History Fanfic / TheFuryOfAShatteredMirror

-->'''YOU''' - "You're pretty comfy."\\

-->'''THE NARRATOR''' - Are you quite done now? Finally sorted through all the memories of a world you apparently don't care about saving?\\

* AscendedFridgeHorror: [[spoiler:When the Shifting Mound starts pulling out the Princesses Harry has already brought her to give them the usual vessel rundown, Harry's more human, worldly perspective compared to the Long Quiet means he interprets her comments about their fate the way a player/reader might: as a form of death

* NotSoAboveItAll: At one point in the second CHAPTER III, Harry has to kick down a locked door. [[spoiler:Flux Et Reflux, AKA the Echo, AKA ''the Princess'']] gives a bonus to the check, with the description being a gleeful "Yeah! [[BuffySpeak Kick that thing!]]"

* TraumaButton: Between the Nightmare boasting that she doesn't ''need'' to get better -- "in fact, maybe I'll get worse!" -- and her MindRape including a vision of her as she "loses everything [she] is", it's safe to say that Harry has his pressed a fair few times in her chapter.

** The Narrator's connection to the world of Elysium is also a mystery: He doesn't know what reál or [[spoiler:Dolores Dei]] are, but seems to at least recognize the concept of [[spoiler:the Pale]], if His horrified reaction is anything to go by. [[spoiler: Despite many variants on the Narrator hearing and seeing plenty about Revachol and the world beyond, He also only seems to become aware that Harry is ''from outside'' when Harry is stripped of his skills and a broken shadow of himself - another echo, you might say.]]

* AndIMustScream: Harry is increasingly aware of the Construct containing a woman, or something like one, pounding on the walls of her prison. [[spoiler: After surviving the Nightmare's vision he and his assorted headmates realize that she's become this monstrous through long, painful, [[GoMadFromTheIsolation unrelieved isolation]].]]

** [[spoiler: Once more, in INTERMISSION - THE TOTAL INPUT. Harry is given an option to attempt to ''fix the universe.'' The check itself is deemed Unthinkable with an insanely high ''99.'' Though, as Volition, Inland Empire, and Shivers note, the mere fact that it's an ''option'' indicates that one day Harry might actually be able to pass the check and succeed...]]

** Like in canon, Half Light speaks Ancient Greek at a few points in THE NIGHTMARE, calling the void around the basement stairs "χάος" (the term for PrimordialChaos), and reacting to the description of the Nightmare's appearance with "αἰκίστρια" -- "[[TragicMonster agony]]". ''After'' the Nightmare presumably it's Half Light which quotes a passage from Marcus Aurelius that can be translated as: [[spoiler: "Look at the speed of universal oblivion, the gulf of immeasurable time both before and after, the vacuity of applause, the indiscriminate fickleness of your apparent supporters, and the tiny room in which all this is confined."]]

* BreatherEpisode: Chapter III: The Echo is a bit meandering and doesn't contain anything like the amount of fear, pain, or anger of the other chapters. [[spoiler: Because the Princess is Flux Et Reflux, another of Harry's Skills, and none of the original Skills or the Voices dwell on her enough for the Narrator to realize what's up, He wants Harry to search for her and is aggravated by every delay but not truly angry and fades out without a lot of stress. Harry and the Spectre forgave each other in the previous chapter, so now they're both pretty well inclined towards the other. Everyone gets to see a change in scene, even if it's all memory, and Harry gets to sit down, have a cigarette, and show the Princess the Sevenfold Sunrise. She's still frustrated by not getting to escape but is glad of the respite.]]

* CommonalityConnection: In the Echo chapter, the Princess talks about how she only seems to make things worse, which seems to strike a chord with Harry even if he's not Sorry Cop right now. The third The Hero and The Princess chapter has Harry consciously realize that the Princess is in a position a lot like his, but worse [[spoiler: in that she's amnesiac and thrust into a bizarre situation and trying to keep up, bluffing with an empty hand, just as he was after losing his memory.]] Not that realizing helps.

** The Skill Inland Empire, particularly, gets to shine in this fic. Harry's imagination is far more cognizant of the whole situation than the rest of him, or of any of the Voices. [[spoiler: Not only does it have RippleEffectProofMemory but it seems to know something about things that haven't happened yet.]]

