PROLOGUE: TO CATCH A SETTING SUN.

Harriana's P.O.V

Harriana Potter ran. The ground beneath her feat, the tickle of dewy grass on bare sole, the slight bounce of loamy soil, made her quick of foot, cutting and carving her way through the condensed woods, dipping and diving, under and over, her course steady and true. In the cusp of night, the grand Yew grove appeared similarly portentous as it did stunning. The Yew tree shadows spread across the ground like leaking ink, rising and morphing, rippling and alive, the dense foliage eating away star and moonlight, lofty and unrelenting, and yet, caught between domineering glooms and ominous instinct, there was a certain sort of security to be found hiding in the dips of the rocks, the unwavering asperity of the trees and the sheer ancient age emanating from every nook and cranny.

Yes, this forest was exceptional. It was terribly, horrendously and grotesquely erroneous, but synchronously, it felt like Harriana had finally come home. No. That was wrong. She wasn't there quite yet, she hadn't come but was coming. Malleable and infinite, like shifting sand. A force of nature. She was lightning and thunder prepared to erupt, darkening the horizon, the storm held at bay. She felt like she was going home, just as one could feel a storm hovering in the air about to slink over the land. Almost there, but not quite. Just as with this forest, not quite virtuous, but not wholly malevolent either. Shifting, morphing, slipping, ebbing and flowing. Everything here was in constant movement and evolution, and yet, everything stayed predictably the same.

The owls lurking between tree branches, precariously watching her as she darted through this sweeping land, the moths humming through the air, fluttering and dancing in the shadows, bouncing from bark to branch, to flower and grass, and even to the crows, off in the distance, cawing and batting their midnight wings through leaf and twig, felt achingly familiar. Yet, they were wrong.

The owls were too alert, even for the embodiment of wisdom, with undue attention restrained upon her every movement, her every breath, the beat of her thrashing heart and scattered mind. They missed nothing. And she knew, simply knew, with their great eyes, so extensive and open, there was something inside, something deep-rooted and astute and beyond good and evil and morals and ambiguity. Something other. The moths that twirled so freely, with their prodigious grey wings and wiggling antennae, shimmered with unfiltered light, green and vivid and boiling and burning, too much, so much in fact that Harriana dared not look directly at one.

The crows in the distance taunted her, she could, perhaps impossibly, hear the beat of their wings, mimicking and mocking the stutter of her heart, pointing out the missed step or faltered leap, their caws nothing but laughter at her failures. The sweet-smelling lilt of lilies, marigolds and roses, flowers that littered this ethereal wood, singing in the air were cloying, suffocating, repugnant, but also welcoming, soothing to her frayed nerves. This land, as odd as it sounded, was at dreadful war with itself, if anything of the like could be possible. It could not decide between being friend or foe, hearth or prison cell, saviour or slayer. But, then again, none of that mattered, not truly, when in front of her, just out of reach, the shadow of her father dipped around another gnarled tree, forcing Harriana to hastily blaze after his phantom.

"Dad, wait, please!"

She cried out for what must have been the hundredth time. Her voice was raw, aching at this point, tight and hoarse. How long had she been screaming for him only to let her roars fall on deaf ears? How long had she been running? How long had she been dashing barefoot around this endless forest? For eternity and yet not for a single moment. It was all so very contradictory. Like these woods. Like many dreams.

Oh, yes, Harriana knew she was dreaming with a throbbing lucidity. She, throughout her life, however short it may have been, or anciently extended, this land made her confused and muddled on even the most simple of facts, had many dreams just as this one. Running, these woods, everything bathed in an eerie green hue. Bone deep familiarity. Countless times she found herself here, all over again, James's back to her, and when she reached out, spoke, called to him, pleaded and begged for her father to look at her, he would run and she would chase. The routine of it felt comforting, if not entirely entrapping. It was a cycle, one she wasn't utterly sure she wanted to break free from.

