I do not own Dragon Age Inquisition Bioware does. Unbeta's so all mistakes are mine (sorry!)

Content Warning: kidnapping, torture (not sexual), distress, swearing, demeaning language

Chapter 1

The storm came out of nowhere. The wind picked up and whipped her plants she was trimming to make a cup of tea around her hands. The dark grey clouds rolled in at the speed of the time-lapse videos they played on the weather. "Geez! What?" she blurted at the sudden change. There was no storm on the forecast, and the sky had been clear all day. She set her clippers down on the small patio table and began pulling her window boxes down, so they wouldn't be blown off her apartment balcony. Thunder rumbled, but she didn't see any lightning. She leaned on the railing of her balcony to get a good view of what was developing.

An eerie wind pushed the thick, dark clouds across the sky. There! She saw the lightning she was looking for, but it was green, not bright white or yellowish. Tornado? She wondered since the sky had taken on a green tinge. She was just about to go inside when the clouds split with a harsh crack, the noise like rocks falling not thunder, and a blast of green lightning bolted from the sky towards her.

She screamed as she was ripped away from the balcony. Moments later, she crashed to the ground in the rain. She didn't move but took a moment to breathe and assess what just happened. Did I fall from the balcony? She took a deep breath, nothing felt broken, but she was very, very sore. She wiggled her fingers and toes and then reached to feel her head for noticeable damage before she tried to roll over. She seemed more or less okay. She was wet, sore, starting to get cold, and had just fallen from her balcony.

She opened her eyes and began to roll over. The stormy grey sky and rain she recognized gave way to forest and then rocky beach beneath her hands. She stared. If she had fallen from her balcony she would be looking at the pavement, the sidewalk, the front gardens that her apartment filled with the wrong plants because they had no idea what they were doing and never listened to her suggestions. Hostas? In the sun? Really, who does that?

She wasn't in front of her apartment. Have I been thrown farther? She looked around. To the left was a forest and to her right the ocean. Ocean? She didn't live anywhere near the ocean. It couldn't have been the lake. She started paying attention to her nose, and there was no mistaking the salt smell. She moved to sit back on her feet. What the fuck? She tried to make sense of it. She didn't fall from her balcony. She wasn't thrown. This was too real to be a hallucination; there were too many sensations. She was cold, her knees wet, her ribs ached, the salt smell, the sound of the rocky surf and rain.

What the heck happened? Where am I? What was going on? She stood up and started down the beach. If I keep the water to my right, I won't get lost. She grimaced wryly at herself. Spitting up survival information like it would help.

She made it to some rocky outcroppings and more of her situation started to sink in. Her bare feet were wet, cold, and sore. She was wet, cold, and sore. Her jeans and a t-shirt were not made for traipsing about a seacoast in the rain. Her clothes were stuck to her, and her hair had washed out of her messy bun. She paused under the rocky archway to make a new plan, any plan other than her previous "walk up the beach" plan.

She scanned her surroundings and noticed movement up the beach. There were figures headed her way. She started to move into their line of sight to wave her hands and yell to get their attention, but the seagull next to her startled her by taking off noisily. She glanced back at the figures, and they were now moving quickly towards her. Are those even people? They were covered in bulky white cloth with metal faces and horns. They also carried spears. Vikings? Have I gone back in time? Cosplay? Am I even still on earth? Aliens? What the hell? She scrambled for a reference.

Their shouts pulled her focus back to them. They pointed in her direction with their clawed hands. Too close, her brain supplied. They started waving their spears, and it finally clicked that she should run. She made it a few steps back the way she came when her body got stuck. She froze mid-step, and some sort of charge shimmered over her body.

They gathered around her, and she could hear their accented English. One of them approached her. His clawed hand reached toward her head, and he gestured in a circular motion around her face. Nothing happened. The others murmured in surprise. One of the others shoved his companion aside and tried the same thing. Nothing happened.

