Dresden Age Inquisition by Thepkrmgc
Disclamer: I don't own any of the rights, I'm not making any money off this, please don't sue me.
Kudo's to theassassinlover and itachi-Uchiha-lover for betaing!
Chapter one: Down the Rabbit hole
Memory is a peculiar thing, or so I've heard it said: that makes our triumphs fade with dawning light even as our failures haunt us evermore.
I ran as if my life depended on it, and considering the eldritch chittering behind me it probably did. Vaulting over an emerald stone as I sprinted through the miasma, a glimmer of daylight in the distance calling me towards a distant spire. Gritting my teeth as my hand blazed in agony I pulled myself up that forsaken slope, beckoned forward by an angel clad in green. Throwing myself upward in a last desperate bid to reach the summit her hand grasped mine and exhaustion overtook me like an olive mist.
I woke up in a dungeon , iron manacles weighing heavy upon me even as the green fire on my hand sent tendrils of pain shooting up my arm. My head was a fog, but I grimly wished that I could at least remember who it was that I'd managed to piss off this time. From the guardsman's sneer, I doubted that my lack of memories would be taken into consideration when the sentencing began. It wasn't long before the clatter of rusted bolts signaled that my interrogators had arrived. I know good cop/bad cop when I see it, (even if the particulars of what exactly a cop was eluded me) and they had their act down to a tee, and I'm not ashamed to admit that my silent act didn't last long under the pressure.
I told them what I remembered, all five minutes of it. Still, it came as something of a surprise when they actually let me out of the cell in response, though considering it was followed by the whole "there's a hole in the sky filled with demons" thing I didn't have long to enjoy the mountain air.. As baffling as the whole situation was, I wasn't just about to stand by while the world ended around me. I didn't know why this Cassandra lady thought that I could do something about the sky hole of doom, but it couldn't hurt to make an effort. To her credit, she tried to explain the situation as we made our way through the mob. I understood her words, but completely lacked the context behind what she meant. Some peace talks were destroyed and someone important was killed, leaving me to stumble out into the ashes and get blamed for everything, but I wouldn't learn about the groups involved in the whole mess until much later.
It wasn't like I had much time for reflection anyway, not with rocks falling from the sky like demonic artillery and the cacophony of battle echoing across the valley. One of them got a lucky hit, and shattered the bridge beneath our feet. It sent us tumbling down onto the ice below with an earthshaking crunch, and a pair of shades proceeded in attempting to disembowel us. Preferring my guts where they are I grabbed the nearest thing to hand, some kind of mace tipped pole-arm, and proceeded to bash what passed for the thing's head in. This, in turn, provoked another discussion at sword-point where I frantically tried to reassure its owner that the only head bashing I intended to do was toward the demons currently trying to eat our faces. That settled, we fought our way through the frozen riverbed until we came across a beleaguered group of defenders fighting below one of the smaller rifts; this one led by an honest to god elf.
Any nerdgasm I might have had was interrupted when said elf, Solas as I later learned, grabbed my marked hand and thrust it towards the rift, and a torrent of memories swept over me. The smallest of fragments drifted to the surface of consciousness, moments here and there: of binding and sealing, of slamming a door. And though it was a mere brushstroke on the canvas of the tapestry that was my life, I knew what I had to do. This rift was a bloody scar upon the world, an affront to father sky, and with a clench of my fist and a cry of Disperdorius I bid it closed.
There was a moment of silence as everyone took a collective sigh of relief, I took a moment to check to see if any more memories were forthcoming, but in their absence I was formally introduced to the people who I had just fought beside. Varric struck me as a fellow connoisseur of leather dusters, if a bit crazy for walking around bare-chested in the middle of an alpine winter. It's not like we got to chat for long what with the sky falling down upon our ears and all. After a moment to catch our breath it was back to our amateur mountain climbing expedition through a demon infested winter wonderland. A bit of skirmishing aside, it didn't take long for us to reach the forward operating base.
We were met by the "good cop" from before and some bureaucrat in a dress, who, by the sound of it was one of the main proponents of the whole "let's run around panicking like a chicken with its head cut off" doctrine, which would be all well and good if he wasn't trying to order my head to be cut off in the process. It was something I would see all too often in the coming months: fear and hopelessness driving desperate actions, which in turn cause a despair all of their own. I think that's why, in time, I would come to embrace the mantle of Inquisitor. I might not believe in the maker, but if putting their faith in me gave people the strength to make the world a better place then who was I to tell them otherwise?
