Canach asks, but Eveanin can feel the fear radiating from him, the knowledge of the grain of truth inside the deception. “My will has always been my own. I seek no master and never have. I am no one’s servant.”

“Oh?” Blighted Canach sneers. “Countess Anise would disagree. Accept the truth: Mordremoth needs servants, and you were born to serve.”

Oh thorns, don’t give in to get away from Anise!

“No,” Canach says. “To redeem myself, I choose to serve. As I choose to kill you now!”

And then, Blighted Canach starts throwing bombs everywhere. Ten times as tough as the real Canach. Eveanin finds herself busy dodging them for some time, while Commander and Canach shout encouragement to each other. Finally, Commander finds another rift, and Blighted Canach disappears.

“I was strong enough to change what I was,” Canach says disdainfully. “I will be strong enough not to become… that. Thank you for trusting my strength, Commander. And for lending me yours.”

“You earned it,” Commander replies. “In my world, a willful comrade is always better than an obedient puppet.”

Eveanin glances around nervously. Braham, then Canach. Just me and Commander left, for Mordremoth to create a specialized attack. Eveanin knows what hers is. Mordremoth had been tormenting her with it since the crash. Now, she just wonders what form it will take.

That form turns out to be Trahearne.

“Heh, well,” Commander says with a strained smile, “if we had any doubt these were illusions before… what do you want?” she asks the shade.

But the corrupted vision ignores Commander and turns toward Eveanin instead. “See how she assumes I am targeted at her,” he says, sounding amused. Eveanin doesn’t reply. She can’t. Humiliation burns through her like a scalding acid. The fake goes on; “who would choose you? I needed a commander, not a student. I needed a friend, not an admirer. An encourager, not a parasite.”

Eveanin can’t look away, can’t think through the sluggish mire surrounding her thoughts to protest the dragon’s words. She isn’t sure she’d want to. What she can’t understand is why nobody else is intervening.

It continues. “But you have learned. You have grown; older and wiser. You helped bring Destiny’s Edge together and kill Zhaitan. You even more than proved your worth to Trahearne, helping him through the days after the crash, when his precious Commander had stayed behind on her little egg hunt. And yet he still did not see your true worth, and sent you away. Mordremoth has shown me your potential. Now, I choose you over the Commander.”

Eveanin exhales slowly - matched by the twisting vines at the edge of the arena - and shudders at the… intimacy the shared breath has. Chosen by Trahearne… at long last… a worthy replacement of the Commander… chosen by Trahearne. Eveanin blinks, her mind a foggy haze. You look different. Corrupted. Mordremoth is… Eveanin blinks again, unsure. Mordremoth was the one that revealed my worth to you in the first place.

“Mordremoth is not the enemy,” Trahearne tells her quietly, stepping over to her. “Do you trust me?”

Eveanin nods slowly, her eyes vacant and staring. Yes. Yes, I trust you, Trahearne. His voice - slightly different from normal - speaks directly into her mind. Now we have to fight Tiffany. She is not the Commander anymore. She can join us as a soldier or die.

But… but she isn’t the Commander anymore. She doesn’t matter. I have no quarrel with her. Eveanin doesn’t know why she is protesting. She just feels tired. She doesn’t want to fight any more.

You fight with your mind, here. Your magic is useless. But your mind is strong. The mindscape is different, now; just Eveanin and Trahearne, with the arena fading off a few feet away. The chaotic, loud voices of Tiffany and Canach and Braham are nearby, but she can’t see them. Stop… stop, it hurts. Stop fighting it. It’s wrong.

The voices get louder, but they are still muted, as if behind a door. She can’t understand what they are saying. You’re fighting the natural order. It’s wrong. It’s against nature. Stop, please, it isn’t working. Trahearne, help, they aren’t listening. Make them stop.

The rest of the arena fades away, and Trahearne vanishes - she is back in the void of the mindspace - but she can feel his mind - powerful and terrifying, and she is glad to obey his orders. He shows her how to reach through the darkness and find a voice; to tune in to what is being said.

Commander needs to be shut down. She’d dominated Trahearne and the Pact for too long.

Eveanin, snap out of it, don’t let Mordremoth win! Commander sounds frantic and panicked. Her voice is out of sync with the rhythm of the mind around her.

But Mordremoth has already won. You’re fighting an unwinnable battle. Mordremoth has shown Trahearne who the true Commander should be. You can still fight under him, but I am his second now.

Commander, Trahearne says, his tone mocking, but aligned with Mordremoth’s pattern perfectly. Not loud and incoherent like a drunken norn. You think I would keep you after your near desertion on that wild egg hunt of yours? Eveanin is loyal. Trahearne’s voice fuzzes out - Eveanin can’t hear him anymore - but he’s still on the same wavelength as Mordremoth. Fight Canach, he tells her, his voice discernible for a moment before going distant and incomprehensible again.

Eveanin reaches, and finds him, and is shocked by Canach’s vehemence. He stabs into her mind with a gut-wrenching, discordant yell. Your greatest vulnerability was wanting to follow the great Firstborn around like a blind puppy? You’re more pathetic than I thought.