What were they trying to do? They shifted uneasily around her and started to argue with each other. The frozen feeling in her muscles started to recede, and she tried to move. She made it a few halting steps away before one of them caught her motion. "Kaffas!" they muttered and starting shoving people aside to get to her as she scrambled clumsily down the rocks. They easily caught up to her and swung their spear catching her across the back and knocking her to her knees. The man swung the spear again and struck her in the head.

When she came to, she could still hear the ocean, and the rain still fell on her face. She was still on the coast then. She sat up and looked around. She sat on a wooden floor surrounded by metal bars. She crawled to the door and gripped the bars. A cage? The ocean was to her right, and the coastline disappeared around the bend at the mouth of a creek. She shuffled over to one side and looked down. The cage was on wheels. Awesome, I hope they remembered to put rocks behind them, or I'm going to roll away. She experimentally rocked the cage, but it didn't move. That may have been because the thing was big and heavy. It was longer than her and looked like she could stand up in it if she wanted to. The cage sat a little too close to the water for her liking. I hope there aren't tides. Otherwise, I'll probably be swimming.

What happened? Oh, right. The storm, falling, strange place, and the people who apparently kidnapped her and locked her in a cage. Awesome. She looked back to the camp. There were five or six of them wandering around a fire. They had taken off what must have been helmets, and she saw that they were indeed people, very human-looking people. The pointed fingers must have been gloves, but they all carried the spears on them. They looked like they were out camping. Just with a kidnapped woman in a cage. Creepy. It came back to her to wonder where she was.

"Hey!" she yelled toward the camp. "Hey! What's going on?" They all turned to look at her. Er, oops. Two of them got up and walked over to her. They were the two who had tried to do whatever they had been trying to do the other day. Was it the other day? How long was I out? Do I have a concussion?!

"You are awake now?" One of the men asked. She would call him Bryan.

"Obviously," she replied. "What is going on? Where am I?" she demanded.

"You are on the Storm Coast as a guest of the illustrious Venatori," he made a mocking bow.

"Where?" she asked confused, "With the who?"

They looked intrigued by her confusion. "The Northern coast of Fereldan," Bryan answered her.

"Huh? Where is that? The last place I know, I was on my balcony in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," she answered.

"Fereldan is in Thedas." Bryan seemed intent on giving her a geography lesson.

"I have never heard of Thedas or Fereldan. Wisconsin is part of the USA. Am I still on earth?"

The two men grinned at each other. "It worked. She is not from here." They called back to one of the other men. He looked like the leader.

"Are you sure?" He asked them and turned to her, "Girl, tell us where you are from?"

"I already said I was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The United States of America, Earth. You know, the second star to the right?"

The man looked at her skeptically, "You are not from Thedas?"

"No, duh."

They went back to ignoring her and talking amongst themselves. "We were searching beyond the veil."

"Yes, but not for a woman," the leader gestured at her.

"What is the veil?" she asked.

They ignored her. "She is resistant to magic," Bryan pointed out.

"But not all magic," his friend shot back.

"Magic?!" she exclaimed. "Magic isn't real!"

They turned to look at her. "There is no magic where you are from?" the leader asked.

"No, it's not real."

"Oh, I can assure you it is real," the leader smirked at her. They started talking in hushed tones and called over one of the others. She recognized him as the man who had knocked her out with his staff. Let's call him Douchbag Dan. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she didn't like the look Douchbag Dan was sending her.

They came to a consensus and unlocked her cage door. "Get out."

She jumped out of the cage. Bryan and his friend grabbed her roughly and began to drag her away. "Hey?" she asked, "What are you doing?"

"Experimenting," Douchbag Dan told her.

She hated Douchbag Dan. Bryan wasn't so bad; he was a coward and always seemed stuck with the job of bringing her food. Douchbag Dan, though, he was, well, a douchbag. She wasn't sure how long she had been stuck with the Venatori magician-people.

Thanks to Dan, she did know that she was not resistant to ice, fire, electricity, and, ironically, healing magic. She was, however, resistant to most spirit magic and necromancy. Anything that affected the mind had no effect on her. She knew this because Dan had been using her as a practice dummy for a few days. They tied her to a post and tried out different kinds of magic before tossing her back in the cage when they were done.

