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Night falls with the usual assaults on the Pact’s camps, enough blood spilled on both sides to water the entire jungle. Afterwards, when the fighting is over and Iestyn is beginning to catch his breath, he finds himself licking his wounds next to a courtier.
The Nightmare Court’s presence in the campaign against Mordremoth is unspoken knowledge amongst the sylvari of the Pact. Worrying, but not enough of a concern to strain the fragile trust of their non-sylvari allies, who are already on their guard for attacks from within. The Nightmare is palpable in the air to those who can sense it, death-cold compared to the oppressive humidity of the jungle depths, the worst kind of relief. They keep to themselves for the most part, though their camps must be close enough to the Pact’s that they’re able to join the fray when they deem necessary.
Iestyn has already been patched up by a Vigil medic, his wounds deemed superficial. The courtier, on the other hand, is stitching his own wound shut—a vicious gash on his sword arm that Iestyn wouldn’t dream of treating himself if he had other options. He hisses through his teeth with every movement of his needle, his expression contorted in pain, despite the numbing herbs that are available to any combatant in need of them, Vigil or otherwise. When he notices Iestyn looking, his smile is strained but thorned with mocking.
“It’s more painful this way,” the courtier explains. “Pain is what I live for.”
Iestyn scowls, turning his head away to watch the camp return to rest as it always does. The Mordrem won’t be back tonight, so all that’s left is to wait for the next attack. It was like this with Zhaitan as well: so much of fighting is the anticipation of the fight.
“Nothing to say, dreamer? Funny, all the dreamers I’ve ever known have been quite eager to preach at me about the depravity of the life I live.” He laughs, the sound threaded with pain, and lets out a pleased sigh. “It never lasts, of course. You break, or, well… You break.”
Hands balling into fists, Iestyn shuts his eyes. No matter how much he wants to punch this courtier—quite frankly, wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if given the chance—the others in the camp will see it as ally fighting ally, and then they’ll think he’s turned. Even if Iestyn survived that, he can’t deal with the loss of his comrades’ trust. The exhaustion of conversing with a courtier is nothing compared to the exhaustion of this endless fight, his bones weighed down with stone.
“Iestyn,” he says. “If you’re going to talk at me, you might as well use my name.”
The courtier laughs again. When Iestyn looks at him again, his smile is one of delight and surprise. He reaches out and offers a hand, slick and wet with his own blood. Iestyn hesitates, then takes it. The courtier’s grip is bruisingly firm. He doesn’t shake Iestyn’s hand, but pulls it close to press a bloodied kiss to Iestyn’s knuckles before letting go.
“Since you’re so polite,” it doesn’t sound like a compliment in his voice, but another barb of mockery, “you may call me Tanet. I am the Knight of Blades—and I see from your uniform that you must be a member of the Vigil, no? Crusader or Tactician?”
“Crusader,” Iestyn admits, fighting a scowl. He’d been a Tactician in the lead-up to the campaign against Mordremoth, but despite his head for strategy, his superiors don’t trust him enough to rely on his judgement these days. It isn’t technically a demotion, but it still stings. Perhaps he can get a blow in himself. “But before I joined the Vigil, I was part of the Lionguard in Wychmire Swamp.”
Tanet’s hand stills, the needle halfway through his skin. He studies Iestyn, his smile still in place. Mocking, delighted, everything that Iestyn would have expected from a courtier.
“Ah, so you’ve seen my fellows’ work first-hand. Have you visited Twilight Arbor? It’s a great honour to attend a revelry there; I regret that the Grand Duchess has never invited me.”
“I’ve raided it, once or twice.” Iestyn places one hand on the hilt of his sword. He doesn’t intend to fight, but it’s worth reminding Tanet that he isn’t some freshly woken sapling, easy to bend. Tanet’s eyes drop down, appraising and almost appreciative. Then he laughs, shaking his head and turning his gaze back to the wound on his shoulder.
“Perhaps we ought to duel one day. A spar is just the thing to improve your skills, and while I’m sure you’re a capable fighter, we can always learn more about causing pain, can’t we?”