Most times, Harriana never even saw her father, and she purely wandered this land of jaded shadows and emerald wisps, content in her curiosity and innocent fumblings. Sometimes, James Potter would appear, she would run, he had proved to be too fast for her still juvenile gate and speed, and those dreams ended quickly in her childhood years. Occasionally, as she grew and aged, mastered her own body, magic and mind, they drew on and on and on until she fell to her knees, exhausted. Those times, well, Harriana could tell he was holding back, lagging, daring her closer, almost pleading for her to reach him this one time, silently, but she had always been too sluggish and as if he, this spectre of her father, knew she was still too young, too naive currently, ended the great game as he faded away like green sparks zapping in the wind.

Yet, the drive to reach James Potter, the compulsion, the need to touch him and see his face, just one time, never lessoned. It was a need, not a want. You didn't want air. You didn't want water. You didn't want blood or guts or organs. You needed them. Just as Harriana needed her father to see her, even if but in a dream, and she had never gotten as close as she had that night. She knew if she were to reach out, stretch her arm as far as tendon and joint would let her, strain and grasp, her fingertips would brush the back of James's shirt. He was there, so close. She only needed one more inch. Yet, just as it came to fruition, just as she was about to win this everlasting game of chase, as fingers skimmed cotton, James took another keen turn, disappearing down a rock-strewn incline hiding behind a barrelled tree trunk.

Harriana tried to follow, but the abrupt shift of forgiving grass to craggy rock sent her ankle twisting and before she could blink, she was careening down, smashing, rolling. Nauseatingly, the world around her reeled, distorting together into glimmers of green and in the back of her mind, she could hear her mother screaming once more. When Harriana finally came to a thudding halt at the bottom of the incline, fixed on knee and forearm, she groaned heartily as she pushed herself back to a stand.

"Father?"

Harriana called out once more, hissing at the twinge of pain to her twisted foot as she steadied herself. Silence greeted her. As the change of grass to rock had thrown her, so did this silence. No thrumming crows. No brightly humming moths. No twittering owls. No groaning trees. Nothing but the pounding of her own heart. There was nothing awfully frightening about this new place, no demon or ghost to haunt and taunt her as she sometimes dreamed of in this vast land, but she could feel it. The shift had swung and landed and this, this little opening that led to a blackened cave, felt definitively malicious.

The grass was dead here, withered and dry. The trees curtained them off, almost as if they too were too afraid to venture too near the cave, or stood sentinel to it, guarding and obstructing wanderers such as she. Two brass scones with torches stood on either side of the cave, fire flickering but gone was warmth and life in rich red, replaced by blinding, frigid and biting blue. Unnatural. Magic. Nonetheless, she had found the crows nests, as they perched upon the top lip of the cave, looking like Celtic gargoyles, staring at her with their beady eyes, heads twitching left and right, observing.

Not too far ahead stood the back of her father, right in front of the mouth of the cave, brazenly staring deep into that void. Despite the fire lighting up this clearing in the forest, the cave entrance stayed pitch-black, oily and richly thick. Strangely, Harriana felt the urge to scream at her father bubble up her throat. She wanted to yell at him, order him to run, turn around and leave, to get away from that terrible cave. Yet, her feet stood locked and her mouth clamped shut.

In all honesty, her gaze was not drawn to her father, precariously balancing between the clearing and cave, but to what stood at his back. A large stick, knobbed and winding, but erect and glorious, was pierced upon the ground, upright and proud, in the very middle of the clearing. The wood was ashen, old but strong, decadently grey like smoke. Elder tree wood if Harriana had to guess, and if anyone was to know Elder wood on sight, it would be her, would it not? In the middle, there was a swath of green velvet wrapped tightly, a grip that tied off into two fluttering tendrils, torn. At the end, the branch broke off into swirling twigs, twisting and curving, reminiscent of a tree, rounded and protective of the shimmering orb safely tucked inside its spindly cage.

It was the orb that gave Harriana such hesitance. It was an intense emerald, vivid and brilliant. The same green shade this endless land mimicked, the same flash of Avada Kedavra… The same fuckin' keen tint of her own eyes glaring back at her. Nonetheless, her attention was soon snatched when, after all this time, her father looked back at her from over his shoulder. He smiled at her, truly smiled, lively and sincere and it was all Harriana had ever wanted to see, all she had ever hoped to be given, the love there, shining in his eyes and kink in his lips… Then he took the final step and faded into the bottomless cave and Harriana's heart snapped in two.