She tried resisting leaving the cage the second morning, but they simply blasted her out of it. She was no match for their magic, and they knew it.

It must have been close to a week, but her bouts of unconsciousness made it hard to keep an exact count of the days. They stopped messing with her and seemed to be waiting for something. They passed the time arguing, pouring over books, and making notes around the campfire. They were content to ignore her unless they had questions or further experiments to do. She was fed and watered, but then left to deal with the cold and everything else by herself. She wasn't sure if they intended to keep her alive or what they hoped to accomplish, but if they left her too long like this the days of cold and wet and exhaustion and injury would kill her.

Finally, they received a message by bird. Bryan came over and unlocked her cage, left it open, and walked away. She waited but nothing happened. They ignored her. Are they letting me go? Are they done with me? Her heart rate picked up as she shifted toward the opening. Then she bolted down the coast away from the camp.

She didn't make it very far when she was tackled. She hit the ground hard. Douchbag Dan grabbed her hair and started dragging her back to camp. She grabbed his arm to mitigate the pulling on her hair and started kicking and screaming. After she landed a few flailing hits, he threw her away from him, and she thumped back to the rocks knocking the wind out of her. Ouch, my ribs. She tried to scramble up, but he was already dragging her back toward camp. He dragged her to the pole and threw her against it. Every time she got up he knocked her back down. Eventually, she didn't get back up. Bryan drag-carried her back to the cage, and the leader tried to make mind magic work. This repeated for several days, and each new thing Douchbag Dan tried never made it so the magic worked. No matter how cold, tired, hungry, or hurt she was, it never worked.

They wanted to see if weakening her body would weaken her mind. It didn't matter what she said or what she did; she had no way to give them what they wanted. She wasn't even sure what they wanted. Did they want the magic to work? To not work? Do they care about the outcome at all or is it the data they are collecting that is more important? She was just a scientific experiment to them. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew where this was going.

They tried everything to weaken her body and spirit to see if the magic would work. And nothing worked. She didn't care anymore. She couldn't think of anything else for them to try. Nor could they, it seemed, as they sat around the fire drinking and waiting for some poorly slaughtered animal to cook. The smell wafted toward her and made her stomach ache. She wasn't hydrated enough to salivate. How long has it been? The ceaseless rain didn't answer her.

For everything they had done, her humor was still intact because at dusk when the bears wandered into camp, drawn out from the creek by the smell of blood and meat, and started to slaughter them and trash the camp all she did was laugh. She didn't even care when they came to paw at her cage knocking it over on the beach.

Bull and his Chargers were thoroughly soaked from the past few days camping at the Storm Coast. They were tracking reports of Venatori in the area. Krem was off making contact with the Inquisition, and they were expecting him back within the week. Down their Lieutenant, the crew was doing reconnaissance work and establishing camp before engaging with the Venatori. The goal was for the Inquisition to accept their offer and help with the final sweep. Bull was coordinating Ben-Hassrath reports with their own information when Skinner and Grim reported in from scouting.

"Chief," Skinner reported. "One of the Venatori camps was destroyed."

"Which one?" Bull asked.

"The one by the creek. It looks like bears."

"Haha!" Bull laughed loudly. "Bastards got what they deserved!"

"We should go back and pick the camp for anything useful," Skinner told him.

"Sounds like a plan," Bull agreed. "You up for another trip, Grim?"

"Mhmn," he replied.

Skinner was right. There were tracks everywhere, and the bears had eaten the food stores or dragged them into the woods. Tents knocked over, papers scattered everywhere, and the camp reeked of magical residue. It made his skin prickle. Grim went to walk the perimeter, and Skinner started to pick through the supplies. Bull turned his attention to the table of books and scattered notes and began looking for anything of interest to the Ben-Hassrath or to help track the Vints' movements on the coast. The notes contained the usual propaganda and magic crap, but the more he pieced together the more concerned he became. They were doing magical experiments with the Fade. More Fade crap. Their experiments found something valuable that they were trying to access through the Fade. Shit, demons. According to their notes—whether he believed it or not—they were not after a demon but something from another dimension, a magic-resistant object.

