The next great adventure

Untitled Part 2

Another shortish chapter but here you go! Let Kol drink alcohol 2020. Let me know what you think :) I'm tired so I'm just posting now 😴😴😴

It was only his long ingrained vampire reflexes that saved the glass from falling from stunned fingers, which would have been a genuine tragedy. Centuries of experience had fortunately regulated his strength so he didn't crush it either. The fact that he could crush it was still sinking in.

Looking up from the glass he saw wicked emerald eyes dancing with amusement. They quickly softened into a more understanding smile, and he knew his face must be betraying some of the things he was feeling right then. Awe. Fear. Relief. Hope. Terrible, choking hope. The most dangerous emotion of them all. The one with the power to break even the most powerful of creatures.

She didn't politely avert her eyes and allow him his moment of weakness in private, just stared, her glittering eyes feeling like a gentle but invasive hand rifling through his soul. That touch said volumes. It said I sympathise, but not enough to look away from this curiosity. It said there is humanity in me, but it is not a dominant force. It said I am so used to doing as I please that it doesn't even occur to me to bow to your wants. It was a look Kol was rather more used to being on the other side of.

Grasping control of himself again, he tilted the glass towards her in a salute and raised it, creepy stone and all, to his lips. A moment's instinctive hesitation that he couldn't control was all it took to prick his pride. What did a ghost have to fear anyway? Besides, he was Kol Mikaelson, and he wasn't going to be cowed by a drink from a beautiful witch even if she did have inhuman eyes and an aura that said she was more deeply touched by death than he was. And he happened to actually be dead. 

Returning her stare with one of his own trademark wildcard Kol Mikaelson grins, only slightly forced, he steeled himself for anything, tipped the glass up, and all but melted with pleasure when the taste of half decent scotch washed across his ghostly tongue. He hadn't the faintest idea how she had managed it, but he would marry the witch right now if she'd have him.

It took a long moment for him to even realise his eyes had fallen closed to savour the sweet alcoholic burn. When he pried them open, his goddess of death and whisky was grinning smugly. "Good stuff? I'm more an Elfwine drinker myself, but you take what you can get, right? There aren't even any elves here, never mind wineries. It's a crying shame, but what can you do? Hellebore Potter, call me Hela." And she stuck out her hand.

Not held sideways for a hand shake as was common now. No, she offered it palm down in a way he hadn't seen in centuries. A Lady presenting the back of her hand for a gentleman to kiss the air above her knuckles. Definitely some sort of nobility, or at least old as hell he decided. Maybe both. 

Would he even be able to touch her though? His instincts said yes. The deathly aura around her almost made him feel like he was the alive one and she was the ghost. That was how necromantic she felt. She hadn't done any particular magic that he'd seen on herself, unlike the little ritual on the glass of scotch, but he just knew.

He extended his hand, gently grasped her fingers—cold as the grave, how appropriate— and lowered his mouth to her skin. Of course, he was no gentleman, despite all Elijah's henpecking. So rather than a respectful bow over her hand without touching his lips to her at all, he planted a firm kiss to the pale, icy skin of her knuckles, holding mischievous eye contact the whole time before straightening up. 

He didn't release her hand. And he still had the glass of scotch in his other hand. He'd gone so long unable to touch anything at all that he was having some trouble letting go of things that he could touch now. "Kol Mikaelson, very much at your service ,Darling."

She laughed, and it was both the most beautiful, and most haunting thing the ghost had ever heard. It was a husky, lovely laugh, backed disconcertingly with echoes of Astarael, the Weeper, and Mosrael the Waker. Two of the bells used by some schools of necromancers. The two bells most dangerous to the wielder too. Though the chimes reverberated through his soul, plucking at his ephemeral edges, they did not compel him as the bells themselves would have.

She seemed happy enough to leave her hand in his grasp, scooping up the scotch from the table with her other hand and taking a long sip from the bottle before speaking. "Well Kol, I'm on an investigation right now, maybe your service could be of some use. I actually came to check out this weird little bubble some naughty magic user made here a little while ago. It's pretty impressive, but it's very rude to meddle in someone else's territory, you know? Since you're in it now, what can you tell me about it?"

He frowned uncertainly, not sure what she was talking about at all. "Ah, I'm sorry darling, but I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. What bubble am I in?"

"This 'other side' of course." She waved a hand at nothing in particular, apparently trying to convey the entirety of the other side, "It's trapping all of the supernatural souls from this world here in a sort of mirror of the mortal plane, when they really belong to death. There wasn't even a ritual petition for permission before it was created. Like I said, very rude. So I'll be finding the creator and having words."

Well that was terrifying. She didn't look much older than perhaps her mid twenties, but she was absolutely older than him. The fact that she considered the other side to have been created 'a little while ago' was very telling.  She had an ancient, timelessness in her eyes that felt infinitely less human than any vampire Kol had ever encountered too. And what sort of being did one petition for permission to trap supernatural souls anyway?

Well, he did love a curiosity. And more than that, he loved magic. Plus this woman could give him the ability to interact with both herself, and physical objects. Not having anything to lose, and plenty to gain, he tossed caution to the wind. "Well I'd be happy to help with your investigation, oh goddess of death and alcohol."

"I'm not a goddess of alcohol." 

What. Kol froze under that amused, alien gaze. Not a goddess of alcohol. Was she implying that she was a goddess of death? That was certainly someone who would be entitled to take offence at the trapping of souls that 'belong to death'.

"I'm not technically a goddess of death either, little though it matters." she carried on as though she hadn't just said something utterly terrifying. What sort of technicality stood between her and godhood? Was this confirmation of the existence of a set of polytheistic deities?

"I'm just the Master of Death. It's a terribly dull position, but it's not the sort of thing one can abdicate." If she wasn't some sort of terrifying being of power he might have called the expression on that gorgeous face a pout.