Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ida was not having a good day. Her ship’s systems had glitched (this was ridiculous, her systems never glitched, something must be wrong with this planet), and she was in the middle of fucking nowhere. She was trying to get to her assignment on another planet, but when she realized this particular dirtball was unregistered, she stopped to scan it and upload it to the database.

Unfortunately for her, the second she got close enough to scan the damn thing, she came into contact with some type of field surrounding said planet. Of course, she did not know she came into contact with a field at the time, she just thought her ship’s systems had glitched. Which, in hindsight made sense, because, as she said before, her systems never glitched.

Now, crashed in a forest somewhere on a planet in the middle of fucking nowhere, she scrunched her eyes together, leaned forward, and mashed her face on the console buttons. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the was an absent hope that she would somehow activate some unknown command sequence, or possibly activate the ship's systems, which had shut down upon entering the atmosphere, but she knew she wasn’t that lucky.

She cracked an eye open to observe the results, and when nothing happened, she slid it closed, and once more mashed her face against the buttons, this time groaning before sliding bonelessly off of her seat and onto the floor. She groaned again, thumping her forehead against the metal, hoping maybe she’d shake her brain into doing something useful. After laying there for a few minutes, she realized exactly how uncomfortable the floor was, and peeled herself off.

Quickly checking the closest viewing port, she confirmed that it was day, and she was in the middle of fucking nowhere. She didn’t know, she wasn’t exactly paying attention when she was hurtling towards the surface of the planet at mach fuck.

‘Well,’ she thought, rubbing her forehead, ‘sitting around isn’t helping anyone.’

After this incredibly innovative thought, Ida pushed herself up, and brushed herself off. Standing there for a few seconds, considering her options, she realized she should probably start packing her bag and go look around, as she was probably going to be stuck here for some period of time, seeing as her ship was going to be rebooting for a while.

Thankfully, though, her communications systems were still functioning, if only barely, so she could send a message to HQ telling them her ship was temporarily down and relocation to her current assignment would be impossible at the time, so if she could kindly be re-assigned here, that would be fantastic.

Staring at the array of things she had, from knicknacks and crumpled up clothing strewn across the floor, weapons of mass destruction and various medicinal paraphernalia, to the truly staggering amount of house plants she kept everywhere (and by everywhere, she meant every available horizontal surface). She pondered exactly what she should take with her to fit in with the minimal amount of suspicion. She didn’t really know what type of society she was stepping into, and for all she knew, she could be on a deserted world with no intelligent life, or she could be on a highly advanced planet, that could somehow disguise their tech to be undetectable to her scanners. Most likely, though, she was on a relatively basic planet, ignoring the energy field, and it had at least one intelligent species, relatively developed, with some sort of society.

She considered her options briefly, before electing to take along her trusty dual dagger set (in their holsters on her arms), which she really hoped wouldn’t become locked up again, as she would be unable to get the damn things off without letting the people around her know that she wasn’t exactly... human.

Returning to her mental checklist, she added an easy-to-hide medi-kit for situations in which she couldn’t use her more... obvious methods of healing, a few odds-and-ends that could potentially be useful, a collapsible bow, a quiver of arrows on her hip, and a sturdy, nondescript satchel, which could also be folded up and attached to her belt (bless whoever figured out how to put pocket dimensions into bags).

Best case scenario, the systems would reboot and figure out what caused them to glitch as she entered this planet’s orbit, and she’d be able to continue her documenting of the planet and system without the drawbacks of the no doubt primitive local transportation. Worst case, her ship would be permanently grounded, and she’d have to send out a distress signal to either one of her co-workers, or one of the galaxy’s locals she was friends with. Either way, she’d have quite the wait ahead of her.

This was one of the times she was abundantly glad she was a shapeshifter, and though the skill was always useful, this was a situation she was extra glad she could change how she looked. Fitting in with the locals was always important. One learns fast after almost being lynched for wearing modern clothing in an undeveloped setting.

Unfortunately, as she had not seen any of the planet’s residents, yet, so she would have to continue in her current shape and clothing until she saw someone to base her disguise on.

