Poor man! Couldn’t they have buried him when they abandon the asylum? I sighed in both relief and grief as I saw no sign of Angela in the room. That means that I still have to look for her in this horrid place. I was about to turn when a walked onto a small frame. The room echoed by mine and another's scream.
I looked up to see Angela's small frame staring back at me as we both caught our breath to still our hearts.
“What are you doing here, Valeria?" Angela asked while patting her chest to still her heart.
“Looking for you! Well, Vittoria wanted me to investigate this place as it seems that her lover has gone missing in this horrid place,” I exclaimed and forced my breath to return to normal.
“It might have been a place of unspeakable horror but there are plenty of drugs and materials for me to use,” Angela said while patting her bags which made a plunking sound as it was filled with glass bottles.
“And the bodies? Are they good material as well?” I asked sarcastically.
“Bodies?”
“Yes, like this one. I guess it was too much to ask for humanity to bury their dead before they abandon this place!” I exclaimed in disgust and pointed to the body on the operation table.
Angela peeked over my shoulder and suddenly turned pale as her eyes went wide.
“What?” I narrowed my eyes awaiting the ill news.
“That… The asylum was abandoned around 70-80 years ago. That body is to fresh. It could only have died around… a few days ago,” Angela muttered while closing in on the corpse as she inspected it. She suddenly looked deadly pale.
“Did you happen to know which clan Vittoria’s lover was?”
I felt my insides grow cold when I realized what she was insinuating. “He was a Monarch!”
“Then we will have grave news for Vittoria. This was a male Monarch. His wings have been cut off and his organs have been removed, “ Angela muttered as she carefully turned the corpse to get the better look at it.
“His face..” I whispered as I looked at the face willed with horror and pain.
“Indeed, he was most likely alive when he was…” Angela suddenly went silent as she stared at the corpse.
“More ill news?” I asked and Angela looked over at me.
“This was done by a professional. Could the culprit be working from the old asylum? It has all the tools for such… feats. “
“Are you trying to tell me that we are in the lair of a murderer who was not afraid of mutilating a Monarch, and we are not running for our lives?” I muttered as I watched my surroundings.
“I’m so sure that we should leave?” Angela answer as she left the room.
“Are you mad? I got you and new of Vittoria's lover. What more might we need?” I exclaimed.
“We Mages has a legend of this place. It was owned by one of us. A mad alchemist named Luigi Coda who was quite famous for experimenting and torturing humans and even Ascendants. It is said that he wanted to create a “cure” for our ailment but we in the Mage Clan is not as convinced as we never found his research and most of all, we never found him. He just vanished. We assumed that some relative of the victims had gotten to him but what if he never left. What if he still here?” Angela explained eagerly. A tad too eager to my liking.
“And how does that justify us staying? Why not take this information to your clan so they can investigate?” I asked disapprovingly.
“Because all we have is theories. That won’t convince the Mages to make a move. We need to find some proof!” Angela exclaimed and ran down the hall as I reluctantly followed. Last time I just wanted to investigate to make sure of something I ended up fighting a giant half human, half spider.
“Where are you going?” I asked as I followed her along the halls past several public rooms.
“The basement!” She yelled back as she ran along with a goal in mind. I halted in place and stared at her back.
“Dios Mio, that doesn’t really sound like a good idea,” I muttered as I slowly walked after her. Angela had stopped in front of an ominous dark entrance. The door had fallen off or had been ripped off and it leads down some stairs which seems to lead into a pit of obscurity.
“You do realize that I have no power in the dark,” I muttered as I had bad memories of basements. I haven’t entered one since Lucretzia locked me inside one a while ago. It may have occurred in bygone days but the memory was still raw.
“Don’t worry! I can create a light,” She pulled up her hand and her voice changed as she spoke her next words. “I conjure the Gift of Prometheus.”
Her voice seemed to echo against itself, almost like she spoke into a jar. A flame formed above her hand, flickering as the winds from the cracks hit it.
I hissed as my skin burned underneath the light of the flames which hit my face. Angela immediately dropped the flame in shock as she saw my reaction and the flame burned out before it hit the floor.
“What was that? Are the I Soli weak against fire? It sounds peculiar, I mean the sun…”
“The I Soli is not weak against fire. No more than any other of the clans at least,” I muttered and she seemed to get what I was insinuating as she exhaled as she forced her heart to calm down.
“I beg your pardon! I was rash. I should have consulted with you first,” she proclaimed with an apologetic look in her eyes.
“It’s fine, can you create light from something else than a flame?” I asked and she pondered upon my request.
“Perhaps…”
She once again raised her hand and looked upon it while uttered the words in that peculiar voice. “I conjure the essence of Ra to illuminate my path.”
Slowly a small orb of light formed above Angela's hand. It looked and most likely was a small miniature sun.
Angela grimaced as the miniature sun clearly hurt her and she turned to me and muttered. “I bestow you the Essence of Ra.”
I received the little ball of light as it healed my wound and bestowed me new vigor. I looked at the small ball in awe. She had created a sun.
“It won’t hold forever as I merely transformed my energy into a small ball of sunlight. When it burns out the light will go out,” Angela explain as she gathered her breath with a proud twinkle in her eyes.
