Amy Dallon, Herald of Andraste

[Kylia Quilor]

I just straight up ignore the thing exists.

Click to shrink...

Well, like I said, there are a few things in Veilguard that may end up being relevant in the story that I'm incorporating into the view of things, but only some. But this isn't really meant to be an invitation to Veilguard discourse, just setting expectations.

 

[Daddycool101]

She bit the inside of her cheek a moment

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How do people do this? I've never tried this in my life.

 

[Soybo]

How do people do this? I've never tried this in my life.

Click to shrink...

You suck in your cheek a bit, try inhaling via your mouth while keeping it closed.
[Edit- Ok nevermind I'm just dumb, there's no inhaling involved just face muscle movement.]

 

[Your_Stepfather]

Ooohhh favorite femcel in dragon age, she'd either love or hate that elf girl who's name I can't remember, the red Jenny or something, I'll be following this on space battles tho

 

[Balorak146]

Ooohhh favorite femcel in dragon age, she'd either love or hate that elf girl who's name I can't remember, the red Jenny or something, I'll be following this on space battles tho

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Sera.

The bratty, xenophobic, obnoxious murderhobo's name is Sera.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Ooohhh favorite femcel in dragon age, she'd either love or hate that elf girl who's name I can't remember, the red Jenny or something, I'll be following this on space battles tho

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....I mean, if you think 'Femcel' even remotely describes Amy, odds are you're not going to enjoy this story long-term.

 

[Daddycool101]

I remembered this old meme

femcel

Click to shrink...

 

[Kylia Quilor]

I remembered this old meme

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Yes. Tattletale. That paragon of honesty and accuracy.

I am not interested in this discussion continuing in my story thread. Please don't post anything like this meme here again.

 

[Kencord]

'Feral Racoon of a girl in a white trashbag forced at swordpoint to drag backwards, medieval assholes to their own salvation'

Oh yeah, Watched.

 

[vaulttec01]

Well, like I said, there are a few things in Veilguard that may end up being relevant in the story that I'm incorporating into the view of things, but only some. But this isn't really meant to be an invitation to Veilguard discourse, just setting expectations.

Click to shrink...

lol do a new 52, amy's arrival broke a barrier that caused minor changes to reality in order to stabilize like with flashpoint paradox making an AU. letting you pick and choose wat you want.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

lol do a new 52, amy's arrival broke a barrier that caused minor changes to reality in order to stabilize like with flashpoint paradox making an AU. letting you pick and choose wat you want.

Click to shrink...

I mean... that just doesn't really fit with how I see anything work, and the path of least resistance is the one I'm taking - preemptively declaring that it's not canon except for anything I like, as with Ward.

I don't really see any need to complexify it more than that.

Glad you're enjoying the story tho!

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Author's Note: I feel like, judging from some comments on this fic, here and elsewhere, that some people have some very specific ideas about what is going to happen in this fic - not from this fic itself, but from their own views about Amy or Amy-centric stuff. I want to set some expectations so I don't have a lot of disappointed people coming at me.

This is not a fic where Amy is going to rapidly go hogwild with her powers. Depending on how one defines 'hogwild', she'll never go hogwild, though she will eventually start using her power for more than healing. But this fic, and the subsequent fics planned in the series, is primarily about Amy's character, rather than Amy's power. A sometimes subtle distinction given how much a parahuman can be bound up with their power, but an important one.

A lot of focus will be on Amy's mental health and her own personal baggage and struggles and issues - as I said at the start, over time, she'll get better on all fronts and have more good days and less bad days and we'll start to focus on those bad days less, but she's got a lot of bad days ahead. She's been ripped away from everything she knows, everyone she loves or cares about, and is being thrust into a situation she is not suited for. Which is, of course, the whole point of the fic.

Her power will be directly relevant in the plot, and allow her to do some things that an Inquisitor in the game just can't, but it is not the only thing she's gonna be doing or like, the centerpiece of the story. Amy's power is inexorably bound up with all the things I find compelling about her, but I find much more about her interesting than just her power.

If the Amy angst and drama gets tiresome, I do encourage you to take a break for a few months and come back and binge stuff or the like. That will let you move through the pace of it a decent bit easier, for the parts you're just less interested in, and the same holds true if you want to see her branching out with her powers, though that will probably take more time to get to.

