Chapter Eleven - Dreadnought
The first thing Harmony did when she woke up was make her way out of the cave. Yes, there were decisions to make. Yes, they needed to make sure Vex held up his end of the bargain. Harmony couldn't worry about that just then; she needed fresh air. She needed to feel real sunlight on her skin, real wind in her hair. She needed to know this was real.
What she didn't need, was to see the ship that had brought them here disappearing into the horizon.
She hadn't realised Ser Ellin had followed her out of the cave until she heard a voice over her shoulder exclaim, "Oh, Maker's balls..."
Harmony was too tired to be shocked to hear her bodyguard swear for the first time. "Sol! Get out here," she bellowed into the cave, hearing the sound bounce from wall to wall after she'd made it.
In a moment, Zevran, Nathaniel and Sol had joined the ladies outside where the longboat was tied up. The fact that Sol seemed unconcerned about his ship's departure told her that it had all been a part of the man's plan - and Sol was certainly the sort of man to always have a plan.
"I promised I would bring you to the seer and I did. I said nothing about bringing you back again," he said, a charming smile on his lips that Harmony knew better than to trust.
"And which part of stranding yourself here with an angered Hero of Ferelden seemed like a smart move to you?" Nathaniel scoffed.
Sol raised an eyebrow. "Stranded? Just how do you think the Seer survives here if there's no way out of that cave, hmm? This is where she conducts her business, not where she lives."
Harmony frowned. "It's still odd that you elected to stay with us."
"Not really," Zevran interjected. "It is quite simple really. He doesn't want to lose track of me."
Suddenly Sol was shoved back against the rocky cliff, with little regard for whether or not the jagged rocks were hurting him, one of Harmony's blades rested against the hollow of his throat, but she didn't kill him. He must have expected that she wouldn't, since his reactions were usually much too fast for her to be able to pin him so easily.
"Is that your game then? Follow us until this business is done and then make your move for Zevran? You have to know I'm not going to give him up without a fight."
His mouth twitched. "And won't that be an interesting day, Queen of Hearts?"
Harmony's eyes narrowed. "Very well then, since you're already committed to this, let's make a deal..."
"Now you're thinking like an Antivan," he murmured with a smirk.
"Give me your loyalty. For now, at least. Help me on my quest and I'll see that you don't get left behind or forgotten. We'll trust each other until King Alistair is safe, and then we'll settle the matter of the bounty on Zevran's head. Is that fair?"
He was silent for a moment as he pondered that. "It certainly keeps him in my sights." He glanced to Zevran, then his lip twitched and he offered his hand out to Harmony. "Very well, my Queen. I swear my oath of loyalty to you until your King is saved from whatever perils he faces. I am your man, without reservation, this I swear." He clasped a hand across his heart and sank into a little bow.
"All of this is strangely familiar," Zevran chuckled, oddly chipper despite the fact Harmony had done nothing yet to save him from the man who wanted to claim his head.
"Your Majesty, wouldn't you rather I just chained him up and dragged him along with us?" Ellin sighed.
Zevran grinned widely. "Now that is my kind of party," he laughed.
Still not feeling her best after their expulsion from the fade, Harmony pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ser Ellin, we do it my way for now. Antivans, stop talking please. Everyone, back in the cave, we have an abomination to talk to."
Inside, Callista was sitting cross-legged on the cave floor, drawing some kind of glyph into the dirt with a stick. As the Queen of Ferelden and her party stepped back inside, the seer raised her head, looking older somehow and less human, though Harmony couldn't quite put her finger on what it was that made her seem different.
Unsure if it would be Callista herself or the rage demon, Vex, in control, Harmony said nothing, just came to a halt once her shadow crossed over the strange symbols on the ground.
"Harmony Queen," the seer said in quiet greeting, briefly glancing up through the curtain of dreadlocks. "I suppose I was wrong to force you into the fade. I never thought you the sort to make a deal with a demon."
Harmony arched an eyebrow. "My palm never told you that?"
