"Latysso Lamperós!"
Cosima casted the spell again in her other hand. This time she was able to regulate the the energy so her hand didn't burn so quickly; however, she knew she couldn't hold the spell for more than a couple minutes before she damaged her hand.
Edoardo and Lorenzo were struggling to get up. The damage made by Massimo was enough to disorient them, so she took advantage of it to attack.
Cosima's lash struck the bookshelf behind her, the roof and the space over them, but missed the target. Using a whip wasn't as easy as she thought it would.
She used it once again, completely sure this time it would hit, but it was stopped by a dark cloak that covered both of the men in the ground.
Edoardo managed to cast a spell; lunares pallium; it was this what protected him. Usually, Edoardo wouldn't have any trouble dealing with a manasi, even less with an amateur; but he had three things against him.
The first one was a matter of nature: His magic was based on shadows and their uses, so his natural enemy was magic that brightened, with fire, light, and electricity as primary examples of that. The second one was a matter of his orders: He couldn't straight up murder Cosima, he had to defeat her without risking her life. And the third one was a matter of time: He had to capture Cosima before Eloisa arrived. Before he had a chance because he had the rest of the order behind him, but if he was to fight Eloisa right now, he would end like Beniamino.
Cosima attacked Vasil this time, which avoided the whip with a super human speed. They were at a five meter distance from each other and the firelight made Cosima able to see him with detail.
His hands had no fingers, but claws long as knives; his fangs protruded from his lips and his skin was white as salt. This was not a manasi, but a monster from tales.
His mere presence was enough for temperature to literally descend. Her whip faltered and her very soul trembled.
"Vampire."
Vasil grinned.
"You are the only one here who dares in pronouncing what I am."
It took an instant. In a blink, Vasil already crossed the distance separating them and grabbed Cosima by her burned arm and slammed her against the bookshelf, breaking the stone and Cosima's arm. The vampire still held her. The difference in height was at least two heads.
"SCINTILLA!"
A tiny spark was formed, but without the hand to direct it, the spark simply went down in an arc, falling on Vasil's stomach.
He yelled and instinctively jumped away letting Cosima fell. The vampire shook and trembled in the ground from the pain. Almost like a fish outside water.
Edoardo then made the cloak dissolve and revealed himself, with Lorenzo behind him pointing at her with three fingers and his thumb pointing at him.
"Maledizione de Trezhar."
Cosima's stomach started to ache and her legs failed here. Lorenzo sat down looking at the ceiling with the mouth open. Cosima threw up and Lorenzo grabbed himself.
The fire whip was in the ground, almost extinguished; Edoardo ran until Cosima was and kicked her in the face. Blood came out of her mouth and while she was still conscious, she was unable to keep fighting.
Massimo tried to grab Edoardo's leg from the ground just to get kicked too, knocking him. Edoardo raised his hand, pointing directly at Massimo's head. Without Cosima in the line of fire, he didn't have to worry about containing himself.
"Brucia finché non diventa cenere!"
Edoardo was hit by a little fire arrow; a spell cast from behind. Eloisa had arrived on time. His torso combusted but he quickly turned around, facing Eloisa. The flames went out, leaving him with second degree burns.
"I was hoping for that spell to obliterate you, did you ate a salamander? You simply don't look like the type of person who can resist that."
Eloisa asked arrogantly, hoping for him to think she wasn't taking him seriously as a psychological attack; however, as she asked, she looked around to recognize the situation.
It was a three against three; Massimo was already out of the battle and Cosima practically too, but for an unknown reason for Eloisa. Edoardo was wounded, but in the middle of the darkness that didn't matter, as he was surrounded by his element. Lorenzo was in the same state as Cosima and Vasil was already healing himself.
Years of experience made the analysis possible in just three seconds. Lorenzo had used a low level curse; Eloisa couldn't pinpoint exactly which one as there exist more than a thousand of them, but she could determine that was the type that works inflicting damage upon both the user and the target, multiplying the effect on the last one. It was nothing she hasn't seen before. At the same time, Vasil was a vampire. She couldn't see him good enough to exactly tell what type of vampire he was, but the fact they were in the middle of the night was enough to tell her that she shouldn't let his guard down around him. And Edoardo was the principal enemy to defeat here. In her mind, she already traced a battle plan by the time his response came.