"Dad!"

She lurched forward, arm reaching as if she could snatch him back from the darkness she somehow knew she could not, herself, go into. This couldn't be how it ended. This was her dream, was it not? She could will him back, force herself to imagine him once more and she could, just this once, pretend everything in the world was right and just. That was the point of lucid dreaming wasn't it? To control them, morph them to one's own likings and wishes. However, she never got the chance to try as something tall, slender and regal, from the very spot her father had dipped into, pressed against the barrier of cave and clearing.

Slowly, it edged to the very front of the cave, though it dared not surge any further. Languidly, mayhap a little listlessly, Harriana thought it couldn't, and more pressingly, she realised it wasn't an it at all, not a ghost or demon, but a he. A he that was somehow, some inconceivable way, both her father and something else entirely. On the surface, in passing, his features were all James. Onyx hair, proud and refined nose, cattish eyes with arching brows and elegant chin. Yet, they seemed all the more pronounced on this man, and completely wrong in context. James's lovable and wild hair took on a sleek sheen, straight and long, cascading down his robed back and shoulders like a waterfall. James's nose almost seemed noble and snobbish on this man, his cattish playful eyes predatory.

Furthermore, the resemblances, however blurred they were, only enhanced the variances between the two. This being was taller, a head and shoulder above her father, rigid and lithe, imposing. James's friendly and impish aura was washed away, bled out and replaced by something heady and dangerous. Her father's pointy ears, ones she had inherited, attributed to the Potter's… Rumoured proclivities to interbreed with fairies, seemed sharper, more blade than ear. Much like her own, in fact. It was then Harriana comprehended the startling truth. As much as many people would say she looked like her father, the spit of James Potter, if the very same people were to see her and this being standing side by side, it would be him she would be the reflection of, and James nothing but a poor mimicry of the two. For some unknown reason, that thought both hurt as it did frighten her.

Perhaps because Harriana did not think this being was a man at all, no mere mortal. He couldn't be. She could almost feel him in the air, old and unbending, pushing against her own essence, testing. He was old, so very, very old, and powerful… And trapped. Yes, he was as stuck as she was. With the knowledge that he was stranded on the other side of the cave, bravery, and perhaps a touch of arrogance on her part, she was a Gryffindor after all, gave Harriana the ability to straighten out under his steadfast stare, chin tilting up proudly, daringly taking a step closer, voice rushing back to her throat.

"Who are you?"

His head cantered to the side a fraction, intrigued and curious with something glittering in the depths of his dark obsidian eyes. Pride. He nearly looked proud of her. He smiled at her, that same James warmth lurking in the burrow of his lips, just a hint, and then he spoke.

"Did you not call for me?"

It was a voice that wasn't a voice at all. It sounded like hurricane wind carrying rustling leaves and sea salt spray from a lapping tide. The language itself was foreign to anything Harriana had heard before, lilting and velvety, almost song like and somehow, Harriana understood every single word of it, and so much more, pushed to the back of her mind, hidden or forgotten, perhaps. How did she know a language she had, or so she thought, never heard before? How did one have a voice that wasn't a voice at all? These were fanciful questions, ones that often-plagued people when they dreamt, and Harriana was not immune to such frivolities. Still, she pushed through the fog swarming her, jumbling her, and took another step closer.

"Where's James Potter?"

He went to take a step, Harriana knew he did, even if he didn't move, but something stopped him and Harriana's half-arsed guess solidified in her mind. He really was entombed in that cave. Nevertheless, he lifted his arms, his robe sleeves falling down like wings, baring himself open invitingly, and that smile never dropped from his lips.

"Here."

Harry frowned.

"I-… I don't understand."

Yes, this being and James bared an uncanny resemblance, and true, in the light of day, she may appear more like this being in front of her than her father, but there was a dense difference between the two. Seeing her unfiltered confusion, the beings arms dropped but his grin only grew.