Turning her attention back to drawing the shapes in the dirt, she "It told me you will do whatever you think necessary to achieve your goal. I thought that meant you would free yourself from the Fade no matter what, not that you would-"
"What? Betray you?" Harmony snapped. "You never asked for my help, you forced my friends and I into being trapped by demons. I did what I could to free myself, and now I'm doing what I can to find my husband." She paused for a breath, folding her arms across her chest. "Let me talk to Vex."
Suddenly Callista's voice was deep and rumbly, a slight glow of magic coming to her eyes. "I am in control now. I need not her permission."
The hint of fury in his voice made her shiver, but she didn't let it show. "Yes, yes. You're very angry and terrifying. Now… you said you'll lead us to him. So lead. Anything funny, my bodyguard snaps your host's neck. Sound like a plan?"
As if on cue, Ser Ellin stepped forward, idly cracking the joints in her knuckles. "Would you like this one chained up? Surely we can't trust her… him… it?"
"My dear, this is a most interesting new obsession of yours," Harmony heard Zevran chuckle from somewhere over her shoulder. In her peripheral vision she could see Ser Ellin blushing furiously, but didn't take her eyes off Vex.
"Chains aren't going to do much to this one," she pointed out. "Not normal ones, anyhow. We'll keep our blades at the ready and we'll be vigilant." Looking to the possessed seer, she adopted a more commanding tone, and said, "Gather what you need. We leave the moment you're ready."
The back of the cave led out to a sheltered village filled with round huts whose roofs were covered with palm leaves. There, they were able to trade for supplies - getting what they needed at a significant discount, since the revered seer was at their side. Everyone who saw her seemed to notice the change in her. They stilled for a moment as they sensed that something ineffable was amiss, but they were unable to do anything other than pretend all was normal.
As it turned out, the lack of Sol's ship didn't matter. Vex was certain that they needed to head for Rivain's north shore - a journey that would take weeks by sea, but only days on foot. He was silent thus far about what they would find when they got there, but Harmony had no choice but to trust that their goals were aligned for the moment. Even if Vex was lying about being an enemy of Aurelian Titus, even if he was leading them into some sort of trap, she had to at least figure that it would bring her closer to Alistair, and trust that she and her friends would be able to fight their way out of whatever trouble they found.
It took longer than Harmony would have liked to get moving. The seer was an integral part of the small village, and had duties to attend to before leaving it - weaving protection spells and doing what she could for the sick and the injured. By the time they set off in a canvas-roofed wagon drawn by two oxen, the sun was setting, turning the sky a deep orange the likes of which Harmony had never seen in the south.
The first of the evening stars were twinkling above them as they set out. Ser Ellin insisted on driving, with Zevran sitting beside her. His eyes never missed a thing, and Harmony trusted him to react at the first sign of trouble. Beneath the wagon's canvas roof, Callista seemed to sleep, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that Vex had let her body become dormant so that it would be fully rested for when he needed it. Either way, none of the others were ready to relax around her… it… yet. Sol sat across from the seer, sharpening his blade with a whetstone, barely taking his eyes off the abomination.
Perhaps Harmony didn't trust Sol yet, but she could at least trust that he shared the same instinct for self-preservation, and would holler if anything needed their immediate attention. As such, she sat on the back of the wagon with Nathaniel, watching Callista's village shrink into the distance behind them.
A person who had never been trapped in the fade might have found it strange to feel so tired having slept all day, but Harmony had been through this before; the first time in the Circle of Magi, and the second in the Black Marsh. Neither had been an experience she'd wanted to repeat, but just like those times, she'd made it through alive.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked her friend softly as it occurred to her that Nathaniel hadn't said much since they'd escaped the Fade. "It can't have been easy seeing your father's last moments."
He heaved a tired sigh. "It wasn't… but it helped, strangely. I feel even more foolish for what I said the day you recruited me, but… I don't think I can regret the path it put me on. The path you put me on."
"I'm so grateful you followed me. Even to the other side of Thedas." Her hand settled on his forearm and squeezed. "Even when…" She glanced over her shoulder to where Callista lay inside the wagon, letting the sentence die on her tongue.
