"Where do you think you are going, old man!?"
"To search for our enemies, you idiot child!"
Two figures were walking down the streets on Novoli; the first one was dressed in a flamboyant purple uniform, while the other was in a simple gray one, carrying a couple of water bottles.
"I'm telling you, this is exposing ourselves to an ambush without reason!"
"I can't believe what I am hearing; my own blood worried over an ambush; the youth these days..."
"Please, don't start."
"When I was your age, I was ambushed seven times in the same day, and I survived all of them! Without a scratch!"
"Yes, yes, whatever you say."
They were walking since the voice spoke to them. At the beginning, they agreed to go around the streets near their territory in Rifredi. But now, the first of the two wanted to go deeper into Novoli, something that, in the eyes of the second one, was deeply dangerous.
The first man was in his early seventies; the hair, once a mix between black and deep blue, had gone gray; the body, once agile and strong, had weakened and thinned. But there was still strength in his steps, and there was still life in his green eyes.
The second man was in his mid-twenties; his hair was short and healthy, with the same hue as the other; his body hadn't been trained to be stronger but to be faster. Looking at both of them next to each other, the old man must have looked like the young man when they were the same age.
"Let's stop for a moment."
Said the first, sitting down on the street. At his right hand there were some buildings, and at his left a park by the name of Giardino di Vaclav Havel.
"Did you got tired old man?"
"I would never get tired before you! When I was your age—"
"I don't want to hear it!"
"This youth of today... I'm bored of walking; I want to fight someone!"
"I would agree; if we were on our territory, as far as we know, there could be traps everywhere!"
"Trifles!"
He suddenly stood up and raised his arm, pointing at the moon.
"Chiamata ad esseri oltre il naturale."
A blue light slowly ascended to the sky before bursting like a firework.
"Was that a flare?"
"Yes, now our enemies will come at us."
"You fucking idiot!"
"Respect your elders, kid. Is this what the Dal Schiavon House has degenerated into?"
"Aaaah, shut up."
Some cars were parked on both sides of the street where they were, but no pedestrians were walking except for both manasies. The silence was covering everything but their conversation. Even if it was three in the morning, there should be at least the sound of an animal, but there was absolutely nothing.
"This is unnatural. Prepare yourself"
The old man ordered the young, suddenly becoming serious. It was in moments like this that their discussions ended and a mutual sense of respect arose.
The young one gave the old man a bottle of water and kept the other to himself.
"They put us inside of a veil! Its creator must be close."
"Don't separate from me. If the enemy has honor, he will approach us and ask for a duel, thing I will grant; if he attacks us by surprise then we must execute him for the hypothetical transgression."
Turquoise fog rose from the ground. Soon, it covered their surroundings in all directions, making them unable to see beyond it.
The sound of metal armor called their attention. Someone was coming, but the direction was uncertain. Was the enemy near or far? Was he behind them, in front of them, or at their side? They couldn't tell; the sound was coming from all of these places, but the moment you focused on one, it moved.
"My name is Anzolo Dal Schiavon, from the highly recognized Dal Schiavon House. I formally challenge you to a duel, dear enemy!"
The old man revealed his name and his noble origin; if the enemy is a noble too, he wouldn't be able to refuse the duel without bringing shame to his House.
"I am Lunardo Dal Schiavon; reveal your name or die by my hand."
The young one did too. Lunardo, the anchor, and Anzolo, the summoned, were related. There were twenty-four generations between them, but they were still related nonetheless.
The fog started to dissipate. From the park, a tall figure emerged. Covered in armor, his legs were mangled, a stain of blood could be seen on his stomach, and the head was carried on his left hand.
"A ghost."
Both of the Dal Schiavon said it at the same time. Their enemy was not a manasi, but a dead man.
"Acqua fon—!"
"Tetemeko la ardhi!"
Anzolo is interrupted by a sudden earthquake resulted from a spell casted by a female voice. The building behind him collapsed, and the ground at their feet opened, making both of the Dal Schiavon jump in opposite directions, effectively separating them. A water pipeline broke and started spilling water like a fountain.
"YOU COWARD! REVEAL YOURSELF AND DUEL ME!"
"I don't care about your traditions, old man."
The voice came from a nearby place, but Anzolo couldn't determine it exactly. Lunardo was focused on the ghost.
I can't see where she is. But that is not a problem. The modern world is convenient.