"The drop can become the ocean, but the ocean cannot become the drop."

Harriana shook her head almost violently.

"I want my father."

It was almost, very nearly, a childish, impertinent demand. Like a toddler screaming for their blanky. The beings smile shattered and something rapacious flittered across his face. Right. Well. He wasn't used to taking orders, Harriana surmised. He also seemed done with submitting to her wistful confusion.

"He is me as much as I am him. Harriana… Remember."

She felt him, not the physical body, but the soul, his aura, his essence, smash against her own fervidly and suddenly, the barriers in her mind were crumbling and it was then Harriana saw, on the back of her eyelids, a cup… A diadem… A diary… One after the other after another until she saw those damned red eyes and ashen skin and hissing curses rang in her ears. Her own voice mirrored his, ancient and husky.

"A horcrux…"

Suddenly, Harriana remembered it all. She wasn't dreaming. She hadn't been dreaming for a while now. This wasn't in her mind, and this being wasn't some subconscious message she had been trying to tell herself. She was here, in this otherworld, wandering, searching, learning. She remembered the war, the blood and death and fighting, so many souls gone, lost. Too many. Friends, enemies, family… She ached for everyone of them, every loss another wound that would never fully heal.

She remembered being a Horcrux herself, something ill and malformed inside her, invading and taking until finally, she had faced her own demon and slain Voldemort and that corrupt parasite, Tom's shard of soul, went into the sweet embrace of death with him and she was finally free… But the freedom hadn't lasted long.

She remembered the years after the war, that saccharine time of peace and healing, the contented period that followed as the wizarding world pieced itself together with crude stitches. That hadn't lasted long either, not for Harriana. She remembered Hermione complaining about a wrinkle as she stretched and prodded her skin in the mirror. She remembered Ron joking about a grey hair in his beard… She remembered staring into her own mirror, still fiercely small, still pale and youthful and innocently rosy cheeked… Still sixteen and unchanged, even as her friends continued to whither and dry like lush plants lost in the desert.

Harriana remembered the moniker they thrust upon her, Master of Death. Oh, the irony of all. How could she be a master of such a thing when it was she who would never get to face it? No one knew how she had gained immortality, though many had their own personal theories. Some said it was because she had united the Deathly Hallows, but Harriana came to refute that idea later on. The tale had never been about immortality or escaping death, but how everyone had to eventually embrace it. Some thought it was due to her untiring sacrifice that day, how readily she had forfeited herself for the betterment of others, and this was simply a reward. Harriana hated that idea even more. This, immortality, was no reward, it was a curse. Some said it was due to her… Exotic blood. Either or, the end result had not change. She couldn't reverse it and slowly but surely, she lost it all.

Harriana remembered Ron dying young, at fifty, after his Auror mission had gone wrong. She had kicked and screamed at his grave-stone, begging any and all deities to just let her rest, to bring him back. She remembered Hermione dying older, happier, grey and wrinkled and well-lived, surrounded by her children and grandchildren and still, even then, at her best friends death bed, almost like a sick joke, Harriana had stood at her side, holding her hand as she passed from this life to the next, still young and untouched, and imagining what it was like to take that last breath. Soon, they all followed. Luna. Neville. Shacklebolt. Draco. Pansy. Seamus. George. Ginny… Teddy. They had all travelled the path she could not walk down, all going to the land she could not follow.

Merlin, she had tried. People had given her ample opportunity. Stabbed. Hung. Beheaded. Immolated. Nothing had worked. For a moment, she would fade and then she would blink awake, whole and untouched, and then, the fading stopped all together and soon, even that was taken from her. Wars came and went. Harriana did what she did best, she fought, and she protected but all those she loved were striped from her. Immortality was good in theory, in practice, not so much. People weren't meant for this life, they weren't meant to be infinite in a limited world. It created a disconnect, the now and future inconceivable and inconsequential.

Time began to mean so little to her. What was a century but a long nap? What was a decade spent reading? Why form new friends when you knew, one day, sometime soon, in a blink of an eye, they too would fade and you would be left? People became something to watch but not interact with. Food turned to ash on her tongue. Drink twisted bitterly. Everything, the birds, the world, the people, meant nothing because, really, there was no end and everyone… Everyone should have an ending. It was the way of life and with it gone, so was life out of reach too.