"Even when you're not sure you're doing the right thing," he sighed, scratching the top of his head.
"You've been at this long enough, friend. You were there when we let the Architect live. It's not always as simple as finding the monsters and killing them."
Nathaniel nodded. "It's never as simple as that. Who knows if she'd have been able to help us if you'd freed her of both demons? Perhaps it wasn't the right choice, but it was the best choice. I'm through doubting you, Commander."
"I thought we were calling you that from now on?" she half-chuckled.
He shrugged. "Not until we're back in Ferelden. For now, I follow you. Until the end, wherever that may take us."
From somewhere, she wasn't sure how, she managed to find her smile. "Until the end," she repeated. There was something about Nathaniel's presence that she found so calming now, after all they'd been through. Never saying more than he needed to, never slapping a cheery face on and pretending everything was going to be fine, but always believing in her, in what she could do. She needed that, she realized now. More than ever, as lost as she had felt since leaving the Fade.
The ghost of a smile came to Nathaniel's lips. "You should get some sleep, Harmony."
"You should get some sleep, Harmony…" Alistair urged, as he found her sitting on a rock at the edge of their camp, staring out to space, her arms wrapped around her waist as she gently rocked herself back and forth. For a moment he reached out to rub her back, then tentatively snatched it away again.
It had been two nights since leaving the Circle of Magi, and Harmony had yet to get a full night of sleep. When she did drift off, it was involuntarily, her eyes closing without her consent. She would wake in a moment of panic shortly afterward, gasping for air and straining for a hold in the waking world. It was difficult to trust to sleep after all the sloth demon had shown them, after struggling so hard to escape, after seeing some of the mages remain trapped there forever.
"I know," she sighed. "It's just…"
He puffed up his cheeks, then clasped his hands together, fingers twitching awkwardly. "Did the demon show you your parents?" he asked in a quiet voice.
"No," she murmured. "I saw Duncan." That made Alistair's eyes widen, which in turn made Harmony cringe. "I had to kill him, I'm sorry."
"Heyyy, no, no, no. That's not your fault," he told her. "I know it was a demon, not really him. You did what you had to do."
She didn't know him well yet - an overheard rumour about the Circle of Magi had brought them there first after they'd left Lothering - barely a matter of weeks since they'd met. But already she was beginning to trust him, and she had certainly had time to figure out what Duncan had meant to him. "I think they knew the memory of my parents was too fresh, that I would see through it too easily. So it was Duncan instead, trying to convince me everything was all right." With a self-deprecating half-laugh, she added, "I suppose its sad that I couldn't fall for that lie, no matter how much I wanted it to be true.
Alistair was silent for a moment after that. He sucked in an uneasy breath and didn't say a word, just sat down on the rock beside her.
"Do you want to talk about Duncan?" she asked.
"You don't have to do that. I know you didn't know him as long as I did," he answered, his gaze drifting up to a clear night sky. She easily recognized his expression as a brave face to cover a deep hurt. It was one she'd worn almost every day since losing her parents.
"I just… thought you might want to talk…"
Alistair's expression softened. "Well if we aren't going to sleep, I suppose we might as well talk about something."
"We?" Harmony asked with a half-smile.
"We Wardens have to stick together, right?" he answered, feigning a dramatic sigh as he put an arm around her shoulder.
As Harmony sagged into him, he began to tell her about Duncan. How they'd met during a tourney held to honour the Grey Wardens, how Duncan had seen that Alistair was unhappy and recruited him in spite of the Grand Cleric's protests. How he hoped to hold a funeral for the man who had saved him from a life of mage wrangling and lyrium addiction once the blight was behind them.
There was something about the sound of his voice that soothed her, that allowed her to relax enough that she could find her rest. Before long she'd fallen asleep against his shoulder, too far gone to even stir as he hefted her up in his arms and carried her back to her tent.
They rode through the night, taking turns to drive and keep watch, only dozing when time allowed. There was little Harmony could discern about the landscape around them, just shadows in the moonlight and the vague lines of the road. As hot as Rivain could become, she knew they would make better time riding through the night and the early morning, and stopping to rest the oxen during the day when the sun was at its highest.
