Surrounded by trees, the road ended in a bifurcation that led to two houses. They were following the Via Varchera, as it was the closest to the castle. Massimo parked on the street. The trio got down and started walking. There was a stone path which was covered by grass and moss, without signs of it being used in decades; however, according to Eloisa, it took directly to the castle.
The trees surrounding them blocked the moonlight, difficulting the walking, as they had to stop every now and then from stumbling.
"Back then, the road was used daily and cleaned weekly. It pains me to show it like this to you. My fian-, I mean, my late fiance, called it the path of fire, because it leads to a castle of fire manasies, clever isn't it?"
Eloisa broke the silence to tell an anecdote, Massimo nodded in answer to the question, followed by Cosima, who was thinking that telling anecdotes was a way for Eloisa to release the feelings occasionated by the state of her home.
After, some minutes they were able to see the now ruined top of the castle. Eloisa stopped, she made a painful expression, but the darkness made it impossible for her allies to see it.
"Scin—"
"Do not."
Cosima was stopped by Eloisa. She followed her order without even thinking, almost automatically. Just a second after she was glancing at her looking for an explanation.
"Some of the defenses of the castle may be active, using magic could activate it, specially because you lack the Cobossi's blood."
"Do I have to worry about something or...?"
Massimo looked uneasy, Eloisa smiled funnily.
"I first need to teach you a spell before your magic could trigger the alarm, don't you think? Either way don't wander around."
"Are we going to keep walking in the darkness? There's nothing we can't do?"
Doubted Cosima with the intention of getting Eloisa to do some magic.
"We are... close enough... yes... Look at me, both of you! Take attention to this, a medium low level spell, the third I learned in fact."
Massimo and Cosima were standing next to each other, completely focused on Eloisa, who put her hands in a position where they were resembling the wings of a bird.
"Torcicollo de cenere."
Ashes started to fall down from the back of her hands; first they were tiny and few just to quickly grow in quantity and size. A grey figure with a reddish blow formed from the ashes in the ground. A sharp trill announced the existence of the new creature; a bird.
It was a wryneck made from ashes. It's eyes were literal flames and the inside of it's beak was similar to a furnace. Cosima was fascinated.
The bird flew over Cosima's head and sat in her hair.
"Did it go to her because the elemental affinity?"
Massimo questioned Eloisa with curiosity, feeling like he just understood something.
"Ermmm, eurghmm, maybe? I don't know."
Eloisa replied looking ashamed, everyday she was getting concious about how bad she was as a teacher.
"I'm going to use this spell to see if the defenses are still up."
Eloisa pointed at the castle and the bird inmediatly obeyed leaving Cosima's head. It flew to the castle and returned in few minutes without nothing happening to it.
"It seems like they stopped working, don't let your guard down. Just step where I step."
The trio went forward carefully. Eloisa kept refusing using light as a precaution.
The grass was singed and some trees had their crust burned; with the night upon them, they weren't able to tell when did this happen, but Eloisa guessed it was recently so they doubled their caution.
They reached a forest glade in approximately twelve minutes. The castle was there. The walls that once stood proud were now in ruins; remains of the bombs from the war occurred eighty years ago could been seen between the debris. Probably anyone had come since the bombing.
Eloisa stood there and dedicated it a glance.
"Are you okay?"
Cosima asked her standing at her right side. Massimo stood quiet, thinking that the best thing to do was to don't inquire on her feelings.
"Yes, let's keep going."
She muttered quickly and started walking over the debris to get inside the structure; the gate should have been at thirty meters from where they were, but rocks had blocked the entrance and the only way inside was through a hole in the wall.
Cosima climbed with difficulty and found her inside.
"Cosima, use the luce scintillante spell. Is the exact same procedure as in the scintilla spell, with the difference you are not going to cut your mana connexion at the end."
Eloisa asked Cosima to do an spell suddenly; it was the first time she actually taught her something.
"My what? What is a mana connexion?"
Massimo couldn't hold his laughter. But he did try to do it.
"Silence Massimo, as if you could do any better. Now Cosima, when you do scintilla, is like you blink, and now, for luce scintillante, you are going to sleep, do you understand me?"
"Kinda."
Cosima raised her left hand and pointed directly forward with her index. All of her being focused on that one point. A slight pain sprung out on the back of her head. Whenever she did magic she had this slight pain, that ended when she did the spell, maybe was this what Eloisa was talking about? But why did it hurt? It didn't look like Eloisa felt any pain at all when she used magic, so why did she? Was she doing something wrong?