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"How did you do-" Cassandra started, staring at her, and then she shook her head, cutting herself off. "No. We need to keep going. We don't have time for questions." She gestured for Amy to follow her. "Come, we must get to the closest rift,"

"If you were going to ask how I did that I - I don't know how powers work. Nobody really does." Amy answered, starting to follow after Cassandra as the woman set off across the ice, towards the shore. She winced with every step - by the end of this, if she was even still alive, she was going to be a walking bruise... too sore to even walk, maybe. She needed to put ice on her...

Everything, really.

Between her fall when the bridge had collapsed, and the demon's attempts to hit her and -

They reached the shore, and started up a hill. Amy wrapped one arm around her midsection. She was pretty sure her ribs were just bruised at worst, but - she bit her lower lip, sucking in air again, and Cassandra paused, turning to look at her. "You are hurt?"

"The bridge collapsing under me, and then falling again when the demon chased me hurt, yeah," Amy said. "And my powers don't work on myself, so when I get hurt, I just have to fucking suffer," she added. She bit her lip again, hissing as she breathed air in, taking the moment of stillness to rub at her arm, checking for especially sensitive spots, and finding a few. She let out another wince.

"...most definitely not magic," Cassandra said quietly, seemingly as much to herself as Amy. "How did you survive the blast, if you have no magic, if your... abilities do not work on yourself."

"How many times do I need to tell you I have no idea?! The last thing I remember clearly was being at the hospital, healing victims of Bakuda's insane bombing spree, they brought in some guy who had a bomb in his neck, I was trying to remove it, and then - I wake up in that cell, with your guards pointing swords at me, and this- this thing on my hand!" She shouted that last part, and then stared at her hand, as if expecting it to flare up again, but for the moment, it seemed to be staying at the constant dull ache, rather than anything worse.

"If not for the fact that you healed my injury without even the slightest hint of magic, I would say it is impossible, all that you say, all that you claim. But you did." Cassandra reached into her belt, pulling out a thick glass vial, filled with some sort of bright red liquid. It looked like some kind of fruit juice, but from the way it sloshed in the vial, a literal cork serving as the stopper.

"Here." She extended the vial to her. "A few sips of this will handle your injuries, and most of the pain."

Amy looked at the bottle, "Really? A fucking healing potion?" Amy's first thought was some kind of weird alchemy tinkertech. That was possible, right? There were tinkers who could heal, though none with the same ease and versatility as she could. She'd been asked by the PRT to monitor people who were healed by Tinkertech twice, since her powers were able to do that, since she could - in theory - counteract any negative side effects, once they'd been sure her powers didn't have side effects.

But drinking the strange tinkertech concoction was a fast path to getting yourself killed or worse.

"Yes. A healing potion."

"I'm just going to accept some random drink from someone I don't know, without any idea of what it does, or how it works, or side effects?"

"Unless you drink too many in too short a span, the worst you can expect from a healing potion is tiredness a few hours later," Cassandra assured her. She grabbed Amy's arm and pushed the potion into her hand. "Drink, or do not, we do not have time for this, but consider that I need you alive to have even a hope of putting an end to this madness," she gestured around herself, at the sky.

Amy swallowed, staring at her. She looked at the mountains ahead, at how far away the big green hole in the sky was, both... just, distance up, and the distance to wherever the space right under it was. She hurt, a lot, and she was going to hurt more, right? And more demons between here and -

Cassandra could just... tell I'm not using magic? How exactly does that work? Is magic-

Was magic actually different from powers? Was it - was it actually a thing here? Were those actually demons?

No. Amy insisted to herself, refusing to believe they were... creatures from hell or - whatever. And magic wasn't real. Couldn't be real. It was just... it had to be powers, somehow, but maybe powers were different here, or maybe Cassandra had no idea of what she was talking about or -

No one really knows how powers work back home, maybe there's an element of - everyone expects chanting and spells and so that's how it works and I didn't chant and -

The 'demons' blood vanishing was probably just... projections? Or some kind of tinkertech creation. Or something.

That had to be. Which meant the healing potion had to be tinkertech or something else created by powers.

Which brought her back to the 'don't drink the strange, untested tinkertech'...

Cassandra made a sort of half-scoffing, half snarling sound of disgust, and turned away, gesturing for Amy to follow after her.

