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crankygrrl · 5 months

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Lair of the Cult of the Wyrm

(Mass Effect/Willow AU. Tanthamore. Content warnings: spoilers for Mass Effect 2, specifically "Lair of the Shadow Broker" and Willow (2022); major character death?; descriptions of injuries and bodies; deliberately angsty situations. N.B. this is not a finished story but more of an enhanced plot outline with story beats, a few visual references and some roughed-out dialogue. This is probably as finished as this piece is likely to get, but rather than leave it in a drafts folder, I thought I'd share it here.)

After season one ends, Kit and company make it back to Tir Asleen, do the Star Wars medal ceremony thing, and try to fit back into their old lives. Hastur is very angry at KIt, specifically, for Graydon’s death but can’t do anything about it *directly* because everyone is like “Dude, you *told* him to go” and things are awkward between Tir Asleen and Galladoorn for a bit. Jade is knighted and given command of her own company of knights under Commander Kase (who dragged his wounded body back to the Mothers Gate where Lachlan found him and took him home to Tir Asleen to recover). With the Crone dead, the Gales defeated, and the curse on Nockmaar broken, Sorsha and Hastur declare peace in our time. Elora and Willow start hunting through Tir Asleen's libraries and record halls for information about the Kymerian empire to help continue Elora's training, and Airk tried to help. Boorman appoints himself Kit’s equerry (but really he’s her squire). And Kit splits her time between checking in on Elora, her duties as Sorsha's heir, and riding out with Jade and her knights.

Then something starts attacking towns and villages loyal to Tir Alseen outside of the barrier. Hastur assumes they’re Bone Reavers but Sorsha, Kit and Jade are skeptical.

“Bone Reavers don’t burn homesteads to the ground,” Boorman notes. “You can’t steal grain from dead farmers.” He has a point.

Kit and Jade sally forth with Boorman, Elora, Willow and Arik and Jade’s company of knights to confront the brigands. They track the path of destruction back to Nockmaar, which has been taken over by a giant (but still much smaller than The Wyrm) wyrm (lesser wyrm below).

They fight the beast and its scaly minions, but in the fury of combat, Bav Morda’s fortress begins to collapse into the volcanic fissure running under Nockmaar (I always imagined that Bav Morda’s throne sat over a literal Hellmouth).

Jade, who led her soldiers into the fight, guards their retreat, along with Kit and Elora (Boorman and Willow lead the way out because someone has to and Willow has the shortest legs). In the heart of the crumbling castle, Elora and Kit fight the Wyrm back towards the fiery pits, while Jade covers their backs. Kit, wearing the cuirass, is the last to turn away. Elora makes it to the safety of firm ground, followed by Jade as the paving stones collapse under Kit’s feet. Jade throws herself forward and catches Kit by the arm. There’s a moment when they seem safe, but the ground begins buckling under Jade's body, pulling her over the edge.

“Let me go. The cuirass will protect me. Jade, let me fall,” Kit begs her.

Jade swings her other arm down to catch Kit’s forearm and holds on with both hands. “I told you,” Jade says, pulling Kit up, “Where you go, I go.”

The cliff’s edge crumbles underneath Jade, throwing them both into the abyss….

Kit wakes up in Tir Asleen several weeks later, covered in bruises, her whole body a flare of pain. She learns that the cuirass saved her life, but only barely. Elora, Willow, Boorman and Airk (I keep forgetting about Airk), found a honeycomb of tunnels underneath the ruins of Nockmaar and found Kit in a pile of rubble at the foot of the cliff beside a river of fire, the cuirass deactivated, the stone that had once glowed a vibrant green in the choker around her neck dull and inert. They searched for Jade’s body, they tell Kit, but found no sign of her. She must have fallen into the magma, lost forever. And Kit?

She doesn't take it very well. You might say she goes a little mad.

Across Tir Alseen and the Wildwoods, Jade is mourned. Skellin goes quiet, the Wildwoods are free of trolls, and Sorsha and Scorpia, forging a peace over the common ground of their grief, believe the firedrake was the last of the Wyrm. Even Elora and Willow start to believe it. Meanwhile Kit, in a fury of rage and guilt, crisscrosses Tir Asleen, Nockmaar, the Wildwoods and Galladoorn, falling upon bandits, trolls, and anyone so unwise as to cross her, until even she runs out of things to kill.

Kit is in a tavern somewhere in Galladoorn when she is surrounded by Knights of the Shining Legion. She surrenders to them when one of them offers her a letter from Zivian Hastur, and she’s not quite drunk enough (yet) to throw her life away in a bar fight (today).

After reading the letter, Kit hands over her weapons and lets the knights march her out of the tavern to a much nicer burger’s house (think something out of The Witcher 3) where a dressed-down Zivian Hastur waits for her. He tells her that the Wyrm’s minions, the half dragon-half human creatures Kit, Jade and Elora fought in Nockmaar, stole Jade’s body. That Jade’s sacrifice created powerful magic that the Wyrm (the big Wyrm not the one they killed in Nockmaar) wants to exploit.

