Healing the Dark - Dragon Age Inquisition Fanfic

Holli shivered, rolling over, her hand reaching out for the blankets. She fucking hated the cold. 

Two things hit her in that moment. The agony in her hand and chest, and a restriction of her arms.

Her eyes opened, trying to make sense of everything. She was in a dark, stone room that looked like a bloody dungeon. It was dimly lit, a couple of torches in the darkest corners and a barred hole in the wall. She would have called it a window, but it had no glass. And her hands were in some kind of stockade, one of them glowing a sickening green from what appeared to be some kind of crack in her skin. Where there should have been blood and tissue, there was only the glow. 

What the hell...?

Her last memories hit her then too, just fragments of them, with all the force of a kick to the gut. She had been shot! 

Her eyes darted around the room again. This definitely wasn't the bathroom at school. Nor was it a hospital. 

"What the actual fuck...?" She whispered to herself. 

Looking down at herself, she saw she was only in the lower half of her uniform; her shirt and blazer had been swapped out for some kind of canvas or linen thing that was too big and not warm enough. Her uniform would have been covered in blood she supposed, and had holes in it. 

She couldn't see down her shirt to see what happened to the bullet wounds, but since she was still alive, she figured they had been treated.

Didn't answer the other immediate questions: Where was she and—?

Her hand suddenly flashed, the light blinding. She couldn't bite back the squeal of pain that it caused.

The door to her... cell? suddenly burst open, the iron bars slamming against the stone wall. She flinched at the sound, watching two women stalk into the room. One practically glowed with anger; the other looked like a blank slate, expression carefully neutral. 

Holli didn't buy it. Were they going to go for a good cop, bad cop thing? And why? Why was she even locked up?

The angry woman circled her, glaring down at her.

"Where am I?" Holli asked. "How did I get here? Who are you? Why are you dressed like that? What is this?" She held her glowing hand up as much as the restraint would allow. It was heavy. "What happened to that dude? I- I don't think I was alone, there was a girl? Where's my mum?"

The questions just poured out of her as she tried to piece her memories together, but there were gaps. Gaping holes.

The two women exchanged a look, and Holli noticed a barely perceptible softening of the angry woman. 

"What is your name?" She asked, less fury in her voice than in her eyes.

"Holiday Whitlock. Everyone just calls me Holli."

"Holiday Whitlock, we were hoping you could tell us what that thing on your hand is. And why you were the only person to survive the explosion." 

Sounded more like an accusation. 

"Explosion? He set off a bomb!?"

"'He'?" The other one asked, her eyes narrowed.

"The shooter. There was a shooter... I can't- I can't remember who it was. Christ, everyone else died!?"

Did they? This whole situation seemed wrong. Were they even talking about the same event?

"Including the Divine," the shorter-haired woman said. The statement sounded more testing than accusatory.

This gave her pause. "Divine? What's the Divine?" 

The women exchanged another look Holli couldn't decipher.

"What do you remember?"

"I was at school; we were getting ready to go to camp. I had to take a quick slash-"

"Slash?"

"A piss. I-needed-to-ur-in-ate." She enunciated slowly and clearly as if they were children. "I went to the bathroom." Her voice dropped as she recalled the terror of it, the disbelief at first. "Then the screaming started... and the shooting..."

The screams and pops echoed around her head and she squeezed her eyes shut and shook it, hoping to banish them.

"Katie came in; she had blood all over her." Holli could feel tears stinging her eyes, and she tried to blink them back. "I can't remember. There was blood... and a green light maybe?" Her voice hardened, and she glared up at the woman. "Next thing I know, I'm here. Where is here? What is going on? How am I even still alive?"

The angry woman sighed, deflating with it. "It would appear Solas was correct."

Holli didn't know who the hell Solas was. 

"Head to the forward camp, Leliana. We will meet you there." 

Leliana nodded and left the room. The other woman crouched in front of her, unlocking the stockade. 

