The oppressive silence of the witch's home was now broken by the agonized, wet gurgles of six dying vampires. The air, thick with the coppery tang of blood and spent magic, was a testament to Klaus's wrath. As the door clicked shut behind the Original Hybrid, the tension didn't break; it simply changed form, tightening around Marcel's men like a vise.
Thierry, a vampire whose loyalty was only matched by his temper, finally broke. He began to pace, his boots scraping against the wooden floor, avoiding the pools of blood.
"He butchered them, Marcel!" Thierry's voice was a sharp crack in the quiet. He gestured wildly at the convulsing forms of their comrades. "He just walked out of here! We can't let this stand. We have an army. There's no way one man, Original or not, can take on every vampire in New Orleans."
A low, humorless chuckle escaped Marcel's lips. He hadn't moved, his eyes still fixed on the door Klaus had exited through. "You have no idea what an Original is, Thier," he said, his voice dangerously calm. "To be frank? All of you in this room combined couldn't even take me on. And I'm just a fraction of what he is."
A ripple of shocked disbelief went through the vampires. Diego, another of Marcel's lieutenants, stepped forward, his pride wounded. "He's boastful. All monsters are. They want you to believe they're invincible."
Marcel finally turned, his gaze sweeping over his men, seeing the same naive confidence he might have once had. "No," he stated, the single word leaving no room for argument. "He's not boasting. He's stating a simple, brutal fact. You think you understand power because you're stronger than humans. You don't." He walked over to one of the bitten vampires, crouching down. The man's skin was a sickening gray, veins blackened with venom. Marcel's own fangs extended, and he bit into his own wrist, pressing it to the dying vampire's mouth.
The room watched, hoping. The vampire drank feebly, but the grayness continued its spread. Marcel pulled his wrist back, the wound healing instantly. "It's not working," he muttered, more to himself than them.
"Why not?" Thierry demanded, frustration boiling over. "You're a hybrid! Your blood cures werewolf venom!"
"This isn't just any venom," Marcel snapped, standing up. "This is from an Original Hybrid. My blood is a diluted copy. His is the source. It's like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water." He looked back at his failed attempt, a grim confirmation of the power disparity. "And that's just his bite. You're talking about fighting him."
He paced now, a caged animal laying out the bars of its own cage for the others to see. "You know we get stronger with age, right? You feel it. Every decade, you're a little faster, a little stronger." The vampires nodded. It was basic knowledge.
"You don't know how the numbers work," Marcel continued, his voice dropping into a lecturing tone, the kind he'd use to train a new recruit. "For an ordinary vampire like you, the growth is linear. Steady. For an Original? It's exponential. They don't just add power; they multiply it. It's said that every ten years, an Original's strength compounds, growing tenfold from its current peak. Not from where they started. From where they are. A thousand years of that… you can't even conceptualize that kind of power."
He let that sink in for a moment, watching the first flicker of true fear in Diego's eyes. "And those of us turned directly by them, like me, we get a taste of that. Our growth is sharper, maybe fivefold in the same time. It's why I'm stronger than any of you. And that's before you account for what Klaus is."
Marcel stopped directly in front of Thierry, his expression deadly serious. "All of that is just for a standard Original. Klaus is more. He's the Original Hybrid. His werewolf side, the very source of that venom killing our friends, fuels his rage and amplifies his power even further. You think we'd have a chance? He'd move, and we'd be dead before our brains even registered he was gone. He wouldn't even need to be elegant about it. He could tear this entire building apart with us in it, and not a single one of us would land a blow."
"So we find the weapon!" Thierry insisted, desperation creeping in. "The white oak stake. We kill him with it!"
Marcel laughed, a short, bitter sound. "The white oak stake can't kill an Original. Not ever. All the known stakes are gone, destroyed or lost to time. But even if you had one, even if you somehow, against all odds, managed to get close enough to plunge it into his heart… do you really think the others would just let that slide?"
He began counting on his fingers, each name a hammer blow. "Elijah? The noble brother who has orchestrated the fall of kingdoms? He would hunt every last one of us, and you wouldn't see him coming. Rebekah? Kol? They may squabble, but you touch one of them, and you face all of them. It's 'always and forever,' not a slogan. It's a promise of extinction for anyone who crosses them. Killing one just signs the death warrant for our entire species in this city."
Marcel's shoulders slumped slightly, the weight of his own logic pressing down on him. The furious king was gone, replaced by a pragmatic survivor who knew the limits of his domain. "So, no. Attacking Klaus is not a plan. It's a suicide pact."
He looked at each of his men, making sure they saw the absolute conviction in his eyes. "What we need to do now is the only thing we can do. We appease him. We find out why Jane-Anne summoned him. We clean up his mess, and we pray to whatever god is listening that whatever business he has here is brief. We hope he gets bored, or that his family calls him away, and he decides to leave New Orleans behind once more."
He walked to the door, pausing to deliver his final order, his voice low and firm. "The order is to stand down. No one touches Klaus Mikaelson. No one even looks at him wrong. Let him have his reign, however short it may be. Our only job is to survive it."
With that, Marcel left them, the groans of the poisoned vampires a chilling soundtrack to his retreat. The war was over before it had even begun, and in the heavy silence he left behind, his army finally understood the terrifying truth: they were not the top of the food chain. They had just been reminded that a predator from a forgotten age had returned to his hunting grounds.