Pausing, she considered it for a second, before taking out her studs and hoops, just in case having piercings wasn’t a norm where she was. After healing the former piercing holes, she retracted most of her hair back into her scalp, leaving only a couple inches, though this was more for practicality, not fitting in.

Hefting her satchel across her shoulder, she set her ship into stealth mode, with a passive life-repelling field around it, just to make sure anyone that came in this direction would subconsciously avoid the crash site and ignore any signs of

Quickly putting in a command to put the ship in stasis while she was gone, so her plants didn’t die, and her food didn’t go off, she took one last look around, trying to remember if she had forgotten anything vital. Running through her mental checklist and finding nothing obvious missing, she adjusted her sight so she wouldn’t be blinded by the daylight outside, and descended. The entrance let out a hiss of air as it closed behind her, sealing shut.

Even though she knew there would be snow outside, she still let out a mighty sigh at all the snow around her, and started crunching and grumbling her way towards where her heightened hearing heard the most activity.

The road (at least that what she thought it was), was, by her estimation, still a good distance away unless she decided to shift into something speedier, but Ida figured she should probably remain in humanoid form, just to get used to the environment.

She paused once or twice on her walk between the trees to take samples and scan the local wildlife for any differences to registered species, or to add the new information to her tech, which would then be wired to her ship, which was connected to the database. There was a slight chance that her augmentations were also fried, although it was very unlikely, as they were literally buried in her skin. It made it much harder to lose it.

Normally, Ida would have appreciated the pristine beauty of her environment; the untouched, pristine snow, gigantic pine trees and various other wintry things were very pretty, but Ida swore she saw signs of civilization when she was hurtling towards the surface of the planet.

She would have turned into a form more suitable for this environment, but she had some self-imposed rules to make it easier to not slip into a more animalistic state of mind, along with constantly shifting her form, so as not to look like some sort of eldritch abomination, and one of those rules was to try and stay in human form unless given suitable reason. Animals were fair game, just not anything outside of that. And no matter how tired of her surroundings she was, this was not a situation she could reasonably justify changing shape. Besides, she should get used to walking around on two legs in the snow, most intelligent species were bipedal, anyways.

As a matter of fact, she was so relieved when she finally came across the road she was looking for, that for a split second, she seriously considered kissing the ground. Then promptly decided not to, after getting a good look at the state of it. Which was really torn up, what with all the people moving along it, and the melted snow mixing in. Also she was pretty sure that wasn’t mud, over there.

That, and she still hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of the locals to base her appearance off of. Going out there like she was, without any idea what the beings here looked like, would either end with people screaming, or some sort of witch hunt, or both. All three situations had happened to her before, and she had no intention of repeating them, without a very good reason. Maybe she should just turn into a dog. Everyone loves dogs.

It was strange, though. Whichever world she ended up in, there was always some approximation of dogs. Always.

Peering out of the trees, she finally began to spot some of the locals heading up the road (or what counted for one here, considering it wasn’t paved), towards what looked like some sort of temple. Either that, or they just really liked giant statues. If she was entirely honest, it could be both. Back to the locals.

Surprisingly enough, there was a rather large variety in the styles of clothing styles, but the most common type seemed to be favoring earthy colours and geometric designs, patterns, and embroidery. There were some reds and blues in there, but for the most part, everything was in different shades of brown. The styles were fairly similar for either gender, but the female versions were more form-fitting with longer robes/skirts. The majority of the people she could see were white, with hair tones much the same as their clothing, save the blues and reds).

With that information, Ida shifted her clothing and form into something more suitable to both the culture and weather. Her hair lengthened to her waist, and changed from its former bright blue to a more tame dark brown, with a red scarf to keep it out of her face, her eyes to a dark brown, and her skin to tone only a few shades darker than snow, with scattered freckles.

