It has occurred to me that I really have no idea why Dilaf had to catfish Hrathen like that. Was this on Wyrn’s order, or was Dilaf just... havin’ fun? Does he have fun anymore? If I’m understanding the situation correctly, Hrathen was just there to serve as a distraction, and the invasion was always going to happen, so I don’t know why Dilaf was going on about his victory or whatever, like messing with Hrathen had any bearing on the outcome.
I don’t know, there are a lot of things in this book that don’t make any sense to me when I think about them, I really just wanted to frame that whole bizarre situation as Hrathen getting catfished by this exotic 20-something little twink, only to find out that he’s actually his old septuagenarian headmaster from Bone School.
Which naturally leads into the question of how dedicated Dilaf was to keeping his cover, because you can’t tell me that the hroden/odiv (H/o?) relationship dynamic doesn’t go there.