Twilight Canon Fodder Challenge
Title: A War to End All Wars
Contest Category (Rookie/Vet): Rookie
Characters/Pairing: Aro, Stefan, Vladimir
Rating: T
Canon Type (Book/Movie): Book
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.
Summary: They never saw it coming, and they've nursed their loathing in isolation ever since. A look at the first, and last, conversation between Aro and the Romanians.
To see other entries in the Canon Fodder Challenge, please visit the C2 page:
http://www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/community/Canon_Fodder_Challenge/79719/
They had come out of nowhere. The night had been cool and clear, the wind blowing softly from the west. The smell of other unfamiliar vampires should have been warning enough, but the castle was crawling with vampires that Stefan and Vladimir had not bothered to get to know. Unfamiliar vampires were all around them, and nothing like a guard or army existed. Vampires knew how to fight instinctually but none expected to ever need to hone those skills. There were individual duels, of course, but nothing like a battle, let alone a war. Vampires ruled over these savage humans and could not be defeated.
Or so they thought.
Stefan, Vladimir and their brother had not heard of any unrest or rebellion. Admittedly, they were not exactly looking for it either, but coups were unheard of in those days. The word did not even exist yet. These were the days of savage hoards of nomadic, pantheistic humans who provided their vampiric overlords with sacrifices and solitude. No one kept secrets and no one dared question the authority the three brothers had cultivated. The brothers were open about what they were and what they ate, and while they were not exactly nice about it, they expected obedience from the humans. They looked not for respect, but for fear. Fear gave them a comfortable complacency that allowed them to sit on their thrones and carry on with their kingly business.
So when the hoards of Romanesque soldier-vampires poured across the battlements armed only with their teeth and hands, the brothers were caught unawares. Even when the first of their Romanian cohorts began dying, Stefan and Vladimir remained upon their thrones. Who were they to interfere with a misunderstanding between two subjects? They certainly had not done that in the past. It quickly became known, however, that the sound of tearing rock was the result of no passing scuffle.
Their brother rose to find the source of the troubling noise, and that was the last time Stefan and Vladimir ever saw him. They gathered later, from what they could piece together from survivors, that he had entered the fray at its middle and had been quite literally torn apart. He hadn't been ready to fight, and they had given him no chance to prepare. The remaining brothers assumed he tried to assert his authority over the rival vampires without ever once assuming they would try to kill him. How could he have known?
When their brother did not return, Stefan and Vladimir finally stood from their thrones. They viewed the battle from within their castle, through windows and through thin slits in the walls made for human arrows. Arrows were not the weapon of choice in this battle, but there was one with a similar name that they met that day. This day was the day of destruction, death, and the birth of a feud that would last for eternity.
A vampire with long flowing black hair—something very incongruous with his soldier's attire—stepped through the throng of battle without a care and stopped just below the window from which the brothers looked out upon the battle. The vampire surveyed the carnage in front of him as if taking in a play and no one dared approach him. Stefan sneered down upon he who was obviously the leader of this uprising. A serene smile sat upon the intruder's lips, and it only grew wider when he saw the two brothers peering down at him from inside their fortress.
"I do hope you speak my language, my lords," the man called out in Latin, and though his tone was polite it carried with it a touch of condescension. Stefan immediately hated him.
The brothers remained silent.
"My name is Aro," the vampire continued unabashedly, "and I have a hope, nay, a vision for this world. If you would consent, perhaps a discussion is in order?"
"You come here to discuss what you call a vision, but you bring soldiers to do it?" Stefan snarled back, perturbed by Aro's calm veneer. "That sounds like an invasion, not a peaceful conference."
"I never said peaceful," Aro replied, that damnable smile still on his face. "I suppose my words have been misleading. 'Discussion' is the wrong word indeed. Perhaps 'lecture' is a better word for it."
"Lecture?" Stefan repeated, completely outraged now. "We are the lords of this realm, and do not consent to be lectured by a subject." He spat the words like venom and watched, pleased, as the smile slid off Aro's face. Stefan's pleasure, however, did not last long.
Aro's arm came up in a blur and he gestured behind him. Immediately came four others, three male and one female. They all four wore the garb of a soldier though two of them were quite small in stature.
A vampire who looked very much like Aro spoke, but not to address his kings. "They are brothers, Aro. They were brothers to the one who was…" The vampire paused, and his eyes flicked up toward Stefan and Vladimir. "Taken."
"Where is our brother?" Vladimir spoke up then, his fists clenching at his sides. "Where have you taken him?"