* {{Forgiveness}}: The Spectre forgives Harry for killing her in the previous chapter, and Harry forgives her for [[spoiler: accidentally killing him in this one]]. His memory is ''just'' Ripple-Proof enough to make him reluctant to kill a later incarnation as a result.

** [[spoiler: Guinevere is referring to the figure from Myth/ArthurianLegend, the British queen and wife of Myth/KingArthur who had an affair with Lancelot which played a part in the fall of {{Camelot}}. Rözovy is a bastardization of the Russian word for "pink", розовый (''rozovyy''). And Baudelaire is taken from Creator/CharlesBaudelaire, a French poet whose TheOtherWiki article speaks for itself: his most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled ''Les Fleurs du mal'' (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris. He coined the term modernity (modernité) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.]]

** Inland Empire labels the Shifting Mound as another in possession of a "vast and oceanic" soul, [[spoiler: and later refers to the shattered cosmos as another corpse marked by stars, just like Lely's. Similarly, Shivers refers to the vision of the Shifting Mound's empty city as "the city on Marvel Hill".]]
* NoNameGiven: As in ''Slay the Princess'', the names assigned to the Voices seem to be non-diagetic and there for the convenience of the reader. Everyone always calls the Princess the Princess, though there are more {{Title Drop}}s for her chapter variants in this fic, but she doesn't have a dialogue tag name [[spoiler: except when she's Flux Et Reflux]]. The Narrator actually says that Harry should call Him the Narrator and signs a fancy N on the repurposed letter, so ''He'' seems to have embraced the 'name'. The Skills also don't seem to be named. Between them and the Voices a lot of nicknames are tossed around.

** Half Light hates and fears the Princess, and in the Spectre chapter is ''very'' upset about [[spoiler: Harry letting her possess him, let alone allowing her to take over for various Skills to pass hard checks. But near the end of the chapter, the Narrator's trick and impending death makes Half Light panic and make what he calls a DealWithTheDevil, letting her take over.]]

** [[spoiler:Flux Et Reflux retains the pink text from her earlier selves, and though this site can't show it, the red used to highlight her name is a different shade than that used for Physique skills. She also gives massive penalties to checks involving Harry trying to figure out where she came from. Once Harry projects her out of his head, her lines go back to being right-aligned, though they keep the name. The skill profile given at the end of her chapter has additions from her in pink; it also shows her to be Harry's new Signature Skill, reflected in her physical appearance by the crown used to designate such in the game.]]

* ProperlyParanoid: Half Light senses there is something fundamentally wrong about the Princess and constantly urges Harry to kill her. As the Princess is the embodiment of death and change, it is entirely understandable for Half Light to perceive the Princess as a threat, even when the situation is nominally under Harry's control. [[spoiler: By the third iteration, with Harry having picked up the Pristine Blade and not killed the Princess immediately, Half Light realizes that Harry has no chance of winning a confrontation and must flee to survive, as this course of events shapes the Princess into becoming an absolute terror. Unfortunately for Half Light, Harry opts to merely leave the basement and stay in the cabin to make up his mind, leading to him being killed by the proto-Nightmare.]]

* SympathyForTheDevil: [[spoiler: The Nightmare route and what follows is a ''very'' bad time for Harry but he picks up on more of her BrokenBird nature than the Long Quiet does and despite not forgiving her, he also doesn't kill what she becomes.]]

* TragicMonster: The Nightmare is already this in ''Slay the Princess''. Here, since Harry's Skills were able to share the work the Voice of the Paranoid was undergoing to keep him alive, and because he's a person with a past outside of the Construct, he can glean more from her vision than the Long Quiet could. [[spoiler: Half Light, being attuned to pain, fills in for Empathy's usual role and spells out the dreadful situation the Princess is in.]]

** The Narrator's connection to the world of Elysium is also a mystery: He doesn't know what reál or [[spoiler:Dolores Dei]] are, but seems to at least recognize the concept of [[spoiler:the Pale]], if His horrified reaction is anything to go by. [[spoiler: Despite many variants on the Narrator hearing and seeing plenty about Revachol and the world beyond, he also only seems to become aware that Harry is ''from outside'' when Harry is stripped of his skills and a broken shadow of himself - another echo, you might say.]]