By the time they did pull over to rest in the shade beneath a large enough tree, Harmony was too tired to notice much. Sandwiched safely between Ser Ellin and the wagon's inner wall, she managed to close her eyes and let herself sleep, for a while at least.
It wasn't until she woke that she was able to appreciate how very different to what she'd known back in Ferelden the landscape around them was. Outside Highever and Amaranthine, all was deep green and speckled with damp mud for as far as the eye could see. Here the world was orange and dusty, olive trees clinging together against the stark hillsides, their twisted branches reaching for the sky.
She and Ellin had pinned their hair up in simple buns, happy to keep it off their necks. In the sweltering heat she couldn't remember the last time her skin felt dry to the touch.
"Ah, you've caught the sun, my dear Warden," Zevran said, smirking as he moved to sit beside her on the back of the wagon. He tapped several different spots along the top of her cheekbone, then chuckled. "Freckles suit you." He offered out his hand, a small orange fruit in his palm that hadn't seemed to be there a moment ago. "Tangerine?"
"Where did you buy those?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
He chuckled. "Here, my Warden, they just so happen to grow on trees. We might be wise to gather some olives before we go as well. I do not think whoever owns this land is near enough to chide us for it."
Harmony's ears picked up the clatter of hooves, implying that horses were approaching at a fair clip. "Sure about that?" she asked.
In silence, they watched as a group of people on horseback drove by, going faster than was truly wise if they didn't want their mounts to founder. Harmony's brow furrowed as she watched them disappear off into the distance. "Did they seem spooked to you?"
Zevran shrugged. "Perhaps. We are far from any town or city. I imagine there are all manner of things that could spook a person out here." With a nudge from his elbow, he added, "Hardly anything to worry the Hero of Ferelden, no? Now, this tangerine. Most people peel them and eat the segments, or quarter them and bite into the wedges. Back home we would cut a little hole in the top and simply… suck."
Her eyes narrowed. "How did you make that sound dirty?"
"A natural gift," he laughed.
She couldn't help but give him a reluctant smile. "You're incorrigible. And awfully chipper considering a man who wants you dead is tagging along with us."
"When was the last time someone didn't want me dead? At least if I can see him, I know he's not sneaking up behind me."
Now Harmony laughed. "You have a point. Come on, we'd best get moving. There's only so much sunshine we Fereldans can cope with."
"Indeed. And your bodyguard, the lovely Ser Ellin, has a most distressing habit of smacking me about the head when I happen to mention that the sunburn on her cheeks is quite becoming."
"Shocking," Harmony said dryly, hopping down to the ground and beginning to walk around to the front of the wagon. "Let's give her a rest under the canopy a while then. I'll drive. You can keep watch."
"Watching over the backsides of oxen, lucky me," he answered with a wry smile.
As afternoon gave way to evening, several more people rushed by them on horseback, all of them seeming to be in some kind of panic but none stopping to tell the six travellers and their two oxen why.
"Fine, fine…" Zevran eventually conceded with a sigh. "There does seem to be some sort of a panic for some reason or another, but that doesn't me-"
Harmony didn't even seem to hear his but as she cut across him with, "We need to see what's wrong," and nudged the oxen into trotting along a bit faster.
By the time night fell there were clashes of light across the sky up ahead, almost like lightning striking except for the colours were wrong. After the people fleeing on horseback came the frightened families on foot clearly fleeing for their lives, carrying everything they could hold as they ran into the hills. Before long the coastline came into view, the sea a shimmering black that blended into the night sky.
From here they could see that the bursts of light were explosions. They lit up the scene before them in brief intervals, and from a hillside overlooking everything, Harmony saw a fishing village that clung to the coast, half burning to the ground as chaos burst through it. The whole settlement was dwarfed by the two ships that had come to moor. The smaller of the two, she could tell by the flags - illuminated by the burning masts - was a Tevinter warship. She could just about make out the sight of mages aboard frantically trying to douse the flames using magic. The other she could recognize simply by the blasts of thunder from the black tubes on its deck. It was a Qunari dreadnought.