Still holding onto the vial, Amy tried to pick up the pace - breaking into a slow jog to just try to keep up with the woman's pace strained, and despite herself, she muttered 'ow' under her breath repeatedly, hating every second of it, but knowing she had to, mind still racing, trying to understand, and dreading going through the entire trip into the 'valley' feeling like this...

Is it really untested though? They reached the top of the hill, and Amy nearly ran into Cassandra as the woman pulled up short, drawing her sword again. "Wait here," she gestured down below, onto yet more ice, and there were two more demons, their tall, misshapen forms turned away from them, a dead man between them. Cassandra drew her sword, and leapt off the hill, hitting the thick ice running and charging into the demons, hitting one with her shield to knock it back, slashing into the other.

The fight was fast, and Amy was just far enough away to not be able to make out every detail as Cassandra seemed to duck under their attacks, or catch them on her shield, or her armor. She fought quickly, cutting at them, bashing them with her shield, and soon enough, both had collapsed and dissipated away...

Projections, it has to be. But where was the cape causing them? Capes? Crusader's ghosts could only go so far from him right?

That was the only projection creator she knew about offhand, and she scoured her memory of Vicky's infodumps and briefings from Carol, from Uncle Neil, about potential threats in the Bay, things even she needed to know, even if she wasn't going to fight -

The cape has to be close, right? But there's no one else so maybe it's longer ranged?

It had to be projections though, somehow, or in some form...

With the demons dead though, Amy made her way down the hill as quickly as she could, gasping for breath as much or more from the pain as the exertion onto the ice again, wondering just how thick it had to be that it was holding up under the weight...

Cassandra wasn't bleeding, but there was a dent in her armor where she'd been hit by one of the demons, even if it hadn't punctured.

"Are you hurt?" Amy asked.

"Nothing serious. Save your... abilities for now. There's much ahead of us, and I don't want to tax your energies."

"It doesn't - there's no limit beyond time and biology for what I can heal," Amy said quickly. "But it does come from the person I heal's own body. So... just... eat a lot, after this is all done." She didn't insist on healing Cassandra this time - she didn't seem visibly in pain, there was no labored breathing or any wincing or...

She could just be better at hiding it than you are...

Amy looked down at the potion in her hand. Her arms, her legs, her ribs... her everything hurt, really. From her hand to her head to her neck...

"You said this potion will help with pain?"

"I don't know if it will do anything for your hand, but yes," Cassandra said. "As I said, I need you alive. All of Thedas does."

"So I can somehow use this... thing to close that," Amy gestured at the Breach. "You believe me when I say I'm innocent... are you still putting me on trial?" Part of Amy wanted to just... refuse to help. But if there were more of those demons raining down from the sky because of that 'Breach', then more people could die and Amy couldn't -

She couldn't let that happen anymore than she could just... refuse to go to the Hospital. Take a break, like Dean had told her to.

What kind of monster would she be if she just let people die when there was a chance she could help save them?

"It is likely that many people will still assume your guilt. Only Seekers, Templars and Mages would be able to tell that your abilities are not magic, and even then..." she shook her head. "I will speak in your defense, but I fear a trial is unavoidable."

Amy bit her lower lip, then nodded. "I guess that's the best I can expect," she muttered. She looked down at the bottle in her hand and finally decided she would take the chance. Too much distance to the Breach and too many demons she'd have to run from and -

She felt insane for even considering this, but Amy wasn't used to being physically hurt, nor was she used to all the physical exertion and more was coming and then all that on top of her hand... and the way her head kept aching every time she tried to remember the details of what had happened...

She pulled the cork out of the bottle and took a small, careful sip. The taste on her tongue nearly made her spit the liquid out - from the color, she'd expected something like cough medicine, which was probably stupid, but instead, she got an unholy combination of peppermint and... grass. The latter reminded her of that time she accidentally grabbed the wrong cup at a hospital breakroom and tasted a nurse's green tea.

All tea was bad, but green tea was just... no.

"Blech!" Amy gagged a little, but - she'd expected something tasting bad, medicine often did for very good reasons, just not - just not this. Grimacing, she forced herself to take another sip, the stuffed the cork back in the bottle.

"The taste does not get better with repeated drinking," Cassandra said with a small sigh. "Come, we must continue. We're nearing the first rift."

