Hello again peoples! I'm baaaaack! Here is the sequel to my first story Grá, Dílseacht, Cairdeas. If you haven't read that one, you need to before jumping into this one. This is the second in a trilogy and will be much less angsty than the first. You should get a little bit of everything in here. Hope you enjoy this one and I hope you enjoyed the last one.
PAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKLET'SGETBACKINTOITPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAK
Disclaimer: I do not own Hotel Transylvania or any of the characters of that universe. I do own my own little OCs!
It had been three long years since the events of Sorry Night, the Vours, the gate, and the battle the Pillars had fought that had cost them everything in the end. Three years of research and desperate digging through old books and libraries, searching for the tiniest shred of truth. Ruthaven worked tirelessly beside Griffin to free Dracula from his stone prison but Mavis hadn't seen them in weeks. The door to the library remained locked as long as the two were within.
Mavis found her comfort in Jonathan and the date for the wedding had long since passed, but the two had decided to wait. They had faith that Dracula would be freed and he deserved to be there when his daughter was married. Johnny traveled to every corner of the world searching for more knowledge that could possibly give them the insight needed to bring the Pillars back.
Any monsters within the hotel who had been possessed had been released upon the sealing of the rift as the Vours fled like the cowards they were. No one knew a single shred of information about them and so hunting them would prove fruitless. More secrets that only Dracula could reveal.
So many questions and not nearly enough answers. It made Mavis' head spin. She clung to the letter that her mother had given her. Martha had known. Martha had been the only one who knew about everything that her father was and she had accepted it wholeheartedly. She had even accepted that she was not destined to share eternity with Dracula. She had seen the love developing between Inmoon and Dracula and had accepted even that.
Mavis wasn't so sure. Inmoon was yet another of her father's secrets and what was it about her that Dracula didn't want anyone to know? She had silver fur which was frightening to see. Silver meant death to werewolves and her pelt was decorated in the poison that killed her own kin. She certainly wasn't friendly, she was so aggressive and haughty in her behavior. But Mavis had seen her actions within the Fearscape and that contradicted everything that she had seen from the silver she-wolf thus far. Mavis just didn't know if these people could be trusted. She didn't know if she could trust Inmoon with her father's heart.
It had already been broken and Mavis worried that Inmoon would be careless with that fact.
"Mavis!" Frank yelled as he ran toward her. "Mavis come on, Griffin found something!"
She leaped from her place at her father's desk, scattering papers as she ran to library and left Frank in the dust. She stood before Griffin in the blink of an eye.
"What did you find?!" She yelled.
"Wow..." He muttered in surprise. "I think that's a new speed record sweetie."
"What did you find?!" She repeated urgently.
"Hold your horses Mavis. I want to wait until everyone gets here before I say anything because there's a lot to sort through and I'm not repeating it."
She growled in frustration and took to pacing the length of the library, running loops along the floor and ceiling. She had already waited three years for any kind of information and now she had to wait even longer. This was her father! Three years was too long to stare at his stone form and dream of old memories, wish that her father would wake and wrap her in his arms again. She had always dreamed of leaving the hotel, leaving her father, but this was different. She always dreamed of coming home to him whenever she pleased.
She never wanted him gone and now he was. For three years, and they were the longest three years of her life.
Frank stumbled in, gasping for breath as he dragged Eunice behind him. Wanda followed shortly after beside Murray. A few long moments passed before Wayne ran inside carrying a sleep rumpled Jonathan in his arms. Wayne set the, clearly exhausted, human on his feet as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
Johnathan's hair was even more a rumpled mess than it usually was. He stood before everyone in a pair of dirty, ragged pajama pants and let loose a long yawn. The man had only returned that morning from a long trip Griffin had sent him on to retrieve a rare book and Johnny had wanted to get it back to Griffin as quickly as possible. It looked as though Wayne had simply yanked him out of bed and Johnny woke up along the way.
Ruthaven was away on business that he had refused to give details on.
"Oooookay?" Jonathan drawled sleepily. "Didja fin' som'thin'?" He asked as he rubbed his face vigorously.
"Actually, I did." Griffin answered and Johnny's eyes snapped open, instantly awake.