Anzolo thought quickly seeing the pipeline.
"Modellare l'acqua fino a quando non sarà schiacciata!"
The spilled water started floating in the air, forming a sphere over Anzolo's head. Then the sphere began to spin at a great speed while becoming smaller. The water was compressing itself as a consequence of Anzolo's spell.
Water in its liquid state normally can't be compressed in a way that's noticeable unless in special circumstances, like changes in pressure in water pipelines; however, Anzolo's spell was able to compress a sphere of two meters in diameter into a tiny one of sixty centimeters. This was a more dense body of water with the same mass and added force because of the spin. At the moment of release, this projectile would be the equivalent of being shot by a tank. The spell was an invention of Anzolo, who never revealed it to anyone, not even his own family.
"In the building!"
Betting it all on a hunch, Anzolo shot the last floor of the building next to the one that collapsed.
"Milima hulinda kutoka kwa uovu!"
His water bullet went through it like if it was paper, and part of the structure went down. A spell was cast, but Anzolo was unable to tell what it had done.
A female figure graciously fell in front of him. Anzolo could see some of her features under the moonlight; she was small, between 1.50 and 1.60 meters; her skin was like ebony; and her clothes were dark. But the thing that he put the most emphasis on was that her left arm was in an unnatural position.
The experience made Alonzo able to understand what had happened until now. The ghost had approached them, probably with hostile intentions. The woman was a manasi who got attracted either by the flare or by the ghost, and realizing she had the advantage of surprise, she attacked from the building. Her first mistake was that she didn't know her enemies were both manasies with water affinities and could use the environment in their favor, so when Anzolo shot with his spell, she quickly answered with another to protect herself and committed her second mistake; either she underestimated the water or was unable to guard herself fast enough to avoid damage and now had lost the element of surprise and was wounded.
"Aquamancy."
She said it with a quiet rage. Her expression displeased.
"Yes, and I have the pleasure of fighting an earth manasi, am I right?"
Anzolo answered, grinning. He had an elemental advantage over her.
The woman didn't answer and mumbled something. Four walls of stone surged from the ground, reaching five meters vertically, and a fifth one covered the space in the middle, successfully trapping Anzolo in a kind of box.
"Servimi il tuo, il miglior coltello della creazione!"
Anzolo pointed with four fingers at the wall in front of him, and pressurized water came out of its tips. In the industries, pressurized water is used to cut objects because it is able to cut through even titanium. In a few seconds, Anzolo was free.
"Vengeance... Vengeance..."
The ghost muttered while he advanced towards Lunardo. At one point, a sword appeared on his free hand. He was unable to help Anzolo; the gap in the ground prevented him from going to where he was, and he had the feeling that the ghost wasn't a normal one. So he raised both his hands and crisscrossed his fingers.
"Acqua, eterna Signora, lava questo spirito torturato e donagli la pace!"
Two water hands started materializing between him and the ghost. The exact moment their form was completed, they launched themselves into the ghost. Usually this meant the destruction of the ectoplasm that the ghost body was made of, but this ghost, with two movements of his sword, was able to cut through the hands, destroying the spell.
"Ahh, you are one of those poor souls that refuse to die until your desire is fulfilled, aren't you? A priest here would be so necessary."
"Veeengeance..."
In all this time, the ghost hadn't stopped walking. Lunardo stepped back.
"You are a high-level ghost, tortured soul; I will put you to rest!"
Lunardo ran to the building at his back, and the ghost suddenly followed him at a faster speed.
"PROIETTILE ACQUATICO!!!"
Pointing directly to the torso, the bottle burst, and the water went over Lunardo's arm before being shot at the speed of sound. Ghosts are vulnerable to magic, and there was no way that this one could walk unscathed from that.
But he did. There was a hole in the place where the breastbone should be, and the ghostly armor was broken too, but he kept walking. Lunardo ran again to maintain the distance between them.
Lunardo's and Anzolo's elemental affinity was water, which is an advantage and a disadvantage in itself because in almost every place on earth you can find water in a gaseous state. The problem is that to use water from the air, you need to spend more manpower to transform it into liquid. That's why most water manasies carry water wherever they go. Had Lunardo been Eloisa or Elettra, he could just accept this extra expense of mana and keep casting spells, but he was born with a low level.
