Chapter 19

Stefan POV

I got home late after drinking with the Originals and talking with them which I admit I had hoped will also help them to stick together in the coming future. They suffer so much because they separate. I'm moving on to my next project. The spirit artifact.

I'm going to ensure the safety of my dimension by creating the ultimate spy and attack system. It is probably best I brush up on my reading because This has to do with Smithing. I need to learn all the basics so I'm moving into the basement, it is a Smithing area in the castle. I had included it durind construction of the castle as well as other facilities such as the place where I will teach and train my personal students who will then teach others or work for me directly.

I go home and inform my family that I'm going on a long term retreat. Father is temporary in charge of the business operations in the family, Damon is slowly letting him run things since he wants to move on to build his own place in the new world. Ofcourse father just thinks Damon is relinquishing his duties so he can learn and then teach the ropes to the twins. Because the businesses will go to the young generation in the future.

We didn't bother to correct him since this is not a bad idea. I had included my business scope increase to other states and our people are doing a good job of separating that part of our business from the current family business. Father is relieved because the manufacturing process of all the products has been given to the trusted staff under his immediate administration. Damon told father that these people will not betray the family so he is relieved.

I give them each a key to enter the world outside the city and a few jade slips with cultivation techniques for everyone but I told them Damon will teach them what is inside. We had a deal that I will help him with the construction of his own city and in return he will take care of the medicinal baths and subsequent cultivation for each of the family members.

He did not like that but I told him that I have people in the city who specialize on teaching cultivation to normal humans. After he finishes with the medicinal baths and the first few cultivation stages he can bring a few of these people here to take cake of the family. Also he is supposed to bring a few elemental guards to protect the town and the family while they grow their strength.

I spend 3 months and 2 weeks collecting all the ore and other materials I'll need to begin my journey to be a renowned Smith. I take a deep breath, then I enter the castle. I spend sometime getting updates on the construction of martial arts schools, I have decided to allow witches and all normal humans in the Empire to train in these schools but they will have to work for me in return.

I recieved updates on recruitments on vampires and werewolves kingdoms which is not very hard considering the power I gave each king especially Lucien.

The vampires are more happy with not being compelled by the Originals that they came to Aurora in numbers. With the wich territory empty I'll have to turn it into the human territory. They will have their own king as well, I'll have to find someone who will not betray me, it can not be Damon since he should get his own Empire.

I then get in the large space with different Smithing equipment I had my people make and place here in accordance to my design. I can't help but get apprehensive, today I'm taking a step towards a path that is hopefully very productive. I walked in a boy, I hope I come out a man.

...

Elijah POV

I stay still in my couch minutes after the witch left. It has been a long time since someone looked any of my siblings in the eyes and called us 'punk'. I smile at the witches words, it's certainly a refreshing experience to say the least. Rebekah is drooling on the couch opposite me after she learnt that her secrets will be discovered by Nicklaus. She has always been the most afraid of him out of all of us.

Nicklaus is not a good brother infact he may as well be a bad one but I know he cares which is what broke my heart when he said he scattered our siblings on the ocean. I had been confused because I was certain he loved us but hearing what he had done with their daggered bodies made me feel like all I had thought of him was an allusion I had told myself to tolerate his outrageous behavior of daggering and storing us in boxes.

I look to Kol who has been staring daggers at his burban cup all along. "Do you have something on your mind brother?" He starts laughing.

"This future the witch spoke of, can you imagine what mine would be like?" Kol asks but doesn't seem to be what he had been thinking about though still I'll humor him.

"I'd say when Nicklaus breaks his curse he would remove the daggers to unite with us when his at his most powerful, with an army of hybrids on his back. I honestly think his tyranny will be boundless at that point, but having his long awaited army reject and or betray him is the worst thing for his temper. As the result I can only imagine how much worse his treatment of all of us will be."

"With your temper, I imagine you will want to leave us and that will not be kindly recieved by Nicklaus especially right after being rejected by his pack of hybrids." I say in conclusion

"So he will dagger me again and steal all who knows how many years of my life?" Kol starts drinking again but his drink must have packed a less than a desirable degree of a punch because he went for What's left of Rebekah's special addition wine and finished it.