“I wouldn’t want to maim you,” Iestyn replies, half-insincere. “We need as many fighters in this campaign against Mordremoth as we can get, and if ‘Knight of Blades’ isn’t merely an exaggeration…”
“Ah, you wound me enough with only your words, Iestyn. I may return to Caledon Forest at once to nurse my injured pride, you see if I don’t!”
Huffing a reluctant laugh, Iestyn falls silent for several moments, considering. There’s something he’s often wondered about the Nightmare Court having common cause with the Pact, but he never thought he’d have a chance to ask. Tanet is affable enough, and certainly talkative, even if it’s all a front for the sadism that all his ilk share. This may be Iestyn’s only chance to learn even a half-truth.
“Why do you fight Mordremoth?” he asks. “I’ve never understood.”
“I imagine there are many things you don’t understand about us,” Tanet sighs, though his smile has softened rather than faded entirely. He looks almost fond, in the way that human parents look at their children when they ask an obvious question. “Why would we not?”
Iestyn raises his brows, surprised that Tanet even has to ask that. The Nightmare changes people, erodes who they once were, but has it really left him unable to see how an outsider would view their actions?
“Because you both want to corrupt us? Because you hurt and kill the people who don’t join you? What is the Nightmare if not another manifestation of Mordremoth’s control?”
The smile vanishes from Tanet’s face for the first time.
“I don’t know if I was ever as naive as you, even when I first woke from the Dream.” He glances at the wound on his arm, and apparently deems it good enough, sitting up straight to meet Iestyn’s eyes head-on. “The Nightmare Court fights control from without, all the ways that other races have dared to impose their visions onto sylvari. Mordremoth may have created our bodies, Ventari may have created our minds. In the Court, we create ourselves.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds almost noble,” Iestyn mutters doubtfully. He was never captured, thank the Mother Tree, but he heard the stories from his fellow Lionguard—the ones who came back, at least. None of them spoke of creating themselves, but of a hundred types of coercion, each more horrible than the last. The Nightmare is a force, like Mordremoth is a force. He can’t imagine being without the Dream or Ventari’s guidance, but from what he’s heard, the Soundless are closer to Tanet’s ideal of creating themselves. Iestyn will never understand them, but they don’t force it on others, so he can coexist with them peacefully enough.
“Don’t sound like that, dear Iestyn,” Tanet chides. “Are the pleasant thoughts that the Dream blesses you with any truer to your nature than the painful liberation that Nightmare promises?”
Iestyn doesn’t bother answering. By their natures—whatever those may be at their core—they’ll never agree on this matter. If he tells Tanet yes, that he does believe that the Dream’s influence on him is the truth on him, he only opens himself to more mockery from a man he can’t convince. Even without a response, Tanet scoffs, thorned smile back in place.
“Just know that I would rather have my precious Nightmare taken from me and be forced to sing the praises of the Pale Tree for the rest of my life than spend a second obeying the dragon’s voice. If you can believe nothing better of me, believe that.”
Without a trace of the exhaustion that begs Iestyn to get some rest as soon as he can bring himself to walk to his bedroll, Tanet pushes himself to his feet. He pulls a dagger from his belt—using his injured arm—with one smooth motion, still smiling even as pain tugs at his features. He holds it as though he could plunge it into Iestyn’s heart at any moment—then laughs, throwing it into the air and catching it with ease as he gives Iestyn a mocking salute.
“May we meet again, Iestyn. Either in the heat of battle, or else in your nightmares.”
With that said, Tanet turns on his heel and walks into the depths of the forest. No one stops him, though the other sylvari of the Vigil give Iestyn wary looks, as though suspecting his sympathies of lying with the Nightmare. He offers them a shaky smile and drags himself to his feet in turn. No rest for the Mordrem, perhaps, but Iestyn doesn’t have to be on watch until dawn. He can sleep for a few hours, if he’s lucky. Perhaps if fortune smiles on him, he’ll even have pleasant dreams.