"I came ready for the rematch. Your fire will not be enough."
Salamanders had similar properties to the frogs. The difference was that while toads gave a general resistance to magic, salamanders gave a powerful but restricted resistance to fire. Now if he ate a normal one, then he would only had a good protection, but if he ate a true fire salamander, he would have been completely immune for the rest of his life. The fact that he was already affected by Eloisa's fire gave her the answer. She will win.
She raised her left hand, pointing what she determined was the weakest, Lorenzo. Vasil attacked her then, moving faster than when he attacked Cosima and Edoardo cast an spell.
"Noctem duodecim lunae!"
The shape of Edoardo was no more, he had become a shadow just like the ones surrounding the library. Lorenzo had noticed that he was in danger and stood up, cancelling the curse and now preparing a stronger one to subjugate Eloisa.
Eloisa could see it all. The vampire's claws dangerously reaching her abdomen, the curse being almost shot and the shadow moving at supersonic speed traveling through the darkness. But that was what she planned for. The spell Edoardo cast was the same he used when they met in the catacomb, Eloisa had a hunch he was going to use it again, he had some sort of pride the first time he used it, like if that was the spell he had honed the most, so she was going to take advantage of that; a cursed made at that speed couldn't be lethal and a vampire who attacked at melee was probably at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Being attacked by three different enemies from three different directions, anyone would have gave up in this circumstances, but this was the situation Eloisa had aimed for.
"Mentre il sole copre il giorno, lascia che il fuoco sia la mia armatura."
A fire formed over her head and quickly extended over her body, covering all her skin with an armor of flames the exact same moment Vasil's claws pierced her abdomen. With superhuman speed, she grabbed his arm with both her hands, incinerating it with her palms. The curse dissolved instantly when it touched her. Edoardo had to step back; the brightness emitted by the fire illuminated almost the whole room, weakening him.
Vasil cut his arm from the shoulder in a panic using the claws in his other hand. Lorenzo was making another curse. Eloisa grinned, what could he be thinking he could be able to do? The greatest curses take months if not years to be made, what could he do in a matter of seconds that she couldn't surpass but in an instant?
Eloisa pointed at him with her index. Vasil jumped in direction to Massimo and Cosima, who was trying to stand up and grab the whip.
The floor surrounding them was covered with their blood; thing that Vasil needed to heal himself. Apparently, the powers of the night weren't enough for him to heal a mutilation, but blood was.
This was a development of events that Eloisa had wanted to avoid at all costs, his students wouldn't last a second against the vampire in the conditions they were in; but he had turned his back on her, she just needed to change the target of her spell from Lorenzo to Vasil and the danger would be gone.
It was less than a second of doubt, but that was enough for Edoardo.
"Mane ubi es, sine meliori, sine progressu, mane, sine declinatione, sine cedente, mane ubi es!"
The conjure was too fast. From the remaining shadows on the ceiling and the floor, multiple hands manifested from those, grabbing Eloisa's arms and legs, ignoring the heat from her armor. They were made of pure darkness, completely different from the shadows he usually wrapped into. A form without form.
I knew you were good from the first time I saw you.
More hands appeared, now they had completely covered her until the neck. Eloisa understood that Edoardo had the same type of thinking that her. He didn't use noctem duodecim lunae as his best card against Eloisa, but to force her to use the fire armor. She could see him tracing a line at the height of her neck. When she used the fire armor, he didn't step back to protect himself, but to aim. In less than a second, he had turned the tables on her.
Why did he needed to make her use the fire armor? Eloisa noticed that all the hands came from the shadows present in the library, so she guessed that he needed to know that the light from the fire armor didn't eliminate all the shadows from the room.
But you aren't good enough!
"LA MIA MANO COME UNA TORCIA!!!"
She managed to say before the hands covered her mouth. A bigger flame enveloped her left hand; the heat from her armor didn't increase, but the light emitted now illuminated every section of the library.
Edoardo found himself disarmed. Without shadows his magic had absolutely no worth, the only alternative for him now was fleeing.