The Tevinter ship was listing dramatically by this point. Harmony was fairly certain it was sinking, but that wasn't going to mark the end of the battle. Some of the crew had fled to shore only to be chased by the Qunari, and now their fight was raging through the streets of the Rivaini fishing village, tearing it apart without a care for those who called it home.
Ser Ellin appeared from behind the curtain that separated the back of the wagon from the cab. "Your Majesty, I don't think this is something we ought to involve ourselves with. Both oxmen and… free mages… are formidable enemies, and this hardly concerns us."
In the back of the wagon, Callista sat bolt upright, seeming to know in an instant what was happening. "This is where the demon sent you, Harmony Queen. Both of those ships patrol the waters of lands contested by their people, if your King and his pirate captain sailed this way, they will know about it."
With a nod, Harmony handed the reins to Zevran. "You and Nathaniel look after Callista and the wagon. Sol, Ellin, with me."
As she drew her daggers and moved to hop down from the wagon, Callista grasped her shoulder to stop her for a moment. "Don't forget to use your name, child. It carries weight even here."
Frowning slightly, Harmony pulled free and gave a curt nod, unsure what she should say in response to that.
"Your Majesty, I really feel I must-" Ser Ellin began.
Harmony instantly interrupted her bodyguard. "Complain if you must, just do it as we walk."
"What's the point in protesting that a course of action is a poor one if you are already taking it?"
The Queen of Ferelden simply shrugged. "It might make you feel better." At that, she ignored Ellin's weary sigh and began a fast stride down the hill to where the battle raged on.
"Why do I get to join you for all this, ah, fun?" Sol asked, perfectly cheery in spite of the fact he was following them into a burning village in the midst of battle.
"You chose to follow me. This is following me," Harmony answered, easily ducking out of the way as a nearby blast sent pieces of debris raining over them from the rooftops above. "You don't like it? Antiva's back that way, I believe," she added, gesturing behind them in a south-westerly direction.
Sol seemed more amused by that than anything else, his only response a smug smile tugging at his lips. Neither he nor Ellin complained further after that. On their way towards the commotion they helped to free some of the villagers from the rubble - even helped to rescue a young girl from a burning house. Anywhere they heard the words help being called, they followed.
They passed Tevinters and Qunari as well, though they all seemed too concerned fighting one another to bother with three humans who clearly were not aligned with either side. Harmony wasn't so headstrong that she was going to just barge into the fight, especially when she had no idea whose side she was on. For the moment, her mission was to stay out of the fighting and help the villagers as much as possible.
Which was a decent enough plan until they followed the sounds of screaming to a back alley, only to discover five villagers - two adult elves and three children - backed into a corner, trapped in place by three men in robes whose eyes were closed as they chanted some kind of spell.
Harmony barely had enough time to take all of that in before she saw one - the elven man - cry out in agony and double over, clutching his head. She saw a red magic surround him, feed on him, rendering him unable to move for several seconds before he burst in a sudden shower of crimson that covered the other captive elves even as they screamed for mercy. It wasn't the first time she'd seen a man's life sacrificed in the name of blood magic, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.
"Maker..." she heard Sol gasp under his breath.
Ellin said nothing, didn't even wait for her Queen's orders for the first time Harmony could remember since they'd left Ferelden. The battering ram of a woman charged in shield-first and bowled over the middle of the three mages.
Her target toppled to the ground, just as a second mage slammed his staff into the ground, sending out some sort of a magical shockwave that pushed Ellin over onto her backside.
Harmony didn't waste the chance. Ever the rogue, she struck just as that mage's focus was Ser Ellin. A dagger caught the man in the side, easily piercing his liver. Given that her blades were poisoned, she knew it would be a sure death without healing magic, and given that her second dagger followed through with a stab through his back that pierced his heart, she didn't imagine he was going to get the chance to cast any.