She turned her leather jacket and skimpy shirt into a more practical dark fur-lined cloak, with a long-sleeved lavender tunic underneath a dark blue embroidered vest, a black skirt with stitched poppies along the hem, and a red shawl tied around her waist, just for a splash of colour, along with tall, fur-lined boots. Finally, after putting her hood up and wrapping a thick scarf around her neck to avoid the cold, she stepped onto the road, and started to head towards the temple with the rest of the crowd.

Joining the crowd of people, she went with the flow of the masses into the temple, through the gigantic, ornate doors. Though she was successfully blending in, she wished she could find somewhere quiet and unnoticeable to shift into something more inconspicuous, like a mouse.

Judging by the current state society was in from what she could see, one more rodent wouldn’t be unusual. She wished she had thought of this earlier, but oh well. She peeled off of the flow of people, all of which were heading towards what she presumed was a meeting area in the middle of the temple. Slinking down the corridor, she hoped that no-one would see her, and would figure out she didn’t belong. While she was very, very good at bluffing, even there was only so much she could trick a person into believing without taking them over.

While making her way over to what seemed like a relatively-unused portion of the temple, she began to hear what she recognized as clanking armor. The source of the noise was soon revealed to be this world’s equivalent of guards, or knights, maybe both, with stylized sunbursts with an open eye on their chest plates. They were running around, corralling people, and ordering everyone they found to go to the main area, as someone called ‘the divine’ was missing.

Of course the one time she’s here, and some sort of leader has to go missing. At least, that what she assumed. With a moniker like ‘the divine’ it was pretty obvious they held some power.

She sped up, not really wanting to see what would happen if she was caught by the guards. She could escape quite easily, but that would cause a lot more ruckus then necessary.

She snuck her way down the halls, occasionally shifting into a flat shape matching the colour and texture of the wall to avoid being caught while still being about to hear what the guards were saying and try to figure out what was happening.

Finally, she entered an even less-used portion of the temple, judging by the slight layer of dust on everything around her, though not as much as she would have expected from a building of this size. More likely than not, the people cleaning this place were too busy in the other areas of the temple, what with all of the people there. Perhaps these were ceremonial chambers, used only a few times a year.

Pausing for a second to scan the architecture, she pondered on how hard it would be to clean all of the nooks and crannies of the finely-sculpted statues, which reached upwards, almost touching the ceiling. Slowing down to a comfortable stride, she took some time to really look at the things around her.

Ida realized that the vast majority of the statues in the halls were of women. Presumably one, but it was quite hard to tell with statues. So her hunch was correct. She was in a temple.

Though, she still had no idea how the system of belief worked. Fortunately for her, she would be on this planet for a while, so there was plenty of time. But now that she thought about it did look remarkably similar to that one religion from earth, Christianity.

Actually, now that she thought about it, a lot of things in this temple she was in, really resembled the christian faith. She’d seen photos of what the old places of worship used to look like, and these really had some resemblance, except instead of statues of a man everywhere, it was statues of a woman. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘it’s nice to see something progressive, here in medieval hell.’

Hell was a bit of a strong word, but as much as she loved pre-technology civilizations, there were always a lot of terrible things in the ‘medieval’ stage.

Maintaining her comfortable stroll, she continued along, the slight urgency of the currently ongoing emergency for the residents for this place pushed aside for documenting the new culture. This was more or less her job, after all. Maybe after finishing up with the temple, she’d contact someone else who was also stationed on the planet, and trade information. Getting stuff from the database was all well and fine, but she preferred getting information from people who were actually there. Not everything translated well into the written word, after all.

During her observation of a rather ornate tapestry, her hearing picked up what sounded like a scuffle from one of the nearby rooms. Multiple men and women involved, judging from the deepness of the voices, one very old, more than likely the ‘divine’ the guards were speaking of. When they were talking about her she sounded very old and respected.

Swiftly dismissing her equipment, she slid one her daggers out from its holster, and crept towards where she thought the disturbance came from. Luckily for the woman, whatever they were doing to her was most likely a kidnapping of some sort, as if they wanted to kill her, they would have done it already. Unless it was some type of sacrificial ceremony, in which she’d better hurry, because it looked like the sacrifice part was coming soon.

