"Council?"
Mavrick wasn't playing dumb this time, he really haven't the faintest clue about there being a council, or any group for that matter where Merlin was concerned.
And a council implies other members besides, members who had to be equal, or atleast in one way or another comparable to the rest. Apart from the Ancient One, Maverick couldn't think of anyone who could sit on equal footing with Merlin.
No that's not quite right. Two names crossed his mind at the thought:
Odin, then Frigga.
"...You honestly don't know?" Lucian once again gave Mavrick a peculiar look.
Shouldn't a society so deeply rooted and highly structured as the magical people have records or something in their archives? Or… it's probably that this kid just hasn't seen any of them. For all that power, he was still just a boy in his twenties, after all.
Mavrick didn't know what inexplicable thoughts were running through the old antique's head. He simply flashed a smile, neither confirming nor denying.
"The council," After a brief pause, Lucian finally began to explain what he knew. "They're this group of ancient, powerful beings. Different books call them different names, Conclave of Godheads, the Council of Gods, Assembly of the Gods, Pantheons of Earth..."
"—So who counts among these… godheads?"
Maverick couldn't recall anything of the sort from the limited scraps of Marvel lore he remembered. Though he didn't rule out the possibility of such a group existing, the Marvel multiverse was, after all, an enormous clusterfuck in itself.
Lucian flexed his arm once. The wound, which would have taken an ordinary man weeks to heal, was already halfway closed, the flesh steadily knitting itself back together before his eyes, courtesy of the Corvinus genes in his blood.
Snape, too, was finished with his task. He tucked the collected samples carefully into his storage ring, then fell silent behind Maverick.
He was quite interested in the conversation as well. Not that he took the werewolf's word for it, but there might be some truth to it. He didn't believe Mavrick would be bored enough to sit through some random story otherwise.
"Godhead of Magic. Godhead of Sorcery. Godhead of Light. Godhead of the Sea. Godhead of the Wind… basically, a bunch of names tied to some aspect of nature or some mysterious force…"
Lucian continued. "Then there's these sires of some Great Mother, I can't remember their names… others with names just as strange, Vishnu, Amaterasu, Chalchiuhtlicue, Ixchel, Wiininwaa, Ungnyeo…"
His hand went to his chin. "There's a group that calls themselves the Eternals. Another group worshipped by the Egyptians, and another worshipped across Asia…"
To anyone else, all of that would have sounded like some fictitious tale, however Maverick already recognised more than a few of those names.
But… Merlin's bare balls, what in the actual fuck. If even half of that were true, wouldn't it mean that he, right now, was nothing more than a small fish in an endless ocean.
Kamar-Taj. Maverick raised the priority of paying the bald auntie a visit sooner than later.
Although his mind was suddenly crowded with a torrent of different thoughts, he showed none of it on his face. And apparently, there was more to come.
"…sometimes they're called gods. Other times, godheads, or simply lords. They're also not equal in power. Count Dracula, for instance, is supposedly a demigod, but he still holds a seat on the council as the Godhead of Blood, worshipped as a god nonetheless by the people of his nation."
Nation?
"Vampyrsk?" Mavrick interrupted when a thought suddenly crossed his mind.
Lucian nodded his head once.
Well, shit. Mavrick was only throwing out a guess there. Not that he knew it from any records or from anything anyone had told him. It was just another name buried somewhere in the fragments of Marvel lore he remembered.
To think it actually existed… and he didn't doubt it. The names matched, so there should be truth to it.
But still...
The more he thought about it, the less sense it was making that no such information ever crossed his path.
He's visited every continent, basically all the magical communities, and read all sorts of books from their archives, not to mention the ICW's historical archives themselves. In fact, more than magical knowledge or magical theories, because his cheat took care of that, most of the books he ever read were about the history of this world.
Although that still may not be enough to call him a historian, something as significant as vampires having a nation of their own, or a council of gods, should have caught his attention.
The waters of this world… it seems he need to reevaluate how deep they ran once again.
A faint snicker suddenly reached his ears, and Mavrick raised his head slightly glancing over his shoulder.
Understandably, the old bat took all of that for nothing more than a story, putting on a disdainful expression he wasn't particularly trying to hide.
"Severus. What do you make of all that?" Mavrick asked him, if anything just to hear what he would say.
"A rather elaborate piece of nonsense." Snape lowered his gaze briefly before looking back at Lucian. "Fables," he added, with even more contempt.
Mavrick barely held back a laugh. As expected of the old bat, he didn't even bother filtering his thoughts. Mavrick didn't bother telling otherwise either, in any case, it'd be fun seeing Snape's face change when he's proven otherwise.
His attention also turned back to Lucian. The old Lycan looked like he was ready to lunge at Snape at any moment.
"You mentioned our sovereign earlier…" Ignoring the silent standoff, Mavrick asked him, "how much do you really know about him?"
With a quiet snort, Lucian finally looked away and returned his attention to Mavrick.
"The Godhead of Magic, Merlin…"
Maverick smiled, saying nothing.