Were they going to run into more demons before they got to this rift? She looked down at the man that had been killed by the demons before - he had a helmet like the guards in her cell. He'd been cut up, armor rent, his stomach ripped open, blood staining him, his clothes, the ice... it smelled like recent bloodshed too, nothing older...

That could have been me.

Amy stuffed the potion onto her pocket and hurried after Cassandra - and nearly stopped entirely when she realized that the running hadn't hurt like it had just a minute before. Her legs still burned from being not used to this much exercise, but her legs didn't feel banged up and bruised and the soreness seemed to be less?

They pushed ahead, getting into two more fights - well, Cassandra getting into fights, and Amy hanging back and having to scramble again, running from a demon at one point. She also learned there were more than one kind of demon - many, actually. The ones she'd first scene, the clawed, misshapen ones with the dusty-darkness lower halves were called 'shades'. The one that she had to run from in the second fight was more...

Ghostlike? It was much more human in shape, with a real face and proper arms... but green, and ethereal, see-through, like a ghost, and it had no lower half, instead just floating above the ground. And yet, Cassandra was able to stab it, so it wasn't actually a ghost, though its name 'wraith' was very ghostlike...

Cassandra had answered 'uncounted varieties' when Amy demanded to know how many kinds of demons there were, but then added that 'most' came down to about a dozen or so common forms in practice.

The Wraith had not only chased after her, but shot balls of green... not fire, but a sort of swirling energy, and it was frankly more luck than anything else that Amy hadn't been hit. Cassandra had, and the balls caused no obvious injuries, but touching Cassandra afterwards to heal another cut from a shade made it clear that the ball had caused damage to her body - namely, her left thigh, where she'd been hit by the wraith's attack, was... older? The cells there seemed to be acting like cells of someone years older than Cassandra, though already Cassandra's body seemed to be correcting the damage. Amy's power just sped that up, correcting the cells with ease, returning them all to the way they'd been before, in line with the rest of her body...

I've never heard of a cape that could make someone older by touching them but... It would be a deadly weapon, depending on how fast it worked... clearly this 'wraith' couldn't do much on it's own, alone -

Cassandra made short work of the demons in each fight, but it was clearly taxing her, and Amy's healing was taking directly from her body's own energies...

Amy had, during that second fight, tripped and fallen again, nearly landing on her face, nearly breaking her nose, catching her fall at the last minute, her left wrist nearly sprained, hurting as much as her left hand now, or at least it felt like it -

She sipped at the potion again, the pain in her wrist mostly fading as they kept going, pushing ahead...

They finally reached a set of stone stairs, carved right into the side of a cliff, and up ahead, Amy could hear shouts, fighting, metal clashing against something, loud snarls and screeches -

Her left hand throbbed, the mark glowing, but differently now, sort of pulsating, glowing and dining and glowing and dimming, the pace of it getting faster as they got closer to the top of the stairs.

"We're almost to the rift. Stay back, but be ready once the demons are vanquished," Cassandra ordered.

Be ready to what? She still had no idea how the fuck she was supposed to use this... thing on her hand to close rifts, left alone the massive Breach in the sky, but -

They reached the top of the stairs, and Amy turned to the source of the sounds of fighting -

Ahead, in the ruins of what might have been a stone house, balls of green fire raining down from the sky around it, were a whole mass of shades and wraiths, with three people fighting, more bodies strewn around them - one was fighting with an oversized, strange-looking crossbow, short and stocky, but remarkably agile despite that, jumping away from shades and firing with it, the bolt punching through one shade and then into a wraith behind it.

Another was skinny, bald and wielding a large staff, shooting white-blue bolts from it, hitting shades, turnings arms to ice, turning one shade entirely to ice that he shattered with a thwack from his staff, twirling it expertly as he spun around to force back a shade that had gotten closer.

The third was a tall woman wearing armor like the guards in her cell had, like the dead soldier had, but if she had a helmet, it was gone now, her shoulder-length red hair flying freely as she used a massive two-handed sword to force demons to keep their distance from her, swinging at them with seeming reckless abandon, but it was working, cutting at demons, hurting them, stopping the shades from getting close enough to strike at her with their claws.

But beyond just the three of them, and the demons, there was a green massive crystalline shape in the air, at the center of the fighting as they desperately tried to hold off two or three times their number in demons - it was hard to tell, the fighting moving too quickly to keep specific track of them, and it was almost as if more kept appearing...

