#don't worry they'll trade depending on circumstances

[amusewithaview]

Triple Trouble 2 (DAI AU)

A/N: follows directly from this post.  READ THE TAGS because I’m not using usernames from this point on, only nicknames. Still tagging @uru-viel an @lucide-dreamer-dreams and @neverending-shenanigans just for funsies.

In very short order it was established that Mews was the oldest (”I am thirty years old, I don’t care if I woke up last that does not make me the goddamn youngest!”) and they were all seriously, completely fucked.

“I really don’t want to lose an arm,” Lucy said, staring at her glowing hand.

“I don’t think that’s our most immediate problem,” Shen pointed out.

“Losing an arm is a pretty big-”

“Um, hi!” Shen said brightly, waving at the two women standing in the doorway.

Lucy spun so quickly she fell on her ass.  “Oh fuck,” she said when she saw what had to be Leliana and Cassandra, the left and right hands of the recently-deceased Divine.

“That’s my line,” Mews muttered.

The game devs hadn’t done either of the women justice.  Leliana had a downright angelic face and her hair positively glowed in the flickering torchlight.  Cassandra was a good six inches taller than the other woman, with steely grey eyes and a full-lipped mouth twisted into a perpetual sneer by the scar that angled down from her cheekbone.

“Oh fuck,” Lucy said again, this time in an entirely different tone.

“Keep it in your pants,” Mews advised.  “They don’t look too friendly.”

“Maybe because we’re speaking a language they don’t know?” Shen pointed out.  So saying, she immediately switched to Trade: “Hello, could you please tell us what’s going on?”

“You claim not to know?” Cassandra demanded, stalking forward.

“The last thing I remember was...” Mews trailed off and switched to English, turning to her two companions: “Booting up the game?”

“Booting up the game,” they both agreed, nearly in unison.

“I remember a woman,” Mews said shakily, voice cracking as she stifled a hysterical giggle.  “There was a green light and...things.  Things chasing me.”

“I remember the woman,” Lucy said slowly, and the distant look on her face combined with her panicked glance at Mews made the latter almost certain she wasn’t lying.

“I think the things were spiders,” Shen said, shuddering.

“A woman?” Leliana murmured, eyes flicking between all three near-identical faces.  “And spiders, hmm?  How interesting.”

“What did happen?” Shen asked after a brief and uncomfortable silence.

“Perhaps we should show you,” Leliana said.

“Go to the forward camp, Leliana.  I will take them.”

“All three?”

“We may require it,” Cassandra confirmed, grim as death.

The redhead nodded and slipped from the room.

“You still haven’t said what happened,” Mews pointed out.

“It will be easier to show you.”

They kept quiet while the warrior slipped the chains from the pole, leaving their hands bound together but no longer tethered to the center of the room.  Shen caught Mews’ eyes and gestured towards Lucy, whose eyes were firmly planted on Cassandra’s swaying hips as they followed her through the creepy basement to the hall and out into the sunlight.

“She’s straight,” Mews hissed out the side of her mouth.

“I know,” Lucy said mournfully.  “I’m just looking!”

“Look up,” Shen instructed in a wobbly voice.

The sky was a nightmare writ large.  It looked broken in a way that was difficult to put into words.  It looked like a thousand things pulled from the uncanny valley.  It looked like a cracked window into a basement, like fractured ice over a deep lake, like heavy fog in an unfamiliar place, like flickers at the corner of your eye, like the feeling of someone watching you, like missing a step at the bottom of a staircase.  It was jarring and unearthly and it bypassed the eyes and reached directly towards the hindbrain singing a discordant song of wrong, wrong, wrong.

Mews had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.  Lucy dropped to her knees, legs gone numb.  Shen swayed and might have fallen if Cassandra had not grabbed her arm and levered her up.

“It’s like-” Lucy gestured wordlessly, face scrunched up.

“Worlds of nope, fucking galaxies of nope,” Mews muttered in English.