“You talk about her like she’s still alive,” Kit says. Hastur’s smile spreads across his face like oil over water: “And what if she is?”

Kit takes Hastur’s information home to Tir Asleen, telling them that there's a change to get Jade back.

“You don’t bring people back, Kit. They never come back… right,” Willow says.

“Kit, you have to let her go,” Elora tells her, with as much care as she can. It makes no difference.

Airk and Boorman say nothing because Airk knows better and Boorman hopes Kit is right.

Willow and Elora’s doubt cuts, but Kit is not the same person who left Tir Alseen to find her brother so many moons ago. She understands their fears but will not be bound by them. That night, in her chamber, she removes the cuirass for the first time since the Immemorial City, as she does so, it becomes two pieces in her hands. She carries the cuirass and the lux to Airk’s rooms and puts them on him, activating the lux. On Airk, the armour is more subdued, not golden but a deep burnished bronze, and it doesn’t cover his whole body but conforms to his torso like the armour of a Roman Centurion (or emperor: Augustus of Prima Porta (inv. 2290) - Augustus of Prima Porta - Wikipedia). Airk says this proves the armour was meant for Kit not him. Kit tells him to watch over Elora and leaves.

Kit heads out alone to find Jade. Or tries to, Boorman catches up, or rather she nearly rides into him on the road less than a league outside Tir Asleen.

“I expected you an hour ago,” he complains, standing up slowly. “I was starting to get stiff.” “I had to see Airk before I left.” “Sibling farewell?” “Left him the cuirass. He’ll need to watch over Elora while I’m gone.” Or if she didn’t come back.

“Yeesh.” Boorman winced, swining himself into the saddle. “I kinda wish I’d known that before I decided to come along.”

Kit and Boorman follow Hastur’s information back to Nockmaar, following the network of tunnels deeper and deeper into the mountains until they reach Skellin. The mines are abandoned, and praise the mothers, all the vermiscus dried up (because fuck that shit). But it does make Kit wonder if Elora was right.

Their path leads them, eventually, to Dragon’s Spine, which is akin to a high-humidity version of Mos Eisley. There they find one of the local bandit bosses is one of the dragon-ish Wyrm minions (and that they refer to themselves as "Dragonborn" and look remarkably like the Krogan, funnily enough) .

“Wreav,” he says. Kit looks way, way up at the big Dragonborn and sneers: “No shit. That your name or your occupation?”

Wreev has Jade’s body and is about to sell her to the Wyrm’s agents. Kit offers to better their offer, attempting to Han Solo the transaction: “Look, I’m literally a princess. The reward for returning the knight’s body will be substantial.” Wreev thinks about it: “How substantial.”

“Substantial. More wealth than you could possibly imagine.” “I can imagine quite a bit, Daikini, and I only take cashl.”

So Kit has to kill him, without the cuirass, which is quite the task, as he’s over seven feet tall and nearly as broad and Kit is… not.

Meanwhile, Boorman is drinking his way through the taverns of Dragon Spine, trying to learn more about who’s trying to buy Jade’s remains (and the drinking definitely helps Boorman not think about the fact they’re trying to recover Jade’s very long-dead remains). It’s in the fifth or seventh tavern of the night when Boorman stumbles across a Dragonborn who lets slip that they’re taking payment by the docks later that night. Boorman knocks the dude right the fuck out, which goes much better than Kit’s fight with Wreav because Boorman is almost tall enough to look the Dragonborn in the eye. Almost.

Boorman tracks down Kit, somewhat battered and bloody but victorious, and says there’s a chance to get Jade back if they hurry. They rush through the streets to the docks to discover that the people trying to buy Jade’s remains are priests of the Cult of the Wyrm (who, like Kit, favour a rich burgundy and black colour scheme… ominous) led by… Hot!Graydon. Kit is stunned. “Graydon? It’s Jade that they want. We need her back. I need her back. Please.”

But Graydon only smiles, “Give her back? You would bury her in the earth but from Jade’s perfect sacrifice, our master will harvest a new generation of warriors, pure in their devotion to carry out his glorious purpose.”

“You knew?”

“Of course, I knew,” and his smile turns ugly and vicious, as Kit’s heart breaks.

The fight is brutal. Kit and Boorman fighting alone, first against the handful of Dragonborn, and then against the Priests of the Wyrm as Graydon, serenely supervises loading Jade’s casket (black as night and twice as lonely) onto a long ship. When the casket is settled beneath the mast in the centre of the deck, Graydon steps aboard and orders the remaining cultists to cast off the boat.

“Make sure she doesn’t follow,” he orders as the rowers pick up their oars with a jangle of chains.

“He’s getting away,” Kit cries, trying desperately to cut her way through the half-dozen or so cultists and Dragonborn between her and the end of the pier.

Boorman looks from Kit to the boat and makes a decision. “Get out girl.”

Boorman throws himself into the crowd, bowling them over like a set of nine pins (which is totally a game they play on Andowyne), creating a gap.

