Chapter Text
The Ancient One is world’s first vampire. It is said he came one day from the debts of Hell to sow his royal oats before descending again to rule it.
Spending only 30 days and 30 nights on earth the vampire procreated and fed endlessly. Taking hundred of humans to mate and a thousand more to eat to produce a single egg for his body. Eggs which were then left and laid scattered in caves all around the world. Meant to be born alone where they would hatch maybe the very next day or not even millennium after. Some still waiting for when it was the right time even to this day.
When they did, descending from their caves and feeding ravenously on the humans below in their new born hunger.
Those children would come to be known as the Arch Type vampires. Children of the first and only true vampire. Unlike any other in power, status, and control. They did not just drink blood but could and do partake in the very flesh and bones of humans. Only settling down when finally sated. Turning from the horrible monster they were and into something less suspicious to their human prey.
Eventually settling down in their own corners of the world, and establishing territories others of their kind dare not tread without permission or warning first. Much like a human siblings who respected the boundaries of each other's rooms.
Brothers and sisters who, while good to each other when they met, preferred to be alone. The simple bond of telekinesis between them was enough to sate their craving for companionship in the earlier centuries. That is until one became truly lonely.
Seeking out its siblings and even managing to stay with a more compassionate few for decades at a time. Still it was not enough.
None of them knew how to cure their sibling of his growing depression brought on by loneliness. But they were fueled to do so themselves as the fear of one day sinking into the same would happen to them. Even more terrifying was when he just up and disappeared. Refusing to acknowledge any type of communication sent through their bond. Search parties were made in every region of every country but with their few numbers he just couldn't be found and eventually they had to cut their losses for fear of discovery.
It was only centuries later when he reappeared to a family reunion they learned what became of him. A family at his side. Three new vampire wives. Standing proud and, as he put it, with good news for his family. He'd discovered it, he said. He discovered the purpose their father had for them.
To breed.
How silly, how stupid they thought. For they had all tried to procreate like their father before them. Through sex, through eating, through laying of eggs. Even going so far as to risk doing so in their monstrous forms again to try, but never has anything happen.
But he must be right, here stands before them is the proof. So they sat, they listened as their once missing brother explained.
They were not meant to be solitary creatures. That while fine now, eventually that burning need for companionship will come for them all. That it will attack them fervently when they come across the first human they could not imagine living without.
An older sister had scoffed. Disgusted at the idea of ever needing what was nothing more than food to them in her life. He hadn't been deterred he'd kept going.
Hed felt this way and he’d feared his families rejection of his taken wife, so had left them. Forlorn, he said this, guilt on his face. He'd planned only to leave them so long as she lived before returning. However, as the fear of losing her grew stronger so did his desire to bite.
How confusing it was. To want to bite the one he'd come to love. Not to eat. No, not in the way they either gorged themselves on flesh and blood but simply to taste. A desire that became so strong in a fit of copulated passion he gave in.
Devastated as she stopped moving. Frozen and still as if poisoned. Her skin ashen and her body cold. Believing he'd killed his love, he'd wailed in despair for three days and three nights.
A hard thing for his siblings to understand having not experienced it themselves. Crying over something that should have been food ages ago. Some so uncaring at the idea they focused more on the wonderful discovery their bite could apparently be poisonous.
On the third day, he continued, his misery was over. Not because he'd come to terms with his loss but rather because she'd come back to him. Waking with beautiful clear skin, entirely blacked out eyes, three fangs lining the inside of her mouth of both sides at the top and bottom, and craving the taste of blood in such a way that reminded him of his own birth.
Such an odd thing to witness. Something born so close to how they looked when they were but so very off. Not a full mouth of fangs but rather only a few. Not an entire body change but a shift in the appearance of skin. The only thing they fully shared was the eyes and the desire of humans to eat.
The others had been fascinated at this point. One of the wives, the one they suspected he was speaking of, step forward and allowed her face and body to change as he'd explained her new look. Stunned they saw what they imagined it would look like if one of them were stuck in a half transformation.
Fascinating.
So as any concerned but responsible and good husband would, he chained her to their basement ground when the ropes he tried first didn’t work. She was desperate to eat and bite but seemingly cooperative in that she didn’t want to hurt him to get her way. A strange obedience from his previously firey wife. Her state of mind was pure instinct at the moment, he'd realized. Her instinct to obey and be good to him was just stronger than her desire to not starve.
How amazing.