Eveanin fires back, aren’t you the one who said you admired him for charging at Mordremoth head-on, when you could barely stand it?

Yes, exactly. I admired him for resisting the dragon, not falling blindly into its embrace like a weak-willed sheep!

Like a vent of fresh air, these words puncture the hazy cloud surrounding Eveanin’s mind, the first sparks of returning reason. Yes… but Mordremoth can’t be all bad. He told Trahearne how valuable I am.

I thought you were smarter than this, Canach snorts, disgusted. That’s not actually Trahearne, that’s a farce a blind dolyak could see through.

True enough; Trahearne joining Mordremoth does sound a bit preposterous… Mordremoth is an Elder Dragon… but isn’t this rather like a Wyld Hunt? Our created purpose is to -

Stop, stop, stop. For one, I don’t have a Wyld Hunt and never did, and for two, do you honestly expect me to hare off on some wild quest like Trahearne did, just because our illustrious Mother - or the Dream - or the Menders - told me to?

Well… I suppose not… but -

But nothing.

Eveanin’s thought-pattern shifts slightly, contrasting to Mordremoth’s for a moment as she realizes: but my Wyld Hunt is to kill Mordremoth.

Like a rushing wind blowing clouds out of the sky, Eveanin returns to reason, and the mindscape returns. She is locked in a battle with Canach, somehow, and Tiffany is fighting Trahearne, and Braham is rushing across the arena to another rift.

Eveanin blinks as she reorients herself. That’s not Trahearne, that’s a corrupted copy; Canach isn’t fighting against the rhythm of nature, he’s maintaining independence; Tiffany is still the Commander, and Eveanin is back to being the overlooked shy one.

She breaks from the battle with Canach as a wave of dizziness sweeps over her; a depressing cloud of inertia hangs over her thoughts, which are sluggish and detail-oriented. She puts a hand to her head as pain threatens to split it open, she feels Mordremoth stabbing lances of pain into her brain, drawing single thoughts into obsessive clarity and detail. Not even full thoughts, or really anything; just the obsessing over nothing that brings on a splitting headache.

And fear, anger, rage - all jumbled together. What if Canach doesn’t realize I’ve snapped out of it and what did you do, I could’ve gone on living forever in that fantasy and then… I just wanted to be accepted, chosen, appreciated.

You can be. Just give in.

“One rift wasn’t enough! There’s got to be another one!” Braham hollers.

Eveanin wavers on the edge, her mind relatively clear - but desire, the happily-ever-after she could have, warring with reality, with sense, with not wanting to live in a fantasy for the rest of her life.

A rift opens at her feet, and Trahearne’s voice - the real Trahearne - speaks urgently into her mind. Mordremoth doesn’t have long left to live. Keep fighting. Eveanin doesn’t know if Trahearne had intended to speak to her, or if those were just his current thoughts, but she sees life again. Mordremoth isn’t everything. Mordremoth is not the world, the all-consuming fabric of the world. This fight isn’t a small pocket rebellion that will be wiped out soon - it’s the victory, it’s the future.

It’s what Trahearne is fighting for, risking his own mind to send her into Mordremoth’s mind and free them all. Victory is inevitable. Giving in is just stupid.

So she reaches down to the rift and pulls, Canach with her, and she feels the last of the dragon’s influence drain away. The corrupted vision of Trahearne slides into the rift as well, and then it snaps closed.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Eveanin says quickly, as Commander and Braham look at her. “I… ouch.”

“I didn’t know you…” Commander stops. She looks slightly lost and confused. “You wanted to be Trahearne’s friend,” she says finally.

Eveanin glances away. “Yeah.” Jealousy, that’s what that had been. Commander is just too nice to say it.

“You know just because he didn’t choose you to be his second doesn’t mean he doesn’t value you as a friend.”

Eveanin shrugs. “Yeah, well… it’s clear to see he thinks the world of you.” Not that this doesn’t sting. The Commander will never see Trahearne as more than a friend. But… “Thanks for snapping me out of that, Canach,” she adds. “I… yeah.”

“Sylvari need to stick together when we have monsters trying to turn us into wooden puppets,” he reminds her.

Eveanin cracks a smile. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll do better next fight.”

#eveanin #trahearne #tiffanycommander #Eveanin is sylvari PC up to joining an Order #she knew Trahearne already before Claw Island #and then he chose Tiffany #good fuel for Mordremoth #Tiffany Commander had no idea though #or Trahearne #also Mordremoth is clueless about love #or it would've used her unrequited crush on Trahearne #also Part II of The Heartrending Mind is coming soon #there's only two parts #and yes the name is a play on 'Hearts and Minds' because why not #Eveanin was with Trahearne in the crash #they helped each other #ALSO EEE #I love writing sylvari turning #helps me visualize how the Call works #also Eveanin is smart #this is also called 'me poking holes in Anet's logic for fun'#and I totally headcanon that Mordremoth's weakness isn't its mind #it's Trahearne #so that's where the thing with the rifts came from #Eveanin is a sweet soul #she kind of resents Commander #but doesn't like want her dead or anything #also that one line of Marjory's #please lady show some sense at least #and Rytlock didn't finish his warning

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