"This is real," he disagreed. "Something happened when we fell."
"Oh, really? You think so?" snapped Hermione, too upset to restrain her sarcasm.
They continued to ascend the tower, becoming almost inured to the sight of corpses, until—
"This one's alive!" Harry's whispered, bending over a big blond man in armor. "Look! He's breathing!"
There were others sprawled on the floor nearby: a giant of a man with dark skin, clad in plate armor; a white-haired woman in strange, colorful robes who vaguely reminded them of Madam Pomfrey; even a big dog.
"They're all breathing," said Harry. "They're just… asleep!"
"He is, too," agreed Hermione, bending over a pale young man dressed in rough leather armor. An elaborate staff had fallen from the sleeper's hand, and rolled away from him. "If only we could talk to them!"
Harry gave a shrug. "We know we're someplace... different. Maybe we can wake them up…"
A deep, hypnotic voice interrupted them: an oily, insinuating, mocking voice.
"I don't think so," it murmured. "In fact, I think you'll be joining them—"
Harry looked up and jumped back. The thing was gruesome, it was huge, and it was only a few steps away.
"Bloody Hell!"
Hermione's quick, shocked shriek covered Harry's quick, instinctive hex. The hideous creature was rocked by the stunner, but not overcome. Its fanged maw opened wide, the jaw dropping ominously.
"Petrificus totalus!" Harry shouted, desperate with fear.
The monster oozed toward them, snarling with rage.
Panicked, Hermione screamed, "Reducto!"
It was quite the mess. Pinkish-grey matter exploded wetly, slapping into their faces, stinging their arms, soaking their clothing. Hermione shrieked again, and then, in the ensuing silence, whimpered. Unidentifiable bits dripped from them, stinking.
Behind her, a voice remarked.
"Good one. That's perhaps the most efficient—if messy— way of dealing with a Sloth Demon I've ever seen."
Harry and Hermione turned to see the young man in leathers get to his feet, stretching. He picked up his fallen staff and said, "I don't think we've met. You must have come to the Circle since I was recruited. I'm Ambrose Amell."
"I'm Harry Potter."
"And I'm Hermione Granger."
The others were also awake and looking on with interest. Awkwardly, Hermione put out her hand, but nobody moved to take it. "I see. Not the done thing here." She dropped her hand and fidgeted a bit.
The elderly woman had risen to her feet, with the aid of the young man, and looked Harry and Hermione over, very puzzled.
"I know every apprentice in the Circle," she said with a frown. "and I don't know either of you."
"The Circle?" Hermione asked eagerly. "is that what this place is called? It's a school for magic, isn't it? We had… an accident…and suddenly we were here."
"And we saw dead people," added Harry, "and then that." He pointed in disgust at the scattered demonic remnants. "Do you have a lot of those around here?"
"Enough," Ambrose replied, looking them over. "You're rather handy in a fight..."
"You made it explode," said the blond warrior. "Ewww. I was having a pretty nice dream, too."
"It was rubbish, Alistair," scoffed Ambrose. "Come on, Wynne. Let's see if we can save Niall." He flicked his fingers at Hermione. "You'll want to do something about those entrails on your shoulder. Come with us if you want to live through this."
* * *
Erised
—Merrill slid the arulin'holm into the crack in the eluvian. The broken mirror reflected her back crazily, mocking her determined expression. The ancient elven tool should work: it should repair the elven treasure and vindicate her research. The arulin'holm scraped along an edge, making an odd noise that resembled a young girl's cry of fear and alarm.
Merrill paused, uncertain, and then resumed her careful work. Here in her little house in the Kirkwall Alienage, no one should come to interfere with this work. Hawke had helped persuade Marethari to give Merril this precious artifact: earned it, really, by fighting with a varterral, a terror of the ancient elven world. Merril slid the arulin'holm along the edge, pressing harder, and the eluvian uttered another muffled cry.
