Chapter Ten – Waking Up
"Ser Ellin..." the name escaped Harmony's lips, a quiver in her voice betraying her feelings.
Ellin had served Loghain before the Battle of Denerim, they'd always known this. Lots of Loghain's men had ended up serving the royal couple instead after the blight was done. Most of them hadn't been guilty of anything more than following orders. But by the time the woman had been appointed the Queen's bodyguard, Harmony had forgotten the faces of those that had beaten her bloody.
"Where did you get my name?" Ellin seethed, leaning in so close that Harmony felt spit hit her cheek. The woman yanked down on Harmony's hair so hard it felt like it was about to rip from her scalp.
"A little birdie told me," Harmony grunted, somehow managing to re-summon her veneer of indifference. Ellin rewarded her with a punch to the face and Harmony felt something crunch in her jaw.
One of the guardswoman's colleagues rushed forward to examine the damage. "You went a bit far with that one didn't you?"
Ellin just shrugged and turned away. "Get the healer in then, if you must." The other guard nodded and left the room.
Blood welled in Harmony's mouth and she spat it to the ground. "You know this isn't real, right, Ellin? You know you're not this person anymore."
Clearly angered by Harmony using her name a second time, Ellin spun around and marched back towards her, gauntleted arm swinging back ready to strike again. Harmony flinched, ready for the pain to come. If only her hands weren't tied behind her back, she could defend herself; maybe even beat some sense into her bodyguard.
Then, in that split-second she remembered where she was. She remembered her first time being trapped in the Fade by a demon and the different shapes she'd managed to adopt in order to adapt to her surroundings and find her way out of sloth's web. The rules weren't the same here in the fade. If she didn't want her hands to be bound then they didn't have to be.
The rope seemed to melt off her wrists and she swung her arms up just in time to catch Ellin's next blow before it hit her. Stunned for a moment, Ellin faltered, her mouth gaping open. Harmony took her chance and threw herself at the woman, the full force of her weight causing them both to topple to the ground.
"Think. Think hard. I know you're smarter than this," Harmony growled.
Pinned beneath her, Ellin struggled and tried to roll free. "Enjoy this while it lasts, cur. Loghain will see you hanged."
"Loghain died seven years ago. You are Ser Ellin, my bodyguard. You're a loyal friend and my most trusted protector," Harmony insisted fiercely, thumping her fist against the woman's shoulder.
Ellin frowned in confusion but stopped fighting back.
"I am your queen and your friend. You've saved my life more times than I can count. I know you haven't forgotten."
The woman's face softened. The armor marked with Loghain's sigil melted away, leaving Harmony lying atop a woman in plain clothes. Ellin never looked quite as big as she ought to in plain clothes.
"My Queen." Ellin closed her eyes and a tear escaped down her cheek.
Harmony rolled up to her feet and held a hand out to her bodyguard. "Your friend."
It wasn't necessary for the demon of rage known as Vex to show himself to let his anger be known. His anger rippled through the Fade. It was there in the atmosphere, a howl carried on the wind. Yet it was no more a threat than a stiff breeze. Harmony felt no reason to fear him. Not since realising that he was afraid of what she could do.
It didn't take long for she and Ellin to find a portal and leap through to somewhere different entirely. They were in what looked like a fishing village. Boats bobbed across the water and floated in the air in that way that seemed completely normal until one realised they were dreaming. The houses huddled together amidst olive trees and juniper bushes on a cliff overlooking the water, their brightly painted walls and arched doorways spoke of somewhere far from Ferelden.
"I don't recognise this place. Is it somewhere you remember?" Ellin asked, glancing about at the unfamiliar surroundings.
"It looks a damn sight more Antivan than anywhere I remember," was Harmony's reply as she marched purposefully ahead. She was rapidly losing patience for the fade and its demons, and was ready for an end to these games.
Ellin paused to frown as a school of fish floated through the air right past her head, then hurried to catch up. "You think this is where we'll find Zevran?"
"No, I think this is where we'll find…" she paused as the man whose name was supposed to end that sentence came into view. He was sitting on a jetty with his back to them, a pretty girl at his side and a fishing rod in his hands. "…Sol."
"You," Ellin fumed. Clearly she blamed their current predicament on the man who had led them to the seer's cave. The fact that he was trapped here too had led Harmony to a different conclusion.
Sol glanced over his shoulder, but the face that regarded Ellin and Harmony was younger than the man they knew, less worn around the eyes. He frowned in confusion, not seeming to recognise them at all.
"Friend of yours?" Harmony asked, nodding to the woman beside him.
"My wife." With a smile far warmer than any Harmony had seen him wear before, Sol put an arm around the woman at his side. "Ah, forgive me," he said, turning his focus back to Harmony and Ellin. "Have we met? I usually am good with names and faces, but it seems yours escape me at this time."
