#oc: Kato Shinin

[writing-ro]

Fictober 19-3: “Now? Now you listen to me?”

@fictober-event​ // Set in a Multi-fandom Fantasy AU where most if not all kinds of fantasy creatures exist alongside humans, though the two cultures stay fairly separate, with many humans being afraid or prejudice against creatures.

Rating: T Fandom: Star Wars, Dragon Age Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Arista Amara (OFC), Oren Revik (OMC), Merrill (Dragon Age), Kato Shinin (OMC), Merida Mahariel (OFC), Tamlen (Dragon Age), Minaeve (Dragon Age),  Additional Tags: elf!Ahsoka, dragon!Oren, Temple exploration, Don’t Touch The Magic Mirror!, the monsters are basically the ra’zac from eragon acting like the darkspawn of Dragon Age, Three guesses who the statues are of and the first two don’t count.

She'd known something bad was going to happen. It had been gnawing at her gut since she was asked to lead the expedition. Merrill and Ashalle had been studying an old elven text and found reference to a temple. Merrill managed to use the context clues and some other old records and figured out the location and asked to go find it. The elders discussed and finally agreed to allow it, and asked Ahsoka, as one of the clan's best hunters, to lead the party. 

She told Arista of the trip, just so she wouldn't worry about her absence. Instead, she insisted on accompanying them. She had a fairly good grasp of Old Elven from her studies, and did have some talent as a mage, so she could be a help. Ahsoka had argued, that the elders would never accept her help, and that it'd be dangerous, but when Arista wanted something, she knew just how to run right over Ahsoka about it. 

So they set out, a party of seven: herself, Arista, Merrill, Merida, Tamlen, Kato, and Minaeve. Three mage scholars and four warriors. Considering the ruins were rather close to the Primian Kingdom border, that should have been more than enough to handle anything. 

The journey there took a week, and they found the ruins nestled up against a mountain, distinctly elven and covered in growth. They spent another looking through the first few chambers of the place, the ones accessible from the front door without need of another ritual like they had used to open it. Notes were taken, a few items collected, and catalogued, and each one made the scholars more and more excited to see what lay beyond. So, the eighth day in the ruins, the mages gathered together and unlocked the door. The hall behind was most impressive, gold and marble being visible even under centuries of dust. Strangely though, there was nothing inside, except a large mirror, twice as tall as any of them, standing on a dias with two statues on either side, one a elven man with a wolf sitting at his feet, the other a dragon with a elven woman kneeling at its feet. It, unlike everything else, was also completely clear of dust. 

“This place is beautiful,” Merrill said. “None of the clans have had the means to build something like this in centuries.”

“What is this mirror?” Tamlen asked.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Merida said, moving towards it with him. 

“Careful you two,” Ahsoka ordered and they flinched back just before they could take the first step up the dias. “We don’t know what it was for. Had to be important, if they locked it up so tight.”

“The room also suggests that hypothesis,” Arista said. “A vault wouldn’t have all this gold just put on the walls. Could this be a ritual chamber?”

“I don’t recall any rituals involving mirrors from the histories,” Merrill said. “Maybe there’s an inscription somewhere that can tell us what it is.”

They spread out around the chamber to look, brushes, brooms and rags knocking down dust which was then swept out the chamber with sweeps of magic. None of them realized that as more of the magic was used, the more was drawn to the mirror, and now the previously clear surface had become cloudy and mottled. 

“Did anyone find anything?” Minaeve asked, wiping her hands on a rag after polishing a plate on the east wall. 

“Nothing,” Marrill sighed as she looked in the last crevice on that wall. “Not a thing. This must have been one of those ‘everyone knows of it, so why should we write it down’ type things.”

“I think I might have found a passage,” Arista said, she and Ahsoka standing by the southwest corner of the hall. “Or at least where one used to be. The stone’s settled different than the rest.”

“Hey, the mirror’s changed!” Tamlen called, and the other turned to see him and Merida standing on the mirror’s dias, Tamlen reaching out to touch it. “I-I think I see something inside. A- It’s a city! But it’s dark, and cold and - WHAT IS THAT!”

“Tamlen!” Merida called, lunging for him.

“No!” half their group screamed as a flash of light from the mirror engulfed the two, forcing them to cover their eyes or be blinded. When they managed the blink the spots away, the two hunters were gone. 

“What just happened!?” Kato asked. 

“I don’t know,” Merrill said, moving a bit closer to the mirror. “Maybe our magic activated it somehow, but what it does, i don’t-” she cut herself off with a gasp as some things sprang out of the mirror, and Ahsoka and Kato drew their weapons while the mages grabbed their staves.