The werewolf leader wore a thoughtful expression once more. "He goes by different names in different books too. The God of Magic. The Supreme Mage. The Mystic. The Murderer. The Mad." He chuckled, pausing. "I wonder how your own history dress him up."
"Not quite so many adjectives." Mavrick feigned a shrug. "Ever met him? Seen him, even?"
"What, no…" Lucian tilted his head like Mavrick was asking a stupid question. "I said I only ever read about them. Although…" He paused briefly. "Oddly, a good many of those books seem to have vanished over the years. Sometime after the age of the witch hunts, or whatever you'd like to call it, it's like someone seems to be quietly working to erase those histories."
He hummed, looking particularly at Snape. "I see why you'd be inclined to dismiss them as mere fiction."
"More of the same lies…" Snape countered without backing down.
Lucian let out a short laugh. "Where exactly do you suppose fiction come from, boy?"
His eyes returned to Mavrick. "Go back even five hundred years, and you'll find a world nothing like the one you know today. Go back further, and you might not even recognise it. Witches and wizards, vampires and werewolves, even aliens, they weren't myths back then. They were real, and people saw them with their own eyes. Hell, I've seen some of them myself."
"You've seen aliens?" Mavrick interjected half-believing.
"Aye, I have. The Asgardians," Lucian replied matter-of-factly.
This day was indeed proving to be most… interesting. Mavrick sent a faint probe of magic while the Lycan leader recalled his memories.
"…A thousand years back, give or take. Some blue-skinned creatures came to Earth, were freezing everything, leaving ice wherever they went... Then the Asgardians arrived, drove them off, sent them running back wherever they'd crawled from—"
"Interesting…"
Lucian fidgeted in his seat, only then noticing Mavrick's eyes fixed directly on his own. They were gleaming, and his instincts prickled in that instant, sending a quiet chill through his blood.
"Why stop?"
"I…" He wasn't sure if the kid was doing what he thought the kid was doing. Other than the feeling of being watched by some ferocious predator, he didn't feel anything else. "Then… that's it. They stuck around for a while after that. That's how the people came to call them Asgardians, I suppose they weren't particularly trying to hide who they were…"
"And?"
Gulp…
Beads of sweat formed and trickled down the side of the old werewolf's face. "And… something about the God of Thunder, and more gods named after other things… I swear that's it."
He said it all in one breath before finally lowering his eyes. Or rather, that was when he could finally bring himself to lower them.
Mavrick flashed him a smile, the gleam in his eyes also disappearing.
What he saw was indeed a frozen winter-like scene, but this fellow only went there long after whatever had happened. The rest was simply what he heard through word of mouth, but when entire villages and towns speak of the same thing, it can't possibly be fabrications.
Moreover, Mavrick vaguely remembered something along those lines from one of the MCU movies.
"Those… books." Mavrick's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Do you still have any of them?"
"No." Lucian shook his head almost immediately. "That was a long time ago. I can't even remember when."
"A shame…" Mavrick exhaled softly.
"I swear, I'm not lying!"
Mavrick observed him quietly, watching his expression change from apprehension to unease, then to fear, then repeating the same cycle several times. He couldn't help but find it amusing.
He did, genuinely, want to see those books though. But it seems that won't be happening, at least not here and not tonight.
"Ah, forget it." He said at last, his expression suddenly easing into something more relaxed.
Lucian, meanwhile, couldn't help but release a breath he didn't even realise he was holding.
In any case, tonight had certainly brought enough surprises for Mavrick to fill an entire book. He smiled and rose from his chair, casually brushing a few nonexistent specks from his robes.
Lucian's mouth hung half open, watching tensely. He saw Mavrick raise his hand, palm up, making his nerves tighten even further. But contrary to what he braced for, something small instead materialised out of nowhere above Mavrick's palm before being tossed toward him.
He barely reacted in time, managing to catch it at the last moment.
It was… a phone.
"Regardless of whether your blood proves useful, you have my thanks."
He raised his head to find Mavrick's lips curling into a smile. It looked real enough, without anything else behind it.
"In return, you may ask for my help, once. Consider it a favour owed."
He blinked.
Mavrick chuckled, looking at him amusedly. With a quick gesture, a portal materialised behind him, its swirling, sparkling orange edges revealing an opening to a place where it wasn't night. Sunlight streamed inside casting a warm glow across the otherwise gloomy room.
Mavrick gave him one last look before turning toward the portal, while Snape also spared him a final expressionless glance before following behind.
The room soon returned to its usual colour as soon as the portal shrank before vanishing completely. Only then did Lucian's tensed nerves finally relax.
He rose slowly from his chair and exhaled a long breath. His expression looked complicated, a mixture of thoughtfulness and uncertainty, not sure what he was thinking.
His eyes moved across the room taking in the bodies, his people strewn across the floor and stairs.
Finally, his eyes lowered to the small thing in his hand. He raised it slightly, studying the device.
A favour. Of all things, he never imagined the night would end with him owing nothing, but instead having earned a favour from an Archmage.
An upward curl formed at the corner of his lips at the thought, a gleam appearing in his eyes. Regardless of whether he suffered tonight or even how thoroughly he was humiliated; it was worth it in the end.
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