"Of course you know us," Ellin snapped, "It's your fault we're stuck here."
Sol's brows rose, then he looked to the scenery around them. "Surely there are much worse places to find oneself than beside the golden sands of Treviso?" Wordlessly, the woman beside him put a hand on his knee and gave him a loving smile. "Forgive me, I promised my lady that I would share the whole afternoon with her. I spend... far too much time away with my work, so this much I owe her. Yes, mi amor?"
The woman smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek in response.
Harmony let out an exhausted sigh. "No. Sorry, Sol. We don't have time for this." Striding forwards, the planted her foot in the woman's back and kicked Sol's 'wife' from the jetty into the water below.
For the briefest moment when she hit the water, her skin flashed purple; a glimpse of the desire demon's true form.
Sol was on his feet in an instant, and the fishing rod in his hand became a sword, which he pressed to Harmony's throat. He didn't seem to find that strange. "Care to explain yourself before I claim your head, wench?" he seethed.
Harmony didn't flinch, though in the corner of her eye she could see Ellin's hands curl into fists. "Where were you, right before you came here, Sol?" she asked him calmly.
"A strange question," his brow furrowed, but he didn't lower his blade. "I was... That is..."
"You were with my friends and I, in the cave where the seer lives," Harmony reminded him.
The truth of it seemed to register with the man, and his mouth gaped open for a brief moment. "I..."
"Do you even have a wife?" she asked, before he could begin to doubt her words.
"Of course I have a..." He paused, and she recognised in his eyes the pain of realising the truth. "Had a wife..." The blade moved away from her throat.
"I'm sorry," Harmony said softly.
"She died in my arms," he said in a quiet voice. "That's not something you just forget."
Behind him, Delight, the desire demon, floated back onto the jetty in her true form, almost naked aside from a few well-placed jewels. As she set foot on the wooden planks, she changed back into the shape of the man's dead wife. Every muscle in Harmony's body tensed as if her entire being were crying out for a fight, but she didn't attack the thing. Not yet, anyway.
"I'm going to get us out of here," Harmony insisted. "Are you with us, Sol?"
The Antivan glanced over his shoulder, the pain in his expression as he saw his lost spouse was achingly familiar to Harmony. "I don't know," he admitted.
"If you choose to remain in the fade, your body will waste away out there in the real world. If you want to live, your only chance is to come with us." Perhaps not as impassioned a plea as she would have given someone who hadn't been sent to hunt Zevran, but it was Harmony's nature to want to save everyone, even Sol.
"I…" He swallowed harshly. "I don't wish to be parted from her a second time."
Sensing an advantage to be pressed, the desire demon draped her arm over the man's shoulder. Sol sagged against the vision from his memories, looking just about ready to melt into the embrace.
Harmony let out a frustrated sigh. "Every second we're in here, our bodies are losing time. I refuse to die with my quest unfinished and I don't have the time to convince the assassin who tried to kill Zevran not to throw his life away. Die here or don't. That's up to you."
As Sol simply shook his head, the next portal appeared past where he stood on the jetty.
"You're a fool," Ellin grunted, her sights already set on that portal. "I took you for a man who put his country before his own selfish fancies."
"Lose the one you love and tell me you wouldn't give anything to be reunited with them." He nodded to Harmony. "The Queen of Hearts knows this. Why else did she travel half of Thedas in search of her King?"
"I didn't settle for an imitation. Neither should you," Harmony argued, giving the Antivan one last pointed look before tugging Ellin towards the portal and hoping for Sol's sake he'd have the sense to follow them through.
When Harmony found herself on the other side with only Ser Ellin beside her, she let out a sigh, but didn't dwell on the matter. She had to focus now on rescuing those who actually wanted to be saved.
The fade portal had brought them before the familiar silhouette of battlements and stone towers stretching up into the sky.
"Does this look like Vigil's Keep to you?" Ellin asked as they passed under its outer gates.
Harmony shrugged. "It looks like the closest thing to the Vigil a demon could manage to copy."
"That's promising, right? Nathaniel's probably in the keep somewhere," her bodyguard surmised.
Through every step she'd taken in the fade, Harmony had mulled over the things the desire demon had said of her companions. One of them would protect you with their dying breath. One has a conscience fraught with guilt over a secret kept from you. The third resents you, deep down.
She knew now that it was Zevran who would protect her with his dying breath. He'd almost said as much before Vex had separated them. Clearly the secret kept from her and the conscience fraught with guilt belonged to Ellin for her part working for Loghain during the blight. That left Nathaniel who still resented her, and there was only one place she would find him.
Ellin started to march toward the entrance to the keep, but Harmony grabbed her by the arm and steered her to a different building. "He's not in the keep," she said flatly.
The bodyguard's brow knit into a frown. "Where would he be if not in the keep?"
