The Vine Crown (eBook)

Doğuhan Pekdemir (Autor)

Alperen Pekdemir (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
190 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-097483-9 (ISBN)

Infos

In present-day İzmir, a team of archaeologists unearth what they believe to be an ancient cultic chamber. Hidden beneath the earth, they find a sarcophagus engraved with grapevines and riddles in dead languages. What they do not realize-until it is too late-is that they have awakened Dionysos, the ancient Greek god of wine, madness, and ecstasy. Freed from his slumber, Dionysos brings with him a supernatural wave of chaos, a delirium that begins to spread through modern society like an invisible infection.

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Leaky Wine

 

The heat-scorched Aegean soil was almost white in the July sun. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the olive trees, carrying an almost musical hum to the excavation site below, at the edge of a rocky slope. Elena Schneider, a German archaeologist, was crouched on her knees, carefully cleaning a bronze nail that protruded from the stones.

"This is definitely late Hellenistic," he said, meticulously wielding a brush. "But the stone setting here is... strange. Like an altar."

"Have we finally found the temple of Dionysus?" murmured Turkish archaeologist Deniz Yalçın. He adjusted his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "You know there's a price for playing with the gods here, don't you?"

"Gods?" laughed Greek archaeologist Andreas Nikopoulos with a sarcastic smile. "Gods only live on museum cards now. But if it really is a temple of Dionysus... I'll pour the wine, dear ladies!"

Elena raised her head. At that moment, in the air shivering under the sun, a barely discernible line appeared on the stone wall. Then a crack... And then the earth shook slightly.

Deniz retreated involuntarily. "Is there an earthquake?"

Andreas ran his finger along the crack in the wall. "No... The door opens."

As the dust-covered stone slab slid slowly to the side, the trio first encountered a wave of damp, cool air. Then... a void from within. Silent, dark and like the breath of something that had been waiting there for millennia.

"Take the flashlights," Elena said, her voice now serious.

None of them noticed: The wind had stopped.

The coolness rising from inside the temple offered a moment's relief to their sweat-soaked skin in the hellish heat outside. Elena lit her torch and shone it inside. The damp stone walls reeked of moss and the air was heavy, like a breath trapped for thousands of years.

"Ladies, after you. I'll admire you from behind," Andreas said, winking.

"As long as you're the one with the lantern, you'll go first, sugar," Deniz said, putting his hands on her waist. "Or do you want the spirit of Dionysus to take you first?"

"Maybe I do," Andreas said, shrugging dramatically. "Get me drunk, give me a night I'll never forget..."

Elena rolled her eyes. "If the spirit of Dionysus is really here, he would choose you first. The one who talks the most always dies first in horror movies."

"Ha-ha," Andreas said with a wry laugh. "German humor... Sharp as ever."

"Elena doesn't do humor, she defends science," Deniz said, laughing. "But we are about to make a very important discovery for science. Do you realize that?"

Elena nodded as she examined the walls. "Yes, this is a temple, yes. But look at this." She shone her flashlight on a relief carved in stone. Three figures danced with cups in their hands, a god rising in the center. On his head was a crown of vine branches.

"Bacchanalia..." said Andreas quietly. "This... This could be one of the rites of Dionysus. But it's very old. It must be ancient Greek, not Roman."

Deniz crouched down and examined the gouges in the stone floor. "There was an altar here. And... Look at this." He pointed to a circle carved with his fingers. There was a thin groove in it, like it was made for something liquid to flow.

Elena pointed her flashlight at the ground. A stone tomb rose there, as if it had remained intact for centuries. It was closed. The almost erased letters on it blinked to shed light on history.

Andreas read it in a whisper:

"Evoé Dionysus. May your soul sleep... or wake not."

Deniz stood up. "Okay, I didn't love this part, really. The door opened by itself, it's full of graves, and you're reading a cursed scripture out loud?"

"Handwriting doesn't have a curse," Elena said in an automatic tone. "But if there is, you may have just activated it."

Andreas grinned. "Then greetings to Dionysus from the 'Greek contingent. I'll definitely put that in my academic paper tomorrow."

"I'll probably finish that article," Deniz said. "Because you will be the dancing slave of Dionysus, climbing the walls."

The three of them smiled, but at that moment they shuddered as the outer door of the temple closed noisily. The entrance door closed with a heavy thud, with stone dust falling inside. The dimness suddenly intensified.

"I think I'll have to delay my article a bit," Andreas said, not showing his fear.

