"How could this happen?!" Vladimir yelled, throwing a chair at the other side of the room and simply making a frowning Stefan move off of the way with a simple step, his eyes refusing to move away from the note in his hands. "How could Sergi have let this happen!?"
"It was not his fault!" A brunette with wavy hair and a furious demeanour reclaimed from the other side of the room, her head shaking and her crimson eyes nearly burning a hole in the middle of the man's forehead. "Might I remind you that he was taken too?!"
Vladimir's frame shifted to face the woman without even a second to let her words sink. "HE IS SUPPOSED TO GUARD, AMELIA." He yelled; his hands moving as if simply with motions as harsh as the ones he made, his words were to have more effect. "As are you!"
That was enough to make the brunette take a step forward. "Are you blaming me?" She nearly spat, her brows raised and her hands balled into tight fists. "This is not my fault, Vladimir. Nor Sergi's. You and I both know he is a good fighter, if he was taken it means—" She didn't want to finish that thought; what could it mean? That he was somehow taken by surprise? That his skills had not been enough? That he was... dead? A sort of fiery pit burned at the bottom of Amilia's stomach upon that thought; nothing having to do with her hunger, but as close as someone such as her could feel to being nauseous.
A reminder that served as much to her upon the dire situation as to Vladimir, who showed his rage by throwing yet another object across the room, missing Stefan by feet and only making the vampire finally look up. "Stop it." He requested, folding the note once again and looking in Vladimir's direction at last.
But the thing was, how could Vladimir stop feeling a rage building within him when, if Sergi Agafitei (someone who had been a vampire for centuries and had trained in combat for the same time) couldn't fight against that who had left the note in front of his room, then how could his own wife, someone who had been a vampire for much less than a year and had had no more than a couple of weeks training, survive an attack herself? It was enough to make the man want to throw something else against the walls of the room. "They are not dead." Stefan stated, letting out an unnecessary breath within his slightly infuriating calmness.
"He's right." Amelia quickly followed, though it was more of a hope shining with her dead heart that begged for her best friend, her lover, to not be dead at all. She needed him, even if she feared admitting it, she absolutely needed him. "She wouldn't have left a note if she planned to kill them. They have to be alive." Though who was she trying to convince? The brothers... or herself?
And it seemed that such was the only thing needed before Vladimir moved in Stefan and Ami's direction for once. "We have to do something." He stated, pointing in Stefan's direction without a pause. "You know we do. Fuck waiting, we need to go now." His hand fell, his eyes falling in Amilia's direction, whose expression merely seemed haunted and angry all at once; if Vladimir had a mirror, he was sure to find an expression such as hers in his own reflection. "We're ready and you know it. We have the numbers; we have Sulpicia and her witch. We can beat them."
But Stefan didn't speak, he simply folded and unfolded the note with his version of calm as calculations took over his mind; of the two, Stefan was the logical one, the one that decided strategy merely for the reality that Vladimir knew he was reckless and impulsive. Anger drove him forward, or fear, and Amilia, as a second to Vladimir, had to either wait for his approval or to attempt getting Stefan to convince him of a dire decision. In this occasion, though, Amilia didn't really know what was best. It was that silence that drove Vladimir mad and made him return to breaking things, and perhaps even broke the other two vampires from their own infuriatingly quiet reveries.
All that Amilia knew was that someone had been stolen from her, the only person she could say held her heart on his hands, and she knew exactly who had done it; all she could feel was rage toward her, wish upon a million pangs of pain to hit her and end her slowly with a burning fire, consume her until she was nothing but a memory to be cursed by her and Vladimir from then on. "That little blonde bitch is going to die." Amilia stated without stopping herself or wishing otherwise; she hadn't even realised when her hands had risen to cross under her chest. She was simply furious.
And that would have been it, had Stefan not quickly after spoken. "Yes, Amilia, she will." He said, folding the note for the millionth time and leading it to the depths of his jacket's pocket as his eyes lifted from his hands once again, looking in Vladimir's direction as he stopped right in the middle of his means to break the office's table in half. "We're going to get Lauren and Sergi back." He announced; nodding with his eyes focused entirely on Vladimir's own. "You are right, brother. It's time." He paused. "Let's bring war to the Volturi, shall we?"