Amy ducked behind a half-crumbled stone wall, watching the fighting, her hand pulsing, throbbing - she bit her lip, trying to hold back a whimper or cry or something - the potions weren't doing anything about the pain the mark was causing...

Is that - is that crystalline thing the rift? It was green, the Breach was green, the wraiths were green, the green fire raining down from the sky -

Cassandra charged in, opening by driving her sword into the back of a shade as it tried to come at the redhead from behind. With her arriving, the tide seemed to turn quickly: Cassandra and the redhead together made short work of a pair of demons, the bald man froze another one solid, the short guy with the crossbow shattered it, and then the rest were wrapped up soon after.

The crystalline form in the air... unfolded, for lack of a better word, suddenly looking a lot more like a shimmering hole in the air before them, glowing, lines forming from it to spots on the ground -

Amy cried out, eyes pulling away as her hand spiked in pain again, and if she hadn't already been crouched behind the wall, she'd have fallen over, the agony ripping through her as bad as it had ever been.

"...there - the rift - now!" she heard someone calling towards her - male, not Cassandra, but she couldn't make out all the details, all the words -

He must be telling me to use this mark to close the rift, but how? She could barely string that thought together against the pain, but -

Victoria Dallon, Glory Girl, wouldn't let pain stop her from saving lives, not if she could, not if she was the only one...

I'm not her. I can't be her. I can't -

Amy screwed her eyes shut, biting her lip again, tasting blood within moments, but she forced herself to her feet, stumbled over the broken remnants of the wall she'd taken shelter behind, staggered towards the rift - she opened her eyes, seeing that she was getting closer -

Cassandra's shield-arm was hanging weirdly from her body, the redhead had a deep gouge in her arm, though she was pulling a half-empty vial of potion out of her belt pouch with her other hand - even the bald man seemed to be injured, favoring his left side - the short man seemed unhurt, at least, but -

Amy took another few steps, spitting the blood out of her mouth, gasping -

The bald man ran at her, and before Amy could dodge or step aside or even really register it was happening, he snatched up her left arm and held it up, pointing it towards the rift -

"Quickly, before they finish coming through!"

A fresh stab of white-hot tortuous pain burned through her whole being, running straight down her arm, to her hand -

Green light, green energy, green - something - flowed from her hand, into the rift - Amy averted her eyes at the brightness in front of her, and then, a sound like crackling electricity, a loud boom and a small shockwave radiating out from just in front of her...

The green brightness at the corner of her eye faded and she turned to look where the rift had been, the agony in her hand already quickly bleeding away into that dull ache once more - though it wasn't as dull as it had been, throbbing much more actively, pain spiraling up her arm just a little.

"Sweet Andraste, that worked?!" The redhead was the first to say, dropping an empty potion vial to the ground - Amy saw the gouge in her hand immediately begin to close up, skin sealing up, regrowing almost as if she was using her power on it, though not as quickly, not as completely - there was still a deep cut, just less deep, less wide, and not actively bleeding...

"So it would seem," Cassandra said.

"Good. We'd have been ass-deep in demons if this went on too much longer," the short man said. He flicked a switch on his crossbow and the four arms of it collapsed inward, and he slung the bow over his back in an easy, practiced motion. He was closer now, and she got a better look at him - he was wearing a chain necklace of some sort, and both of his ears were pierced, wearing an open jacket, and his shirt was unbuttoned, showing off a lot of his chest. If he was bothered by the cold, he didn't show it. "Still might end up that way if we don't deal with the big one."

Amy looked away from the man, down at her hand. It wasn't glowing or pulsating anymore, and for a moment, it almost looked like it was sparking, as if electricity was coming off it, like from a live wire, but only for that moment.

"...so I can do something about this..." Amy said softly.

"Indeed you can," The bald man said, in another accent that was... different, like nothing she could place. "The mark on your hand, and the magic of these rifts and the Breach seemed to be of a similar nature. I theorized that one might be able to influence, or even control the other."

"You didn't know for sure!?" Amy snapped. "Just had me dragged here, right into the fighting to test it!?" Even as she said it, she looked down at the ground, realizing how stupid it sounded, and - she hadn't even been in the fighting really, after the first time and this guy - some kind of cryokinetic, clearly - had risked his life throwing back those demons.