“We can fix this,” Shen said.  They had to fix this.  They were the only ones who could, apparently.  She nodded at Cassandra to show that she could stand on her own again.  “We will help you, however we can.”

Haven was crowded, smelly, and full of people glaring at them.  They were all very happy to be shot of it.  The walk from the first bridge to the second took significantly longer than any of them expected, and the Breach expanded twice in that time.  Both instances sent all three elves to their knees.  The second time, Mews and Lucy vomited from the pain and shock.

“The pulses are coming faster,” Cassandra said, helping Shen grab handfuls of clean snow for the other two to wash out their mouths with.  “We need to move more quickly.”

The second bridge was already destroyed by the time they got there and demons were pacing around the shattered remains.

“We must get past them, this is the only way,” Cassandra said, clearly unhappy with the options available to her.  She gestured to a few boxes of supplies on their side of the broken bridge.  “There are weapons there, you may arm yourselves.  Know this - I am Templar trained and should you turn on me, I will not be merciful.”

“Noted,” Mews said.

“I would never!” Lucy cried.

“Understandable,” Shen responded with a brief nod.

The trio exchanged glances as they slowly moved towards the boxes.

“What are we specced as?” Mews whispered.  “I mean, I always play as a mage but I don’t really feel too...different?”

“Aside from shorter?” Shen asked, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

“Aside from shorter,” she agreed, scowling.

“I think I’m a mage,” Lucy said, grabbing a staff and turning it this way and that.  She tapped it gently against Mews’ forehead, whispering, “Protec,” and grinned when a shimmering teal bubble briefly flickered into view around her.

Mews rolled her eyes and grabbed a staff as well, angling it towards one of the Shades circling the frozen riverbed.  “Attack,” she muttered, and jumped when ice suddenly spiked up through the demon, impaling it.  “Holy shit!”

“Hey, don’t leave me out!”  Shen took her own staff and aggressively stabbed towards a different Shade, grinning when a ball of fire the size of a man’s head flew from the end, exploding when it impacted the demon.  “This is wicked,” she breathed, beaming.

“A little warning next time,” Cassandra said dourly before sliding down the incline and engaging with the half-frozen demon.

“Three mages, no waiting,” Lucy said.  “Little lame that I don’t have any attacks, though.  You guys get fire and ice and I’m spirit?”

“Try attacking,” Mews said.

Lucy pointed her staff at the scorched Shade and nearly dropped it when lightning burst from the sky, sizzling the demon into a puddle of blackish goop.  “Storm and spirit!” she crowed.  “This is awesome!”

Shen frowned thoughtfully, “You know, I think-”

“Way ahead of you,” Mews said, and hurled some lightning of her own.

“We’re all storm,” Shen confirmed, waving her glowing hand at the other two.  “Look at the light.  Mine is fire and lightning.”

“I must be ice and lightning,” Mews guessed, poking at the green gash.

“Stop that,” Lucy said, slapping her hand away.  “You’ll go blind.”

“Oh har dee har.  Is this really the time?”

“We’re about to go risk our lives to save a universe that didn’t exist outside pixels a few hours ago.  Yeah, I think it’s the time.”

They picked their way down the incline carefully to where Cassandra was waiting.  “You are effective,” she said, her tone making it difficult to say whether it was a compliment or potential proof of their assumed crimes.  “Come, we must move faster.  They are waiting.”

#triple trouble au #amuse writes stuff #dragon age inquisition #modern girl in thedas #self-insert #sort of but transitioning to original characters pretty damn quick #lucy is real thirsty for cass #mews is an anxious mess but also the talker #shen is the voice of reason right now #don't worry they'll trade depending on circumstances #also if i post this to ao3 i will open voting for pairings because #THIS IS THE LIE BACK AND THINK OF THEDAS AU #so the READERS get to choose which of us is most effectively gonna woo Solas #yeah i'm going there #MAYBE ONE OF US WILL GENUINELY WIN HIS WOLFY HEART #doubt