“What’s going on here?” She shouted as she kicked the doors open, as they were locked and she didn’t know if she had enough time to open them in a less destructive fashion.

She was greeted with several shocked and incredulous stares from the people within, save from the probably-divine (judging by the fancy hat, every religion had a fancy hat), who was too busy being held up and tortured by tendrils of red energy coming from by a red orb held within the grasp of another being, to pay attention.

As for the being with the orb? Very odd. They didn’t look native to this world, and she was fairly certain this was a pre-contact world. If it wasn’t, then it sure as hell wasn’t her people that had been here.

If the rotting fur pauldrons weren’t indication enough of their unnaturalness, the almost-rotting skin stretched thinly over their midsection with red shards jutting out, especially in the facial area, and the fibres of the hood fused with flesh existed as a point to show how other the being in front of her was.

She would like to question them about their origins, but if they were from another uncontacted civilization, then she really didn’t want to let them know that there were other people out there. Were they from off-planet, then they almost definitely didn’t have good intentions for the people here, based off of what she could see.

While the probable alien was distracted by his torture of the woman, the possible divine somehow yanked her arm free of the binds the others had put her in, and whacked the sparking red orb the giant was holding towards her out of his hands, across the floor towards Ida.

Darting towards it, she scooped it into the hand not holding a dagger before it could get far.
Unfortunately, the orb must have still been releasing energy, because when she picked it up, it started to electrocute her. She was unable to release it without giving herself away, so her hand merely clenched the orb as it fried her nerves, the electricity conducted and amplified by her implants. And here she was, thinking they could cause her no trouble here.

While it was shocking her, the giant’s face twisted with rage, and they, lunged towards her, only to be blown back by a wave of energy released by the orb, throwing her backwards and slamming her head onto stone, knocking her out.

Chapter Text

It was the crackling that woke her up.

She jolted awake, face-down on the ground, coughing as smoke invaded her lungs. It smelt like something was burning, but she couldn’t figure out what it was, let alone the source. Lungs heaving, she tried to push herself off of the damp, hard ground, wheezing when her left arm responded with crackling and what felt like a localized strike of lightning to her arm. Her back arched as she screamed, scrabbling at the ground, trying to get a grip on something to distract herself, freezing when she heard the crackling again.

It was coming from her hand.

Slowly lifting her hand off the ground, she shook from the aftershocks as she held it infront of her.

It had what appeared to be a diagonal scar on it, except the scar was somehow bright green, and glowing. Now that she wasn’t writhing on the ground in agony, she had time to think. This mark, or whatever it was, looked like one of those interdimensional tears that she came across once every while, while travelling through dark space. Strange, but not the weirdest thing she’d ever seen.

Seeing as it was done torturing her for the moment, apart from a strange tingling sensation, she lowered her hand back to the ground, and shook her head. ‘What have I gotten myself into, this time?’

She pushed herself off of the ground, being careful of her hand, not wanting to put unnecessary pressure on it, until she could figure out what it was.

She decided that in a situation like this, the only thing she could really do was start walking. Figuring that going back the way she came would be her best chance. Fortunately, or unfortunately for her, the second she turned around she had to shield her eyes, due to some very bright light shining in her face. After her eyes adjusted to the increased brightness, she looked for the source of the sickly-green light, realizing it was coming from the top of a very strange-looking structure.

And by strange, she meant pieces were just randomly breaking off and floating away, ignoring gravity completely, as well as there being no supports for this very unstable-looking structure. While she was on the topic of everything looking strange, she was trying really hard not to think about why everything was green/black, and about how things were just floating and all weird and fucking hell she was not good enough at science to figure this out.

Instead, what she did was start towards the source of light, and try to figure out how she was going to get up there without falling and breaking something vital. ‘Like my spine.’

When she reached the base of the ramp...thing leading up to the (presumably) portal back to some semblance of normalcy, she started hearing scuttling sounds behind her. Turning around to try and see what they were and how close they were, she didn’t spot anything for a couple seconds unti-ohgodno. Immediately whipping her head back around, she bolted upwards, scrabbling at handholds as she ascended as fast as she could.

