A/N: I. RETURN! Despite my hellacious overtime and a lengthy, unintentional hiatus, I've managed to drop everything for a few hours to update a few more of my stories. That, and to play Dragon Age again, thus rekindling my love for the genre and this ficlet. Things get a bit...dicey in this chapter, so I'll be upgrading the status to M. Fanfiction's witchunt is over, so it should be alright...I hope.

Now, let us continue on with Keeper of my Heart! Also, I'm totally enjoying playing Dragon Age Inquistion! SO! MANY! IDEAS! Although its a right bugger transferring my saved games with that bollocks of a Keep. Why couldn't they make the damned thing simple?!

By Andraste, he annoys the piss out of me...but hopefully this chapter will make ya'll smile. I worked really hard to capture everyone's personality here, and I've had a FIELD DAY with our dear little Lelianna and Cassandra. Varric as well! Also! Prepare to laugh. And YES, 'tis Morrigan reading in the beginning...

...enjoy!

"Holy? Ordained? Me? Sugar, there ain't nothin' holy about ME."

~?

Breach

Spite.

Such a simple, innocuous little word; and yet, this word, this last, desperate act, changed the course of all of Thedas. An act of spite.

Yes, spite.

'Tis a foul, nasty little word filled with cruelty and malevolence. Malicious ill will, prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate another person at any cost. Pettiness or hatred, spurring the disposition to irritate, annoy, or even thwart ones foes. T'would be simple to read the definitions to you, dear reader, but that is not why you are here, I trust.

No, you are here to hear the tale of the Heralds of Andraste. The Inquisitors. The man -and woman, I rightly add- responsible for changing the world. Oh? Did you think, mayhaps, that they saved it? T'would depend on the teller. Some say that they indeed saved it, ensuring peace and prosperity for all. Others claim that left it worse than before. And still others remain ambivalent, refusing to speak their pace. Is our world truly saved? Or, has it merely been rippened for another conquest from another realm?

I shall tell you their-his-story, and let you be the judge of that.

"We stand upon the precipice of change," my mother once told me when I was but a girl. "The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment...and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap. It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly."

Truer words have never been spoken. I was not there for their last confrontation; indeed, only a handful were present for that final, defining moment. But if you are to understand what happened at the end, then so too must you know how it began, or so he has told me. I was not there for the beginning, either; I was merely told the story of how one of the Heralds was cast from his realm...into ours. Ahh, and what a story it was! You see, my dear reader, to know the ending...

You must know the beginning.

"If I am to fall, then so shall you!"

Spite.

Kaguya shrieked this unholy obscenity even as she was sealed; her hateful eyes locking on the two boys who had broken her. Defeated her. Her! HER! The inheritor of all chakra! All of which belonged to her! Even now she could feel her body breaking apart, coming undone back into the tailed beasts. It was over and done they assumed, any threat she might have posed would vanish in a matter of moments. But in those moments, a flicker of power still belonged to her. She leered at them, these young men who dared to defy her, and in her last moments, she resolved to have her revenge.

She drew on the fraying threads of her power, intent on hurtling them out of this world. To another dimension, perhaps. A world without oxygen sounded like a fine place. Yes-she'd fling both of them there and watch in her last moments as they suffocated. But fate, as often it is, chose otherwise.

Instinct.

Perhaps that was what caused the chain of events. Perhaps not. Who knew? Regardless, something happened.

Without thought the blond moved to place himself between his old rival and whatever attack the goddess was preparing, his booted foot striking her skull and shattering her control. Kaguya cursed, but the moment was already gone, lost to her as the last of her body crumbled. She took solace in striking at least one of them. The emerald-hued blast struck him head on, warping his vision; staining everything an odd, eerie shade of odd brackish green. It was done.

"Gah!"

His body rippled like water, shifting and twisting even as he struggled to rid himself of the strange aura in which she'd wrapped him. Kaguya laughed. She'd lost control of her technique but it didn't matter; she'd taken her revenge on at least one of them...even if she had no way of knowing where they'd be sent. The blue-eyed blond met her furious, triumphant gaze and had time for one word before the goddess crumbled back into nothingness. Before he vanished completely.

"Shit."

And then he was ripped into this world and cast into...

...something else.