"Yes but are we realy going to put all our faith on a word of a witch claiming to know what our future holds? A future he wont share with us unless we make our brother marry him? isn't this all abit aucastrated and revised for our eyes and ears?" I say hoping with all my being that the witch was lying just to get whatever reaction he wanted from us.

"Are we realy not going to wake Freya? what if that is exactly what he wanted when he told us about Dahlia and how powerful she is?" Kol asks while Elijah contemplates his options.

"I agree with Kol, but it will not hurt to exercise caution. So let's find a witch, one who has managed to remain alive without aging and put them in a coma and then replace her in the link. When Freya wakes up she will help us wake Nicklaus. Let's just try and achieve all this in a small time frame."

"I'm sorry" we hear Rebekah mummering in her sleep. I just cover her with a small throw and tuck her in. I truly understand her fears, For I also harbor such fears for myself.

"There is a faction of witches who are very old they didn't even put Nicklaus in their eyes when we were trying to find you three last time. I think Nicklaus killed about 12 of them, but they still wouldn't budge. I actually wanted to take someone's life for once." Finn says in a dark tone.

"There, it seems we have ourselves volunteers. Who will go? and who will stay to look after Nicklaus and Freya?" Elijah asks.

"I hate to say this but Elijah you should probably stay, the way you get off the handles ever since the ordeal with Lucien's bite. I cant trust you won't massacre innocent bystanders just for breathing wrong." Finn says rubbing his eye brows.

"That leaves Kol and Rebekah. But Kol has been avoiding Rebekah ever since he came out of the coffins. This may be a good siblings bonding experience or a monumental disaster. However I still think Kol's experience with the witches is important here but his temper will definitely sour the mood. Elijah would have been perfect to help with this but at this point I actually fear he may make things worse."

"So Kol and Rebekah then. Tomorrow first light. Hopefully the wine is the same as the last one with regards to hangovers." Finn says while he yawns going to sleep.

"Well atleast he didn't call us monsters." Kol says in forced humor.

"I remember when he would call us including himself monsters every day begging mus to find a way to die." Elijah adds

"I hate to say it. The witch did us a huge favor with that one." Kol says

"Yes. What are your thoughts on the young man?" Elijah asks Kol

"Powerful, Crazy, Not a fan of senseless butchering of innocents. obsessed with Nicklaus." Kol lists at the top of his heard.

"I'm just afraid that he might be unstable, mentally but when he reasoned on why he can't help with Dahlia it was obvious he is of sound mind. Which means we might be entertainment for him, or he is as you say, obsessed with Nicklaus."

"Elijah even if we manage to kidnap a witch to replace Freya in a coma, we still need another one to do the work." Kol brushes off the topic about the pretty witch.

"Don't worry I have that part handled. We need a witch we can trust with this, we can't force someone to perform such a spell. It could hurt Freya."

.....

Stefan POV

Smithing is an art that I unfortunately do not possess talent for. Fortunately for me I have a cheat which is the Library of Heavens path. However even so I needed to improve my physical strength to effectively use the hammer. I had to improve my choreography in order to draw runes and inscriptions perfectly without making mistakes.

I can draw temporary and well practiced inscriptions such as the ones I had used on Finn and Lucien, those are barrier and protection inscriptions which I am intimately familiar with because of practicing for the barrier I had put on the territory. I had minimized it to be placed on people and structures when I wa helping in building my castle.

On the other hand putting inscriptions on weapons and items requires actual still which can only be acquired through practice. So I gave up resistance and practiced. In order to inscriptions runes and inscriptions I have to have a steady stream of soul force, as the result I had to use my soul cultivation technique to improve my soul force.

The result was a fully packed schedule practice choreography of runes and inscriptions after practicing to the point of emptying my soul force, I would use my soul technique to refill my soul force. Afterward I would pick an item relatively easier to forge and attempt to forge it. This will allow my arm strength to increase, the arm will also become steady as it gets used to the hammer.

I will take a medicinal bath to help get rid of the fatigue. I would rest after the bath, after waking up I have to tackle my physical cultivation, the heavenly dragon God technique. This will increase my strength and boost my confidence with the hammer.

