Notes:

Thank you for taking the time to read this fanfiction. It is the very first one I have written. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!

There were beads of dew upon the leaves, a soft mist hanging in the air, the grass lush beneath my feet. It was a dream of peace, a forest built to my exact liking and I breathed in sweet air with contentment.

There was a glow at the edge of my conscious though, a persistent light that tugged on the strands of reality.

A flash of green and suddenly my right arm tingled as if it lay against a thousand needles, but I ignored it and focused on the light. The glow took shape until I recognized it as a woman.

The woman's mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came.

It was as if she had uttered some command though, one unheard but understood, for everything began to peel away like paint. Flecks of green brushed against my skin as I reached out for the retreating form of the glowing woman.

Suddenly, lightning flowed through my right arm and I yelled out, dropping to my knees. The pain subsided quickly leaving behind a tingling feeling as if my arm had fallen asleep.

When I looked up I was alone in the darkness.

I was becoming aware of my reality though, conscious of substance beyond the dream realm. I knew I was laying on hard ground and that I was unable to move my hands. I was sore and aching too.

And I was not alone.

There was a breath on my earlobe and I felt someone insert a tremulous finger against the palm of my right hand. It was withdrawn with a gasp and the presence no longer felt so close. With concentrated effort I rolled over and opened my eyes.

I had expected to see a person. What I saw instead was...impossible.

I shut my eyes again trying to reason out my predicament. I had to be dreaming still so perhaps I was waking up from a dream into another dream like the movie emInceptionem depicted. Either way I was now conscious of dreaming and should be able to exert some control over it. Lucid dreams had always been my favorite for this reason as they gave me awareness over the story and decisions made and allowed myself to exercise control.

Lying still I began to focus on changing the situation. The discomfort I was feeling was unnecessary so I tried to will that pain away first. When that failed I I tried to imagine a new environment for myself. Taking a deep breath I opened my eyes to see the effect.

Nothing had changed.

I was still in a dimly lit room with my back against hard stone and staring up into the eyes of an elf. She had long red hair and a dark green pattern on her face. I had never seen her face before, but something was pulling at the edge of my mind that I had seen her facial drawing somewhere.

It wasn't until I tried to sit up that I realized my hands had been bound.

I had enough motor skills to know that I wasn't suffering sleep paralysis at least not in a way I was familiar with, but the feeling of this dream was also vastly different from anything I had experienced before. It almost felt

"Hey, everything's ok. We're safe right now. Do you have a name?"

Her voice broke my thoughts and I looked at her unsure that I had heard correctly. My name is… but somehow it didn't feel right to say. I had never been asked my name before in a dream and answering her question felt off. Again, it felt emrealem as if we were having an honest interaction and not one manufactured by my thoughts.

"Can you remember how you got here?" She asked instead when I did not answer.

I didn't know where here was much less how I came to be. I didn't even remember how I came to be kneeling. Which was a good sign that I was dreaming. I remember many stories where a dreamer is able to wake after they fail to recall how they arrived, when they realize the errors of their story. I had no recollection of how I got here so maybe here was just a dream.

With that realization I expected to awaken, instead the elf continued to look at me expectantly.

I was starting to feel frustrated. There were so many errors of this dream state, impossibilities, that I should be able to exert all the control that comes with lucid dreaming, but instead I still felt caught in the parameters, forced to follow along. I tightened my jaw and answered, hoping my cooperation, however unwilling would yield answers, "Not really, though it might help to know where 'here' is."

"If I had to take a guess, I would say we're in Haven," she replied.

I recognized that name and suddenly it all made sense. I looked closely at the elven girl across from me and suddenly recognized her tattoo as emvallaslinem and the gash I had seen on her hand earlier must have been the mark. I was dreaming of Dragon Age then, which made perfect sense as I had been obsessed with the franchise as of late. Recently having completed the DLC for the third game I had jumped straight into writing and reading fanfiction centered around the events of DAI completely obsessing about the world.