"I am Seeker Cassandra Pentagast. And you are in Haven, in the Frostback Mountains of Ferelden"

Holli just stared, unsure what to do with this information because it wasn't making sense to her. And while she wasn't much else, she was smart. Maybe she had a head wound? That would make it difficult to comprehend their words.

"And where- where is London?" She asked weakly.

"No such place exists here, as far as I know." She tied Holli's hands with rope this time, hauling her to her feet. "And as for your hand... Well, let's get outside first."

She kept her hand firmly around Holli's arm, forcing her to walk. Holli fell into her own thoughts, Pentagasts words swirling in her mind. Part of her was still trying to make them make sense, to slot them into place with what she already knew of reality. Another part of her was taking in everything around her. The building was made of wood and stone; light sources were all torches and candles. No electricity... 

They came to a pair of large, heavy wooden doors, which Pentagast pushed open. The daylight was practically blinding, and Holli had to shield her eyes while she waited for them to adjust. When she could see clearly, it was the sky that drew her attention first. There was some kind of swirling... hole? in it. There were giant rocks floating around it, and things were falling out of it. More rocks? 

"We call it 'the Breach.' It is a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour."

What the actual fuck? Did she die? Was this some kind of weird afterlife? A coma dream? This couldn't be real. 

"It's not the only such rift. Just the largest." She turned to look at Holli. "All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave."

Conclave? The Fade? Demons? Holli could only stare at her, dumbfounded. 

"Unless we act, the Breach may grow until it swallows the world." 

The Breach pulsed, growing larger, the shock of it shaking the earth. In the same instant, it felt like her hand exploded, the light flashing. She cried out and dropped to the ground, trying to ease the pain and mildly surprised to see her hand still there and intact. 

Pentagast crouched in front of her again. "Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads. And it is killing you."

"I think... I think I've already died. None of this is right. I shouldn't be here," she said it quietly, afraid of saying it out loud but unsure why.

The woman sighed. "You have not died. But you're right; you do not belong here. Solas suspected you came from... somewhere else. Another world." 

"And does this 'Solas' know how I can get home?" 

"I do not know. My concern right now is the Breach. And that mark on your hand may be the key to stopping it. But there isn't much time."

"Because it's killing me."

The woman nodded, not even trying to sugarcoat it. 

"Fine. I'll help. But I want your word we will figure out how to remove it and get me home." 

Whether or not Holli could trust this woman, she had no idea. But she didn't know what else to do. She was still just trying to process this whole situation and piece together the holes in her memory. 

"You have my word," she said, helping Holli to her feet.

"And can I get some kind of jacket? It's fucking freezing." 

She nodded, walking Holli through the town she was only now starting to notice. There were plenty of people about, and they were glaring. Some people were even looking at her with fear. One woman spat in her path.

"Why?" She whispered to the Seeker.

"They believe you are responsible." 

"Are they retarded?" 

She shot Holli a glare for that comment. "They do not know the circumstances. They know only that you survived what killed everyone else and that your mark is connected to the Breach. They are grief-stricken and afraid. They mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, Head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers." 

"A woman in charge of a religious order? Don't see that very often," she muttered.

"This was a chance for peace between mages and templars. She brought their leaders together. Now they are dead." 

"Mages? As in... magic? Dungeons and Dragons kinda stuff?"

She side-eyed her. "Of course. Then you have mages where you come from too?"

"No. Magic is... fiction. Movie and video game stuff. We don't have dungeons or dragons either. Well, dungeons maybe. But not the same." 

She had been doing a good job of keeping the panic at bay, she'd thought, but the more she learned about bizarro world, the harder it was to fight it off. 

"Wait, do you have dragons here?"

"Of course," she replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "In here," she said, opening the door to one of the houses they were walking by. From the wardrobe in the corner she pulled out a hooded black fur cloak, fixing it around Holli's shoulders. Not the best, but better than nothing. It would help hide her clothes as well, which were mismatched, a mess, and aside from the shirt, not of this world. 

Cassandra pulled a dagger from her belt and cut the rope binding Holli's hands.