It was taunting her... threatening her. Not to be deterred, Merrill set her delicate jaw, and pushed harder, and it seemed to be working. The broken edges smoothed, formed, pooled together as one. In the center, ripples spread out in flowing, concentric circles, as if a stone had fallen into a still pond.
No... as if two stones had fallen. Another cry joined the first.
It was working. With a sob of triumph, Merrill pressed harder with the arulin'holm, and the mirror gave a sudden scream.
Without warning, Merril was bowled over as something large and dark flew out of the mirror. It was a living body, and the owner squeaked as she crashed into Merrill. With a thump, another followed.
Harry Potter groped for his glasses.
"Ow."
"Oh, Harry," groaned Hermione. "Where are we—oh, my!" she cried, clambering away from the half-crushed Merrill. "I am so, so sorry! Are you hurt?"
Merrill stared, blinking, unable to process what she was seeing. "I... don't know."
"Are we... in Wales?" asked Hermione, confused by the accent. That could be good. That would put them farther away from Voldemort and his Snatchers. She had never visited Snowdonia National Park, but she understood that parts of it were fairly remote. It might be a good place to find and hide in.
"Whales? Oh... I don't think so," Merrill answered cautiously.
Harry looked about him. There was no sign of muggle technology. The simple wooden house spoke of the presence of magic.
""Let me help you up," Hermione urged Merrill, fussing a little. "We must have apparated by accident..."
Then she saw the mirror, once again cracked, and still vibrating after disgorging its cargo. "Harry? Is that—"
"Yes!" Harry said, peering closer at the ornate mirror. "But it's broken... and backwards."
"You seen an eluvian before?" Merril asked, sitting up, forgetting her bruises. "The same markings? Do you know what they mean? The knowledge of the language is long lost to us."
"'I show not your face, but your heart's desire,'" Hermione read. "It's easy to read now. In our world it was in our school for magic, and it was backwards."
"I am fairly certain," Merrill said with a certain asperity, "that my heart's desire is not being knocked down by a pair of shemlen children!"
Harry blushed. "'M not a child," he muttered.
Hermione was abashed. "Of course not," she assured Merril. "We just happened to be on the other side of the mirror, somehow. I don't suppose you could send us back?"
Merrill shook her head. "I don't know how I brought you here. I was just trying to repair the mirror."
Hermione was looking at her with great interest, tempered with a certain anxiety. "Er... would you mind telling us where we are, because really, I think perhaps we've gone much farther than anyone could expect. Is everyone here like you?"
Merrill stared. "I'm not sure," she said in her sweet voice, "that I understand you aright. Do you mean is everyone female, or is everyone a mage, or is everyone an elf? Or Dalish, for that matter?"
Harry turned, and studied the delicate young woman, puzzled. "You're—"
"—an elf," she agreed wryly. "It's been pointed out to me before. Is that a problem?"
Hermione reddened. "Of course not!" she said hastily. "It's just that…where we come from, elves aren't so…"
Merrill raised questioning brows.
"…good-looking," finished Harry, with a nervous grin. "You're really an elf?" he asked. "Not a house elf?"
Merrill drew herself up in indignation. "I'm no one's servant!" she declared. "I am of the Dalish!" She quoted the Oath of the Dales proudly, though her heart broke at the words:
"'
We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last elvhen. Never again shall we submit.'"
"I beg your pardon," Hermione said in embarrassment. "You're very different from the elves at home. Of course you should be free. All elves should be free!"
These words calmed Merrill somewhat. The shemlen children were clearly magical, and had the proper attitude about elves. Then too, Merrill had not entirely lost hope of repairing the eluvian. It had been whole long enough for these children to travel down it by accident. That they came from a world where elves were not free was a matter for concern, but not enough to prevent her from continuing her work.
At the moment, however, she was simply too tired. Perhaps they should go see Hawke. He might know what to do with a pair of young shemlen. Or perhaps Anders. They were mages, after all...
"This is Kirkwall, City of Chains," she told her unexpected guests. "And there are some things that perhaps you really should know before you step outside..."