"Chief! You might want to take a look at this!" Skinner called from across the camp where she was perched on a large overturned cage.

"What'd ya find Skinner?" he approached her.

"Seems the Venatori had a captive," she leaped off the cage and pointed to the figure within. The person was unconscious but breathing faintly.

"Pick the lock, pull her out," Bull ordered. Skinner wasted no time. On closer look, it was a human woman. Her matted long brown hair covered her fair skin. She was around Skinner's size, but that may have been due to her treatment at the hands of the Venatori. Given the state of her clothes and the visible wounds, she was not a willing member of the party.

"What did the Vints want with her?" Skinner asked. How had she gotten mixed up with the Venatori? Was she a part of the experiments? The woman didn't stir as Skinner checked her injuries. "Nothing seems life-threatening. Stitches could tell you more. What should we do with her, Chief?"

Skinner's question jostled him out of his head. "We take her back to camp. Keep an eye on her. If the Vints had her we need to figure out why."

"Grim!" he called. "Pack up the supplies. Let's head out. Skinner, get her ready to move as best you can." He went to gather up the papers and research. They left the camp a few minutes later. Skinner scouted ahead, while Bull and Grim carried the supplies and the blanket-wrapped captive back to camp.

When she became aware of herself it was through tired dreams—the ones where you're really tired and sleeping, and your dreams are just feelings of tiredness that you can't wake up from no matter how hard you try because it's too heavy. She gave back into the pull of sleep.

The next time she came close to waking she drifted in that in-between stage where reality mixes with dreams and everything still feels safe and warm. She dreamt about stars and flowers and Ferdinand and his friends, but she didn't fall back asleep.

The noises around her sharpened to voices—a Tevinter accent—and her other senses came back to her body in a rush. Campfire, warm blankets, pain, and then she remembered fear and anger. She opened her eyes. She was in a tent. There was a man in the corner. Panic launched her from the bed, and she bowled over the man when he turned at the noise. She bolted out the opening and ran pell-mell into the camp. She bumped into a heavily armored soldier and fell back on her butt.

The man turned around in surprise. "Oh. Hey there. Sorry, I didn't see you," the soldier spoke in a soft voice with a Tevinter accent. He reached towards her, and she screamed. She scrabbled away from the man and stumbled up to run in the other direction only to be blocked by the largest person she had ever seen in her whole life. With horns?

"Krem, what happened?" the big man asked.

"She came flying out of the tent right into me," the Tevinter spoke and moved towards her. Another man came running from the tent. There were too many of them, everywhere.

Her eyes flitted around, and their conversation faded away. She saw the woods to her right and she bolted toward them. Strong arms caught her around the middle. She screamed and thrashed at the person holding her.

"Hey, hey, easy there. No one's going to hurt you," the man said behind her. He kept his arms around her as she tried to break free and pulled her back against him. Her knees sagged, and the man took more of her weight. "Easy, easy. I gotcha." He lowered them slowly to the ground and shifted her into him. Her head rolled back against his chest. He's warm, she realized, and she was very cold. Her whole body trembled, and she started to cry. The arms gently moved her away from him, and a blanket came around her.

"There we go, dear," came a woman's voice. She turned towards the sound and a kind face with green lines and pointed ears came into view. She leaned towards the other woman and gave into the darkness edging her vision.

Bull saw the woman collapse onto Dalish and quickly put an arm around both of them so she wouldn't knock the elf over. He helped Dalish lift the unconscious woman. "Stitches, what happened?" he turned to the healer.

"My back was turned, Chief. She knocked right into me and ran out the tent," Stitches answered.

"and then crashed into me. I think I scared her," Krem continued.

"Let's move her to my tent now, why don't we?" Dalish supplied and gave the men a pointed look.

Stitches came and took the other side of the woman, "I think that's best. I'll check her wounds, see what happened to 'em during the panic." The two of them moved to another tent, and Bull clapped a hand on Krem's shoulder.

"Don't take it too hard Krem. Everyone reacts that way to Vints," Bull jostled him.

"Nah, Chief. She was screaming over your ugly mug," Krem replied.