As she was scrambling her way up the near-vertical platform, she started to hear a woman above her, screaming at her to move faster, that they needed to leave now, or else something worse than the things chasing her would show up. This obviously made her move a great deal faster, though at the minor sacrifice of her previously pristine gloves. ‘Thank goodness I decided to put the gloves on, otherwise I don’t think I’d even have fingernails anymore.’

Now the woman was within sight, she realized that this was the priest(ess) who was being held hostage earlier. ‘How on earth did she get up there? She’s like, 70 years old at least.’

“The demons! Please, climb faster!” The woman screamed, after catching a glance of what was behind Ida.

“While the motivation is very much so appreciated, I’d really rather not know what’s chasing me!” Ida screeched back, her scrabbling against the rocks becoming increasingly more frantic. As the sounds of the things behind her became louder.

The woman reached down towards her, extending herself as far as she could without toppling over the edge. Ida latched on, and the woman pulled her up, with a considerable amount of strength, seeing as she looked like she was at least in her 70s.

“Thanks.” Ida panted, taking a slight breather, as she was most definitely not a sprinter in this form “I needed that.”

“You are welcome. Now come, we must leave this place before the demons catch up.” The woman replied, promptly turning and starting to run towards the tear, which was presumably their ticket out of... wherever they were. Ida also started to sprint towards the tear, as the creatures were getting uncomfortably close, judging by the noise they were making. She booked it, passing the priestess, yelling at her to keep running, but only looking back once she heard a scream. Turning, she lunged towards the priestess, grabbing at her hands, and trying her hardest not to let her get dragged away by the creatures. After a brief struggle, the woman looked up at her, resignation in her gaze.

“Go.” The priestess released her grip on Ida’s hand, and was pulled into the void. Realizing that the priestess had sacrificed her life to give her some extra time, she stared in amazement at the pure selflessness this person she had just met exhibited, before turning, and jumping into the tear.

Chapter Text

The next time Ida woke up (she really had to stop blacking out like this, probably not the best habit to have), she was sitting in a dungeon, surrounded by guards who were pointing their swords at her, with her hands shackled together. Shaking her head, she attempted to get rid of what seemed like a full-body fuzzy feeling. Blearily, she tried to stare at her fists, attempting to reorient herself before attempting any negotiations with her wardens (if they’d even listen).

Turning the marked hand over, trying to see if the mark she saw earlier actually existed, or was just a hallucination, she stared in confusion and slight elation at the unblemished palm of her glove. She could have sworn-ah, there we go.

After this realization, Ida figured it would probably be a good idea to retake inventory. One of the only good things that she woke up to, was the fact that they hadn’t figured out how to take her bracers off of her arms (though, now that she did look at them, they did look a bit damaged, though hopefully not enough that they’d lock up again. It took her forever to pry the damn things off her arms, and she couldn’t even use the daggers, too.), though they had obviously taken her satchel, as that didn’t require too much brainpower (at least, she hoped it didn’t. She’d be quite concerned for the fate of this world if it did).

Scar on her palm crackling away, Ida’s head shot up when the doors in front of her slammed open, and two women walked in. The guards sheathed their swords and withdrew as the dark-haired, angry-looking one stepped towards her, and started to circle, while the redhead in the form fitting armour just stood there, glaring.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.” The angry one stopped behind her, leaning over her shoulder to speak in her ear. Leaning back up, she circled back around, stopping in front of her.

“The conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead... Except for you.” She tilted her head then, looking up at the angry woman, and the redhead, both glaring at her. ‘I think I’m just not going to say what happened, because I’m not entirely sure what they’ll do to me.’

“And I suppose you think I’m the one responsible. You know, seeing as there's no-one else imprisoned with me.” ‘Nailed it.’ The angry one sprang towards her, wrenching her glowing hand from her lap, and shoving it in her face.

“Explain this.” She snarled, before shoving the hand back down to Ida’s lap.