A few years goe by this way and a storage room in the underground space of the castle become filled with artifacts. From small daggers to large swords. The journey of the Smith who created all this can be seen from the initial crude appearance of the product and the average quantity of the initial products to the sophisticated beautiful and relatively high quality of the product.

At some point the products type completely changed from weapons infused with magic runes and those inscription weapons to bizarre items such as a slab of iron wriggled with peculiar looking inscriptions. Many in the future who will study this Smith's journey will call this a turning point where his objectives started to take shape. They would be right.

The thing That had brought me here to make is finaly taking shape.

...

Finn POV

We found a witch suitable to replace Freya and Elijah's witch performed the spell to transfer the link and it worked. The link was not based on family blood which ment just about anybody can replace Freya, this information made me pause in my tracks because if it was this easy then surely a renowned witch such as Freya would have done it a long time ago to escape from Dahlia.

I raise my concerns with my siblings but it has been over 16 months of looking and searching and hoping that we can help Freya who in turn will fix Nicklaus. The thing that is making all of us very impatient is the fact that Nicklaus has been screaming from about 8 months in the process of curing Elijah's bite. There are even black veins protruding from from his eyes.

At first the was fine, sleeping the entire time just as how he did when he was going through Kol and Rebekah's bite. It must have been because he couldn't solve this one or he saw something in there that shook his concentration that he became lost now he is slowly loosing his mind just like how we had found the three of them.

Now we are desperate to cure him as soon as possible we even went back to see the Salvatore brothers. Actually it was Elijah who was being eaten by guilt after seeing Nicklaus this way, but there was no response after trying to force our way through the barrier no one came out and the barrier started shooting ice, fire and wind blades.

It was a horrible sight because Elijah kept going at it but the projectiles started becoming a net of fire, a net of sharp wind blades and lastly the Ice nets. Who knows what would happen if an Original were to be cut into bits and pieces of flesh? can anyone even come back from that?

So we all dragged Elijah back kicking and screaming and locked him in his room taking turns watching him until he came down. However Nicklaus episodes are getting closer and closer in intervals. So we all agree that we will have to deal with Dahlia when she comes.

"Let's just do it and hope for the best. I don't believe we won't even buy her time at the very least to wake up Nicklaus before we all flee from Dahlia." Kol says agitated.

The witch does the spell and as we had hoped, Freya wakes up. The first thing she does when the wakes up is blast everything around her with magic. She is still lying inside the coffin, she raised her hands and everything moved away from her. The witch who performed the spell almost died if not for Kol healing and taking her out of the vicinity of Freya.

"Bloody hey you almost killed that woman. What are you doing dear sister?" Kol smirks at Freya who jumped out of the coffin ready for a fight.

"Kol?" Freya said in confusion.

"I saw them dagger you." She frowns

"Where am I?" She asks.

"Home, You are home with your family now please, dear older sister come yourself. The house is about to come down on us." Elijah says to Freya who has been shaking the house.

Finn is very far from all the commotion because even though he has a barrier around him, no one knows what would happen if the entire house comes down on him.

Freya stops shaking the house and looks at Elijah calling her older sister and she can't believe it. They know of her and they went and found her. She is still thinking when it occurs to her and her face consort to horror as she speaks. "If I'm awake that means she is also awake. She will come for me." She says with tears in her eyes and my heart breaks so I come out of my hiding place.

"Hey come down. we just found you so whatever comes, we will face it like Vikings. On our feet with our weapons in hand. Together." I say and run to hug her, as I hug her I can feel she is shaking. The house stops shaking and I ask Kol to lift her up. Rebekah chooses this moment to come back from gods know where. I look at her.

"Help her clean up and give her a change of clothes." She nods and take over. A few minutes later Nicklaus starts with his usual screams. We all just watch helplessly as he bangs his body on the barrier trying to claw at us.

"What happened to Nicklaus?" Fraya asks and Rebekah says. "Welcome home Sister." And she starts with her usual theatrics of drinking and we know soon she is going to disappear to somewhere.