"Thank you, Marcus," Aro replied, casually ignoring Vladimir's outburst. "Are you willing to grant us entry, my lords?" He turned his face from this Marcus and that infuriating smile once again appeared.
Stefan laughed, slightly nervous but not frightened. "I think not, my friend. You should gather your friends and go home before the weight of your rulers crushes you."
"Oh, I think not, my lords," said the third man, stepping forward with his thumbs tucked into his belt. Look around you." He made a large sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating the battlements. The stones and grass beyond were littered with unattached limbs and scattered fires. No one seemed to be fighting anymore, and the brother kings recognized none of those still standing. "Your sorry excuses for soldiers are dead or being burned as we speak. We will take this castle by force if we must, and the Volturi never backs down."
"You can't do this," Vladimir shouted then. "How dare you come here with an aim to take our thrones? Do you think yourselves better than your kings? I shall come down myself and then we will see if your words remain the same." He made as if to crush the wall between them. Aro's smile grew malicious, and he leaned down to whisper in the small man's ear.
"Alec, if you please."
Stefan watched as Vladimir reared back his fist and then suddenly stopped. Vladimir blinked several times before waving his arms wildly about him. His eyes grew wide, and he opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound came forth. He sank to his knees on the floor and began to shake, holding his face in his hands.
"What have you done to him?" Stefan roared, racing to kneel beside his brother. Placing his hands on Vladimir's shoulders, he whispered, "Vladimir, what have they done? Please speak, please tell me and I will fix it."
Though Stefan could no longer see the offending group of vampires, he could still hear the unnecessary breaths that filled their lungs and the scraping of their feet on the stone outside. Aro's voice wafted up to him as if on the wind.
"Alec just released your brother from his anger momentarily. He will survive with no lasting damage. I would speak with you alone first. If you would allow us inside, we would be happy to release him."
Stefan, not moving from his brother's side, whispered, "Never."
Aro's sigh drifted in from outside, and when he spoke, his voice sounded full of genuine regret and sadness. "Very well then, you leave us with no choice. Jane."
Stefan wondered for approximately half a second what the woman's name had to do with his refusal before his entire body was overtaken with a terrible burning. It felt as if he had been suddenly engulfed, head to toe, in the hottest of bonfires. For a terrible moment, before his body acknowledged the sudden pain, he imagined himself on a spit like a pig. Food for humans. His body folded in on itself then and he crumpled to the ground, screaming. All thought was erased from his mind; he could only process the pain, and taking breaths to scream was all his body could do. He did not know how long he lay there, but it may as well have been eternity. He was sure he was going to die, but as suddenly as the pain had begun, it ceased.
"Stefan?" Vladimir's voice rang out in the caverns of Stefan's mind, but Stefan found himself unable to respond. He was frozen on the cold stone floor with his knees curled to his chest. "Brother?" Vladimir asked again, this time placing a hand on Stefan's shoulder. The feel of Vladimir's hand brought Stefan back to himself and he jumped to his feet, flying to window.
"You'll die for this!" he roared down at that wretched Aro and his motley crew. "I shall kill you all myself and you will know the true meaning of pain before you die."
Aro laughed at that, which only enraged Stefan further. "I don't think so," he said, and his face fell into a mask of deadly seriousness. He gestured and the two smallest members of his entourage stepped forward and threw back their hoods.
Stefan gasped. They were only children, but their eyes held the telltale crimson tint of one who drank from humans. The girl, a tiny blonde, looked him in the eye and he could see the fire, the sadistic pleasure burning within her.
"Witches," he whispered and Aro's peaceful smile appeared again.
"That is Jane," Aro corrected Stefan, placing a hand on the small girl's shoulder. "She can invade your mind and make you feel as if you are on fire, can even kill you just from entering your mind." He smiled down at the girl and she returned his smile with reverence. "And this is Alec." Aro placed his other hand upon the boy's right shoulder. "He takes away your sight, your smell, your ears. He even takes your voice. You call them witches?"
Stefan did not speak a word but continued to stare down at the faces of evil personified.
"Well, you are more like humans than you think." Aro continued cryptically. "My terms are these: you and your brother either immediately vacate the castle and its vicinity or I shall give you both to Jane. I am sure there are a few of your subjects lurking in the surrounding woods. You may go to them for help and shelter, but you must not make an attempt to retake your thrones. If you do, well…" He smiled down at Jane again. "All roads lead to Jane."
Jane smiled an innocent smile at the brothers, and they fled, leaving their possessions, and their dignity, far behind them.