By this point Ellin was back on her feet and Sol was fighting too, doing what they could to keep the Tevinter mages occupied. Harmony took the chance to turn to the bloodied elves and say, "Make a run for it! Now!"
"You've made a grave mistake involving yourself in this matter," one of the Tevinters hissed, throwing out a blast of ice with a mere flick of his wrist, one that froze Sol in his tracks.
Harmony plucked one of the throwing knives from her belt and threw it, managing to impale the man's hand, breaking his concentration from whatever he was readying to cast next.
That was the moment Ellin cried out in pain, crumpling to her knees and grasping her head, a trickle of blood running down from her nose. Of the trio of mages, one had hung back, and now he was trying to drain Ellin's blood to augment his power.
"Oh no…" Harmony began to rush towards him, which was just the moment the mage with the knife in his hand chose to exact vengeance by magically plucking her up a few feet into the air and then slamming her back down, knocking the air from her lungs.
"Nothing personal," the mage told her, "I simply have no intention of dying to those horned bastards. Or to you."
She strained for breath, watching on in horror as Ellin sprawled out on the cobblestones, making a series of gut-wrenching gurgling noises and trying with everything she had to fight this fate. A red glow surrounded her, and Harmony had to force herself not to close her eyes in anticipation of an explosion of red.
Just as she thought Ellin was about to succumb to the blood magic, a broadsword found its way through the mage's chest from behind, and he crumpled to the ground, his spells fading with his life. His body hitting the floor revealed a fearsome horned warrior, who gave a grunt of approval at the kill.
The second mage followed a swift end as a second Qunari separated his head from his shoulders. He looked to Sol, Ellin and Harmony skeptically, then looked to the warrior at his side and muttered something in Qunlat. Something that ended in the word Karasten.
Even as Harmony tried to get to her feet, the name made her eyes widen. She quickly had to remind herself that she hadn't heard Sten, and even if she had, it wouldn't have meant her Sten.
The one who had been called Karasten let out a low growl, resting the hilt of his broadsword over one shoulder as he answered in the common tongue, presumably for their benefit. "Probably mercenaries working for the magisters, then betrayed for a blood sacrifice." It was clear from his tone that he disapproved. "The mages are all dealt with. Let us bring these ones to the Arishok and let him decide what will be done with them."
The Arishok is here… The new Arishok… Harmony thought, remembering that she'd heard about who had been chosen after the last Arishok's death in Kirkwall.
Callista's cryptic clue about using her name suddenly made sense. Harmony scrambled to her feet, struggling to get herself into the most regal, commanding stance she could manage. She quickly adopted her best not-to-be-trifled-with voice and a stern glare. "I am no mercenary, nor would I ally with Tevinters. I am Harmony Cousland, Queen consort to King Alistair, Hero of Ferelden and Commander of the Grey in Amaranthine. I seek an audience with your Arishok."
As hard as Qunari were to read, it was impossible to tell whether the men in front of her believed it to be the truth, a bold lie or the words of a madwoman. All the same, the Karasten responded with, "You will come with us."
The three of them weren't chained, but the way the Qunari surrounded them on the walk towards the shore through the burning streets was one that gave the impression more of prisoner than of guest.
"I presume you have some sort of plan, Your Majesty?" Ser Ellin murmured close to Harmony's ear.
"Not a plan, so much as a potential ally," Harmony answered, giving a slight shrug. Up ahead of them the sea came into view and she saw the Tevinter ship completely on fire, its hull disappearing into the water below. Beside it the Qunari Dreadnought had taken on a slight list, clearly in need of some repairs before it was ready to leave the northern coast of Rivain. Up close she was struck by how huge the ship was. She'd heard stories of Qunari Dreadnoughts, how they spit thunder but were nigh unsinkable themselves. Seeing it in person was another matter entirely.
Ellin didn't seem very convinced. "What makes you think their Arishok's going to have any interest in helping you?"
Harmony smiled just slightly, keeping her eyes on the ship up ahead of them and hoping to catch a glimpse of their hornless leader standing on its deck. "Because before he was the Arishok, he helped me kill an archdemon."