* BreatherEpisode: Chapter III: The Echo is a bit meandering and doesn't contain anything like the amount of fear, pain, or anger of the other chapters. [[spoiler: Because the Princess is Flux Et Reflux, another of Harry's Skills, and none of the original Skills or the Voices dwell on her enough for the Narrator to realize what's up, he wants Harry to search for her and is aggravated by every delay but not truly angry and fades out without a lot of stress. Harry and the Spectre forgave each other in the previous chapter, so now they're both pretty well inclined towards the other. Everyone gets to see a change in scene, even if it's all memory, and Harry gets to sit down, have a cigarette, and show the Princess the Sevenfold Sunrise. She's still frustrated by not getting to escape but is glad of the respite.]]

** Lampshaded later in this conversation, when Inland Empire spouts another poetic line:

* LateToTheRealization: [[spoiler:After God only knows how many iterations (not even counting the prior chapters), the Narrator ''finally'' figures out Harry isn't supposed to be here when he fails to free the Act of Futility. Other versions of him had ''seen'' Harry's memories of Revachol but were seemingly unable to comprehend what this meant. Seemingly he only catches on when Harry, like himself, is a shadow of a person.]]

* LemonyNarrator: The Narrator leans hard into this during THE SPECTRE, seldom missing an opportunity to call Harry and his actions "asinine" or "inane". To be fair to Him, Harry's actions in this chapter include thinking the Spectre is the avatar of communism and [[spoiler:spending five minutes zoning out to hold a "Mind Parliament"]], so it's clear he feels like the OnlySaneMan.

** Shivers briefly refers to the nascent Shifting Mound the same way she does: "solitary lights in an empty city."

* NoNameGiven: As in ''Slay the Princess'', the names assigned to the Voices seem to be non-diagetic and there for the convenience of the reader. Everyone always calls the Princess the Princess, though there are more {{Title Drop}}s for her chapter variants in this fic, but she doesn't have a dialogue tag name [[spoiler: except when she's Flux Et Reflux]]. The Narrator actually says that Harry should call him the Narrator and signs a fancy N on the repurposed letter, so ''he'' seems to have embraced the 'name'. The Skills also don't seem to be named. Between them and the Voices a lot of nicknames are tossed around.

* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: [[spoiler:Harry, not being a god, is unable to understand the Shifting Mound when she speaks to him. This also applies to the Spectre while she's possessing him, but Interfacing is able to fix that one.]]

* AndHereHeComesNow: [[{{Justified}} when Harry's skills start returning to him after losing them in THE ACT OF FUTILITY. Each one is called back by a skill check or dialogue option that would require their help; for example, Half Light returns when Harry succeeds the white check from THE NIGHTMARE to "get the fire back", while Perception returns when he tries to look around himself. Volition occasionally tries to {{invoke|d}} this, to... mixed results.]]

* AccidentalPun: Interfacing describes [[spoiler:Soona's final readouts of the Swallow]] as "annotated heavily in the scrawl of a woman possessed". The Spectre, currently observing the vision, can only go "[[pink:Heh.]]"

* RapidFireNo: A variant in response to the Voice of the Hero wondering if they really did want the proto-Damsel to kill them:

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: At the start of the second run, one of Harry's unchosen dialogue options in response to the Princess asking if he's here to kill her is an example of this that would do the Razor proud:

* ADayInTheLimelight: With the blend in formats, there's very little of Disco Elysium's usual background description (ex: clicking on a mailbox leads to bringing up the dialogue window, where the description of the mailbox starts with MAILBOX: as if it's a character speaking) which has Skills chiming in. Instead, like Slay the Princess, the Narrator provides His narration and other voices fill in the gaps, though Harry's library of Skills finds a lot more to comment on. Since the Voices and the Narrator can hear and respond to them, the Skills have active dialogue with them and are more individualized.
** The Skill Inland Empire, particularly, gets to shine in this fic. Harry's imagination is far more cognizant of the whole situation than the rest of him, or of any of the Voices. [[spoiler: Not only does it have RippleEffectProofMemory but it seems to know something about things that haven't happened yet.]]

* LaughingMad: [[spoiler:The Act of Futility is left doing this after Harry fails to free her.]]

