The atmosphere around the Bennett estate felt pressurized, like the air inside a diving bell descending too deep into a dark trench. The hum of tension was thick enough to taste, mostly due to the enrage original and the raw, predatory power of Michael's elites about to face off in a brutal display of absolute violence.
Finn Mikaelson stood in the center of the yard, a figure of ruined elegance. His outfit was shredded to ribbons, revealing a physique that looked less like flesh and more like it had been carved from the cold, unyielding marble. His eyes which were usually filled with a somber, suicidal melancholy that made him the outlier of his family were gone. In their place burned a frantic, white-hot rage that could only be matched by the volatility of his siblings.
He was an Original. He was the foundation of a species, a pillar upon which a thousand years of history rested. And yet, he was being hunted. He was being circled by these overgrown mutts who clearly didn't know their place in the hierarchy of the world.
A low, guttural growl vibrated in Finn's chest, a sound that hadn't escaped his throat in centuries. He looked at the two massive wolves, and a specific memory clawed its way to the surface. He had a special, deep-seated dislike for this species. After all, it was one of their filthy kind that had torn young Henrik apart in the moonlight a thousand years ago. It was their savagery that had prompted Mother to turn the Mikaelsons into the very "abominations" he now loathed being.
In essence, his entire miserable, immortal existence could be attributed to them, couldn't it?
'Ah, yes,' he thought, his jaw tightening until the bone nearly snapped. 'It is. You are the architects of my damnation, of this abominations that now plague this world and of my mother's dilemma… absolutely loathsome.'
Finn narrowed his eyes, his gaze flickering with lethal precision. He looked back at the Bennett witches, the keys to his mother's grand design then back at the towering werewolves, and finally at the man in the coat who dared to command them. Every muscle in Finn's body tensed,
———
Nolan didn't move with the frantic, blurred haste of a common vampire. Vampires were a linear species; they were over-reliant on the sheer physics of their speed, often charging like bulls because they assumed no one could see them coming. They were arrogant, rarely bothering with the nuance of tact or the cold calculus of strategy with the exception of the Old Ones, like the formidable Lady Nadia. But she was a ghost of another era. What mattered now was that the Original still had his sights set on the Bennetts, and Nolan had been given a very specific directive by his beloved lord to ensure that path was blocked by a wall of obsidian and teeth.
He slid the obsidian-weighted knuckles over his fingers with a metallic snick, the dark, porous stone humming as it began to drink the ambient energy of the clearing, glowing with a faint, bruised violet hue.
"Engage," Nolan gave a simple command to start the incoming dance of violence and brutality.
The two massive wolves, beasts that looked like they had been pulled from a prehistoric nightmare didn't bark or growl. They moved with a silent, synchronized lethality, blurring forward in a pincer maneuver executed with the terrifying precision of a Swiss watch. The first wolf, a brute of obsidian fur, lunged low, its head snapping toward Finn's hamstrings. Simultaneously, the second wolf launched itself in a high, gravity-defying arc, its massive jaws aimed squarely at Finn's throat.
Finn roared, his arm becoming a blur of motion as he moved out the way and caught the high-jumping wolf by the scruff of its neck, but instead of a simple toss, he drove the beast downward, slamming it into the grass with enough force to create a small crater. He jerked his hand back just in time as the low-lunging wolf snapped at his wrist, its teeth clashing together like a bear trap.
But the wolves were merely the opening gambit.
Nolan was already in his guard. He appeared in Finn's blind spot using a "displacement step" which was not the long-distance dash of a vampire, but a disciplined, explosive step-in that minimized wind resistance. Before Finn could pivot his center of mass, Nolan led with a cupped palm strike to Finn's left ear.
The force sent a concentrated shockwave through Finn's vestibular system, rupturing the inner ear's equilibrium. Finn's world tilted 45 degrees.
Nolan didn't give him a second to recalibrate. He moved into a lightning-fast combination targeting the most vulnerable biological hinges, regardless of Finn's durability.
Going for the throat first as he drove a stiff, obsidian-reinforced jab into Finn's Thyroid Cartilage. The weighted ring crushed against the windpipe, not enough to kill an Original, but enough to cause an immediate, involuntary spasm that cut off his oxygen and speech. Sliding his lead foot inward, Nolan delivered a devastating Liver Hook. The obsidian knuckles sank deep under the right side of Finn's ribcage. Even for an Original, the "liver shiver" is a biological reality; the strike sent a surge of autonomic nervous system signals that made Finn's legs momentarily lose their structural integrity.
As Finn doubled over from the liver shot, Nolan pivoted on his heel, swinging a heavy "hammer-fist" into Finn's Floating Ribs, aimed directly at the Right Kidney.
The effect on Finn was visceral. The obsidian knuckle acted as a magical dampener, momentarily "short-circuiting" the Original's ability to heal the internal trauma instantly. Finn gasped a wet, rattling sound, as he dropped to one knee. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a mix of shock and agonizing clarity. He was being dismantled by a human-sized opponent who understood exactly where the "off" switches were located on the immortal machine.
"You... insignificant... pest," Finn wheezed, his voice sounding like grinding gravel.
Each strike from the obsidian knuckles had landed with the rhythmic, sickening sound of a sledgehammer hitting dense, unyielding flesh. Finn coughed up a spray of spittle and dark blood as the kinetic energy, amplified by the magical dampening of the knuckles, disoriented his senses. Every time his brain tried to calculate a counter-move, another vibration from the knuckles pushed his consciousness back into a fog.
