Ardent | Elijah Mikaelson

Chapter 12

Evangeliya was furious.

The vampire world had erupted into chaos. Servers everywhere crashed as information spread, as many panicked individuals tried to determine what was going on, why the mass dying had happened, and if they were next.

No one had ever seen a situation like this. If vampires died in large numbers, it was due to a witch's interference, or a battle, something that could be seen and understood. Not something random. Not sudden desiccation and loss of life.

From what Evangeliya could tell, from her closest contacts, everyone knew at least one person who'd died. Everyone was scared and unsure and now, the entire vampire world was rushing to gather all the bodies before some other supernatural or even a human got a hold of it and turned them into sacrifices or test subjects.

Evangeliya helped to delegate tasks. Assigning certain vampires to clean-up, tagging, and helping contact any relatives or friends, ensuring that they didn't burn the bodies before they'd been identified and able to be claimed. Vampires like those in The Strix had provided large warehouses to sort through the bodies and label them. Everyone was fighting to give the deceased a proper burial and a chance to be seen by their loved ones one last time. In the event they couldn't contact anyone or no one came for the body, some of the vampires had agreed to hold a mass vigil. All of them, no matter who they were, would be given some sort of service.

Another group had been assigned to mitigate the fallout. Some friends and family (humans mostly, or untriggered werewolves) hadn't even known that their loved one had been a vampire; they either hadn't yet gotten around to telling them or didn't plan to. Many vampires had offered to go and either compel information away from witnesses or to calmly explain things to the family and give them as much knowledge as they had in the moment to calm them down. Breaking the news wasn't easy.

Despite all their efforts, many still believed the world was about to end. That the vampire species would be no more within a few hours. Many of the younger, inexperienced vampires were quite literally in shambles. Their magnified emotions induced panic attacks as they struggled to comprehend what they were witnessing, what they heard from others. Evangeliya anticipated many would be traumatized, particularly those who were whispering about mass burnings of bodies happening, by vampires who had no idea that they were trying to return these people to their loved ones. Their first instinct had been to get rid of them to keep the humans from seeing. She didn't blame them but she wished she had a better way to spread information so that this wouldn't have happened.

She ensured that her vampires spread the word to as many as they could, once she had a story to give them. She sent those same words to Lucien and Tristan and had them tell everyone in The Strix what was going on. The fact they didn't even reply meant that they were likely being swarmed with questions and, in The Strix's case, probably having to be assigned an emergency task and travel to serve as leaders in different regions to aid those who were not sure what to do. They were always the best clean-up crew, in Evangeliya's opinion. They operated very covertly and had many years of experience working around governments, gaining control, and figuring out what to do in situations like this.

Evangeliya had never seen vampires working in tandem like that, ever in her life. Such unity, such devotion. Everyone was trying to be kind to one another. All grievances were tabled for that one day. It was comforting. As if this awful event was bringing them all closer together as a community.

And yet, it was set to deepen the divide.

This event had let her and the entirety of the vampire world know a fact that would haunt her forevermore: her life was linked to the Original who beget her line. Now, everyone wanted to know which sireline they came from. Everyone wanted to know which Original had to stay alive to ensure they did not die. Then, there were those who sought to find out in order to kill off competition, make it so only the Original who sired their line was walking around. All others could die.