Because of this, Lunardo was obviously in a precarious position, but was he unable to fight? No, Lunardo did what the human has done since the beginning of the species: if my strength is not enough, I will use my intelligence.
It is said that crises foster creativity, and for Lunardo, this was true; his weakness had made him search for alternative methods to reach his objectives.
I can't physically win against this ghost. But there's always another way to defeat them. I simply have to discover his name before he reaches me.
Lunardo and the ghost were now on the fifth floor. He could still hear the ruckus that his ancestor and the woman were doing in the street.
Standing in front of a window at the end of an aisle, Lunardo calculated there were fifteen meters between him and the ghost, who was at the other end.
"Veeeenngeaaaaanceeee!"
Lunardo was betting on a spell created by himself to break the floor between them and give him the chance to think about what the ghost's name could be. But a sharp pain in his stomach made him unable to He was stabbed somehow. Lunardo had a moment of brilliance.
"Vengeance against who?"
He asked, ignoring his pain.
"COSIMO DI MEDICI!!!"
An invisible force pushed Lunardo through the window, falling from a height of fourteen meters over his feet and breaking his legs.
The ghost jumped through the window too, falling where he was, and proceeded to grab him by the head and drag him to the park. But Lunardo didn't panic; he just used his brain to its maximum capacity.
This ghost is using magic based on conditions; the condition was me standing in front of the window; all the other times I was running near the windows but never actually standing. Before that, I got stabbed. This ghost has hate against Cosimo di Medici, and the condition he used is probably how he got murdered. He is carrying his head in his hand, so he probably was decapitated after falling. He is also very powerful; this could be for two reasons: he is either related to me or to this place. I can disregard the first possibility and focus on the second. A man assassinated by getting stabbed, pushed through a window, dragged on the ground, and finally decapitated; a hate towards Cosimo di Medici, probably his murderer and related to Firenze. Only a name comes to mind.
The ghost raised his sword. Only a couple of seconds more before Lunardo's death.
"Baldaccio d'Anghari! You are Baldaccio d'Anghari! Fade into the night, Baldaccio d'Anghari, as I am not the one you hate; may your rage someday recede and you achieve rest and peace!"
The ghost stopped his blade and slowly disappeared as dust in the wind. Lunardo thought he saw a look of sadness on the ghost's face before it faded. He probably would wander until he killed Cosimo di Medici, but that man had already died, so he was eternally condemned.
"L'acqua è la fonte di tutta la vita, purificami, come pulisci ogni cosa."
Using the mana he had left, Lunardo started healing itself.
"MBU WENGI KAMA VUMBI HULA KILA KITU!!!"
"LO STRATO BAGNATO COPRE INDISCRIMINATAMENTE TUTTO!!!"
Hundreds of beings, created from the dust and debris of destroyed streets and buildings, raised up, similar to mosquitoes; they were like a cloud, and all of them flied toward Anzolo, but a cloak of water appeared in the air, covering the dust mosquitoes and drowning them.
I don't have many mana left. I lost.
The woman thought to herself, worried about the state of things.
"Ee dunia, mwonyeshe mwanadamu kuwa wewe hautawaliwi, haribu majengo yake dhaifu hadi misingi yake."
A stronger version of the spell that started the fight was cast. The area in a radius of twenty meters around the woman was struck by an earthquake of 8 on the Richter scale; the street was cut like if bread was broken in half; the trees in the park fell off; the buildings were destroyed; and a cloud of dust was raised.
A minute passed before the dust set in. The woman was nowhere to be seen. It took Anzolo a couple of minutes to find Lunardo laying far away in the park.
"And the manasi?"
"She fled; I told you that in my days I was the greatest duelist in all of Venice; tens of people challenged me every day, but most surrendered immediately."
"Yeah, you are half good."
"Let's get out of here before the florentians arrive; I'm pretty sure that last spell killed a lot of people."
Anzolo cast another spell to accelerate Lunardo's healing. Afterwards, they fled, covered by the night, to Rifredi.
Watching through binoculars, a man was standing on top of a tree in Villa la Nave, a place two hundred meters from where the fight happened. He had been the one who put the veil up in the first place.
"So they defeated Baldaccio d'Anghari. It was hard to bend that ghost's will, but even if he lost, now I understand their capacities. They will not survive the next one."
He jumped to the ground and left. An ambulance passed by while he walked, and he couldn't stop himself from laughing a bit.