"Enough waiting!" Mavis yelled. "Tell us what you found." She glared.
"Just like her father." Griffin mumbled.
"Calm down Mavy." Johnny said as he wrapped his arms around her. "Everyone's pretty tired here."
"Oh gods….." Mavis groaned. "You smell awful."
"Yeah." Johnny said with a dopey grin. "Definitely due for a fluff n' fold." He laughed sadly before sniffing himself. "And a shower." He grimaced. "I used to not mind smelling like this until your dad went and turned me into a neat freak…." He groused.
"Alright. Enough, follow me." Griffin called and the group followed the floating pair of glasses as Griffin walked to the far back of the huge library.
He opened the door to a single private study in the back and ushered everyone inside. The room could only be described as chaos. Papers and books lay strewn about the room in haphazard piles but the most shocking thing was the papers pinned to the walls, yards of string connecting the pages and pictures in an imitation of a massive spider's web.
"Alright." Griffin sighed. "Like I said, there's a lot of stuff to sort through." He said as he ducked and weaved through the strands of red thread.
"Everything starts here, with the Pillars and with the Vours." He said pointing to a picture of Dracula, a list of the names of the Pillars, and a single slip of paper with the word Vours scribbled across it.
"The Vours…..well I got exactly zilch on them. But there are a few things that I tracked down that I think may have been about them but I'm not sure." The strand connecting to the Vours wobbled as Griffin's glasses wandered to a nearby section of the wall. "Here," He said gesturing with his folded glasses. "we have a mysterious cult written down as a myth, a legend. That's why this took me so long by the way. I'm sifting through fairy tales trying to find a grain of truth and connect them."
He sighed before continuing.
"This cult was described as bloodthirsty and cruel. It was said that they worshiped demons or, more often referred to in the texts, the Old Gods. The Old Gods could be summoned through ritual and from what I've gathered demanded blood sacrifice from their followers and the leaders of these cults were said to be vessels of the gods themselves. Sound familiar?"
The group nodded.
"In fact, all of these cults and stories of witnessed archaic rituals hold remarkable similarity to everything Drac told us about the Vours. Which means that humans used to worship them and even summon them from their own realm and into ours."
The strand wobbled again as he followed it back to it's connection point at the Pillars.
"Another consistency with all of these cults and sects is that, in the stories, they were all found to be inherently evil and the various members, followers, and supporters were punished by the current gods of the time. In other words….they were all killed and any detailed record of what they did was destroyed."
"Griffin….are you saying that..?" Wanda stammered with wide eyes.
"My theory is that Dracula and the Pillars decided that mass slaughter was the lesser of two evils. To prevent the cult and, therefore, the Vours from spreading the Pillars killed everyone involved and destroyed all of the evidence in a mass cleansing that lasted for an uncountable number of years."
"Okay, that's it. I need coffee or something." Johnny said as he pushed his palms out in a gesture of surrender.
An entire coffee pot was thrust into his hands by Griffin before he returned to his spot and picked up his glasses. Johnny shrugged and took a few long gulps.
"Dude!" Johnny exclaimed, staring at the pot with wide eyes. "I'm gonna die." He mumbled before taking another sip.
"I needed it strong. I haven't slept in five days." Griffin rattled off before continuing with his explanation. "That is everything that I dug up that I can directly link to the Vours. Now!" He clapped. "There are a few things that I'm pretty sure are also Vourish things but I'm honestly not sure." He followed the strand over to another wall littered with pictures and pages. "There are various rumors of villages and cities being home to a dark cult but they're just rumors due tot he fact that they were destroyed very thoroughly."
"In fact." He said as he pulled a page off the wall and handed it to the group, who passed it around. "I found something very interesting."
"The library at Alexandria?" Johnny muttered in confusion. "What's that got to do with this?"
"Well, as you know, and if you don't shut up I'm about to tell you, The Library of Alexandria was and remains the largest collection of knowledge known to the world. Not counting Drac's own library here but I have the feeling that they got their hands on something that they weren't supposed to. I did find rumors of a dark group forming amidst the city, which actually blended in quite well with the paganism that was already the main religion in the city at that time. I couldn't find much but shortly after accounts of this group, the library burned and all information within was lost."