"Lady Cassandra was the one to 'drag you here', as you say," the bald man said, his voice soft, seeming unconcerned. Cassandra didn't have any visible reaction to him pinning the blame on her, but - he was right, wasn't he? "But I'm not sure there would have been any other way to find out if your mark could close the rifts,"

"Right." Amy swallowed. "I... sorry."

"I am gratified to see you still live," the man added. She looked him over now - his clothing looked... unremarkable. A little shabby, but not like, falling apart. He too seemed completely unbothered by the cold, which was starting to get annoying to see. Fine, she wasn't dressed for the weather, but still!

Then she did a double-take as she registered something she hadn't been seeing before.

Pointed ears.

The bald man had fucking pointed ears! Like an elf!

Magic, demons, elves...

Some kind of minor Case 53/Monster Cape type thing, right? Like Bad Canary, who had those feathers? He couldn't -

Next thing would be that the short guy wasn't just someone short, or maybe dealing with one of the conditions lumped under 'dwarfism' but he was an actual dwarf! That was just - this couldn't be magic! This had to be parahuman stuff and tinkertech and projections, right?! Even on another Earth, magic couldn't be real!

It couldn't!

"That's his way of saying he's the one who kept that mark from killing you while you slept," the short man - who absolutely was not a dwarf! - chimed in.

"Thank you?" She said, looking at him. Did he have more than one power? Or had he used his ice to somehow... dull the pain of the mark or something? Maybe he was just a powers nerd, like Vicky.

"You are quite welcome." He held out a hand, ungloved, "My name is Solas."

"Amy." She said, taking his hand in hers. She could get an idea of how hurt he was and then offer to heal it, if he really had helped keep the mark from killing her, she owed him that much, at least, right!?

The moment her hand touched his, she felt her brain suddenly screech to a halt, like a record scratch in a movie bringing everything to a stop.

It was impossible to put into words what exactly she 'saw' when she touched someone and got a complete look at their biology. She'd tried, after Vicky had pestered her enough about it one time, and she could at least... approximate it, but even then, it was - it was a lot of things that she just couldn't describe. But she got a look at everything about a person, right down to their cells. She got a look at the structure of their brains, which of their organs was operating at peak efficiency, any indications of long-past bone fractures, their antibodies, all flooding into her mind at once.

She had to actually focus a little to get any useful information beyond the immediate rush, like zooming in on a specific spot of a picture, but the basic impression had information too, sometimes.

She'd touched Case 53s, during power testing with the PRT, to see if she could return their bodies to normal. Leaving aside the fact that some of them didn't even have organic bodies anymore, like that metal guy from Boston they'd actually had her check if she could affect (she'd rolled her eyes at that waste of her time), the ones that were organic were... weird. There were bits and pieces of human DNA and sometimes human organs and so on underneath the surface, even if that surface could be really weird.

She also couldn't give them their old bodies back, even if she'd known, if they'd known, what they'd looked like. Maybe she could have changed them, shaped their flesh to look human, if she'd been willing to use her power that way, but - she couldn't 'heal' them back to human appearance. Her power just... didn't see them as hurt.

But touching this man, this... Solas guy -

Her power was feeding her a complete look at his biology and for all that looked like a tall, slim human with eyes that were maybe a bit larger than normal and ears that were pointed... he was absolutely not human.

He had all the same basic general organs, in the same basic arrangement, but she'd healed enough human bodies to know that that - that lungs shouldn't be arranged like that, that the heart was beating at speed that absolutely should have been too slow for this man to be as healthy as the rest of his biology seemed to read. His bones were bones, and his muscle tissue were muscles, but the cells within them were arranged... all wrong, and the muscle was... layered wrong, for lack of a better way of putting it.

His fucking DNA wasn't Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine. The chemicals were similar, and it was definitely DNA, arranged in a double helix and - and -

But it wasn't the right chemicals! Cassandra had been human, absolutely normal human - maybe a lot healthier than the average American except for the lack of antibodies for diseases Amy was familiar with and with maybe slightly worse teeth, but for some primitive medieval place her teeth weren't actually that bad -

His brain was also just - again, close, but not right. She'd gotten a look at more human brains than she wanted to count, and they had differences, but this -

This wasn't human.

And there's no fucking Corona! No Polentia! No Gemma!

