Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, etc, or any of their related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T++ (for now)

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Dragon Age Origins, Origins DL content, Dragon Age Rise to Power, and Dragon Age Inquisition as well as the novels The Stolen Throne, The Calling and Asunder.

Chapter One: The Woman

The Seeker, Cassandra Penteghast, tall, strong, proud, marched into the Chantry's undercroft with her hand on the hilt of her sword, paying little attention to the men she passed. Her focus was on her prisoner, the great monstrosity kneeling in chains in the middle of the floor.

"What are you?" she asked. Either her question or her Nevarran accent seemed to give the prisoner a moment's pause.

"What am I? What do I look like?" the prisoner said, in a resonant, biting voice of her own.

"You look like some sort of qunari whore, but I question what such a creature would be doing at the Divine's Conclave. Most Holy would never have required your services."

"Ah. You judge me based on my looks and my choice of clothing. Common among Chantry-folk. Judgmental people, by and large. I'm not a whore, I'm a mercenary. My band, the Valo-Kas, were hired by the Divine herself to provide security. This is simply the way I choose to dress."

"This is the way you dress when you are 'providing security?'" Cassandra said. "In dancing slippers with six-inch knife-blade heels, and something vaguely resembling a 'dress' that covers very little of you, half made of beads and a third made of some sort of black gauze?"

The prisoner nodded, unperturbed.

"Really? Ha. What is your name, Mercenary?"

"The boys in the Valo-Kas call me 'Adaar.'"

Cassandra spoke over her shoulder to one of her men. "Check the hiring records for a mercenary company called the 'Valo-Kas.' Find out who hired them. Look for the name 'Adaar,' and any information about her specifically." The soldier saluted and shot out of the undercroft on the double.

Cassandra walked stiff-legged in front of the prisoner with both hands laced behind her back. "Are you a mage?" she asked.

"No."

"Tell the truth."

"I'm telling the truth. I'm a warrior. I'm not a mage."

"You make for a strange terrorist, I admit," Cassandra said, "but I am not about to cast judgment upon you for that."

"Terrorist?" the prisoner said, one dark eyebrow cocked above her cold blue eyes as her only show of interest. "How do you justify the use of that word?"

Cassandra flung herself into her face, stopping when they were merely an inch apart. "Don't play stupid - you know what you did! The Conclave is destroyed and everyone in attendance is dead! Everyone except for you!"

"And that, of course, automatically proves my guilt. Survival," the prisoner said, unflappable.

"Explain this!" Cassandra said, and grabbed the prisoner's left wrist. She brought her hand up before their faces. Her left palm glowed with an otherworldly green light that was not on it nor in it, but rather through it, like a spike. That dark eyebrow twitched, but the woman's bland expression did not otherwise falter in the slightest.

"I can't explain that at all. Hurts like a bugger, though. Wondered what was wrong with my fucking hand."

Cassandra hauled off and slapped her. The prisoner moved with the slap and then her head went back to dead center. She didn't even blink, and she didn't look remotely angered. This only angered Cassandra, who slapped her across the face again, and then again from the other direction. "Cassandra, we need her!" someone with an Orlesian accent said. Another woman stepped forward from the entry, a woman with red hair peeking out from under her dark hood. The prisoner's cold eyes watched her with some minor interest.

"Do you remember what happened? Anything at all?" this second woman asked, approaching the prisoner as Cassandra backed away.

The prisoner's cold expression resumed. "Not much. We crossed the Waking Sea and arrived in Haven a few days ago. This morning - or what I hope was this morning - I took my post outside the Temple of Sacred Ashes to stand guard for the Divine's pre-Conclave meditations. And then… it all gets kind of fuzzy. There were some weird… spidery-looking creatures, and I was running uphill without a weapon… and some glowy, indistinct woman at the top of the hill reaching out to me… and then I woke up here in chains to this interrogation."

"A convenient loss of memory," Cassandra said, with a sniff and a toss of the head.

"A woman?" the redhead said, interested. "You did not know her?"

"No. As I said, my memory of her is rather indistinct, and I seem to recall her as glowing. Perhaps I was having a dream?"

"The soldiers who found you said you stepped out of a rift in the Fade and then fell unconscious. There was a woman in the rift behind you, but the rift closed. No one could say who she was," the redhead said.

"Ah. Well, then, that would explain the glowing. She was probably a Fade spirit," the prisoner said.

"Mm. Perhaps," the redhead said. She sounded doubtful herself, however. "In any case, we do not have time for further discussion. The Breach is growing, and making more and more Fade rifts. We have to move, Cassandra."

"Of course. Get to the forward camp, Leliana," Cassandra said. "I will take the prisoner to the rift."