"What makes you think this had anything to do with dad?" Mavis asked as she handed the picture back.
"Yeah, no one actually knows how the library was destroyed." Johnny added. "Some think it was during Caesar's attack, some say it was the Christians, and some say it was the Muslims."
"Because!" Griffin exclaimed as he lifted up Dracula's journal. "I found this entry, dated at roughly 48 BC. The same date as Caesar's great siege and the burning of Alexandria, and it specifically states that both Drac and Inmoon were in Alexandria at the time. The journal is very vague about what they were doing but if they were erasing evidence of Vours, they wouldn't have written it down."
A long moment of silence passed as Griffin pinned the photo back to it's place on the wall.
"Drac's been waging war against these things long after the gate was made." Griffin said as he returned to the front of the room and stood before the picture of his old friend. "But….on to other things I found."
He followed the strand again to another wall off to the left of the group, absolutely littered with papers and pictures.
"It was obvious from Drac's journal that he and the Pillars have been around for a very long time and they certainly have. If you know what to look for you can find them scattered all throughout history. Now! I don't know the others very well but I do know Dracula, and I found quite a bit and not all of it is very nice."
He sighed again before snatching the coffee pot from Johnny and knocking back a few large gulps before returning to his place.
"I found connections to several characters, both gods and demons, that rather accurately fit Dracula's description. Not really in looks but in behavior. First I've found God's eerily similar to Dracula in the Greek, and Celtic Pantheons. I also managed to fin him in Syrian gods as well but that took longer. Taking a look at characters like Hades, and Erebus for example immediately make me think of Dracula. If human's came across a being as powerful as these guys are they'd probably file them away as gods because they didn't have another explanation."
Griffin paused for a few minutes before continuing.
"Once I found Dracula I was able to look at his relationship to other members of the Pantheon and find a few of the others. Artemis seems to match up with Inmoon in behavior, the Titan Chronos is Zeyphx, Hephaestus is Viore, Hecate is Isobel, and Aphrodite seems to match up well with Lorelay. Or at least that's the best that I can figure out without Dracula here to answer some questions. The Greek Pantheon is just scratching the surface though."
"Don't you think you might be reaching a bit here Griffin?" Murray said with a skeptical look.
"But he isn't." Mavis gasped as her eyes widened.
Everyone stared.
"What do you mean?" Eunice asked.
"When I was in dad's Fearscape the first level was in Egypt. We ran into one of the great pyramids and it was a temple. Along the walls were murals, huge paintings of a man in a falcon headdress doing a number of different things. Most of what I saw depicted were wars."
"A falcon headdress?" Griffin prodded.
"Yes! With a huge disc on the top! It glowed like nothing I've ever seen."
"You….mean….Ra? The sun god Ra?" Murray stammered.
"The King of vampires, shadow incarnate…..is the Egyptian sun god?" Johnny finished with a laugh. "That is a riot! Talk about ironic!"
"So…..if Dracula is Ra then where do the other Pillars fit in? I would think Horus is Viore but…." Griffin trailed off as he leafed through three different books.
"Not now Griffin!" Wayne shouted.
"Oh! Right! Moving on." He blurted as he made his way back to the front of the room.
"So, all of the Pillars are bound to a specific Element and, as Drac's journal stated, the Elements are the source of all magic. They used to be unbound and basically everywhere at once, until the gate was formed. Monsters, as opposed to humans, are magically based creatures."
He sighed again.
"Here's where things get bad." He grimaced. "In Drac's journal he wrote that after they awoke from petrification they were transformed into monsters and they couldn't find the Elements and therefore magic had vanished. We're in a lot of trouble."
"Why?" Murray asked.
"Because when Drac and everyone was petrified the Elements, who were bound to them, also petrified which means…..no magic. Magic is the only reason monsters exist. Take away magic…..if we don't find a way to wake them up before too long and get magic back in the world then we're all going to die."
PAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKI'MMEANPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAKPAGEBREAK
Well…..I guess I'm not done being mean just yet. First chapter is done and I had way too much fun with it. Hope you enjoyed it. Leave a review please? Constructive criticism is welcome but no flames!