"You're - you're not human!" Amy stared at his hand, and then realized everyone else was staring at her, that she'd shouted the words out.

He doesn't have powers? But he could - he could make the ice and -

Amy let go of his hand, stumbling back, nearly falling over, breathing suddenly coming faster - she would have tripped, landed on her ass or something if not for a hand suddenly on her shoulder, watching her, keeping her up. Cassandra and Solas were in front of her, and she didn't think it was the short guy so - the redhead?

If he's not human and - and he doesn't - then magic - and he's actually - then - were the demons -

"No, I am not. And yet, you say it as if this is a surprise to you, but only after you touched my hand." Solas said. Amy did hear his words, and made them out even as her mind raced around in circles, refusing to believe the obvious, the facts of what she'd seen, what had to be happening.

"Amy claims to be from beyond Thedas," Cassandra said. "I am becoming increasingly inclined to believe her. She was able to heal my injuries at a mere touch, without magic."

"Without magic? At a touch?" The redhead said from behind her. "Lady Pentaghast, that - how is that possible? Are you - you can't be -"

"Because that's what I do! That's my power!" Amy said, managing to collect herself enough to string words together again. "I - I heal, other people. And I get a complete look at their biology and - he's not human! What the fuck are you, an elf?"

"Yes," Solas said simply, staring at her, eyes wide a moment, genuinely seeming confused, surprised by her.

"So - what, he's a dwarf then?!" she gestured behind her, to where she thought the short man - the dwarf? - was.

"I am." The man said. "Varric Tethras, at your service." She heard him walk up beside her, and she turned to look at him - Amy wasn't used to being taller than people, but she was taller than this man. This... dwarf. "And you're from beyond Thedas? If we make it through this mess alive, you probably have some really interesting stories to tell." The dwarf - Varric - went on.

"Varric, now is not the time," Cassandra said, sounding exasperated. "I'm not even sure why you're still here. I brought you to Haven to share your story with the Divine, but... that is no longer possible."

"Right now, you need all the help you can get, Seeker," Varric said. "Your soldiers aren't in control of the valley anymore, and it looks like the only one who can stop us from getting overrun by demons is a kid who I'm guessing doesn't know the first thing about fighting." He raised an eyebrow and glanced back at her.

"I don't! I'm a healer! That's what I do!" Amy raised her voice. She tried to take a deep breath - she wasn't on the verge of hyperventilating anymore, but her breathing was coming in ragged, shaky. She was still -

"If she's not from Thedas, and she's not a mage... I don't see how anyone, but especially a non-mage, could have been behind the Breach," Solas said, looking at Cassandra.

"I am beginning to believe she is not the one behind the Breach, but further questions will have to wait. We need to get to the valley, we must close more rifts, and then the Breach." Cassandra said.

Amy tried to take another breath, but again, it wasn't working, shaky, ragged -

"That's a great idea, Seeker. We should get moving then," Varric said.

"Varric, absolutely not!" Cassandra raised her force, shaking her head, grimacing as if the idea caused her physical pain.

"Like I said, Seeker, your soldiers aren't in control of the valley."

"Lady Pentaghast," the redhead said, taking her hand off of Amy's shoulder, "Varric saved my life. Without him taking down a demon that nearly ripped me open from behind, I'd be among them," she gestured to the fallen soldiers around. "If Amy is the only one who can close these rifts, we need to keep her alive." The redhead's accent was, Amy realized now that she'd heard her talk enough, nearly identical to Cassandra, though they hardly sounded the same otherwise...

"This Breach is a threat to us all," Solas pointed out.

"Very well," Cassandra made another scoff/snarl of disgust and turned away, crouching by the bodies of one of the soldiers.

"If you can heal, could you help me with this?" The redhead asked, moving a little to get in Amy's eyeline and raising her injured hand. "I'd rather not open another healing potion just for this, but it still fucking hurts,"

"I... yeah," Amy nodded. She extended a hand, and touched the wound through her damaged glove, closing it up quickly, the skin leaving no sign of even a scar, no hint there'd been any injury there.

"No scars even? I think you're my new favorite person," The redhead chuckled. "Katerina, by the way," she introduced herself.

"Nice - nice to meet you," Amy said, looking at the woman. She was... maybe a few years older than Amy? Her glimpse at her biology - the woman was definitely young, and had a lot of muscle underneath her armor - had to, to have that two handed sword, right? She...

