Crossover fic: The Witch's Promise

I know I should be getting on with my existing Works In Progress, especially ‘Tabula Avatar’ and ‘Came the Thunder’, but (as happens all too often, I’m afraid) I’ve been distracted by a plot bunny. This is one that’s been kicking around in my mind and my ‘Outlines and Rough Drafts’ folder for quite a while. All I needed to turn it from a sketchy outline into a working draft was a spark – and, as I was working on my ‘Writing Original Characters’ presentation for the writerconuk event, that spark was struck. I made an oblique reference to it in the presentation (“Hmm. Actually I think I’ll write that one myself.”) but once I started writing the character in question didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hinted.

This is a sequel to the BtVS/Conan crossover The Hour of the Troll that I wrote two years ago. In that story Willow’s spell to banish Olaf to the Land of the Trolls misfired slightly and sent him to join Conan the Barbarian in the Hyborian Age.

Now Willow, seeking to bring Tara back from death in ‘Seeing Red’/‘Villains’, is given the chance to save Tara by sending her to the Hyborian Age in Olaf’s wake. She accepts – but, with Tara stranded ten thousand years ago in an alternate past, will Willow ever be able to get her back? And Tara no sooner arrives there than she is immediately plunged into deadly peril…

Crossover between ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and the ‘Conan’ stories of Robert E. Howard. I’m posting the Prologue and Chapter One together because of the Prologue’s extreme brevity. Rating R, may contain violence and femslash. It’s not intended to be very long, probably about the same length as the original Olaf story or a little longer, but you know how tales grow in the telling. This installment is 4,750 words.

( The Witch’s Promise: Prologue and Chapter One )