He started the spell. It was the same that he used to escape from the catacomb and from Elettra. While he pronounced the words, he could see Eloisa tracing something similar to a fire-weapon in the air while she did a spell of her own. A musket wrapped in fire appeared in her hands. He simply didn't have the time to end his spell.
A million of memories replayed on his mind; the first six years at the orphanage before being adopted; his four attempts at escaping the abusive household in which he was trapped and the favorite moment of them all, his first meeting with Domenico.
He remembered the smell of the rain falling, the cold night of Torino and how miserable he felt, hidding below a balcony. Then the warm and gentle touch of hand over his head.
Domenico was there, dressed in a suit like he always did and was carrying a umbrella, inviting him to get under it.
Edoardo couldn't believe it at first. His parents had gave him away because they feared him; the children of the orphanage had hit him when he tried to get close to them and his adoptive parents treated him worse than a street dog. All because he could move and bend shadows at will. But that man was offering him his hand.
Edoardo didn't take it, the man was offering help because he didn't knew about his ability; the moment he learned about it the exact same cycle of rejection would start again.
"The power you have, it's a gift. If you come with me, I will teach you everything about it to you."
Edoardo never discovered how Domenico got to know about him, nor did he ask. The next years he learned that he wasn't an aberration in the world, but a member of a select group of people called manasi. However he didn't care too much about that, what he wanted was to dedicate his life to serve Domenico as a his way to demonstrate gratitude.
I swore to defeat every enemy that you could had Grande Maestro; to surpass every obstacle, to never defraud you.
He thought as he saw a fireball being shot directly between his eyes.
But this was too much for me, I lament not being what you wanted me to be. Uh, I was so close.
Edoardo was killed on impact, his body was pushed back until it hit a wall as a result and his remains burned to the ashes.
But Eloisa didn't allow herself to lose a second and turned again to were Cosima was. She was struggling against Vasil. With her whip in her burned hand he was striking in his direction to maintain him away while he looked for an opening. Both of them were too tired and wounded to move as good as they would have wanted.
Aiming with her musket, Eloisa carefully pointed at Vasil legs. She didn't want to risk failing a shot to the torso or the head and hitting Cosima instead.
She shot. A fireball the size of a bullet travelled on a straight line until touching Vasil calf, moment it ignited into flames, the fire quickly spreading through the rest of his legs.
Vasil fell to the ground, but he wasn't dead yet: he was preparing to launch a final desperate attack on Cosima in an attempt to cut her neck and drank her blood, but Cosima had the perfect opportunity to kill him right then, the only thing she had to do was to strike him once more with the whip.
"Kill him Cosima! Kill him!"
Eloisa pressed Cosima seeing that she wasn't attacking. Cosima looked at her scared and then at Vasil, she could kill him, she had to kill him; she just needed to move her arm, but she didn't, she hesitated to end a life, even if it was from an enemy. Vasil took the chance and jumped at her neck, even wrapped in a fire, still had his instincts intact and wouldn't miss.
Eloisa risked it all and shot at Cosima, anticipating where would Vasil be in half a ten of a second. She got it right and the fire bullet hit his arm at the height of the elbow going through it and hitting Cosima under the stomach. She got burned instead.
Eloisa ran over to Cosima while aiming to Lorenzo, who was the only one who remained.
"I SURR–!"
Eloisa shot Lorenzo, killing him on the spot; then reached Cosima and finished off Vasil with a shot in the neck.
"Spegnere."
The fire on Cosima extinguished, but she still got a second grade burn on her torso.
"I–."
"WHAT WAS THAT COSIMA!!!"
Eloisa snapped at Cosima, grabbing her by the neck of her shirt.
"You said you were prepared. I see you were not."
"Eloisa I got ner–."
Eloisa put her index in Cosima's lips, making her shut.
"I did told you that no one is really prepared to kill and this was my fault for leaving you alone, but understand. When I command you to do something, you have to obey me. Are we clear?"
"Y-yes."
"Fine."
Eloisa let Cosima go and remained silent for a couple seconds.
"That was a good latysso lamperós. It lacks control and elegance, but it was good after all."
"Do you really think that?"
"Yes, I do. Now stay still, I'm going to treat your and Massimo's wounds. After that, we are going to continue the plan."