She was pretty. Amy could recognize that much, despite the situation. And tall. Maybe six feet? Just under? The blood spattered on her armor, on her face, from the demons - it was already starting to vanish. How the - how did that happen? How did any of this happen?

WHAT IS GOING ON?! Her brain was screeching at her, or so it felt like, and she couldn't stop cycling her brain around back to Solas, to -

How did his body work? How did it - it wasn't like he was just human but with pointed ears and taller and thinner and better eyes or something, like in a normal fantasy novel? He was - his biology shouldn't work, right? Human biology worked the way it did for a reason!

But he wasn't human, but he was close, so close and how - how could he be so close and so so not and -

Katerina wasn't the only one who got hurt! Cassandra's arm was definitely injured, and the - Solas had been favoring his left side a little.

She turned back to him, "Are you hurt?"

"Not seriously, but if you're offering to heal, I wouldn't object," Solas answered. Amy took his hand - for a moment, she got lost in the just off-base insanity of his biology, but she closed her eyes, focusing in on on his left leg. He wasn't cut or bleeding, but he'd been hit there pretty hard and there was a hairline fracture in one of his ribs on his left too, so she sealed that up... she didn't know if she could safely have his body make painkillers like she usually did for -

For humans -

But for all that his bones were... wrong, she did have enough examples of his bones that seemed to be fine, and she patched up the damage from the blow to his leg - serious blunt force - and his rib.

"Strange... it feels much like if someone healed that with magic, but there truly is no magic in what you're doing," Solas shook his head.

"I'm still not convinced magic is real, but you're obviously not a parahuman - or even a para... elf, so..." Amy shook her head. "Later. Rifts. Breach." She let go of his hand before she could start trying to make sense of his kidneys -

She looked for Cassandra, who was standing a bit away, looking down the path that looked like it led further, into the valley that she could at least get a few glimpses of now, in the distance.

"Can I heal your arm?" Amy asked. "It's obviously - it's got to hurt a lot, the way you're holding it." Cassandra turned back to her, and took off one of her gloves, holding out a hand. Amy took it - she had a few smaller bruises-in-the-making from the impact of attacks that had hit her armor, but her shield-arm was fractured in a few places. Small ones, nothing that would stop her from using the arm, unless it got worse, but they definitely hurt, her body already responding to the pain -

Amy fused the bone back together, touching up the other injuries... she could so something about Cassandra's scars, but - they were old and they weren't related to this and -

"It's increasingly clear there is much you have questions about, but we do not have time to linger."

"I know." She took a breath, "But I - I - I'm not used to running this much, or even jogging or - if we keep this up, I'm going to collapse before we get to the Breach..." or she might faint if she got hit with another impossible shock to her system. Another revelation of -

Demons. Elves. Magic. Dwarves. I'm really in some fucking fantasy world!? It was like one of those shitty portal fantasy stories she usually didn't bother with - most of them were terribly written, with unlikeable main characters and she just didn't have the time to read much anyway so she wasn't going to waste it on schlocky nonsense.

Of course, maybe I should have... Might have given her an idea on what to do here, now?

But - well, she did know what she had to do right now, right? She had to focus on the Breach, on the problem ahead of her, on the immediate issue. Even Vicky would be holding back questions in the face of all this, and Amy wasn't the nerd her sister was. Vicky would be wanting to pester Solas about his his 'magic' worked and want to understand what it was once she realized it wasn't powers

But would she? Vicky wouldn't be able to tell? She'd just think he was some cryokinetic, right? And that he just was a human with pointed ears.

"We must push ahead, but - I suppose we will have to moderate our pace, for a time then." Cassandra said, frustration shaking off every word - she let out a long exhale when she was done, grimacing after.

"Well, I'm sorry I skipped leg day! I didn't expect to end up in a backwards medieval world that doesn't have any flying capes or - or cars or - apparently horses or anything else!" Amy muttered.

 

[ChaosSlimeKing]

I'm surprised that Amy didn't accidentally unveil Solas's true age to the group. The egg head is lucky that Amy didn't completely ruin his deception. I'm still waiting for the moment when Amy gets her hands on darkspawn blood, or dragons, or any more crazy things from Thedas.
TFTC, and happy easter