“It will be enough for some exploration and hopefully for me to fight off any adversary we discover,” I proclaimed as I took the lead down the basement with far more valor than I had before.
The path down was filled with rubble and it was with great difficulties that we transmigrated down the stairs. The stone walls were damp, as the bygone rain had slithered through the cracks in the ceilings and dripped down all the way to the basement where it stays as no sunlight could dry it.
We came to a heavy metal door which was remarkably well preserved. Did… They have metal doors back in the day?
Angela and I shared a looked before I tried to pull the door open. It was heavy and Angela had to help me pull it open. We were met with obscurity and at first, we merely held our breaths as we didn’t want to make a sound. Then we heard it.
“Pusti me! Znaš li tko sam ja? Ubit ću te, kurac!”
A female voice spoke, or to be precise, shouted in a foreign language. It was none I ever heard before. We entered the room as we saw a beautiful, if unkept, woman with red eyes and most of all wrathful ones, staring at us.
“Jeste li see vratiti da me mučiti, kukavica?!”
”Apologies, Signora! We do not understand you,” I replied and noticed that the woman engulfed herself in silence while she inspected us. Her hair was natural blond and her eyes glowed in the same crimson light as a ruby.
“Friends or foe, Signoras?” The woman asked in an accent fairly similar to Leonide’s.
“We are not with… Whoever did this, at least!” I muttered as I came closer. I made sure to remove the light from the woman as she clearly was a member of Le Lune. To my surprise, she didn’t seem bothered by the light. It should not be so, the light which gives me strength should drain the woman of hers. Was she not a Le Lune?
“Red eyes! What clan are you?” Angela exclaimed while she tried to free the woman from her bonds.
“I am a member of the Order of the Dragon,” the woman replied and Angela frowned as she finally freed her.
“Never heard of that clan.”
“It’s a faction among Le Lune. The Moon Clan. The siblings of the Sun Clan. I told you about them,” I explained to Angela, who lit up in realization.
“Like signor Zahara!
“Precisely,” I replied in agreement and the woman frowned at us.
“Another of the Moon Clan. To my knowledge, Torino should not have members of my clan.”
“You two might be the only ones in Torino. Signor Zahara is working with my clan,” I explained and the woman’s eyes narrowed as she perused me before noticing my eyes.
“Vidim te, sestra! I had planned to search for the Sun Clan when I was captured right before entering Torino and taken here. Some madman said that he needed organs.”
“Well, you found us. Now, I must ask, why don’t you seem bothered by the light and why haven’t you broken out yet. This darkness should give you strength,” I asked as I looked around at the blood covered walls. I saw and blades on the tables along with jars of, what I could understand, intestines.
“He gave me something. A kind of drug. It removed my powers,” the woman explained as she removed herself from the table and brushed off her dirty clothes.
“Permanently?” Angela asked eagerly and both I and the woman glared at her.
“Pardon, it’s just… If the madman is Luigi Coda, he might have found a cure.”
“I do not know the man's name, only that he was a Mage. An Alchemist, to be precise,” the woman muttered with clear disgust and a hint of fear.
“I do hope that I am not “cured” as you so crassly put it!”
“I’m sorry, it wasn’t my intention-“
“You are still an Ascendant. I can smell it in your blood,” I proclaimed before this conversation escalated into an argument.
The woman turned to me with hope in her eyes. “Are you sure, Signora?”
“Positively, you smell delightful,” I said which earned me a laugh.
“I am fairly sure that I smell anything but delightful as I haven’t washed myself in quite a while. But where is my manners Dragica Karlovic and though I am delighted to meet you, I still suggest that we move out of this chamber of horrors before my captor decide to visit,” the woman introduced herself. I was about to do the same when Angela interrupted me.
“We cannot leave yet. We need to find Dr. Coda’s research. If he discovered a cure-“
“What is your obsession with the cure, Angela?” I asked suspiciously. She had volunteered to become a disciple of the Mage Clan. Why would she need it?
“Can you comprehend the magnitude of possibilities if we discover a cure?” Angela argued stubbornly and I huffed.
“We can turn Ascendants back into humans. What for?”
“I may have become a disciple voluntarily, but can you say the same? You were forced to drink blood and then you and your entire family were burned alive. Wouldn’t you want a chance to become hum-“
“No, I wouldn’t, and who should determine who would have the chance to be turned back into a human? The Monarchs? The Sovereignty? What would happen if the Anarchy or Cabal got the hands on such a weapon?” I asked with increasing rage. If the Monarchs found out that I was forced to turn and they had a cure… There was a risk of them forcing me to turn back against my will. I already lost everything once, I wasn’t about to lose everything again.
“Yes, envision such a weapon in the hands of the Anarchy!” a polite voice of a man said behind us. We turned to stare at a face none of us, except Dragica, could conceive as the face of a monster. A man in his thirties with gentle eyes and calming smile looked back at us. His white hair verified him as a member of the Mage Clan and he wore a doctor’s white robes.
This was Dr. Luigi Coda, the mad Mage whose tale haunts these halls.
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