The redhead gave Cassandra one last uncertain look, then nodded and left. Cassandra unfastened the shackles on the prisoner's wrists, and tied them together with a sturdy rope while the soldiers kept their swords leveled on her. She tugged on the lead and the prisoner stood up, towering over Cassandra at more than seven feet in height, probably even without the heels. Her features were… odd. Ill-balanced, with a narrow face and a large, hooked nose that had clearly been broken and badly reset some number of times, and delicate ears long and pointed like an elf's, but she was sure to look strange to her eyes, Cassandra reasoned, for she was the first qunari female she had ever seen. There was an elaborate tattoo over her right eye, black as coal and shaped in coiling vines like a nest of serpents. She bore no horns, but her long black hair had been shaved off at the sides of her head to better reveal her ears, leaving only long wind braids like a man's, beaded and decorated with feathers. The rest of her hair hung straight down her back all the way to her ankles, also beaded and feathered in places. Standing on her feet she looked incredibly powerful, no matter how inappropriate her attire.

Cassandra led her outside the Chantry. She gave no reaction when she laid eyes on the great, green swirling hole in the sky. "We call it the Breach," Cassandra told her. "It is a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger by the hour. It is not the only such rift, but it is the largest. By now, it looks to swallow the world if we cannot find a way to stop it. Your mark is in some way connected. Every time the Breach expands, your mark spreads, and it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but we haven't much time."

"Well, then, I guess I'd better do whatever I can, eh?" the prisoner said, casually.

"You mean that you will?" Cassandra said, barely allowing herself to hope.

"Of course. I clearly don't have anything left to lose if I'm dying already. Point the way, Sister Seeker."

"You know who I am?"

"A lot of people do, Lady Cassandra."

"You did not know me until you saw Sister Leliana, I am certain."

"Seeing the Left Hand of the Divine made it obvious you were the Right Hand."

"I should have thought I was the more recognizable, considering Leliana works generally in stealth."

"True, but I was not expecting to see either one of you. You might call my initial ignorance of your identity willful."

"I suppose I can understand that. Come along." Cassandra led her prisoner through the village of Haven, past the tents and houses, past the people who stared at the tall woman and forked the sign of the evil eye at her and spit as she passed. "They have decided your guilt. They need it. The people of Haven mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between mages and templars. She brought their leaders together. Now they are dead. We lash out like the sky, but we must think beyond ourselves, as she did. Until the Breach is sealed."

She led the prisoner through a gate onto a bridge, and cut the rope binding her wrists. "Come. It is not far."

"Where are you taking me? To the Breach?"

"Your mark must first be tested on something smaller," Cassandra said. "There are many smaller rifts in the area. One is very nearby. There are soldiers fighting the demons that spawn from it. We will help them, and then hopefully you will be able to close the rift forever. Then we will know if we stand any chance at all."

"How am I even to know how to do this?" the prisoner said.

"There is a man with the soldiers, an apostate who is the nearest we have to an expert on the powers involved. He believes he knows how the mark will function. Come now, we must hurry. Don't break your ankle, running in those shoes."

"Don't get too winded, trying to catch me up," the prisoner said, and took off, her long legs chewing up the cobbles at an amazing stride with no apparent fear for her safety in the high heels or the swinging ropes of beads attached to the back of her short turquoise skirt or leggings. Cassandra almost shouted for her to stop, but realized she had given the woman permission to run, and she was running in the correct direction for the moment at least. The best thing to do was, as she had said, to catch her up and keep her moving. She ran after her. The only reason she caught her is because the woman stopped to wait for her at the end of the pavement.

"Where did you get such clothes?" she asked. "I have never seen such garments before, not even the cloth they are made from. And why would you ever chose to wear them, especially if you are what you say you are, Mercenary? It cannot be comfortable for such a line of work."

"It isn't. I hate them, deeply and truly, I always have. But I got them long, long ago in a strange land far, far from here, where I wore them for work of necessity. Not what you're thinking. I danced and sang in the streets for coin to keep myself and my friends fed. A strange girl with some strange power had a number of sets of these clothes made for me so that I could do that with greater return for my effort. I hated it, but it kept us fed and safe while we were stuck there."

"You couldn't get any other work?" Cassandra said.

"Not in that land. It was a very strange place."

"If you hate the clothes so much, and you no longer have to do that work, nothing is making you wear them now."

"Not true. There was a young man who was with me in that strange land. He loved to watch me dance. I didn't care for him. We became friends, but… I didn't want him in the way he wanted me. He was highly placed, and like many highly placed young men, his marriage was arranged. But he was highly-placed enough that he was able to break his betrothal contract and force an arrangement with me, one that I couldn't say anything about. All of his people surrounded me and forced me to say yes to it. I thought it was the end of my life. I thought that I would be… his sexual slave. But it… wasn't exactly like that. He was kind. He let me remain myself. But almost every night he would ask me to dance for him. Just ask, not demand. Great big begging green eyes. And every night, I would say no. Now he's dead. He's dead, and I… I guess I miss him. So I wear these gods-awful dresses, every day, all day, no matter what I'm doing, and I hope that wherever he is, at the Maker's side or otherwise, he can see me. And every day, I take the time to do at least one dance."