"That makes a bit more sense," I said finally finding my voice. "Are you from the Lavellan clan then?"

Her shock was not faked, but I was more stunned when she turned it around on me.

"What? But I'm not a…." Something in her confused expression stopped me and I turned my head away. Tentatively I reached up to feel my ears.

They were long, tapered, and sensitive.

I looked back at her to confirm my discovery and saw her doing the same check I had just done. She had a look of horrified fascination as her hand traced the long edge of her ear.

"We're elves!" She exclaimed, turning her wide-eyed look to me.

I was dumbfounded, "Did you not expect to be?"

"No," she answered shaking her head in emphasis, "last I checked I was human. Do you know what that mark is on your hand?"

I looked at her perplexed. What was she talking about? The mark was clearly on her hand, but again something in her expression stopped me and I looked down. My left palm was unmarked. However, my right one bore a green split in the middle. I rubbed a finger along it and suddenly felt queasy.

"That's the anchor, but you already have one and mine's on the wrong side," I answered slowly. My mind was in overdrive with questions now and I was frantically trying to process everything. "How did it get there?" I managed to finally say..

"I don't know, but like you said I have it too. I don't know what is happening or how either of us got here, but I think it's safe to say that this is not the world either of us came from. How much do you know of this world?"

"This world being Dragon age right?" I verified. She seemed confident in her placement, but I still wasn't entirely sure I wasn't dreaming this or outright hallucinating it. At her nod though I continued, "I only played Inquisition and its DLC. I never went through the first two, but I've read a lot of fanfiction, even wrote some, so I'm pretty well versed in the lore of this world even if I may not be familiar with the characters from the previous games." I sat thinking for a moment and then in a bit of a rush let the top questions on my brain spill out, "What about you? Are we both really in another world? Why do we both have the mark? I'm really not dreaming this?"

I saw the hint of a smile on her face as she replied, "Those are questions I would love to have answers to, but I'm afraid I don't know any more than you do. The good thing is that I played all of the Dragon Age games and the DLC which means both of us have a pretty good idea of what is expected going forward, if we're lucky that is. It might not follow the storyline we expect at all. There are two marks now which means everything could be altered. The whole story could be different."

She was right, if not a bit ahead of herself. I was intricately more concerned with surviving the next few hours than debating the future of Thedas and meeting the expectations that came with the mark. My anchor might not even work or act the same as hers. It could just be a shoddy replica, something my brain came up with to try and make this dream seem more believable.

Still, until I was sure of what this was I couldn't afford to act carelessly. Better to pretend it was all real until I knew for sure.

When I relayed that to her she agreed full-heartedly and afterwards we sat in silence.

It was my first chance to really look around and I solemnly took stock of my surroundings. The walls and floor were built from heavy stone and there were no windows only a few lit torches. There was one point of entrance and exit in the shape of a solidly built looking door.

As for myself, I seem uninjured except for the occasionally glowing gash on my right palm. I was dressed completely different though. The last clothes I remembered wearing was my work uniform which resembled nothing like the organically designed clothes I now modeled. I was wearing thick leggings that felt as if they were made out of animal skin. The tunic I wore felt the same as well though I could see it had fur lining on the inside. I also had calf high boots on, that were not produced with any material I was used to wearing and a wide belt around my waist. Looking at my companion I confirmed she was dressed exactly as I was.

I was in the middle of considering various possibilities of how to wake myself up, survive this, and figuring out what this even was when she made a sudden declaration, "What's taking them so long? We've been awake for probably a half hour now. They were supposed to come in right as we awoke. Apparently the timing isn't going to be reliable."

"Right, what do you think we should do?"

"This," she announced and stood, walking over to unapologetically bang on the door.

Attracting our captors attention hadn't exactly been what I expected nor wanted. There was still so much I wanted to think about before we were pulled from the safety of our cell and I opened my mouth to stop her when I saw the slit in door slide open.

It was too late. We'd been noticed.