* * *
Soldier's Peak
—"Walking skeletons?" Harry asked in disbelief. "Demons? What kind of place is this?
They're not really demons," Hermione huffed. "That's just a lazy mental shorthand way of describing them. They're obviously hostile alien creatures from another dimension that has drifted perilously close to our own. "
"Demons," Harry shrugged. "Nasty gits, too."
Hermione huffed again. "We really can't expect such alien beings to have values similar to our own. The people here clearly haven't tried communicating with them in an open atmosphere of mutual respect."
"I don't think they respect us," Harry pointed out. "I think they think we're… food."
One of the creatures actually did try to communicate with them. It spoke through the possessed, rotting body of what had been a woman, and it wanted to be loosed on the world, which was manifestly a Bad Idea. Harry was strongly tempted to try out the death curse on it, but a series of cutting hexes killed it just as completely.
There were more of the walking dead on a connecting open passageway between the castle and a tower. Hermione cast a tripping hex which sent the skeletons hurtling away to splinter into fragments on the rocks below. Beyond were more doors—
—and the one living person in the deserted castle. Unsurprisingly, he was an old wizard. He did not look up from his worktable as they entered a wide, lofty chamber, but ordered them to be silent, in a voice cracked with age.
"I hear you! Don't disrupt my concentration!"
There were more skeletons: one of them gruesomely impaled on a wall of blades. Others were crumbling in iron cages. The two friends looked about them with wide eyes.
Harry whispered, "You reckon he did this?"
"Don't be silly, Harry," scoffed Hermione. "These bones have obviously been here for hundreds of years!" Impatiently, she called out, "Please? Could you tell us where we are—" A bit nervously, she added... just to be safe... "—sir?"
The wizard looked up, scowling, and then the scowl faded into a look of astonishment. "You are no Wardens! You're... children!"
"I'm seventeen!" Harry growled. Hermione elbowed him.
"Ah," replied the bald and aged wizard, his tone dry as the bones about them, "a man of sober years, indeed. And yet you managed to get past the demons that plague this place. Impressive. Tell me, why have you come to Soldier's Peak?"
"We don't know," Harry confessed. "A witch named Bathilda turned into a snake and attacked us. We fell out of her window, and suddenly... we were here."
The old wizard stared at them narrowly. Harry wondered uneasily if he were a legilimens. Whatever he saw in them made him chuckle.
"And they say there is nothing new under the sun. Come closer, little mages. I think I should hear your story in considerably greater detail."
"I don't suppose," Hermione asked, "that you have anything to eat?"
* * *
The Final Battle. Just Not Harry's.
—A rush of sparks and smoke threatened to choke them. Harry fell awkwardly, only rolling away just in time to keep from snapping his wand. Screams drifted toward them on a hot wind. In the distance, horns blew. Hermione winced, flicking her wand to heal her scraped knee. The cobblestones had torn a hole in her jeans.
Wait.
Cobblestones?
"Harry, this isn't Godric's Hollow," she whispered, trembling.
"This isn't London, either," he said, getting carefully to his feet. There was blood on the pavement. Here and there, old-fashioned wattle-and daub buildings were burning, and a once-cheerful painted canvas awning was draped forlornly over a pile of wreckage. Besides the smell of burning, there was another smell: a vile, unfamiliar stink. The sky was overcast and lowering. In the distance, a dragon soared high above them
The obvious question... "Where are we?"... was voiced by neither of them. Neither had a clue, other than realizing that they were in a desperately dangerous situation.
A roar, and a monstrous creature burst out of the smoke, trundling toward them. It was bigger than a troll, and its head was massive and crowned with great curving horns.
"Oh, Harry!" cried Hermione. "This is..."
"Stunners—on three," Harry urged her. "One...two... three..."
"Stupefy!" they shouted, willing the creature down in twin beams of crimson light. The monster paused, grunted, and toppled over with a crash.
