Chapter 24 - 24 Slaughter and mercy

Now surrounded by vampires, I look around and every vampire takes a few steps back out of fear, until they get their bearings and Aro quickly shouts out to Jane. "Jane, what are you doing? Use your ability, NOW!"

"But I.. I, I have been using it. Since he threw the spear."

Quickly coming to a realization Aro looks at me in fear. "You faked it? You pretended to be hurt by Jane, why?"

"Look around you, Aro. You've brought them all here. You practically gift wrapped them for me. This was never your trap. It was mine. And now, because of your arrogance and pride, the Volturi will cease to exist."

"No... NO! What are you fools standing around for?! KILL HIM!"

Unfortunately for Aro almost half of his Volturi buddies try to escape. 'Haha, as if I'd let them.'

I quickly use my Aura to create a construct of a dome, surrounding all the Volturi and myself, essentially turning this into a cage match.

"What is this?! What did you do?!"

"You can not escape this barrier, Aro. The only chance you have is to kill me, and soon you'll realize why the ancient vampires had no choice but to imprison me, despite wanting me dead."

Realizing they have no choice but to try, some of the vampires start surrounding me. Focusing all my senses, I create a mental, 3D, real-time map of my surroundings. While I focus on the map, everything around me seemingly slows to a halt.

176 vampires in the dome, only half of them showing clear signs of hostility. The vampires around me, inching closer every second, trying to find the best moment to strike. I wait carefully until the first fool leaps towards his death. With a casual swipe of my claws I decapitate him without even looking at him. Meanwhile some of the vampires behind me take the opportunity while I'm distracted with the first fool.

"What? Are you done already? Then I suppose... It's my turn!" As I say that, I cover my claws in my aura and turn them into 40cm short swords. I take a proper battle stance and pounce on my first unlucky victim.

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"Mom! Are you seeing this?! It's like he's dancing through them and with every step or move he makes, another one falls!"

Looking at her daughter while she's staring at Fenris' display of brutality, Bella can only sigh and hope she doesn't become a battle maniac.

"It's like that song, mom. And another one gone, and another one gone. Another one bites the dust. Hey Jacob? Can you do that too?"

"No, not even close. Look at him, I didn't even know some of those moves were possible. It's insane. Pop-pop is really going all-out here."

Then Alice chimes in, "No, not even close. Look carefully. He's not moving much faster than they are and I'm pretty sure he's holding back his strength as well. I think he's... practicing."

They all look at her like she must've lost her marbles or something, until they remember how he'd saved Irina. He was so fast they couldn't even see him. THEY couldn't see him, they were all vampires and werewolves, they were supposed to be pretty fast themselves. Instead the only one who could even catch the slightest glimpse of him was Edward.

Coming to the realization that Alice may be right they all focus back on the transparent blue dome and watch the fight come to it's conclusion with 46 vampires left standing.

After 4 minutes, the only vampires who are left are the ones who weren't hostile from the beginning, I suppose they must be Aro's witnesses. Vampires from other covens who didn't really have a connection to the Volturi other than them being forced to either do as they say or suffer the consequences.

Oh and then there's Aro, Marcus and Caius of course. I saved them for last.

I slowly walk towards the three leaders of the Volturi and surprisingly they're not that afraid, Marcus seems to have made peace with his end, Aro is just seething with anger and Caius is trying to protect a woman behind him. 'Hmm, must be his wife.'

"Marcus, you seem to have come to terms with the fact that today is your last day on earth."

"I suppose I have. I knew that Aro's plan lacked imagination." At these words Aro looks at him with indignation. "If Jane's gift was all it took to defeat you, you wouldn't have been nearly as much of a threat to the ancients as the stories made you out to be. I'm somewhat glad you didn't disappoint. Dying at your hands would be as good a death as I could hope for."

"A last request?"

"If you could answer a question I've been wanting to ask since the moment I laid eyes on you, I'd be grateful."

"Go ahead, ask."

"How powerful are you, truly?"

Pondering that question myself for a couple seconds, I truthfully answer him. "I don't know. I've never been pushed to my limits, nor have I ever pushed myself. Sorry I couldn't give you a proper answer."

