#human inquisitor

aka the From the Waters of the Fade fic

Just imagine it:

Everything happens according to canon until the end of MoA. As in canon, Percy grabs hold of Annabeth to keep her from being pulled into Tartarus... but unlike canon, she slips out of his grasp when he grabs hold of a ledge to check their fall. He lets go to fall in after her, but cannot see or reach her in the dark. They fall into the Cocytus seconds apart, but without Percy to shield her Annabeth dies instantly.

Percy, however, merely thinks they were separated by the current and travels through Tartarus looking for both her and the doors. It's not until the first time he allows himself to sleep that he learns the truth - and he vows to close the Doors of Death so that her sacrifice won't be in vain.

Canon continues apace - without Percy being ashamed of his poison powers because Annabeth isn't there to be afraid. He emerges from Tartarus determined to stop Gaia, though it's the kind of determination that speaks of immense misery and guilt being channeled into the one positive outlet he has.

(Though rather than the song and dance with the Physician's Cure in BOO, Percy takes a leaf out of Kronos' book and uses the Annabeth's cursed knife to carve Gaia into tiny pieces and scatter her to the winds - with the gods' help, after he shares his idea with Apollo on Delos.)

After the fighting ends, Percy falls into a deep depression. He manages to crawl out of it eventually - Dionysus and his powers of madness help a little here, as do Sally, Paul, and Estelle - and decides that rather than try to put back together the shambles of his mortal life, he'll stay at CHB as a sword instructor and (eventually) deputy camp director.

Fast forward to the summer Percy turns 24.

Things are going well. Though he's only taking classes part time, he's most of the way through degrees in social work and military history from NYU. The gods have done a good job of keeping their promises regarding their children and the minor gods, and even Athena has finally forgiven him for Annabeth's death. It looks like the start of a golden age.

All that is shattered when an unknown force enters CHB through the Labyrinth and kidnaps several of the youngest campers.

The alarm is raised and the demigods fight back... but several children are still taken, and Percy leads the group sent to rescue them.

The rescue attempt occurs while the kidnappers are camped next to a fissure in the Labyrinth, one which looks like it might go down to Tartarus if not for the acidic green glow it gives off. During the rescue, Percy falls into the fissure...

...and lands in the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes in Thedas.

And so Percy Jackson becomes the Herald of Andraste.

His intro to Thedas somehow manages to be even worse than his intro to CHB - but in their defense none of the others seem to realize he's not from this world until after The Wrath of Heaven, when he throws a bigger fit about being the Herald of Andraste than anyone expected from a human warrior. ("No, look: I can't be the Herald of Andraste. If I'm anyone's herald, it's Poseidon's - and I can't even be that because it's my brother's job and he's already worried I'm going to supplant him. Use my name or come up with a better title.")

Percy spends his first weeks in Haven confusing everyone around him. He's a warrior who uses a strange one-handed sword and rarely bothers with a shield - who is, in fact, more likely to use Annabeth's cursed knife as an off-hand weapon than anything else. He also has control over an element - water, in all its forms - that no mage in Thedas is known to have. And that's not even touching his strange armor preferences or references to an unknown pantheon of gods.

Only after In Your Heart Shall Burn - when Percy dumps an avalanche on the invading army without need of a catapult - do some start to believe he's from another world. Unfortunately, they take his off-the-cuff remarks about the Greek Gods, mix them with their Andrastian understanding of the world, and come to the conclusion that Percy is the grandson of Andraste and The Maker via their son, Poseidon.

("This is not what I meant by come up with a better title. Gods!")

The game proceeds apace, with the Inquisition doubling down with its heresy by claiming their Inquisitor is the Heir of the Maker.

Percy denies this at every turn, but everything he says is taken for proof of the new flavor of Andrastianism cropping up in the Inquisition. ("No, you don't understand, I used this knife to kill my despotic grandpa and his mom, neither of which was your Maker!" "Ah, Andraste must have been the half-mortal child of an Old God! I bet it was Zazikel!" "No, that's not what I- Sigh.")

In fact, the only one who believes that Percy is who he says he is at this stage is Dorian, who is eager to hear about the world he came from. They form a close friendship which slowly shifts into romance.

His actions in restoring peace throughout southern Thedas only encourage his new cult. Recruit both the mages and the templars and force them into peace talks? Why, that's what the Divine was trying to do! How holy of him! Close the rifts, fight Corypheus, and drive out the Venturi? Isn't that an echo of the first Exalted March? And so on.

Percy can feel himself being propelled towards apotheosis and nothing he does can close the floodgates.

He is a figure of awe and terror during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, the Orleasian court not knowing whether to burn him for heresy - and risk becoming the next Hessarian - or fall down on their knees in worship. Percy hates it but cannot deny its utility in forcing Gaspard, Celene, and Briala into a public truce.

He cannot deny its usefulness either during the battle at Adamant Fortress, when many of the Wardens refuse to turn their sword against the grandson of the Maker.

Even so, Percy, Hawke, and their companions still fall into the Fade.

They are led through the Fade by Annabeth, who has been residing in this space between realties ever since her death in Tartarus.