The mark flared up again, and while I've gotten damn good at suppressing pain over the years, it cut through all my mental shields like a hot knife through butter. If it weren't for the chilly winter air I might have passed out then and there. When the pain subsided I looked up to find everyone expecting me to make some sort of tactical decision, as if I hadn't been rotting in their jail an hour ago. Understandably baffled by this I asked Cassandra, who was apparently my designated parole officer, why I was suddenly the one making decisions?
"It's your mark." was her response, as if they hadn't just imprisoned me because of it.
"They're your soldiers."
"Yes, but you are the objective they need to protect." Frankly I just thought they wanted it not to be their fault if the assault just went horribly wrong.
"Look, just flip a coin or something, the sky-hole isn't going to get any smaller while we sit around debating the issue..."
A coin was produced from one of Varric's many pockets and so the matter was decided, a headlong charge into demonic territory it was.
I had expected to have an army at my back, but the state of the few ragtag troops that joined us really hammered home just how dire the situation was. These people had been fighting nonstop over the past few days against a tide of monsters that must have seemed unending. They had held the line in the mud and snow as the world seemed to fall apart around them. I couldn't blame them for looking for a miracle, I just hoped that I could deliver on their expectations. And then I saw it, where they found me falling from the sky to land amid the ash and smoke with hundreds dead around me. It must have seemed like a vision of hell made real. No wonder they thought me some kind of monster, in their place, I might have done the same.
Then there it was, the breach in all it's freakish glory, as spires of twisted stone rose up all around it, as if they were straining to pierce the heavens from below. And from it emerged a loathsome baritone, echoing off the blasted walls with words like Sacrifice and Apotheosis. But even those ominous overtones paled in comparison to how utterly tainted the place felt, as if the blood of innocents had seeped into the very stones and dyed them red. Varric called it red lyrium, voice filled with caution born of dire experience, but I was too busy retching up my meager rations to care. Stumbling forward, desperate to be anywhere so long as it was away from here, I tripped over a loose stone and fell into the center of the crater. My duster turned what would have been an impromptu self-impalement on a set of glowing granite spikes into a nasty set of bruises and a few cracked ribs instead.
I looked up into a vision of myself, standing tall before a monster cloaked in shadows, an old woman cloaked in battered papal robes crucified before it. She screamed for me to run, but I've never been one to stand by as others died before me. The beast raised its hand dismissively as I raised mine in anger. A word of power came to my lips before a blur of motion sent the apparitions back into the dust from whence they came. I knelt there in the cinders, my mind blurring with static and memories until the others arrived, asking questions I could not answer. Until the rift opened in an emerald vortex, and the moment of truth was upon us at last.
I'm not sure what I expected to come off of the smaller sky-hole below the breach, but a ten meter tall purple spiky thing with the proportions of an Olympic body builder was not it. I would later learn that this was something called a "Pride demon", which probably explains why it didn't take well to being called a "Barney wannabe", and came charging headlong at me far faster than you would think anything of its bulk could go. If I was Leonidas I would probably have made an epic leap onto its chest and stabbed it to death with whatever pointy object I had on hand. In the absence of spartan valor, however, I made a mighty war cry (that may have sounded like a pathetic squeal of terror) and dove out of the way so it could disembowel itself on the rock formation behind me. Nobody seems to believe me when say that the whole process was entirely accidental…
Its guardian may have been defeated, but the breach still hung overhead. As much as I wanted to just lay on the mud and nurse my aching ribs there was still work to be done. So I took the pain, and the rage at the thought that these demons might be let loose upon the world, took the pride in my victory and the raw joy of survival, and I cast it into the abyssal sky so that no more would it threaten the realms of men. Exhausted from the effort, I passed out as a flash of neon green overtook my vision once again.
(A/N, I've been meaning to write something like this for a while, and decided to experiment with writing a fic as I was playing the game alongside it. I hope you enjoyed the initial results, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave a review.
Oh, and I'm still trying to think of dresdenified nicknames for the main cast, I've got a few already in mind but varric and iron bull took the easy ones already so if anyone has suggestions please let me know)