But it was not alone. Two more followed, too close, too fast. It would take everything they had to cast strong enough stunners to bring them down. And how long would they keep them down? The first was already stirring...
"—Stupefy!"
"—Stupefy!"
The second monster tottered, dazed. The third was still coming on, shaking its heavy head to clear it. Harry gritted his teeth, and yelled, "Sectumsempra!"
The creature staggered, and uttered a dull bellow of agony as its flesh was slashed apart by the curse. It slumped to its knees, dying. Harry gasped, dizzy with effort. The second monster had recovered, and was lurching towards them, gigantic hands out to crush and rend. Harry pushed Hermione behind him, hoping to buy her a split second to renew her strength.
He was too absorbed in the fight to hear the quick footsteps coming up behind them. A woman's voice cried out a strange incantation, and the monster in front of them was abruptly frozen solid. Then a tall man in gleaming armor shoved them aside.
"Move, boy!" he shouted at Harry. With a leap he attacked the frozen monster, and the blow of his sword shattered it to bloody shards.
That was shocking enough, but others followed the big man. A short, slender man in leathers charged after him, shouting words in a strange language. A tall young woman, also in armor and bearing what was obviously a magical sword, glanced at Harry and Hermione in amazement, yelling. "Stay behind us!" She, too, attacked the monsters, hacking, hacking at them, until they spurted black blood. A big dog dashed past, growling, tearing at the creatures. The air was full of magic. Two witches with long staffs and strange robes and a very pretty woman archer joined the warriors and the dog. The group stared in confusion at the young witch and wizard.
The tall man took a step toward them, black brows knit in a forbidding scowl. Harry was uncomfortably reminded of Severus Snape.
"What are you children doing out here? Get to safety!"
Harry and Hermione could only stare back, utterly bewildered.
The young swordswoman took their part. "What safety would that be, Loghain?" she scoffed. "Are you foreigners?" she asked uncertainly, taking in their unfamiliar garments. "Do you understand the King's Tongue?"
"Yes!" Hermione managed. "We don't know how we got here! We were attacked and fell from a window, and suddenly..." she waved a hand weakly at the devastation around them.. "we were here! What is this place?"
"You are in Denerim," said one of the witches, a white-haired woman with a soothing voice. "And the darkspawn are attacking. Where are your parents?"
"Parents?" Harry's voice cracked in disbelief. Really, it was almost funny. "Parents? Haven't any."
Hermione nearly wept, thinking of her own mother and father, unimaginably far away in every sense of the term. "We've been on our own for nearly a year."
The two woman warriors and the elderly mage were looking at them with pity in their eyes, which Harry hated.
"We've been doing all right."
The big man snorted. "All right? You're in the worst place in all Thedas at the moment, my lad."
Urgently, the elderly witch said, "The Chantry's is not far from here. If it is still intact, perhaps the priests—"
"Oh?" the younger of the two witches spoke, her voice like acid. "You would turn apostate mages over to them? I hardly see any benefit to them in that. Besides," her yellow eyes studied Harry. "The lad, at least, is powerful."
The tall, dark-browed man nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed as he studied the two youngsters.
"Loghain Mac Tir!" huffed the elderly witch. "I would not think it even of you that you would force these children to fight!"
Loghain shrugged. "I was fighting the Orlesians when I was their age."
The young swordswoman agreed. "They stopped two ogres, Wynne. That's got to be tough enough!" She clapped Harry on the shoulder. "Stick with us. If we find a hiding place for you as we go, all the better." She asked Hermione. "Do you know any other useful magic?"
Harry nearly choked. Hermione blushed. "Yes. I think I can help."
"She really can," Harry assured them all. "Hermione's amazing."
"She'd better be," said Loghain. "Don't expect us to take care of you."
The swordswoman introduced herself as they moved down the street. "Lesley Cousland. Hermione? Is that right?"
"Yes. Hermione Granger. Pleased to meet you."
The Cousland girl grinned at the formality at such a moment. She looked pointedly at Harry.
Dragon's Era- No Man's Land Page 23