"What *exhales* happened?" She asks and I explaine about his bite and that it is a curse.

"She visibly relaxes when she finds out it's not poison but a curse. Do you think the crazy witch was right about her being a super witche?" Rebekah asks Kol who just looks at her.

Rebekah's actions and words show hostility toward Freya. Perhaps it is because she doesn't wish for Nicklaus to wake up or it's because she wants Freya to feel that she was brought back just so she can be of use. This will in turn make her feel like her family had ulterior motives for finding her, which they do but it doesn't take away the fact that they were originally going to find her before Nicklaus daggered them which led to Lucien taking and then biting them.

I told her from the beginning of where my changes came from to where we found out about her. I told her how I got to her and Stefan's hand in helping me retrieve her. She takes all the information in and then start by checking spell on the witch who took her place. She then told me the spell will indeed give her time but not much only a few days but she will make them count.

She thanked us for getting her and assured us we did the right thing because she wouldn't want Nicklaus to be lost. She then started listing things for us to get for her, luckily we have been around long enough to know most of them and Elijah's witch helped with the rest. After all this we give her time and space to get to work.

I take some of the burban from Kol and take a sip. "So Stefan was telling the truth about Dahlia awakening if Freya wakes up. Makes you wonder what else is he right about." Kol says with a little worry on his face.

"He did give us hope. He said if we stick together as a family we will win against whatever is coming our way. I just hope Nicklaus is not overly murderous when he wakes up." Elijah interjects.

"I wouldn't hold my breath. There's a reason Nicklaus is notorious for his temper. It's not something he can control, and after going through all our memories who knows what would become of him?" Rebekah adds. She seems extra gloomy after we woke Freya up.

"Hellish difficulty indeed." Kol mummers but if I can hear him everyone in the room can hear him.

"Moving on to more pressing news I have it on good authority that Lucien and Tristan have even joined hands. Wherever they go vampires and werewolves disappear out of thin air. Soon the world will be free of vampires and werewolves. I think they are bringing all of them into Stefan's dimension." Elijah informs us. We all realize that whatever Stefan is doing is going to change the course of the world as we know it.

"This world of his is said to be bigger and stronger than earth doe that mean it can accommodate even more people than this entire world? I'm tempted to check it out." Kol says with interest.

"Stefan said he won't hide us there, atleast until we deal with Dahlia. What I'm curious about is the rumours that Lucien can allow werewolves to turn without the need of the full moon while he is not turning them into vampire hybrids. The news I got came from the ones who were left to guard the lands of their ancestors, those who have not triggered their curse. There is and agreement in the werewolf community that if you trigger your curse you can go live in the other world, it is permitted to take as many people as you want even if they are humans.

It's a peculiar thing but I can not get more details because all those whose loyalty i had compelled were released from my compulsion when Nicklaus daggered me over a year ago.

"Now I'm being blindsided by that group of pests. It's not like we can infiltrate this place, because it's a whole new dimension that has an owner and it's own set of rules." Elijah seems really helpless and it frustrates him to no end.

"Yeah bringing in humans in is a good idea, all those vampires need to feed on someone." Kol scoffs.

"That's another thing, it is said the food that grows in that place has a type of energy that provide vampires with sustenance. It said that vampires in that place look down on blood since the food also makes them grow stronger as they continue consuming it over time." I look at Elijah with shining eyes.

"Really? That young witch found another way for vampires to feed without hurting humans?" I'm on my feet now shaking Elijah's shoulders in excitement. The truth is I am not happy with my family feeding on humans and hurting innocents.

"Come down Finn. Do you really think vampires will stop hunting and terrorizing humans just because there's a delicious salad bowl? Vampires hunt because we are preditors. It is what we enjoy, it's not just about sustainability it's the way of life. This idea will be in hype for a while until vampires miss their hunting days and then, humans in that world will weep." Kol crush my hope and dreams turning them to dust right as they bloomed.

I became dejected and slumped on the couch. Then I remember Stefan and look at Kol with a confident smile on my face. Kol looks surprised when he saw me back to looking happy at the news regardless of his recent speech.