I know not how long he spent in that strange realm between the world; it could have been days. It might have been years. Decades. Eons. He refused to speak of the horros he witnessed there, nor the strange, terrible events that altered him, scarring his mind-his very soul-into the being we now know. But I do know thus. Somehow, someway, he escaped. Coincidence, perhaps? Providence?

Finally, blessedly, something shifted.

Something tore in the veil, ripping him free and casting back into reality once more. Into a new world. But not his own.

Ours.

When he came to, he found himself in chains. In a cell.

Compared to the hell he'd suffered, Uzumaki Naruto found it a most welcome change.

The terrible agonies he'd suffered in that eerie dimension, though still stark in his memory, were gradually being replaced by the cool sensation of the cooled cobblestones beneath his legs. Slowly, blessedly, his mind came back to him. He looked down at the rags that'd once been his orange-black jumpsuit, saw what years of imprisonment in that eerie dream-world had wrought on him. It had changed him. Hardened him. Nearly broken him. But now he was out. Gone. Free. Here.

But where was here, anyway?

An attempt to move caused his chains to clatter, eliciting a grunt...and a groan. Something that suddenly reminded him he was not alone.

Another was bound beside him, her features hidden in the shadow of their shared chamber. Whomever she was, she was large. Not wide, just...tall. Very, very tall. Like an amazon, he reflected. He could've sworn that the shadows were playing tricks on him-were those actual horns on her head?-because her skin, what little he could see of it, seemed to flicker a dull matte grey in the subdued torchlight. She sat in a forced postion on her knees, much like him, her head bowed.

Probably had something to do with the half-a-dozen guards standing at attention around them. Blades drawn in hand, the armored soldiers watched them like hawks, ready to slit their throats at the slightest act of any aggression on their part. He caught one man's eye and bared his teeth in a ghastly grin, causing the soldier to flinch back, taking his weapon with him.

"Pussy." Naruto muttered beneath his breath, chuckling hoarsely to himself. Once, he would've blanched at such a word. But an eternity in...well, wherever he had been had done much to strip him of his good humor in that regard. Thankfully, before he could think of tormenting the guardsman further, someone decided to pipe up.

"Graaaah...I have such a headache." Kurama's groan reverberated inside his skull like a crack of thunder. "Never do something that stupid again!"

'Oh, there you are, fuzzball. I was starting to think you didn't make the trip.' It was a blessed relief to hear the voice of his tenant once more; they hadn't been able to communicate whilst they were in that strange, odd world of dreams and demons and death. Speaking with the kitsune now was a cool balm to his soul. But, was it just him, or did his ally sound...different, somehow? There was a pitch to the beast's thunderous tone that hadn't been there before, or if it had, he'd simply failed to notice it before in an unguarded moment. But now he did. Genuine relief colored the kitsune's words, almost as if...

'Hey...

"What?"

'I know I never thought to ask before with the other half of you, but are you a-

The fox gnashed its-her?-fangs, the sound like a thousand nails drawing across a giant chalkboard.

"Finish that sentence and I will KILL you."

'Whoa!' Had his hands not been bound, Naruto would've raised them in a placating gesture. 'Alright, alright...' And then, because he simply couldn't resist, he gave an impish smile. 'Don't get your panties in a twist.'

"NARUTO!"

'What? It was just a joke!'

"Hardy har, har. Very funny, kit. Hope you like your new beard~!"

'Beard? What the hell yo-oh, fuck you! When did that get there?!'

The saviour's sight snapped down in the same instant that his hand rose, each telling him-confirming-that he did in fact, have a substantial layer of yellow fuzz on his whiskered cheeks that hadn't been there before. He felt something lurch in his gut. A beard, not the nice kind you'd see on someone like Asuma, but a long, unkempt thing as ragged as it was bedraggled. He resolved to shave as soon as possible; but it was impossible to ignore the stark reality staring him in the face. He was taller than he'd been before, his voice just a touch deeper than the teenage pitch it'd been trapped in. He'd been nearly seventeen when he'd stared down Kaguya-before she'd ripped him out of his world and into the next.

How long had he been gone...?

"I think it suits you."

'Oh, sod off.'

Naruto sniffed indignantly at his new facial hair then returned his attention to the chains binding him. Giving them an experimental yank. Idly he looked down, staring at the mark on his hand, the same mark still left by the Rikudo Senin. It seemed to ripple before his very eyes, the circular mark bearing a strange, crimson hue that hadn't been there before. And then, his hand phased out of the shackle. Just like that. One moment, the arm was bound by solid iron, the next, it simply phased right through; he narrowly caught the link in his hand before it could clatter to the floor.