"That's alright, if you could then make my death quick and painless instead, I'd appreciate it. But do as you please."

"That request I can fulfill." The next moment I'm already standing behind him while his head slowly slips off his body due to a clean cut.

Retracting my claws back, I turn around to face the last 2 leaders of the Volturi.

"Caius.." But before I could finish my sentence, he interrupts me.

"Please spare my wife. You can do anything you want with me, I don't care, but please let her live."

I just stare at both of them for a good 20 seconds, which must've been the longest 20 seconds of their lives. I then focus my attention to Aro who seems to have calmed down slightly, in the sense that his hatred is no longer displayed quite so blatantly.

I simply walk up to him without any resistance from him whatsoever, probably due to even him being able to realize the futility of resisting.

I then grab his arm, elongate my fangs and devour all Aro's memories. Through doing so, I learn a lot about art and music, though unfortunately he didn't have much to offer in the science department, despite his appreciation of it. At the same time I'm also thoroughly disgusted by the bloodbaths the Volturi have enjoyed over the many centuries of their rule, although surprisingly Caius and his wife didn't participate in them. They drank for sustenance, but they did not revel in it like Aro did. Even Marcus contained himself compared to him.

After going through his memories I see that Caius and his wife are not entirely beyond redemption.

The next moment I hear my stomach rumbling and I feel a burp coming up. *BUUURRRP*

"Uhum, pardon me."

After settling down my stomach, I notice something... odd, to say the least. I don't feel more powerful or anything like that, but I do have the strangest feeling that I can now do something I couldn't do before.

'Hmm, could it be..'

In order to test my theory, I walk up to Caius and grab his hand and try to focus. The next moment, it's like I'm seeing a highlight reel of the most impactful moments in Caius' life. And now I'm convinced that overall, he and his wife aren't all that bad. He's still kind of a d!ck, but I'm not gonna kill him for that.

I summon some paper from my storage space and an empty bowl, next I fill the bowl with my own blood. I then elongate one of my claws and use it as a pen. I write a basic contract stating that henceforth Caius and his wife will never again take an innocent life, be it from a human, werewolf or vampire. They can only hunt animals for sustenance and should they ever drain or otherwise kill a human, vampire or werewolf that was innocent, they'll crumble to dust immediately. Further in the contract I narrow down exactly what constitutes innocent and allow them some leeway when it comes to protecting themselves and eachother. I try to narrow down the possibility of a loophole to a b.a.r.e minimum, although I'm pretty sure there's probably one in there somewhere. Guess I'll just have to take a small leap of faith on that one.

Looking over the contract a couple times more just to verify no mistakes have been made, I nod in satisfaction. Next I draw all the proper ancient greek runes on the bottom of the paper, fueled by the magic in my blood, the runes light up for a moment and dissipate.

Having finished the magically binding contract, I give it to Caius.

"Read it. If you agree with the terms and conditions, sign it."

"How? We don't have blood."

"Any liquid infused with any kind of magic, originating from your body will do just fine."

Caius then looks at me in disgust.. "You want me to... on the paper, and sign my name with it??"

"What? No! You f.u.c.k.i.n.g pervert. Your venom will do. And you both need to sign. It's a magic contract so if you ever break it, well the consequences are mentioned in the contract."

After some pondering and discussing between the two, they both signed and handed the paper back to me.

I quickly draw one more rune on the paper and a copy of the contract appears." The copy is yours, while the original will remain with me. The contract is binding until I die. Any further questions? No? Then I wish you both a good day and get the hell off this continent. Oh and I'll be raiding the Volturi vaults at my earliest convenience so don't even think about taking anything. You can take your personal assets, nothing more."

With that dealt with, I focus on the remaining 42 vampires.

From Aro's memories I know that they were just roped along under threat of severe punishment.

"I've killed some of your friends and coven mates today. I understand how you would feel a certain way about that, but I would strongly suggest you don't act on those feelings. You've already witnessed how futile that would be.

For you lot, I'll make the same contract I made for Caius. From now on you'll all be following a strict Bambi diet. No more human blood, EVER!"

After everyone signed the contracts and got a copy, I opened the dome and suddenly time stops. Alice who was running towards me is completely frozen like a statue and everyone else is too.