Finn stumbled, his head snapping back violently as a perfectly timed right cross caught him flush on the jaw. The force was enough to rattle his teeth, a sensation he hadn't truly felt since he was a mortal man in the Old World.
"You... mongrel!" Finn hissed through grit teeth, his hand clawing through the air, reaching out with a desperate, lethal intent to crush Nolan's skull like an overripe fruit.
Nolan didn't panic. He dipped his lead shoulder, slipping the lumbering punch with the practiced grace of a prize fighter. He didn't retreat; he exploited the opening, stepping deep into Finn's reach and seizing the Original's overextended arm. Using Finn's own staggering momentum against him, Nolan executed a brutal, technical joint-lock. He didn't just pull; he leveraged his entire body weight, driving his knee upward into Finn's ribs with the force of a battering ram while simultaneously wrenching the captured arm backward at an impossible angle.
The sound that followed was a sharp, crystalline CRACK as the sound of an Original's humerus snapping like a dry branch in a winter forest.
Normally, such a feat would be a physical impossibility. The spell Esther had woven into her children's marrow strengthened their bones beyond all earthly reason, making them denser than steel. But the power bestowed upon Nolan by Michael, allowed Nolan to exhibit the precise, focused level of force needed to actually damage the immortal enemy.
Finn's roar at the humiliation. He wasn't used to being out-techniqued. For a thousand years, he had operated on the assumption that he was the faster, stronger, and more inevitable force in any room. But here, in this muddy yard, he was being "jumped" by a coordinated unit that moved with a terrifying, singular mind.
The two wolves were back on their feet in a heartbeat. They let loose a deep growl as they began to circle him like sharks in blood-tinted water. Sensing Finn's momentary lapse in balance, the first wolf leaped again, its massive jaws clamping down on Finn's injured calf and dragging his weight downward toward the earth.
Before Finn could swing his good arm to retaliate, the second wolf launched itself like a furry cannonball. It slammed its massive head and shoulders into Finn's chest, pinning him backward against the jagged, rusted frame of the old tractor.
Finn's hands scrambled desperately against the rusted skeletal remains of the tractor, his fingers digging into the grime until they clamped around a four-foot section of the axle. With a scream of pure rage, he ripped the iron bar free and swung it in a wide, lethal arc that cut through the air with a predatory whistle.
"I will skin you alive!" Finn screamed, his voice cracking with a thousand years of repressed fanatical hatred. "I will hang your pelts from the gates of the New World! You are nothing but dogs."
The iron bar connected with the obsidian wolf in a glancing blow, the force sending the massive beast tumbling into the dirt in a flurry of dark fur and kicked-up topsoil. But the opening was momentary. Before Finn could reset his footing for a follow-up strike, Nolan was already back in his face, his silhouette a dark blur against the moonlit yard.
Nolan's fighting style shifted into a tighter, more restrictive defensive posture. He didn't retreat from the iron bar; he moved into the path of the weapon. As Finn swung the axle in a horizontal cleave aimed at Nolan's neck, Nolan didn't duck. He stepped inside the arc, meeting the iron bar with a Cross-Parry, using his obsidian-weighted knuckles.
The collision showered the yard in a fountain of sparks that flew like a fireworks display, the sound of stone on iron ringing out like a cathedral bell.
Nolan's movements were dictated by a terrifying economy of motion. He wasn't faster than the Original, no mortal-adjacent being could be and no werewolf could as well but he was exponentially smarter. He had spent more years honing the art of the kill than Finn had been awake in the last millennium. He read the tension in Finn's shoulders, the slight tilt of his lead foot, and the dilation of his pupils. He anticipated every telegraph.
As Finn thrust the end of the bar toward Nolan's chest, Nolan performed a Micro-spin, moving his head a mere three inches to the left. The iron whistled past his ear, close enough to draw a bead of blood, but Nolan's feet never lost their root.
Using the crook of his elbow, Nolan hooked the iron bar, momentarily pinning it against his ribs and stripping Finn of his leverage. With Finn's weapon-arm compromised, Nolan slid his lead foot between Finn's legs, breaking the Original's base.
"Your anger makes you sloppy, Mikaelson," Nolan grunted, his voice steady despite the chaos.
He stepped deep into a clinch, his hands locking behind Finn's head to control the posture. He delivered three rapid-fire, piston-like Knees to Finn's solar plexus. Each strike was backed by the full, crushing weight of the obsidian knuckles, which were now beginning to gleam with a pulsating violet light.
With every impact, the dampening magic within the stones transferred into Finn's body, short-circuiting his nerves before cycling back out into the next hit. The energy transfer acted like a physical vacuum, forcibly ejecting the air from Finn's lungs and leaving him gasping, his immortal chest heaving as the "Indestructible" foundation of his body began to buckle under the weight of superior technique.
Finn's eyes bled into a dark, bruised purple as his vampire features tore through his mask. Veins like black lightning branched out under his skin, and his fangs descended with a click of lethal intent. He dropped the iron bar, the metal clattering uselessly against the stones, as he caught Nolan by the throat and his fingers sank deep into the muscle of Nolan's neck.
"Die, then, for your master!" Finn hissed, his grip beginning to crush Nolan's windpipe.