Finally words that could make Vladimir smile.
-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-
"How could this possibly have happened?!" Aro Cancellieri spat in Caius' direction without daring to move from his spot behind his throne, ignoring the knock on the door and not daring to tighten his grip on the backrest of it with fear that he might split the marble. "I feel like I am but working with a bunch of idiots!" He exclaimed, not even daring to look in Marcus' direction for the mere fact that he seemed as hypnotised and zombiefied as the rest of the time. "I prohibited the union of anyone in the Coven, and you went behind my back—" The hand –he had received Enzo's hand and had so horribly realised that Corin and Enzo had been married– shook back and forth upon his own. Not that he was stupid enough to think the marriage wouldn't happen (or that it mattered, really), but there he had been thinking he could have some control over it.
"Might I remind you, Aro," Caius retaliated with a step forward, "that you are but one of three Masters." his crimson orbs focused entirely on the eldest Master's within enough of a comeback to make his brows raise when the other scoffed right in front of him. He had not lied when the man has asked him upon the knowledge of the situation.
Aro was even shaking his head. "And may I remind you, brother," the word truly bled with the venom the man had implied. "That if it weren't for me you wouldn't even be here? That I am the one true Master and there is absolutely no reason why I should have stopped myself from following my own judgement all this time? That—WHAT?!" He yelled in the direction of the nearest door, because he had been, in his opinion, about to place a speech that would make Caius and Marcus aware of who he truly was, when the knock that had attempted to interrupt him before only repeated enough to make him want to kill the one who hid behind it already. Perhaps he would have if he'd been alone.
The door to the place opened, and slowly, in came Felix. "It's Ana, Master Aro." He announced with a look behind him. "She's back, and... she says she's brought presents."
Aro nearly took a step to break Felix' little neck in half. "Can't it wait?" He wondered, motioning with a hand towards a still sitting Marcus and a frowning Caius nearly behind him. "I'm busy."
Felix, somewhat nervous, looked behind him and soon thereafter shook his head whilst looking in Aro's direction again. "She says not, sir." For anything other than their own conversation, the silence in the Volturi castle was truly eerie. It became even more so when, without a true word, Aro waved his hand and nodded along for Felix to open the door completely.
Within the silence, in came Ana, who so confidently held a good sized red box in her arms and stopped before the masters to bow shortly. "Anastasia." He greeted, formally as he usually did and studying the box in her hands. "What is so important that it couldn't wait, dear?" He wondered, lifting his gaze to look into her own blood red hues.
Hues that shone with the excitement within her smile as she lifted the box with a gentle nudge. "This sir," she paused, taking another step forward to offer the box in his direction. "I have brought you a present."
A breath of near annoyance befell from the master's nostrils, but a movement forward dictated his curiosity well enough to make Caius behind him scoff with enough annoyance to leave the room and abandon everything else. After all, he had mostly gotten his answer, hadn't he? Not that such was important, or anything within Aro's thoughts as he reached for the box's lid and moved the material aside within the means to reveal its contents. And such were exactly the contents that made Master Aro release a joy filled noise within a gasp of unneeded breath and a few claps of his hands. "Dear Anastasia, you have done it!" He called, laughing within a moment as he looked inside the box at the shocked looking faces of Sergi Agafitei and Lauren Mallory. Eyes staring blankly at the red walls of the box.
All Ana could do was nod. "The rest of their bodies are in the dungeons, sir." She confessed, offering the box and becoming absolutely proud and confident when the master actually reached for it excitedly.
Another wave of laughter, nearly maniac echoed around the room, and if his hands had been free he might even had clapped. "Finally something goes right." He stated in a note barely higher than a whisper, looking at the blank eyes of the two vampire heads within the box. "I must go to them at once." He stated, lifting his gaze away once again to look into Ana's own and a step to move him along the words he spoke. "Go tell Jane to meet me in the dungeons as soon as possible."