Elena pulled her gloves from her dusty backpack and crouched on the edge of the grave. She examined the stone surface with her fingertips. The engravings had been almost erased by time, but the god's symbol was still legible: Vine branches, cups, a theater mask. All together, signs of Dionysus.

"That's him," he said. His breath was shaking. "It's really him. The tomb of Dionysus."

There was a silence. Then Deniz whispered hoarsely, as if afraid to break the silence of the temple:

"So... This could be the first god in the world whose real tomb has ever been found."

Andreas looked around with the excitement of a child, his eyes sparkling. "When we write this, when we announce it to the world, everything will change. Archaeology books, mythology, religious history. This is not just a discovery. This is a... Revolution!"

Elena stood up, took a deep breath and put her bag down. "When we started digging today, I thought we'd unearth a few late period pieces at most... Right now... I question the immortality of the gods."

Andreas smiled. "I wasn't questioning it anyway."

"Why, are you a pagan Andreas," Deniz asked curiously.

"Yes. But I'm not the kind of person who sacrifices to gods and does creepy rituals."

Deniz, as always, raised his eyebrows in skepticism. "Wow! I didn't know my assistant was a pagan." He thought for a while. "But... Why would a god be in the grave? I thought gods didn't die?"

"Maybe... People buried them forgotten," Andreas said. He leaned over the grave and just looked at it without touching it. "And now we remember him."

At that moment, all three stopped. There was a slight hum around the grave. But it wasn't a wind, it was a... vibration. Almost inaudible, but palpable. Elena was startled. "It might still be warm," she said. "That could be explained by thermal energy." But her voice didn't believe her explanation.

The sun had set and the orange light outside had stopped seeping through the stone walls. Only the yellow rings of the lanterns remained.

"I think we should camp here," Deniz said. "We'll contact the away team tomorrow morning, there's no signal now, but they'll be curious and start looking for us anyway."

Andreas rummaged through his bag and pulled out a metal bottle. "In honor of this god, then... Dionysus! If he really exists, he will want to drink with us!"

"It's not very academic," Elena said, but she didn't hide her smile. She was secretly proud to be part of this great discovery.

"Let us celebrate tonight, Elena," Deniz said. "Tomorrow we'll get serious again." She smiled. "Maybe."

After a while, they illuminated their surroundings with small camping lamps close to the stone floor. The three of them were sitting right next to the grave, drinking wine, arguing lightly and laughing. Suddenly, as Andreas took a sip, he shook slightly and spilled a little of the wine. Right on the edge of the grave, on the stone soil...

None of them cared.

But it was as if the earth was in a hurry to absorb the liquid. As if it had been waiting for a long time.

A crack appeared at the base of the stone. Too thin to be seen. But it was there.

Deniz closed his eyes and stretched. "Tomorrow I will give the interview of my life. My mother still questions why I chose archaeology."

Elena was silent. She was drinking her wine slowly, looking at the grave.

Andreas leaned his head against the stone wall, humming tiredly but pleasantly:

"Evoé Dionysus... Are you really back?"

The lamps of the small camp set up around the grave illuminated the stones with a yellow light, casting dancing shadows on the walls. The bottle of wine was in the center; all three had poured it into small metal glasses.

Andreas raised his glass, smiling:

"In honor of Dionysus, god of gods! To the god of drunkenness, theater, madness... and academic achievement!"

Deniz laughed. "You particularly liked the academic success part, didn't you?"

"Of course," Andreas said. "I'm an ambitious person, even if I don't show it." He gave a little laugh. "Barbaros will go crazy when he hears the news!"

Elena sipped her drink but kept her eyes on the grave. "How strange... Until today we accepted that he was just a myth. Now we're sitting by his grave."

I mean... If it's really him," Deniz said. "We're not a hundred percent sure."

Andreas winked. "Deniz, this job is impossible without a little mysticism. A little godly thinking is allowed today."

Deniz put his glass down and leaned his back against the wall. "Well then... Let me tell you a story."

They both turned to him. Deniz squinted slightly, as if her voice had changed a little, as if it had merged with the echo of that stone temple.

"It is an old story... It is told in Anatolia. It is said that Dionysus haunted Lycurgus, one of the kings of Thrace. Lycurgos banned the god's rituals and forbade women from going to the forest. Dionysus was very angry about this. First he took Lycurgus' mind, then he turned his people against each other. But here's the really scary part: One day Lycurgus went so mad that he mistook his own son for vine branches and chopped him with an axe. Then Dionysus makes him lose his eyesight and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.7.2025
• Übersetzer: Ömer Faruk Balıkçı
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-097483-8 / 0000974838
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-097483-9 / 9780000974839