Harriana had tried valiantly to fight that apathy and divide that had threatened to devour her. She remembered staying, keeping watch of her friends children, and their children, and theirs, teaching old magic soon lost, listening to their own difficulties, but it became too much. They all followed their parents, they grew, as they should, and they died. Over and over and over, the circle kept spinning. Rapidly, Harriana could no longer see Hermione or Ron, or Luna and Neville, or anyone in their descendants. They were lost wholly and truly, ate by genetics and time. That… That had been the killing blow, the straw that broke her back.

Harriana was sure it was then she began to isolate herself. Her trips and journeys took longer, wandering from land to land until when she eventually got back to one place, everything was irrevocably changed. One day, everything was gone and there she fuckin' stood, sixteen and unmoved by life's hand. She no longer felt like a person, a sentient being, but a relic of a time long lost. So, she took her last journey and she left. There was one last hope… The Veil. Like her dear Sirius Black so long ago, she slipped between the folds.

Only, she had not seen her friends again as she had wished. She did not see her parent. No one was there to great her finally. She had come here, where her dreams took her each night and slowly, as time passed, she had forgotten, the fog of this land heavy and tempting and she became convinced she was dreaming. Perhaps she was, in a way. It was easy to forget in this place. Yet, everything here was new and brilliant and shining and Harriana once again began to wander. She saw them, the ghosts, the wisps, even the demons that lurked in the shadowed corners.

It was here she found a home. It was here where beings were like her, unchanging and un-aging and they wouldn't fade from her straining fingers. Dreams became memories of other people, old, dead people she could visit. Societies lost, ages gone, secrets… So many secrets to find and listen to like forgotten songs with the tune still humming in the air. And then, like her dreams in the wizarding world, James Potter would come, and she would chase and around and around they would go… Until today.

The being sparked at her accusation, but seemed pleased she remembered, even if it was in fractured pieces and jarring images.

"No, not so rudimental. Lesser? Yes. A shard of me, a slither, a drop of essence cast out into the void to take form and thought upon itself. His memories are mine. His feelings, thoughts, life, all mine, and yet, mine were not his. My shadow pitched to freedom which was out of my own grasp. Ironic, in a tragic way, that it was a deer that set us both on our life's path, in this world and the other."

Harriana turned a new appreciative eye upon the man in front of her. Were they the same, him and she? They had the same ears, the same features, but he was older, so much older and stronger, but caged. She knew you couldn't trust all wisps and beings in this land, for some lied and schemed and begged audience with trinkets and promises sealed in blood. Yours most often than not. However, he didn't seem like them, those demons who wore friends faces and heckled her. He also seemed too forthright, as if this, as momentous as it was, was small in comparison to what he was really hiding, hoping the shade of this admission would conceal it from her gaze. Everyone, even he she would guess, hid things. So, how far could she trust a single thing he said, even if she detected no outright lie caped in between his words? Harriana, decidedly, did not like these games of words and hidden meaning and in true Harriana fashion, cut through the bullshit.

"Why am I here?"

If what he truly said was, well, true, and James Potter had been some facsimile fracture of himself cast into the otherworld, she still highly doubted he was here for a family reunion. This being had led her here, after all. If everything was a lie, then what had changed? He was here, she was here, and he obviously wanted something. Likely something she wasn't all too willing to give.

"You've grown stronger, wiser. You've earnt your title and heritage. The veil is failing, the rifts will weaken the barrier further and so, I can reach you now. The time for the People to return is nearly upon us. It is time for you to finally come home and stand beside your brethren."

Brethren. The People. Harriana didn't rightly like those blanketed terms. Her brethren were gone to everlasting rest, her Hermione and Ron, and she had no people left. Additionally, she never had, and she never would, enjoy people telling her what she should or shouldn't do, who or what she was. If anything, she was the maker of her own destiny, even if it was the pathetic destiny to wander alone in this land caught between death and dream.

"I know who I am."