"I don't suppose you have any kind of combat training?" Cassandra asked as she ushered Holli out the door.

"No. Do I need some?"

"It would be ideal." 

Honestly, right now, coma dream was the ideal scenario. At least then it was just a dream and none of this mattered. Maybe even dying here would wake her up. If she was dead or had indeed somehow jumped worlds, then this was her reality, and it was cold and terrifying. 

They left the town, passing through a gate and stepping out onto a bridge. The wind hit harder out here, and Holli pulled her cloak tighter around herself, wrapping herself in it like a blanket. 

"Are we going to try and close the Breach right now?" She asked.

"No, we must test you on something smaller."

Holli followed Cassandra closely, wary of the armed men and women out here who were giving her the stink eye, almost as fierce as Ginny Pike. 

Holli couldn't help but wonder what the situation back home was. How many of her classmates had been killed? Injured? Had he been stopped? 

Was her mum sitting at her bedside in the hospital? Preparing her funeral? Or wondering where she was? 

She just couldn't understand how this was happening, on the off chance it wasn't a coma dream. Part of her didn't want to go there; another part knew not to discard anything just yet, no matter how impossible it may seem. 

She followed Cassandra out the gates and up the hill in silence. She watched the Breach as she walked. It was massive, and the swirling vortex hypnotising. How they expected her to close it with her little old hand was beyond her. 

It flashed and grew, and she felt it in her hand, losing her step and biting her tongue to keep the scream in. 

Cassandra came and crouched in front of her again. "The pulses are coming faster now." 

"Sucks to be me then," she muttered through gritted teeth, hauling herself to her feet. 

She fell into step beside the older woman, pulling her cloak tightly again. 

"The larger the Breach grows, the more rifts appear, and the more demons we face." 

"What do you know about how I came to be here?"

Did her arrival cause the explosion? It wasn't a question she wanted to ask out loud on the off chance they hadn't considered that yet. The last thing she wanted was to prove they had reason to blame her. 

"Only that you appeared from a rift, a figure behind you." 

"I appeared after the explosion? Who was the figure?"

"Yes, after. Nobody knows who the figure was, only that they glowed bright as the sun." 

If she appeared after, maybe her arrival wasn't responsible then. 

They stepped onto another bridge, the wind hitting harder with the absence of cover from the mountain, trees, and rocks. A loud noise from the Breach shook the ground beneath them; the next thing Holli knew, the bridge collapsed, she and Cassandra tumbling down over the broken stone and hitting cold, solid ice below. 

Her skin burned where the ice touched it, and she wasn't sure, but she might have broken or fractured something on the way down. The wind had definitely been knocked out of her. 

Cassandra was up quickly, drawing her sword and shield. Holli followed her hard gaze to some kind of creature rising up out of the black muck and smoke that had fallen from the Breach. What the fuck was that?

Holli got to her feet, once again pulling her cloak around her, her teeth starting to chatter. She watched Cassandra a moment before something caught her eye. Another pool of that black shit not too far from her. A clawed hand reached out of it, then another. A near-identical creature to what Cassandra was fighting dragged itself out of the blackness. This one was focused on her, and Holli tried to stagger backwards, slipping on the ice. She reached out for some fallen brick nearby, hurling it at the creature, which easily dodged it, more agile than she would have thought. 

A sword suddenly burst through its chest, and it disintegrated. Cassandra was there, lowering her blade. 

"What the hell was that!?" Holli breathed out, trying to stop herself from hyperventilating.

"A demon," she replied casually, sheathing her sword. "You do not have them?"

"Not really. Again, fiction. Or... well, some religious people think they're real, but there's no proof of it."

The woman made a thoughtful noise before continuing on. How she kept such sure footing on the ice, Holli had no idea. She sort of shuffled and slid until she reached the snow and rocks, far less gracefully than Cassandra.

"Should we encounter more, which undoubtedly we will, stay back; keep yourself safe." 

Holli nodded. She didn't have to be told twice. She was no warrior.