"What do you mean you can only make the Scintilla spell!?"
"Scintilla"
A single spark falls from Cosima's index.
"That wasn't even a good scintilla spell. We are going to get killed, Cosima; they are going to roast us, eat us, and spit on us. All because you only know how to make a scintilla, a children's spell, I'm going to kill your master; who is he?"
"I don't have one; I learned on my own."
"Ahhh, that is good; it means that you aren't hopeless. We have the same elemental affinity; I will be your master then."
"What is that of the elemental affinity? Domenico said the same thing."
"Who is this Domenico, a familiar of yours?"
"It's the man who kidnapped me; he said something about the ritual being an experiment, and... WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE ELOISA!"
Cosima suddenly got up, surprising Eloisa.
"Where are you going? What's happening!?"
"I know who the next manasi they are going to use for the ritual is!"
Quickly, they got out of the house just to discover they didn't exactly know where they were.
It took them half an hour to discover they were in Bellosguardo. The good thing was that it wasn't as far as they thought it could be.
Both of them reached the residence in under thirty minutes; have they had been familiar with the city, they could have arrived faster.
A few meters from the residence, Cosima was stopped by the administrator.
"Hey Cosima! Massimo was worried about you because you didn't come last night. I told him he was imagining things, but maybe you want to tell that to him."
"Ah, it's just that I was... with my cousin and..."
Cosima was trying to think of an excuse that wouldn't make her seem suspicious.
"Hello."
Added Eloisa, raising her hand awkwardly.
"She wanted to help me move some things."
"Ah well, I think that Massimo isn't home, so maybe you wouldn't have problems moving things around."
Somehow, Adriana was convinced and didn't ask any further questions.
"Try to get along when you see him!"
"Don't worry, I will!"
Walking under the sun, Cosima noticed how Eloisa looked. Her skin was similar to her's but was a bit darker and had a birth mark that looked like four diagonal lines next to each other in her neck; she was also ten centimeters taller and way more muscular; her hair was a deep fuchsia that looked natural on her and reached her waist; and her eyes were black as coal. When she walked, she did it with such elegance that she really gave the impression of nobility. Eloisa Cobossi truly was someone who stood out.
When they entered the house, Cosima found the note that Massimo had left on the table.
"You live together with a man, but you two have never met before?"
Eloisa said this after reading the note.
"Modern times are strange. Also, why do you live in a place so... normal?"
"I-it's temporal!"
"Do you think this Massimo was already kidnapped?"
"I can't tell; apparently he is only here to sleep, so he may as well be fishing on a river."
"Even if he were, I don't think he is in immediate danger. Do you remember what the voice said? All sacrifices need to be summoned."
Cosima looked at Eloisa, confused.
"What voice? What are you talking about?"
"Ah, yes, you were unconscious. We are the number twelve of fourteen."
"And after that, what happens?"
"I can't confirm this, but I think some kind of fighting is going to happen. We should prepare for that."
"How? What do you want to do?"
"This place, this house, shall serve as our unassailable castle."
Eloisa sat on the sofa in front of the TV.
"Even if your magic isn't nearly as good as mine, you still have the knowledge of the current day that I lack."
Cosima remained standing.
"Domenico said something that makes me wonder."
"Talk me more about this Domenico; what type of person is he?"
"I don't really know; he worked and was a friend to my father, but after he died, I didn't see him until yesterday; almost thirteen years have passed between. But what I do know is that he wasn't expecting me to be here tonight, so I probably wasn't part of the plan."
"If we assume that is true, then it means that he isn't going for planned people, but for mages with enough mana to whistand the summoning... What type of manasi is Massimo? Elemental like us?"
"I haven't seen him; didn't I tell you already!?"
"Why do you stress so much? I just forgot, damn."
Annoyed, she started to answer, but stopped herself. Taking a deep breath, she realized just how strange things had gotten. She hadn't expected to meet a friend of her father's when she set out on her journey. Let alone that she would be betrayed by him and get caught up in a ludicrous scheme like this. But what dismayed her the most was the thought of someone else suffering like that because of her. Had she taken magic more seriously all this years, maybe and just maybe she could have defended herself. Even if it was a little possibility, it was that maybe what was driving her crazy.
"Ah... I'm sorry. It's just that Massimo might suffer in that awful ritual. I can't help but think we could have prevented this if we came sooner."
"Why do you think so? If you weren't here yesterday, he would have been kidnapped, wouldn't he? So, logically thinking, your presence doesn't change the fact that he was already in danger. Don't blame yourself; blame your persecuters and burn them to ashes."