He was back to smiling and despite intrinsically knowing this man was prehistoric compared even to her, ten times more practiced and prevailing, she had the sudden urge to hit him.

"That's never really been true, has it? One need only look upon your ears to see just that. What was it they called it in the other world? Blood of the fairy? How primitive and derogatory."

Her jaw clenched. Unbiddenly, she remembered the derisions over her life, her ears always bearing the brunt, though, her small height took a few hits now and again. Back then, she had always been hiding, hats, corners, trying to blend in. She was just like them, her friends, just another face in the crowd and then the immortality came and there was no more running from the fact that she was different. Perhaps that had not changed, she was here, was she not, still running? Nonetheless, she remembered the acceptance too, how Ron overlooked it completely, her difference, as if it did not matter, right to the very end. In that way, she was still one of them and always would be. Moreover, his soft prod at a sore spot of hers showed her that, no doubt about it, he was definitely probing around in her mind, wreaking forth things best forgotten. She would not be goaded.

"My… Genetic quirks have no baring, in this land or any other. Furthermore, I am home."

Now who was the one who was lying?

"Not yet, but you will be."

It sounded both like a humble promise and a threat. So far, he had been dodging all of her question, but then she found the right one.

"What are you?"

He turned whimsical and incompatibly severe and unforgiving.

"A guide… Fortune… Death. Many names and many faces, most lost to our people now."

There it was again. Our people. Were there more of them, others like them? Where were they? Did they too traverse this land morphed by imagination and concealed mysteries? Despite the cautionary feeling of this being, even if this was all a falsehood, the prospect that there were more beings like her around, the possibilities that brought, the idea that she wouldn't be so fuckin' alone again, never again, felt too good to ignore.

"Where are they? Can I see them? Are they here? When-"

The air around them shook, the earth beneath her feet trembled and through the silence, cutting her words to shreds, was an almighty rip as if the universe itself had been torn asunder. Harriana braced herself, feet and shoulders squaring, subconsciously edging towards the staff beside her, gaze shooting to the sky above. The sky… There, right there, was a tear, the light emanating from it blinding and hot, orange and strange and so very, utterly wrong. Whatever was happening was immense and significant enough to rush the man into speedy order as he levelled Harriana with a severe look.

"Our time has been cut short. I must act before the others do. You have a long and arduous journey before you… Follow your heart and keep true to your soul, Ashalan, and we shall soon meet upon Elvhenan's golden sea."

Harriana thought she could hear it, that rip, hear its song and tune and it was something awful, bloody, desperate. Like a death rattle mixed with war drums. The man barked at her.

"Take the staff. Now!"

This was bad. Wrong. A Mistake. That hole shouldn't be there. There should never be a wound in this place. The wisps, those peaceful beings she called friends, who took safety, purpose and heart from compassion and knowledge and peace, they were… Oh no. Danger. This man might have lied to her, he might be something else entirely, this may all be a game and he, nothing but a demon sent to torment her, but he was right. She needed a weapon and she needed to move, she needed to protect them, her wisps. Her hand shot out, but before she could fully grasp the long staff, the man spoke up on last time.

"Beware the wolf."

Harriana, whether it be the resemblance of her father, or the dire tone of his voice, took the warning to heart and shot him a grin as she nodded. Then, she grabbed the staff, heaved it free from the dirt, and disappeared with a pop. When she landed, she was in the far reaches of this plain, by the shadowed canyons where the demons liked to lurk and hunt and feast. At her feet was a woman. An actual, real life mortal woman. Harriana kept a tight grip on the staff as she bent on her haunches, running a hand down her soot-stricken face to her neck, pressing into the tender flesh. Her heartbeat was faltering, dying. The woman blinked awake, cracked lips parting as she gasped, hand coming up shakily to grab Harriana's own in undiluted fear.

"It's okay. It's over. Let go."