The things were humanoid, but wore black leather armor and black cloth over their faces. Wicked blades of black oily metal hung from their waists, and they made weird clicking and hissing sounds as they moved, looking over the party before drawing their blades and splitting into two groups to attack. 

“RUN!” Ahsoka ordered, but found herself and Arista cut off before they could follow those orders. Kato, Merrill and Minaeve managed to get to the door, and there they tried to hold position, Minaeve holding a barrier while the other two attacked the monsters. Arista tried doing the same for herself and Ahsoka, though it was hard to maintain it and attack.

Yet it seemed for every monster they cut down, two more would take its place. Eventually there grew to be so many, the clicking and hizzing was all that could be heard, and a sea of black separated the party. 

“Kato, go!” Ahsoka screamed over the horde. “Seal the doors and warn the clans, tell them to not send anyone else here!”

“Ahsoka-!” Kato called back, but Ahsoka screamed louder.

“GO!”

Merrill put a hand on Kato’s arm, and finally he relented he and Merrill backing up, Kato shooting the monsters while Merrill used her magic to grip the doors and pull them closed, the room growing darker as the light disappeared until all that remained was the strange, purplish glow of the mirror. 

“Think you can get that passage open?” Ahsoka asked. 

“I can try.” Arista let out another burst of magic that pushed the monsters back a few feet. “Hold them off?”

Ahsoka nodded and took a deep breath, then lunged into the fight. Her swords whirled around her in a dance of steel and gore, cutting down monsters and dodging their own return blows. As she fell more into the groove of the fight, she got faster and faster, where she could cut down several monsters before even one got a swipe at her. Those swipes she dodged, sometimes by a hair, but a miss was a miss, and the monster never got a second swing. A short wall of bodies was starting to form, but she never lost her footing. She was getting lost in the dance, and some distant part of her mind was saying it would be a story for the ages, if anyone were ever to learn of it. A elven knight sacrificing all to defend her lover and the world, taking out as many of these twisted foes as she could before her blades finally-

A grind of stone sounded behind her. “Got it! Come on!” A barrier pushed the monsters back a few paces and Arista’s hand touched the back of her shoulder. Ahsoka gave one last sweep of the monsters before turning and running after her lover down the passage way. 

However, the barrier was weaker than usual, and Ahsoka had not noticed the archers who had joined the first wave of monsters. Not until an arrow pierced her armor and into the back of her shoulder.

“AHH!” She gripped her shoulder, shoving Arista ahead when she paused. “We’ll worry about it later, for now run!”

The two ran for they didn’t know how long. The corridor was line with sconces of stone, glowing a pale blue, perhaps charged in the same manner as the mirror, or some other magic. Either way, it meant their flight was lit, and they managed to keep ahead of the horde. Every once in a while, there would be an ancient trap of some kind, always activated by the horde after their own passing, and right after a split in the corridor. A cross ways to the left and right, two sets of stairs going up or down. By unspoken decision, they always went right and up, hoping to find some doorway out. The traps slowed the horde down enough to give them some breathing room, but they would soon overwhelm it by sheer force, and Ahsoka could feel herself starting to fatigue, the exhaustion of fighting and the blood dripping from her shoulder causing her to slow. 

Finally, as they reached another junction, a giant pit trap behind them slowly filling with the bodies of the horde, she collapsed against the wall, barely keeping her feet under her. “‘Rista, go.”

“No, not without you.” Arista said, taking her hand, but Ahsoka pulled it back. 

“I’m not going to make it, I’ve lost too much blood. You at least have a chance to get out.” She raised her hand to caress Arista’s cheek, and Arista caught it.

“I’m not leaving you. Besides-” she smiled at her “-didn’t you once say you wished we would die together?”

Ahsoka couldn’t help the breathless laughter that left her at that. “Really? Now? Now you listen to me about that?” Still, Ahsoka pulled Arista close to her, burying her face in her hair as they sank to the floor. She wanted her last memory to be of her lover’s scent and the sound of her heartbeat, not the click-hiss-whoosh of the monsters and the smell of- burning bodies?

Arista screamed as a torrent of flame erupted out of the corridor they had just come down, almost drowning out the dying shrieks of the monsters as they were incinerated. The fire, heat, and smoke blocked the hall, and Ahsoka found herself growing more and more lightheaded. Black spots began dancing in her vision, and she started slumping in Arista’s hold, her lover’s calls for her to wake up becoming more and more distant. Right before the blackness overtook her, the fire finally dissipated, and she thought she saw the dragon she and Arista had met all those months ago, standing over the charred bodies and looking intensely worried about something.