"B-but I-"
"Let me tell you a story. When I was your age, there were some bastards stealing dogs to sell their meat, saying that it was pork. Back then, I was living in a personal residence in Sicily that was close to Nicobazzena town. And then those bastards from Nicobazzena stole my dog. You know what happened?"
"What happened?"
"Have you ever heard about Nicobazzena town?"
"No."
"Now you know why you never heard about it. It's gone."
"And that is what I should do with my enemies."
"Yes, but don't burn down the entire city; that could cause you financial problems."
Cosima was dumbfounded. Were all mages this insane? How could you reduce burning a city to it would hurt your wallet?
"How many piastras do you approximately have?"
"What is a piastra?"
"Ah yes, we are in Toscana; erhmm, how many fiorinos do you have?"
"Ah, you mean money? We use euros now; I have a hundred thirty seven million and six thousand euros."
"How much is that? I can't even fathom!"
"It's like, hmmm, like, I don't know how to explain you."
"Can you raise an army with that?"
"Probably, but it's like... AH, I KNOW!"
"Oh, really, how much is it?"
"A kilogram of gold is 62.320 euros; that means I have..."
Eloisa saw how Cosima started doing multiplication on a piece of paper.
"Oh, you know mathematics; you are very smart!"
"Ah, nowadays almost everyone can read, write, and do arithmetic."
"So education's more accessible; this could be a problem."
"A problem? Why could more educated people be a problem?"
Cosima didn't stop making the multiplication as she asked.
"Because if education got more accessible to normal people, then it got even more accessible to manasies. So what a manasi in my time could spend years learning, discovering, and experimenting; a manasi of today could just make the same thing faster."
"So you are saying that a manasi of today is more powerful than a manasi of the past."
"Not necessarily; most mages discovered something and didn't reveal it to anyone, effectively converting it into a familiar secret. You probably have a lot, and you simply don't know it."
"Tell me more about that."
"Imagine there are two families of mages that specialize in water. Now, these two families are enemies, but because they both specialize in water, they can't do too much damage to each other."
"Because they would know how to counter each other's magic."
"Exactly, but then one mage of the first family discovers how to attack using the water in your body. If he reveals this, then the other family would know how to counter this too, but if he doesn't, then it becomes an advantage."
"And after killing the other family, they still hide their discovery."
"Yes, you see, magic is the opposite of science. I don't know if it's still like that today, but back then, when a scientist discovered something, the first thing they did was write a paper and send it to an association to get their discovery validated and do more science. On the other hand, a mage would discover something and could either tell some magic guild or association he was allied with or only his descendants. This gives them an advantage, and it guarantees that someone in future generations can sell the knowledge if he gets into economic problems. Or, they could keep it to themselves until the grave."
"So the books and things I have in my house are worth lots of money too?"
"They are probably priceless."
Six minutes later, Cosima had ended the multiplication.
"How much money do you have, then?"
"If I spent all my money right now, I could buy two thousand two hundred seven kilograms of gold. In other words, I could buy one percent of all the gold extracted in history."
Eloisa said that the collection of books in Cosima's mansion was priceless, but for Cosima, the only priceless thing in the world was Eloisa's face right now. It looked like she was going to die right there out of impression.
"With such a quantity of money, we could buy anything we need to survive."
She said, after processing that her anchor was a gold mine.
"But the banks could take months to move so much money; that's probably a mountain; we can't use it."
"In the current world, we don't need to have money at hand; we have things like debit and credit cards that make us able to do transfers and lots of other things."
"Eh?"
"I-i will explain it to you later. Right now, let's define our roles."
"Ah, that's easy; I do the magic while you bring the logistics. It's the same thing I did during the war."
"The war? Which war?"
"Against the French Empire, at the end of the eighteenth century, did you hear about them?"
"You mean the Napoleonic wars!? You fought in them?"
"Yes, all manasies of Europe did; the Church got involved too."
"On which side were you?"
"I fought for my kingdom, the Regno di Sicilia, against Napoleon."
"Amazing!"
"Back then, I was the most powerful fire manasi in Europe, but then I got myself involved in this ritual and appeared here."
"Oh yes, I wanted to talk to you about that. What happened two hundred years ago?"
"I will tell you, but before, find us something to eat, I could devour a whole cow right now."
Cosima went to the fridge to search for the pizzas. Massimo said he ate two slices, so it should remain enough to satisfy the two women's hunger while they waited for another food delivery.
"Massimo you fucking liar, you ate a whole pizza."