"He's in the jail," she answered flatly.
"Why would he be in the jail?"
Harmony sighed and came to a halt outside the entrance to the jail. "Because he's been there for seven years."
Harmony pushed open the door to the place where she'd met Nathaniel for the first time following his father's death. On the day he'd tried to claim her life. On the day she'd claimed his for the wardens.
She had expected that small jail with that one holding cell that sat within the Vigil's grounds, but of course things were never quite as one expected them within the fade. Still, the surprise of finding herself in an entirely different place made her eyebrows rise, and a familiar dread sink to the bottom of her stomach. Because now she found herself in a dungeon, one that she had hoped never to see again; the one in the Arl of Denerim's palace. And when she glanced over her shoulder, Ser Ellin was not behind her.
Ahead, she didn't see Nathaniel as she had expected, but a familiar group of adventurers on their way inside. Namely Morrigan, Zevran, Sten and... she squinted at the woman leading them, and it took a moment for her to recognise her younger self, a fierce expression fixed upon her face.
"Kadan," Sten said softly. "I know your fury is not without reason, but those guards-"
"-Are Howe's men, the same who slaughtered my family!" she heard herself snap as she marched on in, tears shining in her eyes.
Harmony – the real one - blinked. Usually when she thought back on that day she could remember very little, small snippets of details and the rest a blur. Seeing it again made her remember. Anger had taken over that day. An anger unlike anything she'd ever felt before or since. Where she should have used stealth and cunning to make her way to Howe, she used rage and merciless slaughter.
Cautiously she followed along beside the vision of her past, though it soon became apparent that the other Harmony wasn't aware of her. The woman butchered her way past more of the guards, splattered with blood from head to toe, red dripping from her hands and blades.
It was difficult for the real Harmony to see the looks exchanged between Sten and Zevran... even Morrigan. She remembered choosing those companions on purpose, making sure Leliana, Wynne and even Alistair were left behind. She remembered telling Alistair that being caught might damage his chances in the Landsmeet. She had only said that because she couldn't bear the thought of him seeing her bring her vengeance to bear. All of her mercy and compassion had been left at the door of the palace, and she had arrived with nothing in mind but retribution.
"This is how it happened then? This is how my father died?" the sound of Nathaniel's voice over her shoulder made her jump. When she turned to face him, his expression was grim; lips pressed into a thin line.
"His betrayal, losing my parents like that. I..." Harmony sighed and shook her head. "I wasn't any better than him on that day. Seeing myself like that shames me. But I still believe he had to die. I'm sorry, Nathaniel."
"They're moving on," Nathaniel said in an emotionless voice, nodding to where the younger Harmony and her companions were disappearing around a corner of the stone corridor.
"A demon of rage brought you here, Nathaniel. He feeds on your anger. You don't have to give him what he wants." She settled a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to watch this."
The man looked at her with cold eyes. For a moment he said nothing, but she thought she could hear the faintest whisper on the wind, as if some disembodied voice were feeding bitter words to her friend. When it fell silent again, Nathaniel said, "Caring words, Hero. But they only serve to make me wonder what it is you don't want me to see." At that, he shrugged her hand away and moved to follow.
Harmony closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and followed too. The hazy nature of the fade made it take fewer footsteps than it should have done, and it was a mere few seconds before she was standing once again in that room where, to her shame, she had exacted revenge.
She still felt it, that chill in her bones as she looked upon the face of the man who slaughtered her parents. She still felt sickened by the thought that her family had called him friend right up until the day he betrayed them.
"Well, look here. Bryce Cousland's little spitfire, all grown up and still playing the man. I thought Loghain made it clear that your pathetic family is gone and forgotten." Such venom in the words he spoke and the way he glared at the young woman before him. Even now Harmony wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve such scorn.
Instead of looking at the face of the man who had torn her world apart, Harmony kept her gaze fixed on Nathaniel, trying gauge his reaction to the scene unfolding before them. His face softened as he stared at his dead father, and he slowly stepped forwards, aware that his presence would not interfere with the scene unfolding before them.
"You won't forget. Their memory drove me to you," the younger Harmony seethed, the slightest quiver in her voice, hands clenched at her sides and visibly shaking.
"Your parents died on their knees, your brother's corpse rots in Ostagar, and his brat was burned on a scrap heap along with his Antivan whore of a wife. And what's left? A fool husk of a daughter likely to end her days under a rock in the Deep Roads. Even the Wardens are gone. You're the last of nothing. This is pointless. You've lost."
"Were you really so bitter?" Nathaniel asked his father, though of course there was no reaction from the late Arl.
"After this, I'll kill your wife and children, too."
The real Harmony cringed as she heard her ghost say that.