“I can’t. Believe me. No matter how much I’d like the know why, exactly my hand has a glowing mark on it, I don’t.” As Ida spoke, the two women got progressively more frustrated, though the black-haired one’s face twisted with rage. The redhead just continued to glare, though with considerably more venom than before.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Angry woman growled, continuing her circling.

“I mean that I have no idea what it is, or how it got there!” She declared. Obviously this hit a sore spot with her interrogator, as she lunged towards Ida, beginning to shake her, attempting to find out if she shook Ida hard enough, maybe answers she liked would fall out.

“You’re Lying!” The woman snarled, clenching her shoulders so hard, they began to lose feeling. The redhead quickly pushed her away from Ida, back towards the door, before turning and looking back at Ida.

“We need her, Cassandra.” She firmly stated, although why Ida was needed, and what she was needed for, she didn’t exactly know (and wasn’t sure she wanted to).

“So, what happens now? You obviously don’t think I’m innocent, and somehow I get the feeling that letting me go isn’t exactly an option.” Shrugging, she tilted her head and made her best attempt at an innocent, yet snug smile. It didn’t work too well, and the women stared at her in both disbelief that she actually tried that and disgust at her disregard. The redhead stepped away from the doorway, and padded closer to her amazingly quietly, considering she had thigh-high armoured boots.

“Do you remember what happened? How this began?” Ah, yes. The classic interrogation starter. Next, they'd bring out the hot pokers and thumbscrews. All jokes aside, though, this woman looked at lot more willing to resort to cruel and unusual methods than Cassandra, who seemed to prefer brute force. Now she really had to start getting creative, and get her game face on, because the redhead looked like she could sniff out a liar from a mile away. ‘Well, if it all goes horribly, horribly wrong, I guess I could always turn into a dragon, or something equally terrifying for the local populace.’

“I remember running. These things were chasing me, and then..." She paused for dramatic effect. "....A woman?” ‘Hell if I know. This has been a very long day for me, and I’m pretty sure I’ve suffering from multiple occasions of blunt force trauma.’ Doing her best to look innocent, and actually trying this time, not just bullshitting, as seen earlier, she tried her hardest to play the ‘confused amnesiac’, hoping the redhead wouldn’t be able to sniff out her lie.

“A Woman?” She sounded confused, as though she had not considered that someone other than Ida was involved.

“She reached out to me, but then...” Trailing off, hoping they’d interpret this as her not knowing , as she could only successfully bullshit her way through things before she started to fuck up the details.

“Go to the forward camp, Leliana.” So that was her name! Ida thought she was just going to have to call her ‘redhead’ forever. “I will take her to the rift.” Cassandra turned around, and unshackled Ida from the ground, although she did leave Ida’s hands tied together. Got to have some control over the prisoner, after all.

“What did happen? I can’t remember anything.” Looking up at Cassandra as she helped her up. Still making a valiant attempt at innocence (and mostly succeeding).

“It... Would be easier to show you.” Cassandra sighed, sounding defeated. ‘Well. That can’t be good, if she has to show me, rather than explaining it. Got to be something big.’

“Thanks for helping me up, by the way.” At saying this, Cassandra almost swung back around, looking very surprised that the prisoner she had been harassing not five minutes ago, was thanking her for something as inconsequential as helping her onto her feet. Ida cracked a smile when she saw the look of surprise, voicing that “well, there’s no point in being rude to the people who have my life in their hands. And you did help me off the ground, where you could have very easily left me there.”

“...You are welcome. Now come, we must move.” After uttering this, she turned back around, and began to lead Ida out of what she realized was a dungeon. They walked a short distance underground, before turning and going up a flight of stairs, out into what looked like a smaller version of the church she had seen earlier. While Ida was walking, she noticed a very strange height difference between her, and Cassandra. Where she would have once been around nose height, she was now only shoulder height. Very suspicious. But as she could not find a mirror, and she couldn’t shift here, she would have to stay like this for now.

Following Cassandra through the building, they soon exited through a large set of double doors, not unlike the ones she had burst through in the fancy temple, earlier on. They were promptly greeted by glaring (at her) and a giant fucking hole in the sky holyshit this was so not her day.