He'd left and went to get her just what she craved. Bringing back scores of humans for her. Alive and wiggly. Throwing them to her feet to feast on. Expecting, like they had when born, for her to eat them down to the bone and all. Which surprisingly she hadn't. She had taken chunks of flesh at her most hungry but never fully eaten it all. Instead, she sucked them dry. Every single drop of blood drained from their bodies. The first few humans shriveled like mummies when she was done. He said this with pride and with deep affection.
The woman in question was looking away blushing. Bashful at both his affection and the tale of her over indulgence.
Once she was sated she returned to her normal self. As they all did when born. Allowing them to learn and study just what she was now. Much like them in many ways but overall weaker and not completely as they were, but a clear kinship was there that went beyond just his love for her as a woman.
They could communicate. Telepathically, that is. Something only know to be done between family with them. At the words many of his siblings turned to the woman and stared intensely at her, seemingly trying to trigger her to respond. She shuffled her feet uncomfortably and shifted towards her mate. Unable to hear them.
They'd known that too, he explained. She'd only been able to communicate telepathically with her maker, him, her sister wives, and with her own nest. So many questions that brought. He continued the story.
They'd learned her limits and strengths. Such as her ability to eat flesh as well but her need stopped at blood. She didn’t even crave flesh as he did. They also tested all she could do and all that she felt towards him, not just her husband but her maker now. A deep love and loyalty never present before and a bond that desired to be close and to help him however she could. How similar to his own. Not just, as he put it, the weak love akin to human love he had before for her but something deeper. Something that inspired a desire to protect in him. A precious thing she was to him.
Such a strange but wonderful feeling none of them had ever experienced he claimed. For it was one thing to worry for and protect each other as siblings, as equals in strength, it is another thing to feel that desire to do so for something weaker than you. It burned so much brighter. Akin to the love of a parent and child, yet so different as she was his lover, his wife.
It was many years of just the two of them happily together and without concern for others. Happily secluded from the world back at his old castle, they all had one. A desire to have a large home in all of them assumed previously to be a result of their Hell-like royal blood, but their brother had a new theory. That they were intended to fill those homes and that's why they desired to build them.
Eventually though he began to feel a need. A shameful need, he put it. A desire for another woman in the same way he'd loved his wife. So exact in its nature it scared him at first and he rebelled against it. He'd killed the one he first felt this way towards. A painful memory for him if the way he whimpered was anything to go by. His wives reaching out to comfort as if on instinct. He took their touches gratefully. A wonderfully interesting sight to witness.
He'd told his wife of what he had done when the pain had been great and his sorrow obvious. She dreaded seeing him hurt more than seeing him love another. So she'd said she'd kill the next, and they both knew there'd be a next.
She did just that, a young man this time, and it was not just he who ached from it but her as well. Claiming she'd felt as if she'd killed a sibling. A younger brother she should have protected not harmed. She'd only even been able to do it as she put her feelings for her mate before her instinct towards the young man.
Next time, they decided together, they would not kill them. A young woman again was the second. A courtship seemed to go on, between all three of them. The young woman unaware of what the young wealthy aristocratic couple she'd met were. They took her as their lover and they spoiled her. They liked it, they all did. Eventually, it was his first wife who asked if he would do to girl the same he did for her.
So, they had. After deep reveals and explanations and bouts of fear to overcome from their young lover, they had. It was much the same process and they were both glad to be there for her in her first days and to ensure she was well fed. Their small family had grown and he had been sated once again, for a time at least.
A realization all his siblings had seeing the third wife, yes he must have felt the carving once again. The story did not go there though. Instead he talked of his wife. How it was she who was unsatisfied.
Glad for the growth in the family and welcoming of her new sister wife but a burning for more. A burning that sounded much like the need he'd once felt amoung his siblings. Lonely in a crowded room.
She'd left them. Up and left one night, he and his second wife devastated and unknowing what became of her. A feeling he now apologized for subjecting his own siblings to.
When she returned it was with another, a young boy, no more than nine in appearance. Not like her fully, not like him, and not of the same relationship as them all.
She looked towards him as a mother would a child, fully and unlike the complicated bond between she and them. He had been born only by her bite and drinking her blood. He had two small fangs on either side of his mouth and red pupils. He sustained on blood and blood alone. Flesh made him sick. He was stronger faster than a human yet nothing compared to them. He shared in their telepathy but only to the first wife, his mother, and her maker. He could not communicate with the second wife at all.
He was just the start. Soon, she would bring more but always younger than herself and always those she came to see as dependents on her. As children, never as a lover like their husband felt for his wives. She was not alone in this either.
Eventually his second wife did the same and came back with her own six-year-old little girl as her first. So young, so sweet, so deadly. Their family was growing. Filling the corridors of his once empty home and finally sating that desire in him for a family.