After everything going on in the coven, after the betrayals, the stabs in the back, the ungratefulness from some of the guard, finally, something seemed to go right in his eyes. Stefan's second in command and Vladimir's wife; how right it felt, to be able to make them talk, make them betray their loved ones, how sweeter success would taste when given by someone so close to the hopeful loser. How incredible; Aro could already imagine what he would do, what he would tempt them with, what he would force them onto. And, oh, they would speak, they would come to him with all the information he needed to erase the Romanian as an enemy once and for all, he would win, regardless of all his loses, he, Aro Cancellieri, would win as he always did, he—"Master Aro!" Came a voice somewhere upon the other side of the room; yet another one of the few doors that led to the throne room, as it opened swiftly onto a near crash against its wall. "Master Aro! Master Marcus!" The young guard said; one of the two who had fought in that party of Heidi's. Such calls that annoyed the previously celebrating Master enough to wonder why he hadn't killed them too. "One of our Romanian spies, he—he's nearly here, I came as soon as I could."
"What is it?" Marcus asked from his once entirely silent corner within the room, his tired expression shifting towards the vampire who had come in without much notice, curious but bored, enough to contrast Aro's expression of anger and curiosity alike.
The man allowed a pause within the moment, one that seemed too long to all vampires around regardless of if it was only but a second long. "The Romanian, sir." He stated, looking from Aro to Marcus and back again. "One of our Romanian spies came back and..." His head shook. "The Romanians are coming for war."
Within a short moment there was silence, the tension of fear within the lesser guards toward the master who held the red box; even Marcus himself frowned and allowed for a glance in his brother's direction. War; had he not already been through enough of those? Had he not already lost enough?
And suddenly Aro began to laugh.
The moment was so entirely strange, so completely uncalled for, but it remained within echoes that tensed around everyone but filled the room; his hands dared not let go of the box, but he laughed nonetheless. It was as if the boy had spoken the most amusing of tales, as if he hadn't truly just said that the war he had so very much waited as much as dreaded, was right around the corner. "Master Aro?" The boy dared speak, frowning and only daring to voice a wonder that everyone else had but written on their features. Had he lost it?
That question had been long answered.
"Master Aro, what do we do?" The boy prompted without a single change of note; concern, fear, the need to follow orders to save himself from that which he could consider death.
And yet Aro continued laughing. For a moment there was nothing else he could do; and with that same note of utter amusement, after what felt like an eternity to everyone, the man spoke again. "What can you do, dear boy?" He wondered, shaking his head and releasing a breath as if he dared need it. "You go and fight them before they get here of course."
The silence within the next pause was even more tense than before; specially within the stupidity of the question that so curiously befell the deliverer of news. "M...me, sir?"
Only until then did the smallest notes of anger dare echo in the Master's voice. "Yes, you! Are you deaf, boy? Go! Take Ana," He motioned with the box in the blonde's direction; a blonde that had not smiled since the moment he had started laughing. "Take Marius, take that new girl, Rose, hell, take half the guard with you! Stop them! Kill them all before they get here, go!"
No sooner had those words left his lips that the boy nodded and looked in Ana's direction; her eyes fell on Aro and the gift she had brought him, yet even so, with fear, she gulped and followed behind the other. "Someone else needs to bring Jane to me as soon as possible." The Master stated. How could he have done it? How had Aro been able to simply lay the order with no pain within his voice, with no note of hatred other than the hint of anger toward the boy that had gone? How could he have so easily spoken with amusement and not later thereafter turned away with his box and two heads toward the dungeons where the companions to his present resided? How could he be so completely satisfied with what had happened? Someone had just come in and announced the beginning of a true war, not even something as mindless as the one with the Cullens, but a real war; and he had gone to play with his gift as if there were dolls instead of bodies and he had been told of rain instead of war.
If not before, it had been exactly at that moment in which every single person, in the room or the castle entirely, realised the truth: Aro Cancellieri had truly and completely lost his mind.
To Be Continued.