Her mouth started to open, the words that Eloisa told her were about to be pronounced but for Cosima, this moment was extended to the infinity as she investigated the cause of her pain.
Was it really on the back of her head? Eloisa said something about the soul, was the soul located in the back of the head? She focused on it but there was nothing in there, now the pain was on the back of her hip. She went there and the pain moved to her right knee. She repeated the process tens of times and every single one the pain moved to a different location. Then it hit her.
The soul had no physical form. It was impossible to feel pain from it. But the soul does exist and the pain she was feeling was a phantom pain similar to the one an amputee feels. A memory of her childhood came to her, in it, she was trying to do a handstand but her shoulders hurt. It was because those were a muscle that weren't used to be used in that way.
The pain she was feeling was her soul being used in a way it wasn't used to. If she had to compare it with something, it was like a baby breathing for the first time. They cry because it's painful at first, so the reason she felt pain when she did magic was because she was a baby in the use of her soul. Now knowing the reason, the eternal moment ended and the words were said.
"Luce scintillante."
A spark appeared in her fingers, but instead of being shot like in the scintilla spell, it just moved around Cosima's body in the same way the Moon orbits the Earth.
"Like a firefly."
Massimo commented, his eyes cemented on the light.
"Good first attempt, could have been better."
Eloisa rated her and Cosima instinctively turn around to the direction she was talking from, then she saw that Eloisa had also made the spell and had a spark orbiting her, with the difference that if Cosima's spark was a moon, Eloisa's was Jupiter.
"I wonder what could I do."
Massimo said to himself full of expectation.
The light of both sparks filled the room, making them able to see the place they were at.
The floor was made of brick stones and a ruined carpet covered some of them. The material was something Cosima had never seen and the color may have been green or blue, but decades of dust and dirt made it unindentifiable.
"Ah this was the third dinning room. I didn't like it, it needed a window."
Eloisa said looking at a broken round stone table.
"Why is everything made of stone?"
Massimo inquired after giving a look at the surroundings.
"As fire manasies, we want to avoid a dumb scintilla to burn down the whole castle. The carpet is nonflammable."
"Why is my mansion made of wood then?"
Cosima interrupted Eloisa's answer with a well based question.
"It actually surprised me to see that you were a fire manasi, the Farfali's weren't elemental manasies in my time. Do you want to hear about your family?"
Cosima looked confused by this declaration, but she still wanted to know so she nodded her head for Eloisa to continue. Massimo noticed that Eloisa was doing everything humanely possible to not talk about the castle so he stopped touching the subject.
At the same time, three figures were lurking in the tallest place of the castle that was still standing. Edoardo, Lorenzo and a third person, Vasile, who was the pilot of the helicopter.
They had arrived with hours of advance to the town of Folcata and walked the rest of the way to Campagna with the intention of ambushing them on the castle.
The room was round and was only accesible through a spiral staircase. The roof had an opening from which you could see the stars; a telescope once stood there, but not anymore, it had died along it's masters, the Cobossi. This observatory was their pride as it was one of the first ones to be owned by a manasi house in Europe.
"Tomorrow is going to be a full moon."
Vasile commented looking through the opening, his face illuminated by moonlight showed his eyes. Edoardo felt an air of Adalberto in his eyes, but the remarkable hunger was repleaced by a cold dead glance. The skin was also pale, but, different from the pale of Adalberto, this was like if wood had been bleached repeatedly.
"Why just don't we go and kill them, they are quite distracted right now, Cosima can easily be kidnapped after Eloisa is gone."
Lorenzo objected against the current passivity. Edoardo thought this wasn't like his methodic and perfectionist usual self; however, after seeing what Elettra did, he couldn't blame anyone for changing.
"Don't rush things Lorenzo, Eloisa is almost if not as strong as Elettra, however, right now she is probably not focused because the emotions of this place overwhelm her. They are distracted as you said, but I think we should let them think they are safe, so when they inevitably ended separing, we can secure Cosima, kill Massimo and if circumstances are fortunate kill Eloisa too."
Edoardo explained his position giving arguments in favor of his posture, Lorenzo had no way of refuting things. He had to accept.
"It really doesn't matter if they are grouped like sheeps or scattered like birds, but it's not time yet to attack, patience please, the night is still too young. At midnight we strike."