There was nothing Harriana could do but ease the passage and soak the womans pain into herself, so she could pass peacefully. This land wasn't meant for muggles or mortals. The woman was dead as soon as she got here, however that may have been. Likely by that fuckin' hole in the sky. With a groaning sigh, the woman was gone, her hand slacking. Suddenly, Harriana's palm burned, searing hot pain shooting up her arm, zagging down her spine and Harriana howled as she ripped her hand free, huddling over it, hissing in Parseltongue. Eventually, the pain lessoned enough for Harriana to unlock her muscles, unclench her feet and pry the limb away from the sanctity of her chest. What met her was a sight Harriana did not wish to see. There, in the middle of her palm was a tear, a green light bursting forth, etching across her palm, a reflection of the rip in the sky. She could feel it pulsate sickeningly, growing, pounding against her.

Hustling to her feet, the pain in her hand still immense and heartedly disconcerting, but, well, when did her luck ever pull through as the sound of scuttling from behind her echoed out, like a thousand feet tapping on sand. The body of the woman… It had drawn attention. Glancing behind her, Harriana was proven right.

"Bloody hell."

Harriana, once again, ran. Acromantula, or the embodiment of fear in this land, demons, spiders, huge and fat and swollen with sharp knobbly legs, were scurrying out from the damp alcoves in force, ravenous and on the hunt, drawn in from the smell of blood from the woman. Harriana pushed harder, urging herself to dart faster, strides long and balanced, hopping from perch to rock to indent on rocky pillars. However, the torturous pain in her hand, the odd weight of a long staff in the other, threw her off balance, slowed her down. Coming to a dead-end, the only way was up and so, Harriana climbed and scrambled up the loose rockface of a wide cliff. Her left hand gave out, fingers spasming from the pain and she slipped further down, swearing profusely as a rather enthusiastic demon lunged forth, nipping at the heel of her dust covered feet.

She went to swing the staff around, perhaps clobber the damned thing in the head, when on whim, the orb flashed red and shot out a burst of light at the spider readying to swipe once more. The thing screeched, high pitched and wailing as it curled its fury legs into its distended abdomen, bouncing down the rockface, hurtling through other spiders scuttling up. The staff… It was like a wand.

Harriana didn't have much time to contemplate this fact when she began climbing once more, the spiders hot on her trail. Nearing the top, feeling and hearing the hungry squawks of the plague behind her, was when Harriana finally saw it. Standing at the very top of the cliff was a figure, swathed in golden light, sunbeams and molten gold, reaching a hand down towards her. Harriana went to reach out, feeling hope and wisdom emanate from the wisp, but she was still too far down. A fang skimmed the bare skin of her calf.

Harriana pushed back, jammed the edge of the staff deep into the rockface and with a shout, flung herself up and out, away from the face, pulling the staff free last minute to take with her. For a moment, she was airborne, flying, reaching, that green light from the mark on her hand bursting as the golden woman dived forward. Fingers brushed fingers, the magic in the air condensing when contact struck, slithering between the layers of her skin, through her veins, scouring her bones, and then the mark on her hand exploded into shamrock light and the world ruptured.

Everything swirled, blending, changed and morphed, flaring bright red, grey and green, meshing and fighting and all Harriana was sure of in that moment, when she couldn't tell you where she began or ended, where north or south was, was the sudden feeling of rock, solid and flat, beneath her feet and voices crying out.

"Did you see that?"

"A woman… Elf?"

"Quick, healer, over here!"

But Harriana was collapsing, falling, darkening and for the first time in a long, long time, she was gone.


What is this? Where did it come from and where the hell will it go? Your guess is as good as mine! This little plot bunny hopped into my head when, three years too late, I began to play dragon age inquisition and as most, fell in love with the bold egg who back stabs you lol. I thought it would be fun to explore it, so here it is! I hope you found some enjoy from this madness and are looking forward to the absolute insanity to come.

TAGS: Fem!Harry, Inquisitor!Harry, Elf!Harry, MoD!Harry, Dragon Age Elven Race/culture exploration, Deep dive into Elven lore and mythology. (May extend list later in fic as we progress.)

Relationships: Fem!Harry/Solas, Iron Bull/Dorian, Krem/Bard, Sera/Vivienne.

As always, if you liked this, please drop a review, they let me know this isn't just plugging up space XD. Until next time, have a lovely day!