Naruto blinked. Well, he mused, that's new.

It would've been child's play to simply shatter the other chains even without this odd gift, but something held him back. Curiousity, perhaps.

Bemused, his slipped his hand back through. This time, it stayed. Fascinating. He practiced his new parlor trick a few more times in the shadows before finally drawing the attention of his captors and, unsurprisingly, his fellow prisoner. She stirred, rising from her shackled crouch to turn, tower over him, and look down at her hand, hissing in pain. Odd, that it was glowing green. But that wasn't where his thoughts lay; no, his sight was fixed decidedly elsewhere, in retropsect. Kurama seemed to agree with him, when faced with this strange new sight.

"Oh, bugger."

And what a sight she was.

For a moment, his heart simply stopped beating; the logical reaction to being faced with a towering giant amazon with grey skin and horns. Did I mention the horns? Horns! Naruto couldn't help but stare at them, those jagged appendages jutting out backward from a messy tangle of ebon tresses to stab at the space behind her head. In any other light he would've considered her pretty, but here, in this dank cell, the sight of this eerie-very eerie!-and strange woman produced the opposite effect. He'd spoken to all manner of talking creatures and summons during his time as a shinobi but this, this was neither.

For a terrifying moment he was trapped in that world again-the Fade-tormented by those horned...things, never allowed to rest, never given a change to breathe, never-

...who're you?" she asked, shattering his painful train of thought. She wasn't one of them, he reminded himself. She wasn't.

"Don't just sit thre you dolt! Say something!"

"Huh." he blinked, quelling the instinctive rush of stark fear he felt when he looked at this strange, demonic woman. "Horns. Okay, that's new. What the devil are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

Dark eyes regarded him with confusion at first, then, seeing the shackles that bound them together, resignation. A pale ghost of smile pulled at her dark lips. She shifted slightly, seemingly unaware of the blades only a few feet from their necks.

"I take if you've never seen a Qunari before." when she spoke fully her voice was rich like honey, albeit thinned by the pain the mark on her hand appeared to be causing her.

"I don't even know what a Qunari is." Then, almost as afterthought, "You're very...ah, tall, ya know. Are all your people like that?"

"Well, that's what I am. A Qunari." she remarked glibly. Her horned head cocked aside in thought. "Well, actually its more of a religion. My parents were never terribly explicit about that."

And just like that the tension evaporated. Naruto shook his head, disarmed by her wit. His first reaction had been fear, but when faced with this, he found that same fear beginning to wane. Perhaps this Qunari woman, strange as she was, wasn't so bad after all. She certainly seemed better than those horned, scantily clad creatures that hounded him in that...other place. Just thinking about it was enough to evoke a subtle shiver of dread.

"Naruto." he introduced himself tentatively, probing the waters between them.

"Herah." she replied with a nod. "So, any idea why we're locked up here?"

"You don't know?"

"My memory is...fuzzy. I remember running from these creatures, and a woman, then...nothing."

"I suppose we'll be finding out soon enough." he shrugged.

"Oh?" Herah blinked, tilting her head aside to regard him closely. "What makes you say that?"

Naruto blanched.

"I have...experience with situations like this." He admitted reluctantly, glancing at one of their guards. "I suspect our captors will barge in here and start making demands any minute now. Besides," he gave their single shared shackle a cursory glance. "We seem to be stuck together for the time being. No point in leaving until we see what they want, at least."

She shrugged, rolling her slim shoulders. "If you say so...

In the end, they hadn't long to wait.

As if summoned by those very words, the doors burst open. Two women strode through, one wearing sleek back armor, a shield at her back and sword at her hip. By comparison her companion was dressed in leathers, rather than deadly plate, and was former held her arms aloft fist curled and, ready for action. Behind her, two additional guards stood, holding their weapons out defensively. The robed woman moved with a deceptive grace; where the blackette swaggered, this redhead simply glided. Assassin. Spy. Dangerous. He saw her in those odd, lavender-colored robs, and his mind immediately told him to be wary.

