The interior of the roadside bar had been transformed into a macabre gallery of slaughter. Tables were upturned, chairs splintered, and the air was thick with the copper-sweet stench of fresh death. The male bartender lay slumped over the mahogany counter, his hand still white-knuckled around the grip of a shotgun he never had the chance to fire. The floorboards, once stained with cheap beer and sawdust, were now dyed a deep, visceral red as the life force of a dozen patrons pooled into a single, widening lake of gore.
On one of the tables near the back, the last survivor, a young woman who had spent the last ten minutes screaming, finally lost the strength to struggle. Her head lolled back, her eyes glazing over as the final drops of her life were syphoned away. With a dull thud, her body hit the floor, joining the others in the silence.
As if on cue, the front door of the bar swung open with a violent creak.
The man stepped into the room, his nostrils flaring as the scent of the massacre hit him. He looked around with an expression of absolute revulsion, his lip curling in a sneer of moral disgust.
"A hideous look," He said, his voice echoing through the hollow, blood-soaked room. "And an even more abominable act. To slaughter these cattle with such reckless abandon... it is a stain on what little dignity this family has left."
The man who just finished draining the poor girl laughed, his chin and silk shirt stained a dark, glistening crimson, didn't even look up at first. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a predatory smirk playing on his lips.
"Oh, cheer up, big brother, and have a drink with me," he said, his voice light and mocking. He glanced around at the carnage, his eyes dancing with a manic, dark energy. "Unfortunately, I've already downed every 'vintage' bottle in the house. You'll have to settle for plain old alcohol, I'm afraid. So, what'll it be? Bourbon? Rye? Or do you prefer the taste of your own self-righteousness?"
The new comer stepped over a corpse, his boots clicking on the blood-slicked wood. "I would never stoop so low as to commit such monstrous acts, Kol. I find no joy in the feast, and even less in the company of those who revel in it."
Kol let out a sharp laugh as he reached for a bottle of top-shelf whiskey that had miraculously survived the chaos. He poured himself a glass, the liquid amber swivelling in the light. "Always the martyr, aren't you, Finn? Dressed in your finest rags, judging us from the height of a pedestal that Mother built out of lies. You're just as thirsty as I am; you're just too bored with life to admit it."
Finn's eyes narrowed, his patience thinning like a fraying rope. "Mother sent you on an errand, Kol. Why are you still here, playing with your food in a swamp?"
The casual, mocking glint in Kol's eyes vanished instantly. His fingers tightened around the glass until the crystal groaned. With a sudden, violent snap, the glass shattered in his hand, shards of diamond-sharp glass and whiskey spraying across the bar.
Kol stood up, his vampire features flaring for a split second as he glared at Finn with a simmering, volatile anger.
"I am not a bloody errand boy, Finn!" Kol hissed, his voice dropping into a dangerous tone.
The tension in the air snapped like a bone as Finn's eyes remained fixed on the wreckage of the bar, his voice dropping into a cold, clinical whisper. "You are exactly what Mother fears, Kol. A mindless parasite with no purpose other than to consume. It's no wonder Niklaus saw fit to leave you in that box for centuries; you aren't a brother, you're a liability."
Kol's face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated malice. "You want to talk about boxes, Finn? You spent nine hundred years in the dark because you're a bore!"
With a roar, Kol launched himself across the room. He was a blur of violence, his movement far more erratic and feral than Finn's disciplined posture. He slammed into Finn, the two Originals crashing through a heavy oak table that splintered like matchwood upon impact.
"Nik put you in that bloody coffin because you don't know how to have fun!" Kol shouted, his fangs bared as he grappled with his elder brother in the crimson-slicked dirt of the floor. "You were born a martyr, and you'll die a martyr, miserable and alone!"
Kol kicked Finn off with supernatural force, sending him skidding into the ruins of the jukebox. As he scrambled up, Kol snatched a broken leg from a chair, snapping the end into a jagged, lethal point. He blurred forward, the makeshift stake aimed directly at Finn's heart.
Finn didn't panic. He used his vampire speed to pivot on a dime, the stake whistling past his ear and buried itself deep into the wall behind him. Before Kol could reset, Finn grabbed a heavy metal barstool and swung it in a massive, horizontal arc.
CRASH.
The stool connected with Kol's ribs, the sound of breaking bone echoing through the silent bar. Kol was sent flying, smashing into the mahogany bar and shattering dozens of liquor bottles.
"Pathetic," Finn spat, straightening his tattered waistcoat. "You are impulsive, reckless, and entirely devoid of self-control. You still act like you are a child brother and behave like one. Throwing tantrums just because you see fit."
Kol stood up, wiping a mixture of whiskey and blood from his eyes. He laughed once more at the elder Mikaelson. "And yet, the 'child' is the one who's actually lived while you were busy being a statue."
Kol blurred in again, kicking up a cloud of glass shards and blood to cloud Finn's vision. In the split second Finn squinted, Kol was gone.
Finn felt the air shift behind him, but he was too slow to react to Kol. Kol's arm drove forward, his hand punching through Finn's back, snapping through the vertebrae with a sickening pop as his fingers wrapped firmly around Finn's ancient, beating heart.
Finn gasped, his body locking up as Kol held his life in his hand.
"There now, big brother," Kol whispered into Finn's ear, his voice dripping with venomous triumph. "I'm just putting you out of your misery for a moment. You've been begging for the end for a thousand years, haven't you? Well, here it is. I'm leaving this dump, and I'm leaving you here to rot until the next time Mother decides to play necromancer. You're a curse on this family, Finn. A grey, dull shadow."