After his third wife was taken he explained a since of completeness like no other. He believed it to be a sign he would take no other wife. That he was content finally in what he'd built. He thinks that had it been one of them though, they may have found completion with a different number. Maybe at the first maybe not until the 7th mate, they'd just have to wait and see.
What a thought that was, to one day experience this desire for themselves.
While his burn had faded, and that of his first wife's after she'd take her fourth into her 'nest'. Nest, what they'd taken to calling these bundles within their family. The grand nest, being how they referred to them all together. The true nest is what they'd come to call all vampires that walked the earth, related in some way or another.
His second wife had taken her sixth child recently and was finally done they suspected. The third wife was young by their standards and after only taking one of her own seemed she had many more to come.
With all these different types of vampires they'd taken to naming them. Feeling they had the right as the first of their kind to make a grand nest. A fair point his siblings agreed. The man, and his siblings, were to be known as Archetypes. Their first turned, like the man's wives, as Supremes. Supreme, now, in comparison to the humans they'd been born into. A good name they thought. Finally, the children they made, where the line ends as these vampires were incapable of procreation as either vampires or humans, were to be known as Liberi. Latin for children.
They dominated their territory. Their children eventually going out to discover the world but always to return home after a time before leaving again. It was like they felt the need to portal to the edges of their territory. Like wondering century guards.
Eventually through this all the man had come to realize what they were intend for on this world. To grow, to make families, and to be happy. Such a simple declaration, with such a sweet fanged smiles from him and his wives. Their children, their Liberi, not present to share in the moment with them.
Stunned.
That the only word to describe his siblings, who'd all sat and listen patiently to their brother. Not knowing how to take it all. So many discoveries. Such a different event from their decennial family reunion then usual. Some passing through their telepathic bond how they'd need a bigger meeting place for these meetings soon if this was true at all. 195 Arch type vampires were one thing but all their grand nest? No way they'd all fit. Maybe they'd limit it to only the wives/husbands could come but children had to stay home? That could still be too much to find a venue and food for, perhaps only the first three wives and husbands?
A random annoyed hiss from somewhere in the room ended that shared thought process and got them back on topic. Sharing with just their thoughts instead of speaking. A default when they felt threatened by something, usually something new.
Their brother knew this too and spoke out loud in active rebellion to their worries. Be calm he said. This is nothing to fear nor to expect immediately. He just hadn't wanted to leave them thrown into the fire as he had been. He felt obligated to tell them fully all that he knew to expect and with that he dismissed the impromptu meeting and party stopper.
Insisting they continue as always and taking himself and his wives to enjoy themselves. The party was slow to start again but when the youngest wife picked up an instrument she'd brought and began to play it for them a sense of peace went about the room slowly again as they unwinded. Glad to see a sharing of the love of arts by this new creature they hadn't fully comprehended yet.
His siblings. In their love for him, sought to accept these women. They came to him, one by one. Two by two and three by three, for the closer sibling who shared territory. The twins and triplets born of the same caves. Talking and their experiences. Not just from their story but personally. Calling them little sisters as they were so young but still family.
Having never had a family member they did not know fully through a bond. Feeling weirdly distant with the inability to communicate telepathically not just words but feelings, presences, memories, and images. So strange to get to know someone this way. So interesting to then learn when they shared hands with their brother and he with his wife they could share in that bond after all. They simply needed a bridge between them in a way.
How funny it was when their brother let go their hands, possessively keeping his wives thoughts and feelings to himself. Both his siblings and lovers taking great humor in this.
It was good three days and three nights of peace for them. Their party always lasting so long as tribute to their fathers thirty days and nights on earth. The number three seems to resonate well with them, they were finding.
Saying good bye this time around was odd. All wondering what the next meeting would look like. How big would they have to make their temporary home? How many more humans would they need to bring to feed themselves and their families? What was one to do with all this new information.
These thoughts and worries wandered their minds and even sometimes slipped into their shared sibling bond. Everyone having some significant emotion attached to this new development rather positive or negative in nature but one of their siblings, thought to be the oldest of them, in theory was nearly unaffected.
Having lived the longest and never experienced so much as a inkling feeling of what his younger brother described, he knew in his very bones his life would change no time soon. He had no desire for it either. He was content as he was. With his siblings and with his food.
This vampire, the oldest among them, this Hannibal Lecter as he would come to be known had no idea what the future held for him, but if he did it could be summed up in a few words.
Hannibal Lecter will take Will Graham as his first and only Supreme and he will dread the day Will craves to make his own nest.