"You almost got me Kol, but you forgot who made this world and that kind of mind will have accounted for such a possibility. Now that you have given me so much to consider, I can't wait to see how he takes care of this problem." I say smiling at Kol who is bewildered.

"Do close your mouth Kol, you are inviting flies keeping it open like that." I laugh and even Rebekah smiles a small smile. We continue chatting and before we know it a whole day and a full morning has passed. I go to check on Freya and find her sleeping on the chair exhausted. I look to a place where Nicklaus is staying only to find an empty space.

I get Elijah to put Freya down a on a bed so she can rest while we pack our belongings to run From Dahlia. Nicklaus seem to have been cured and needed to let out some steam. Probably what he saw was too much. I go and go look for Kol.

"You need to go find Nicklaus, he must be out of sorts and may be in a confused state of mind."

"I'm not exactly the the person to come to when dealing with handling emotions brother, you should send Elijah." Kol says uninterested.

"I'm afraid he may be part of the problem. Just try to get him back by morning so we can leave this place as soon as possible. I have Elijah compell us transport. We are out of here in the next few hours so get Nicklaus back at any cost." I say with urgency in my tone. Kol goes to look for Nicklaus while I go and take care of what to include in our luggage.

...

Lucien POV.

The first month after moving in the hybrid kingdom I went into the forest reserved for us to shift and run as much as we want. The size of this place is as big as an entire city, the inside is a virgin forest untouched by men. Something I have realized about this new earth is the pleasant environment. The air is more fresh, I suspect it is the spiritual energy that Stefan kept saying is prominent in this place.

Clare shifted into a glorious wolf with shining red fur that can be mistaken for fire when the moon is up reflecting its shine. She feels powerful and my wolf got excited when she finished shifting. Without even realizing it my wolf took over and shifted. We spent the whole night rutting in the woods, the wolf part of me felt complete he was howling and chasing his mate all over the woods.

It's a bit embarrassing to think about all that took place but the next morning I felt it. The power of the pack only myself and my mate for now but It's exhilarating and then there a power dormant in my subconscious that I instinctively know it is the ability to accept pack members into the pack. Clare has an elemental power of fire. I asked her to try and inject poison into a rabbit, she had been eating animals during our hunting time at night and there was nothing out of the ordinary with her bite.

I told her that it is a subconscious decision to infect with poison for us. Even my wolf's bite is a normal bite unless I want to put what I'm biting under the dementors curse. So she tried it and I think it is fire poisoning. Very nasty thing that is. I smile thinking about my wife tearing our enemies apart and then burning them to ashes.

I started recruiting werewolves, it was not very hard once I tell them I can transfer the ability to transform without being forced to by the moon. At first the leaders were concerned about vampires but when they found out they can use there transformation whenever they want.

They realize that it is not so bad as they can also protect themselves against vampires unlike their current predicament. The fact that vampires have their own kingdoms helped in lessening the worries they have for their children and wives.

What made me even more happy is the seven royal werewolf bloodlines. I went ahead and made them nobles. They hold lands and therefore have people under them taking care of these lands which include farm lands. The seven families hold armies that will be trained regularly in the ways of combat.

Stefan had told all of us kings under him that since this is annew world, wars may happen so we must be prepared. Stefan gave us a piece of information that guns are not allowed to cross but cold weapons may cross. He said this is his home if someone wants to take someone else's things, they must use raw untainted power. Not machines that only requires a trigger and a person is dead.

"Train your armies in the ways of war. they will be fighting with swords and knives and arrows. There will be no gun in this world and if someone manages to make it by hands, it will never work. I have placed a curse on all hot weapons unless they are magic weapons that will be sold from my city, no other weapons will be able to send fast moving projectiles with a switch of a button. I make the rules son.

This is one of the most important of my rules." Stefan had said to me and I remembered that this young man who jokes and smiles is the same young man who pulled hundreds of triggers on me during our first meeting just to make me pay for the disrespect my soldiers had showed him.

"Soldiers are innocent, it is the general's fault" He had said. A man who thinks like that has gone and make an empire where all the powerful creatures will bow to him as their Emperor. And I get to be the first of them.