Kit doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t even think, she runs. One Dragonborn makes a grab for her and she smacks him in the face with the pommel of her father’s sword. She hauls ass down the length of the pier but she’s too late. The long ship is already away from the pier, ten, twelve feet and more. Kit doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t even think, she hurls herself at the long ship, kicking off from the end of the pier and landing like Black Widow in the back of the long boat, facing Graydon.

Graydon’s pop wide open, his smug effect falling from him like a mask. For a moment, he seems like Kit’s friend again, unsure and awed by the events around him; then the mask slips back down over his face as he twists his hand, summoning a spell.

Kit steps forward and stabs him through the throat. Graydon reaches for the wound as Kit pulls out the blade. She twists her wrists, and brings her sword down through his neck in a single, final sweep of the blade.

Graydon’s head falls from his shoulders and dissolves into a puff of crimson smoke. The clothes he was wearing fall empty to the deck.

Kit stares for a moment, then raises her sword and looks wildly around her. One of the oarsmen, fearfully, speaks up, “We mean you no harm, Lady. What do you command?”

Kit looks back to docks, to Boorman. He’s been caught. Two Dragonborn are holding him by the arms, and a third is working him over. Kit sees more Dragonborn running towards the fight. She looks at the casket, and back to Boorman. If she goes back, they’re both dead and Jade is lost. With one last look at Boorman, she orders the rowers to keep going and head for open water.

Later, Kit will free the rowers from their chains and promise those who come with her to Galladoorn will be compensated. While the others rest, she stands alone on the deck and pries open the casket holding Jade’s body.

Jade died in the fall. Her injuries, the tears in her clothes and flesh, the bones that don’t lie right in arms and legs give testament to her courage and its limits. Kit reaches out to touch her dear face one more time and the blood smearing her cheek is wet to the touch. The still flesh is warm, the skin soft to the touch. It is as if time for Jade stopped the moment she was pulled from the rubble and a dangerous hope explodes in Kit’s chest.

“You don’t bring people back,” Willow said, “They never come back… right.” But Willow was a mediocre sorcerer. A scared old man who hid away in a hole rather than face his faults. Kit isn’t afraid to look herself in the mirror. Kit knows exactly who she is, and how far she would go for those she loves. “As far as it takes.” She closes up the casket and the next morning her crew, freed from their chains but not their labours, set sail for Galladorn, skirting the edges of the Shattered Sea to the Great River, past Manheim to the headwaters of Mother Lake.

Kit can see the hills of Tir Asleen when she orders them to tack south and make for Galladoorn, and finally to the steps of Zivian Hastur’s very throne.

The crew, no longer enslaved, receive their payment, in real Galladoorn silver—Hastur is many things but not a cheat and not ungenerous. Some leave the city immediately, for Galladoorn’s enslavers are notoriously unconcerned about the legal nuances between freed and enslaved, and some go back to the long boat, promising their new captain that they will wait for her to finish her business.

Alone with Hastur, Kit opens the casket and reveals Jade once more.

“Can you bring her back?”

Hastur studies Jade, sniffing the air and running his fingers over the obsidian casket. Kit’s skin crawls as he runs his hand over Jade's face and down her arms.

“It is… possible. Perhaps. The sorcerer who cast the spell was powerful. Very powerful.” He runs his finger over still lips. “The spell holds her at the precipice, in the moment of her last breath. Powerful, powerful magic.” “Then wake her up.” “Wake her?” Hastur smiles that same oily smile. “If we woke her now, she would only die of her injuries. No, we must heal the body, only then can we dare to wake the spirit.”

Hastur makes a gesture, and two servants wearing collars stamped with Hastur’s sigil come forward. They replace the lid of the casket as two more join them. Each takes a corner of the casket and raises it to their shoulders. “Hey, where are you taking her?” “Peace, Kit. They are taking her to someplace safe, where no one can disturb the spell until such time as we are ready to wake her.” “But…” Kit wants Jade back now and she sure as hell doesn’t want to let Jade out of her sight. “How long until we can wake her?”

Hastur considers: “Healing magic is a rare skill and even the best mages can only do so much before they become exhausted. Jade’s injuries are extensive and we must work carefully lest we disturb the spell that holds her.” “Months,” Kit sighs. “I can’t wait months. I—I left someone behind.” “Thraxus Boorman,” Hastur says with disdain. “He’s a degenerate and a drunkard. Leave him to his fate.”

“Boorman is a friend. I wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t have Jade if not for him. I need to go back.” Hastur frowns, “You waste your loyalty on the unworthy, Princess. One day it will be your undoing.”

“But not today,” Kit said. “Once I find my friend, I will be back for Jade.” Kit turns to leave and then pauses. She looks back at Hastur, “Thank you, Your Majesty. Take care of her for me.” “Galladoorn has ever been an ally to Tir Asleen. Go with the Mothers blessing, Princess.” Kit nods, saying nothing, and walks away.

(2811 words, 2/05/24)

#Cranky writes things #Unfinished fic #Mass Effect/Willow crossover #Tanthamore fic #Tanthamore angst #kit tanthalos #jade claymore #Jade Claymore is Commander Shepard #Kit is Liara #Walt Disney bring back Willow you cowards #Willow 2022

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