Kol's grip tightened, the intent to rip was clear and final until the world changed around him as a sudden, invisible force gripped Kol by the collar of his blood-soaked shirt. He was yanked backward with such violence that he let go of Finn's heart, soaring across the room like a ragdoll. He slammed into the far wall with a bone-shattering thud.
Before he could slide to the floor, three wooden stakes flew from the floor, propelled by a sheer telekinetic force. They hissed through the air, impaling Kol's shoulders and thigh, pinning him to the wall like a moth in a display case.
Kol screamed in pain until he was caught off, "Now, now, children," a voice drifted through the room, as calm and chilling as a winter morning. "No fighting, please. You know I hate it when you do that."
Finn stood up, his spine audibly knitting back together. He leaned heavily against a table, his face pale as he looked toward the door. "I... I apologize, Mother."
Esther Mikaelson stepped into the bar, her long robes sweeping over the blood-stained floorboards. She looked around the room, her eyes moving over the piles of slaughtered humans with a look of profound, weary disgust. She turned her gaze to Kol, her disappointment more cutting than any blade.
"This," Esther said, gesturing to the carnage. "This is why I am trying to save you. This is the rot I want to spare you from."
She walked slowly through the bar, her fingers tracing the edge of a table where a young girl lay drained. "I spent a thousand years watching from the Other Side. I watched you turn into this. I watched my beautiful children become monsters of hunger and ego."
"I don't want to be saved!" Kol spat out in anger and annoyance as he struggled against the stakes pinning him to the wall. "I love what I am! I love the power, I love the hunt, and I love the way the world trembles when a Mikaelson walks the earth!"
Esther looked at him with a pity that made Kol's rage burn even hotter. "You are a slave to the hunger I created, Kol. And I will not stop until I have set you free... even if I have to break every bone in your body to do it."
Kol clawed at the wooden stakes pinning him to the wall, his fingers slick with his own blood, but the magic holding them was reinforced by Esther making it very durable. He snarled, his fangs fully extended, looking less like a prince and more like a trapped animal.
"But, be that as it may," Esther said, her voice cutting through his animalistic growls like a razor through silk, "I sent you to retrieve a very important package, my son. Now, where is it? Or have you decided that your time is better spent gorging yourself on blood and cheap spirits?"
She tilted her head, her gaze sweeping over the carnage again. "I find it tragic that even after a millennium, your primary impulse is still to fill a belly that can never truly be full."
With a flick of her wrist, the invisible pressure holding the stakes snapped. Kol collapsed to the floor, landing hard on his knees. He let out a sharp breath, his hands trembling as he pushed himself up, but he didn't get far. Esther reached into the folds of her robes and pulled out a small, crudely carved wooden doll. She walked to a nearby table where a dead woman lay, dipped a needle into a pool of fresh blood, and drove it deep into the doll's chest.
Kol let out a strangled cry, his body arching in agony as he fell back to his knees. "Do not test the limits of my patience tonight, Kol," Esther said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, challenging register. "I have sacrificed everything to return and fix the mistake of your existence. Do you truly believe I won't cause you a moment's pain to ensure the world's salvation?"
Kol panted as the phantom pain in his chest slowly receded as she withdrew the needle. He looked up at her, the defiance in his eyes flickering out into a weary, bitter defeat. "Okay... okay, fine! Bloody hell!" He spat a glob of blood onto the floor. "You want your precious cargo? It's right there. I hope she's worth the trouble, because she's a talkative little thing, even when she's unconscious."
"Watch your mouth, brother," Finn warned, his voice tight with disapproval. "You are speaking to the woman who gave you life."
"And she's the woman currently using me as a pincushion and wants to kill me, Finn! So forgive me if I'm not exactly overflowing with filial piety," Kol snapped. He scrambled up and moved to a dark corner of the bar, behind a stack of upturned crates. He reached down and dragged out a heavy, oversized canvas bag, hefting it with one hand before tossing it across the floor.
The bag landed with a heavy thud at Esther's feet. "There. That's your bloody delivery." Kol wiped his hands on his trousers, his lip curling. "Why do you even want her anyway? She's just a fledgling with fangs."
"She is a bargaining chip, Kol," Esther murmured, her eyes fixed on the moving bag. "A leverage that will prove to be useful later with what I have in store for my other children. And for Kan. To destroy a monster, one must sometimes take away the things he believes he can protect."
Suddenly, the bag began to move erratically, a muffled, frantic sound coming from within. Finn stepped forward, kneeling down to undo the heavy cord. As the canvas fell away, Caroline Forbes surged upward, gasping for air, her blonde hair a chaotic mess and her eyes wide with terror.
She spotted Kol immediately and bared her fangs. "You! You bastard! You broke my neck! I was just trying to get to my car and—"
She froze. Her gaze shifted from Kol's smirk to Finn's stoic face, and finally landed on the woman standing in the center of the room. The color drained from Caroline's face.
"Oh my god," Caroline whispered, her voice trembling. "Esther."
"My apologies, my dear," Esther said with a gentle voice. "My son has much to learn when it comes to manners and the delicate nature of a guest."
Caroline scrambled back, her heels clicking against the blood-stained wood. "Guest? You kidnapped me! What do you want with me? I don't know anything about whatever crazy family drama you guys have going on!"
Esther stepped closer to her and bent down to address her, "It is not what you know, Caroline. It is what you represent and how you will help me get to my children. And soon, you will be the catalyst for their final rest."
Caroline's breath hitched, a cold shiver running down her spine. "Final rest? You're going to kill them. You're going to kill all of us."
"I am going to save them," Esther corrected with a small smile.
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