Edoardo thought he was too arrogant for his own good, but because he agreed in keep waiting, he didn't said nothing about it.
Eloisa had began walking to speed up time. She said that going to the castle's library was necessary because of the equipment in there, and while walking, she could tell Cosima wathever she wanted to know.
The library was at the other side of the castle so Eloisa usually could find a quick way to it, however, she didn't count with two things: the first one was that in the century the castle was still habited after her incorporation to the ritual, her family changed the dispositions and purposes of some rooms, making it hard for Eloisa to navigate; the second one, many stairs, halls, hallways and doors had been damaged, destroyed or obstructed, forcing her to find detours.
"When I was your age, I met one of your ancestors in a party, his name was... Antonio... Or Alejandro. It started with A and ended with O, I'm sure of it. It breaks my heart to tell you that I don't remember anything else about him; I was drunk at that point and we didn't coincide again in the future."
"You said that my family weren't fire manasies back then. What were they?"
"They weren't elemental manasies, they focused on alchemy and rituals, in fact, they were searchers of inmortality. Probably they married with some fire manasi and their blood overwrote yours."
Cosima stopped dead on her tracks. Her family was looking for immortality too? If her father was friends with Domenico then it's more than possible that he was involved with the ritual too, that would mean that she wasn't a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, but someone who always had a relation to all of this.
"Don't you mean genes?"
Cosima suddenly was taken from her head to the real world. She felt like she was awaken by an alarm after sleeping for just two hours.
"What are you talking about?"
Cosima asked quickly, he wasn't following the conversation.
"Genes, Eloisa don't know about them."
Massimo answered with a resume thinking that Cosima wasn't paying attention.
"When I came to Firenze, I brought a basic magic book and some things to do potions. There wasn't anything about fire or pyromancy just alchemy and things I don't understand. It's possible I'm the only fire manasi of my family."
Eloisa looked at her confused, what Cosima said wasn't impossible, but it was so rare it might well be.
"You could be mistaken."
Cosima denied with her head.
"The mansion is flammable and without the exception of the book I mentioned, there was nothing about pyromancy. If the rest of the family was still alive today, I probably would be an anomaly."
"Don't be like that Cosima, I'm sure your family would have still loved you. It's not like a family of musicians would hate their lawyer cousin."
Massimo intervened interrumpting Cosima, there was no point in thinking about what dead people that they didn't knew would have do in a hypothetical situation.
They reached a room after going up some stairs that had a window that had a view to a garden. Somehow it was intact from the bombing, however nature had reclaimed most of it.
Massimo noticed that Eloisa violently turned her head around the window after noticing what it was. The moonlight was bright enough Massimo could discover the source of discomfort for Eloisa.
"It's a cemetery."
He muttered to himself.
"Well, if your family were soldiers for fifty generations and you decided to be a singer, the probable thing is that they reject you. That's Cosima's situation."
Eloisa defended Cosima's posture, without mentioning nothing about the cemetery; she didn't seem to notice Massimo's realization and Cosima looked oblivious about the whole thing.
"I'm just saying, even if ninety-nine families do that, maybe Cosima's is the exceptional loving family who wouldn't."
"Manasi families usually don't work like that and the Farfali are a noble House. She would have gotten expelled and disinherited."
Cosima looked very discouraged about the whole affair. But Massimo still had an argument, a winning hand that had no refusal. A little fact that Cosima told him was remembered by his superhuman mind.
"Cosima wasn't born an orphan, her father still took care of her; maybe not everyone would have accepted her, but some would."
"Oh, that's true!"
Cosima affirmed with an expression halfway between a smile and a shocked face with the mouth opened.
They went down another set of stairs and found themselves in a very big room, full with books. The castle's library was more than a hundred meters large and fourty long. The books were in perfect condition even after all this time, Cosima really couldn't understand how.
"Welcome to the Cobossi's library. My family proud collection of books is the only one in the world where all the paper is stone based and not wood based. Back then it was the fourth biggest in Italy."
"It's bigger than the one in my house! Did you read all of these?"
Cosima doubted amazed. It would take her months to read them one by one.
"It's like a children's book, straight out from a fantasy, truly beautiful."
Massimo was unable to do anything but to praise the collection. The bookshelves were all filled to the maximum and they reached the four meters of height. There were at least a hundred thousand books in here.
"More important than books, if my family didn't move it to another part of the castle, there should be a device able to tell if you have an elemental affinity and which one is it if there is. I'm going to search for it."