** [[spoiler:Additionally, the chapter preceding the Act of Futility starts with countless "I'm sorry" repeating in loops and multiplying until it dissolves the entire background into white, once again representing the loops Harry goes through. And if one looks at the page's CoolCodeOfSource, it's shown that it's actually ''multiple'' different MadnessMantra repeating that compose the white background, implied to be the Skills themselves having their own mental breakdown]]:
*** [[spoiler:"The endless maze. A dark forest, devoid of life. An island on the sea of stars. Hot coals raked across every surface. Rotting from the inside until you turn hollow."]] -- Likely Shivers.
*** [[spoiler:"No sight. No hearing. No taste. No smell. No feeling."]] -- Likely Perception.
*** [[spoiler:"Tendons stretch, bones grind, organs rupture [=--=] but you live on."]] -- Likely Endurance.
*** [[spoiler:"10-33. Repeat. 10-8. Repeat, please. 10-9. Acknowledge."]] -- Likely Esprit de Corps.
*** [[spoiler:"An endless dance. Twirling through the eons, a death waltz to the end of time."]] -- Likely Drama.
*** In GratuitousGreek: [[spoiler:"Look at the speed of universal oblivion, the gulf of immeasurable time both before and after, the vacuity of applause, the indiscriminate fickleness of your apparent supporters, and the tiny room in which all this is confined.""]] -- Likely Half-Light.
*** [[spoiler:"You are not alone, and this place is not empty. There is a sound [=--=] the harmony of the spheres. You must find its source. You have to keep going. You will make it. It is predestined."]] -- Likely Inland Empire.
*** [[spoiler:"Nothing makes sense. There are no laws. Chaos reigns."]] -- Likely Logic.
*** [[spoiler:"Eyes everywhere. Every time you turn your head [=--=] more eyes. You can 't keep them in your vision, only on the periphery. You are watched. You are watched."]] -- Likely Reaction Speed.
*** [[spoiler:"Hit and kick and punch and jab and struggle and hit..."]] -- Likely Physical Instrument.
*** [[spoiler:"There is no winning. You can't bargain with something like this. You can't talk your way out, you can't [=--=] you *can't*."]] -- Likely Rhetoric.
*** [[spoiler:"Scrounge for a weapon [=--=] *your* weapon [=--=] but it won't make a difference. Of course it wouldn't. No piece of steel and sulfur could help you now."]] -- Likely Hand/Eye Coordination.
*** [[spoiler:"The singularity at the heart of a black hole. All vectors point inward. Time and space bend and twist until they become one [=--=] to proceed forward is to fall even further. There is no escape."]] -- Likely Visual Calculus.
*** [[spoiler:"Endless pain. It isn't constant, but that just makes it worse [=--=] knowing during the reprieve that it will flare up again. Physical pain, mental anguish. It will not end."]] -- Likely Pain Threshold.
*** [[spoiler:"Keep it together, keep it together...you can't keep it together. You are a wreck."]] -- Likely Composure.
*** [[spoiler:"There is no knowledge that could help you. This is beyond anything that's ever been written. The facts of your current situation slip through your fingers like a sieve."]] -- Likely Encyclopedia.
*** [[spoiler:"You are nothing. A worm in the sand, beholden to forces beyond your capability. Your achievements are meaningless."]] -- Likely Authority.
*** [[spoiler:"Grand machinery chugs away at the edges of the world, each turn of a cog crushing you beneath its weight. The tension grows, the chain tightens, and the memory is dumped in anticipation of the next operation."]] -- Likely Interfacing.
*** [[spoiler:"Find something to distract yourself. Anything. This is [=--=] it's unbearable. Get *something*. Anything at all."]] -- Likely Electrochemistry.
*** [[spoiler:"Words fail you. You can't describe you way out. There is no vocabulary that would even come close."]] -- Likely Conceptualization.
*** [[spoiler:"You are unravelling at the seams [=--=] but so is she. She is destroying you both."]] -- Likely Empathy.
*** [[spoiler:"Dodge and weave and duck and twist and dodge..."]] -- Likely Savoir Faire.
*** [[spoiler:"Take a step forward."]] -- Likely Volition.
*** [[spoiler:"Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves."]] -- Likely the Voice of the Paranoid.

*** [[spoiler:"Eyes everywhere. Every time you turn your head [=--=] more eyes. You can 't keep them in your vision, only on the periphery. You are watched. You are watched."]]

-->'''[[gold:PERCEPTION (SIGHT)]]''' [[gray:[Formidable: Success] ]] - Also, all three of them are wrong [=--=] [[spoiler:[[AGlitchInTheMatrix the mirror is still here]]]].