There is much info dumping, but it boils down to: 1) Chaos bore many children, which created many worlds, of which Thedas and their earth are just two; 2) Most spirits stay in the world of their birth, but some - those that don't go to Hades or Tartarus - are sent to the Fade, which eventually wears away at their memory until they become archetypes of whatever defined them most in life - anger, faith, valor, fear, &c; 3) When Zeus killed Kronos the first time, his spirit was trapped in the Fade. Kronos created Thedas, but abandoned it when he found a way back to their earth; and 4) Time does not move the same between worlds. Annabeth believes that Kronos' death in the Second Titan War spurred the Fifth Blight in Thedas, and Gaea's death at the end of the Second Giant War is somehow behind the Breach - either as a consequence of their deaths or as part of their plot to return to earth.

("So I really am the grandson of their Maker? Fuck.")

The sequence continues - without gathering the Inquisitor's memories, as he never lost them in the first place. Annabeth sacrifices herself to stop the Nightmare - and when that's not enough, Percy's rage at watching his friend die because of him a second time is enough for Percy to take control of the waters in the Fade and destroy the Nightmare once and for all, without any need to leave Hawke or a warden behind.

Percy had been angry at Corypheus before. Now he's enraged.

Storms and earthquakes batter Corypheus' forces across Thedas. Horses in the enemy's forces escape their stables. The sea becomes dangerous for anyone to sail.

The same single-focused rage that allowed Percy to end the Second Giant War takes over Percy now. Though he leads an army through the Arbor Wilds, he deals more damage than all the rest combined. He pursues Corypheus to the Temple of Mythal, pulls his lyrium dragon from the sky, and uses his powers to hold it in place as he beheads it. (Corypheus' agonized scream is like music to Percy's ears.)

They make it to the Well of Sorrows, the Sentinels being unable to stop a god-in-waiting.

After Morrigan drinks from the Well, they learn that with Corypheus' dragon destroyed Corypheus will be unable to change bodies. All that remains is a Doom Upon All The World.

Corypheus expends the last of his power to reopen the Breach, but Percy has slain two gods and multiple dragons at this point and has the might of a cult behind him. It is nothing for him to destroy Corypheus once and for all, using the orb to tear Corypheus apart and scatter his remains through the Fade much as he'd done with Gaea back on earth.

This is all that's needed to tip Percy over into godhood. Flush with power, he returns the Anchor back to the Orb before destroying both for good...

...which enrages Solas, though there's nothing he can do. Percy is divinity in truth, with faith and power behind him, while Solas lost the better part of his strength with the destruction of the Orb.

The war is over - and another begins.

The Inquisition disbands, but is largely reformed as the center of a new denomination of Andrastianism - one which acknowledges Percy as the grandson of the Maker, returned to Thedas to retake the Black City and pave way for The Maker's return. It's hard position to deny now that Percy reeks of divinity, and thousands flock to their banner. Mother Giselle is their new leader as Divine Joyous III.

Meanwhile the Chantry has finally regrouped under the banner of Divine Victoria (born Vivienne de Fer), and thousands flock to their banner in order to crush the heretics. A war of religion looms and nothing Percy can say will stop it from coming.

Part of him doesn't want to stop it from coming. Worship is a heady thing, for all he tries to cling to the things that made him human.

His friends help with this, but his friends are only mortal. Even Dorian, who Percy has come to love dearly, can only do so much, and refuses to be made immortal even if it means they'd have an eternity together. One by one they die, and eventually Percy is left all alone: a god amid a sea of worshipers.

(One day Percy will march on the Black City. One day he will wage war against Kronos and Gaea, who are gathering their forces to wage a third war on the Greek and Roman worlds of their original earth... but that is another story.)

Bonuses include:

Percy clinging to his mortality with raw, bleeding fingers. Each denial instead becomes more proof for those who would rather have present god than an absent one. The larger his cult grows, the more power Percy has to stop Corypheus. Percy is forced to sacrifice more and more of his mortality to save the world... and in the end it is all he can do not to become the very thing he despised.

Despite all the angst... humor. As Edith Hamilton says of the Greeks, "But never, not in their darkest moments, do they lose their taste for life. It is always a wonder and a delight, the world a place of beauty, and they themselves rejoicing to be alive in it." Percy is not as goofy as he is in canon, but then he is a young adult now. He's grown, but he's still happy to play and tease and live even in the midst of death.

The implication that the group which infiltrated CHB at the beginning are a group of clear-sighted mortals opposed to the existence of the gods. Some are relatives of demigods who died in the wars, others are opposed on religious grounds, and some just think western civilization is a scourge on the earth, but entirely mortal.

Percy being absolutely sure that Hawke is a demigod like himself - probably the child of the Old God Razikale. He has no idea how that might even work, but thinks it explains a lot about Hawke's power, to say nothing of the fact that Leandra doted on the twins but was far more critical of her theoretically oldest child. No proof is ever found for this, but things should be circumstantial enough that even Hawke starts to wonder about it once they learn of it.

And that's all I have - which, as usual, is far more than I ever thought I would. As always, feel free to adopt this plot bunny, just link back if you ever do anything with it.