Arl Howe grinned. "Isn't that precious. Is this where I lament the monster I helped create? You're still so very new to this. Shall I show you how it's done? I made your mother kiss my feet as she died. It was the last thing your father saw. Meet my sword and try to change that!"
Only this time, it wasn't Harmony who met his sword, but Nathaniel.
His eyes burned with fury as he ran in, a sword appearing in his hands from thin air. His anger was so strong that it forced the ghost of Rendon Howe to acknowledge him, and the resounding clang of steel echoed in the room as his father blocked the blow.
"How did you get so broken that you were driven to this? Why did you have to drag the rest of us down with you?" He seethed as he continued to attack, blow after furious blow with no pause even to breathe. "What Harmony did to you was better than you deserved."
The blade found Rendon Howe's chest and put an end to the vision of him right there. He crumpled to the floor, clutching his wound.
For a moment the room was silent aside from Nathaniel's heavy panting as he lowered his blade. Harmony settled a hand on his shoulder, knowing the action would bring far more comfort than any words. She could see in his eyes that he was feeling just the way she had once felt. That ending the man had done nothing to ease the pain. The visions of her younger self and her companions had faded now, leaving only two of them to stand over the dying traitor.
"Maker spit on you, I deserved more…" Rendon Howe rasped just as bitterly as Harmony remembered.
Laughter followed the familiar words, but it wasn't Rendon Howe's. It was the sound a rage demon made as it delighted in having found a way to push someone into loosing their fury. Flames appeared around the man Nathaniel had once called father, and the human appearance melted away to reveal the creature of fire and anger. Vex.
"Such delicious ire," his deep voice growled. "It strengthens me."
"Bring out the other demon. Attack me together. Let's finish this now." Harmony snapped. Nathaniel's bow appeared in his hand and he trained it on Vex as she continued, "I'm done with your games. You only play them because you know that you'll lose if you fight fairly."
"Not much incentive to fight fairly," Alistair's voice suddenly purred in her ear. The familiarity made her ache, of course, but she wasn't fooled for a moment. Delight, the demon of desire, had appeared beside her.
Without blinking, without sparing a moment's thought, Harmony's dagger found the hollow of its throat - of Alistair's throat - and struck without mercy. In a flash his skin turned purple, and he dissolved away into the desire demon's true form. "You didn't think I would strike you while you looked like him, but you underestimated me. The real Alistair needs my help. You are in my way, and you're far from convincing."
Harmony pulled her blade free and Delight let out a choked, gurgling noise and then her head tilted right back as she sank to the ground, dead.
Not pausing for a breath, Harmony turned to point her daggers at the Rage demon.
Vex burned white hot for a moment, and then his colour died back down to a more muted shade of orange. "You should not be hasty. I can help you reach your King," he growled.
"You will return my friends to me. Now," Harmony said in that voice nobody liked to argue with, not even a demon.
"As you say," he answered. In a flash, Zevran and Ellin appeared at different sides of the room. Even Sol appeared. Delight was dead now, after all, and there was no ghost of his wife to cling to without her.
Harmony's eyes narrowed at the rage demon. "You don't have anything else I want, creature."
"But you can bring about something that many of my kind want."
Her gut told her she should just kill him; that it was pointless to speak with demons. Yet somehow she couldn't help but ask, "And what is that?"
"The death of Aurelian Titus."
That made her pause. The man she was chasing. The man who was hunting her husband. And apparently there were demons calling for his death as well. "Why would a demon care about something so trivial as the death of a human?"
"Because this human enslaves our kind to serve his own whims." Vex's growl following those words made it clear that the thought was troubling. "Callista brought you into our realm because she wanted to be rid of us. I do not wish you dead, I simply do not wish to die. Allow me to live on in Callista and I will lead you to the one you seek."
"Callista brought me here to save her."
"She gave you no choice in the matter. I am giving you a choice. I merged with Callista at her behest, and my presence here would be fact even had you never met her. You are failing no one by leaving me alive, but if you stay trapped in here, you will never find your husband."
Briefly Harmony locked eyes with Ser Ellin, Nathaniel and Zevran in turn. She already knew their opinions without having to ask, just as she already knew what Alistair would think. It didn't really matter. Coming to Callista had been an act of desperation, of grasping for anything that might show her the way when she had no other leads. Even a deal with a demon was better than being stuck in Rivain with no clue where to find Alistair… Even if Alistair would never forgive her for it.
"You have my word. Send us back, I won't kill you today, " she answered.
Vex seemed to grin. Not a pretty expression. "When you wake, I will lead you to Titus."
The next thing she knew, Harmony's eyes opened to a dank cave lit with the soft glow of the candles that lined its walls. Free at last...
Someone was standing over her. Elven ears came into focus, blond hair and a tattoo across the cheek.
"Rise and shine, my friend. Perhaps you'll recall we have a King to rescue, si?"