There are two types of human souls in this world: the normal ones and the ones who can interact with the supernatural. Mages are part of the second group, and they, as all members of the second group, have a slightly different body than a normal person. This difference means the existence of mana, an element required for the realization of magic, and the body has to consume more energy in order to have this mana. In other words, mages need more food than usual.
Cosima cut the pizza vertically and put both halves inside the microwave, then went to her room to grab her phone and returned the moment the timer went off, and finally she served the food.
"This is only an appetizer. I already bought three more; they should arrive in ten minutes."
"When did you buy them? You only went to the kitchen and your room!"
"There are things called cellphones, but I will teach you about them later."
"Modern world is so convenient. I will spare the places I like during my conquest of Italy."
Cosima ignored that comment.
"I just realized you are very lucky; this house has exactly three rooms, and only one is free, so you can take that one. But if the administrator assigns that room to someone else, you will have to be in mine."
"Why, why would someone take my room? I will burn the hair of whoever steals my room."
"Because you aren't here legally, don't press me; it's hard to explain; just do so, so things run smoothly."
"Well then, you wanted to know about the ritual, right?"
"Please, everything you know."
"One day I heard rumors about a wizard called Aleix Codorníu. He traveled across the world and was making a ritual in Firenze. Obviously, I just didn't care, until manasi from Asia and Africa started coming."
"Then this ritual was a serious thing."
"That was what I thought; traveling such a distance for a ritual isn't something mages usually do, especially for a rumor, so this had to be a real thing. I went to this city and found that a group of masked men like the ones from yesterday were searching for people with an astonishingly high level of mana."
"And we are one of those."
"Exactly, but as far as I know, they only found two people and me. Soon after, I discovered that this was a ritual for eternal life, but everything was too shady, so I tried to step back."
"Too shady? If it's a ritual for eternal life, then I assume it's full of weird things and cannibalism and human sacrifices and cursed objects."
"Actually, eternal life isn't hard to achieve."
"IT ISN'T!!!???"
"Just convince a vampire to turn you into one, or necromance yourself, or make a pact with a true magic being. These are all forms of imperfect immortality. True immortality like the one they say the ritual is for it's impossible to obtain, and even if it wasn't, it wouldn't be obtained through a ritual like this."
"So you couldn't leave the ritual; what happened?"
"Aleix tried to kill me, but he failed, and I followed him to a building where we had our final confrontation. Then I discovered that I was lured into a trap; the moment I stepped inside, I was caught by a magic circle similar to the one where they used you to summon me."
"He tried to kill you, couldn't, and then forced you to partake in the ritual."
"Exactly. My theory is that the ritual has two parts. One where they needed fourteen manasi two hundred years ago and the second one in the present day, where they need fourteen manasi to bring back the ones from the first part."
"And after that?"
"They called us sacrifices; probably they are going to try and kill us."
"But we aren't going to let them do that."
"Exactly, Cosima, I swear to you, I'm going to make us survive this and incinerate those that made me lose my life."
The delivery knocked on the door. Cosima went to grab the food and continued eating and speaking with Eloisa.
"You said that this Massimo guy lived here, so if we go to his room, I could easily tell what type of manasi he is."
"It's that important?"
"Your element is fire; mine is too, so probably, I'm not sure, they need someone with the same characteristics to use as an anchor."
"I don't think so; they kidnapped me just because I was there and Domenico recognized me; if it wasn't for that, they would have used him for summoning you."
"Maybe his element is fire too."
"That would just be too convenient for your theory, don't you think?"
"What do you think then, uh?"
"I can't say; I'm not educated on this."
"But you agree that, if we searched his room, we could determine what type of manasi he is."
"Couldn't there be traps in there?"
"You are talking with the greatest fire manasi of her time. No trap can catch me."
"You just told me the story of how you were led to a trap!"
"Silence."
Eloisa and Cosima went up the stairs and opened Massimo's door, expecting anything to happen. But nothing did.
Massimo's room was exactly the opposite of what they would have imagined. It was plain and dull.
"This is Massimo's room, isn't it?"
Eloisa asked while she looked around, feeling bewildered.
The room had a bed with blue sheets, a desk with a cheap laptop, one chair, one book, and a closet with a few clothes.
"Are these all his things? There's nothing that says that he is a manasi; it doesn't even look like he lives here!"
The exclamation from Eloisa made Cosima remember the words of the administrator.
"She said that he only sleeps here, so he probably has another place where he actually lives!"
"And that place would be his own magic den, like your mansion or my castle."
"We only need to find it; maybe he is hidden there and not kidnapped!"