"I don't know whether to salute you or to slap you," Cassandra said. "You would not do it for him when he was alive, so now you do it always, every day?"

"I consider it atonement for my stubbornness," the prisoner said. "It wouldn't have cost me anything to dance for him once in awhile."

"Did you have children with him?"

The prisoner gave her a steely blue-gray gaze. "That is between me and my late husband," she said.

Cassandra shrugged her shoulders. "It is only a simple question. There is no need to get all testy."

"You're the one who wants to cut my head off."

Cassandra held her silence until she could speak without snapping. "I only want justice for the Divine. If you are not guilty, then I want to find whoever is responsible, and bring them to justice."

"You haven't made up your mind on me, then?"

"Many have. I… had, originally. Now I am not so certain."

"Hmph."

"So. Do you have children? You don't have to tell me anything about them."

The prisoner sighed. "All right, I suppose it hurts nothing to say. We had two children, a son and a daughter. I haven't seen them in years."

"Why not?"

"They are grown, strong enough to take care of themselves. They don't need me."

"My parents were executed when I was still a child. But I should think a child that has a parent, would always need their parent."

"Don't lecture me. You don't know me or my children."

"True."

They came to a bridge. A small body of soldiers were a few paces ahead of them as they crossed. Before they made to the other side, a blast of green light shot out of the Breach and vaporized the soldiers. The bridge crumbled beneath their feet and the prisoner and Cassandra pitched down to the frozen river below.

"Ooph!" Cassandra picked herself up from amidst the broken chunks of bridge gingerly, amazed to find herself without serious injury. She found her prisoner, half-buried under cobbles and stones. She seemed to be unconscious. Perhaps dead.

"No! We need you!" Cassandra shouted, and dragged her by the hair out from under the rubble.

"Yeah, that's what you do when someone has a head and possible spinal injury," the prisoner said. "Let go of me, bitch. I've got a splitting headache already without your 'ministrations.'"

Cassandra let go. "You frightened me."

"Thought you lost your 'tool,' did you?" the prisoner said, raising her head. There was blood on her face from a cut on her cheek and she was already bruising there, but otherwise she seemed her surly self. "We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

She stood and brushed herself off. "Your garments did not take damage?" Cassandra said.

"They're actually designed to act as armor. They're really quite effective," the prisoner said.

"Bullshit," Cassandra said. The prisoner merely shrugged.

"So, how do we get where we were going from here?" she said, looking around at the steep, ice-slicked embankments.

"We shall have to take the long way and look for a route up the embankment," Cassandra said. "We were lucky to survive without serious injury. Let us hope our luck holds."

A green light shone from the Breach onto the ice in front of them, and a demon appeared within it. "Stay behind me!" Cassandra said, drawing her sword and throwing herself at this sudden foe. The prisoner was content at first to leave it to the Seeker, but when a second shaft of light shone down and a second demon appeared she began to search the wreckage of the ruined bridge for something to use as a weapon. All she could find on short notice was a wooden staff with a crystal at the tip.

The demon came for her. She swung the staff, connecting solidly, but the staff wasn't meant to be a weapon in that manner and broke in two. She jabbed with the crystal piece, hoping it was enough to score a wound, but instead of striking a blow, a bolt of electricity shot out of it and jolted the demon. It threw up its arms and collapsed into the Fade just as Cassandra finished with her own foe.

"Put down your weapon," she said, advancing upon the prisoner where she stood stunned, her sword leveled at her. "You lied. You said you were no mage."

"I'm not a mage."

"You just cast magic!"

"I don't know what that was, but believe me, I am no mage! The only time I have ever been capable of magic was in that faraway place I told you about, where I got my dresses. Everyone could do magic there, even me! But I never could before, and I never could since! I swear it!"

"What was this land, where everyone could do magic?"

"It's… It's a place called Eorzea. You'll never find it on a map. It… doesn't exist in this world. I was cast there with two other people I didn't yet know by a… a very powerful witch called Flemeth. I never did find out why. We were only able to get back home by working for another powerful witch of that world named Paddra Nsu-Yeul. She's the one who gave me my dresses."

"A likely story."

"You don't have to believe me, but that's the truth."

"An elaborate lie to come up with on the spot," Cassandra said. She lowered her sword. "I still don't believe your wild tale, but I start to think that perhaps you do. I do not like thinking I am saddled with a madwoman, but the task is too vital to quibble over your sanity. Pick up your staff. I cannot defend you from everything, and you should have some means to protect yourself. Come. It should only be a little further from here."