Then he saw the fury crackling in the shield-bearer's eyes and knew what was coming. He could've done a dozen different things in that instant, each of which would've ended with his escape and the massacre of every sapient soul in the room. Instead, Uzumaki Naruto simply closed his eyes.

He blinked, the curtain of his eyelids fluttering shut for only a moment, and in that moment, the woman stepped forward and clobbered him.

Hard.

"Tell me why we shouldn't kill both of you now." she hissed through the pained haze Naruto didn't answer. So she hit him again.

The blow rocked him backward where he sat, but when it failed to provoke the gibbering confession the woman doubtlessly wanted, that same hand flew to her blade.

With that, Naruto did the only thing he could think to do:

He laughed.

"Okay, you're obviously the bad cop. Lemme guess, then." His head turned toward the redheaded one. "Good cop?"

"...we just want to know what happened." she chose her words well, this one, but her response-and lack of violence-gave her away.

"Yup, I'll take that as a yes."

Herah stifled a laugh, but otherwise, there was no response.

"You're a real stick-in-the-mud, you know." Naruto continued, savoring the outrage in the face of his captor.

"You will tell us what happened at the Conclave!"

In the corner of his eye, Herah flinched. Naruto sighed.

"Lady, I have no idea what you're talking about."

The Seeker narrowed her honey-coloured eyes dangerously, but she did not respond. At least, not verbally. Naruto saw her finger twitch; she was just aching to draw her weapon and lop off his head.

"Cassandra," the cowled woman's voice was thick with reproach. "We need them."

"Still listening." He reminded him in a sing-song voice. "But where are my manners? The name's Uzumaki Naruto. And as to who I am...well, I think I'll be leaving now." Conjuring a bit of nature chakra into his hand, snapping the shackle of steel on his wrist and sending it hurtling at the figure.

The woman wearing armor grimaced, accepted the blow and staggered back a few steps, her expression twisting into rictus of shock and fury. "You!" she spat in a voice that echoed with fury and indignation in a way no mere male voice could manage. Her hand flew to her sword, yanked it free-

-and bright blue eyes flashed purple.

"Enough."

Cassandra blinked, her head buzzing and full of fluff. Pain radiated through her body, from the back of her head down her back, but it was muted, distant. She stared blankly at blurry darkness, wondering where she was. What had happened? Was she lying down? Why was she lying down? Why was she suddenly across the room?

A blob filled her vision, and details started emerging. Blond hair. Tan skin. Whiskered cheeks. Violet eyes. A man's face, looking down at her.

"Wha-" she mumbled, sitting up and shaking the cobwebs from her thoughts.

"Well," In a voice dripping with menace, the shinobi growled out, "Looks like I've got the Rinnegan now, somehow. Fascinating. And as for you, would you you care to lower your blade, before I revoke your breathing privileges?"

Reality rushed back. With trembling limbs, the Seeker scrabbled back, putting a few precious feet between her and-the mage?-now escaped convict. She rose quivering to her feet and stumbled backwards, glancing at the door to the cell. It suddenly appeared to be leagues away, and offered no escape from this man. She swallowed, trying to shift an unaccustomed tightness in her throat, more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She knew she could draw her blade and attack, but one look into those burning eyes stole any resolve out from under her.

She nodded so quickly he was surprised not to hear her vertebrae creak. "You...have me at a disadvantage."

Naruto grunted, his hand still raised from the violent pushing motion he'd made. Then he noticed the three guards who'd been guarding him and Herah. The qunari gawped at him now, as did the two women he'd sent sprawling. The guards, who'd been a great deal closer to the blast, hadn't been so fortunate.

The tableau held for a few seconds.

Naruto dropped his arms. "Oh bugger," he whispered, eyeing the bloodstains on the wall. And on his clothes. "That's going to be a pain in the ass to wash out...

A/N: Aaaaaand there we go. Naruto as another Herald/Inquisitor in addition to the original, if you will. Someone suggested I give it a go, and by Andraste, I hope I didn't dissapoint. If this Naruto seems a little snarkier than most, its because he's realized that his world is probably gone, lost, or forever ruined by his actions. That'd do a lot to mess with a guy's head, not to mention the fact that he's just realized he's ever known is now forever beyond his reach.

And woe to ye who mess with our favorite blond!

So...in the Immortal Words of Atlas...

...Review, Would You Kindly? It would make me oh so very happy to hear what you think of this story =D

R&R! =D