In an alley in the city of Rome, a man stood outside an old pawnshop, occasionally taking puffs from the cigarette in between stealing glances at the main street. It was a cool Spring evening, and it was reflected by the coats and jackets the pedestrians still outside wore over their clothes. The green polo shirt and cloth pants he wore, coupled with a receding hairline and hints of a belly stretching his clothes made for an exceedingly inconspicuous sight.  
 
Turning from the main path, another man walked into the alley. This one was younger, with a head of dark, wavy hair framing his handsome features. He walked with one hand in the pocket of an elegant, tan overcoat, and shirt visible underneath was speck-free and smooth as though recently ironed. His other hand held onto a suitcase that swayed at the rhythm of his spotless black shoes clacking against the road. The man would not have looked out of place in a commercial for men’s clothing, and the picturesque cobblestone streets did much to enhance that image.
 
Perhaps more attention grabbing than the man’s distinguished aura, was the radiant smile that he directed to the drab individual by the tired old pawnshop when he caught sight of him.
 
The older man matched his smile, flicking the cigarette away as he turned towards him, arms wide in welcome, and the two met in a tight hug.
 
“Alonso!” exclaimed the younger one. “It’s good to see you!”
 
“It’s good to see you too, Ricardo, it’s good to see you too.” The man laughed heartily and motioned towards the shop. “Come on, let us talk inside. You came all this way to see me after all.”
 
The two entered the pawnshop, the older man bidding the cool outside breeze goodbye as he led the younger one deeper inside, exchanging pleasantries all the while. ‘A nice day, is it not?’ ‘How was the trip?’ ‘Have you found a place to stay?’ and so on. The two deftly danced around the matter that had brought them together, as was expected of them.
 
Of course, Alonso knew the man had business of his own to take care of. Ricardo had met Alonso through his father many years ago, when the boy was still a teenager and Alonso had more hair to lay claim to. His father had been an affluent member of the Spanish nobility, with numerous business ventures that often brought him overseas.
 
Perhaps predictably, in that manner in which affluent people sometimes seemed drawn to particular, eclectic tastes, the man had taken a liking to certain esoteric articles and artefacts. Alonso assumed he held a collection of such objects in an estate somewhere.
 
He himself was a facilitator for the acquisition of such products. Or, perhaps more accurately, he was a middleman. Throughout their activities, the Sicilian Mafia sometimes came into the possession of specific art pieces or relics. These often made their way to auction houses, but occasionally, a buyer would be found before reaching those places. In turn, this meant someone was needed to perform the trade.
 
It was perhaps fortunate that the younger man had inherited his father’s tastes.
 
Alonso brought the pair to an isolated room deeper in, the only accommodation within being a small table with a pair of chairs.
 
Ricardo gave Alonso a warm smile as they took their respective seats. “How are the girls?” he asked, at the mention of which pride suffused Alonso’s expression.
 
“Marina—the eldest—was accepted into an interpreting university this year. She’s been studying in the US.”
 
“Congratulations. I’m happy for you. What about la niña?”
 
“Visiting her sister with her mother,” Alonso sighed. “They grow up so fast. By the time you realize they’ve left home and are doing their own thing. The little one wants to go into engineering, can you believe that? She’d be starting in just two years. You’re all leaving us in the dust!” At that, his smile lost some of its joy. “I heard about Marcelo. He was a good man. My heart goes out to you.”
 
 “It was a shock to all of us.” Ricardo’s features took on a mournful cast, but only for a moment. “That said, I did not come here to mourn. Perhaps we can move on to business?” The tap of a finger against leather brought Alonso’s eyes to the suitcase resting by Ricardo’s leg. He had come prepared, as expected, but this made the situation rather awkward, in fact. While knowing that the young man was well was a blessing in itself, it would have been easier to rebuff him otherwise. Alonso’s hesitance must have shown on his face, because Ricardo’s pleasant smile was marred by a puzzled frown. “Is something the matter?” he asked.
 
“I am afraid there is a slight problem,” began Alonso. “The article you wish to purchase has not yet arrived. I cannot entrust you with something I do not have in my possession.”
 
The man’s expression froze. “I beg your pardon?”
 
“Perhaps you would prefer waiting for some days while I take care of this issue? You are in the city of Rome, after all. Take it as a chance to enjoy all that the city has to offer.”
 
Ricardo brought a hand to his face, rubbing pensively on the stubble covering his chin. After a moment, he slowly placed it on the table. “While that does sound lovely,” he said. “I do not think you’re being quite honest with me, Alonso. After all, I’m told that the package reached you yesterday.”
 
It was Alonso’s turn to be taken aback. He was about to ask what he meant by that, but something in the man’s expression stopped him. Even though he was still smiling at him pleasantly, there was something in the cast of the man’s eyes that unnerved him. Where he would normally scoff at the thought of a young rich boy threatening him, the younger man’s posture suddenly reminded him of a shark that had tasted blood.
 
“I assure you,” he tried to appease him, “whoever told you that was wrong.”
 
He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but at that moment, Ricardo had a coin in his hand. It glided over his fingers as he deftly turned it over from one end to the other.
 
“Oh no, I have every reason to believe it. I know that you do not always sell your packages to the agreed buyer, Alonso. Sometimes you’ll find one who pays better and keep the difference. It’s a miracle to me how you’ve avoided drowning so far.” Even as he stared at the spinning coin, Alonso flinched at that. ‘Drowning’ was a euphemism among Mafiosi for making someone disappear. “However, I do not care so long as our own business is conducted in the proper faith. That was how you and my father conducted themselves, and hoped that that would be the case now with me.”
 
Alonso’s eyelids felt heavy as he listened to Ricardo’s voice. He found it difficult to focus on anything other than the man’s voice. That, and the coin spinning in his fingers. He had the vague feeling that something out of the ordinary was happening, but he could not place what it was. “Please, Ricardo.” He felt like his tongue was weighed down by lead. “You know I—I would never do that to you! I held Marcelo in the highest esteem.”
 
Ricardo let out a sigh. “Yes, well. I suppose I’ll know, won’t I?”
 
By then there was no escaping the fog obscuring the older man’s thoughts.
 

 
Ricardo stopped spinning the coin in his hand and held it up. Alonso stared at it vacantly, lips parted in a dumbstruck expression. Waving the hand made the older man turn his head to follow it. Only a stream of drool was missing from the image.
 
“So,” Ricardo began. “You were saying you’d never spurned the official buyer and found another one to pawn off your merchandise?”
 
When Alonso’s only reply was a vacant stare and an [i]actual[/i] thread of drool, Ricardo grunted and snapped his fingers.
 
“Wh-Uh?” The man jumped as if started. “No, no. I definitely have. Numerous times. God, how do you think I’m paying for my daughter’s education?”
 
“Did you pawn off the relic to somebody else?”
 
“Of course not,” he sniffed. “I actually liked your father. I wouldn’t do that to his boy. I simply never got it.”
 
Ricardo scowled. For a moment, he thought Alonso may have simply been lying while pretending to be under his influence, but that was not possible. Alonso was not a magus, and neither was he wearing anything that might serve as protection. He was sure of that. Which meant that the man believed he was speaking the truth.
 
Of course, belief only carried one so far. Ricardo decided to change tacks.
 
“Where were you yesterday at noon? That was when the package was supposedly delivered.”
 
“I was—” the man paused. “I was… what was it?”
 
Alarm bells rose in Ricardo’s mind as he saw Alonso’s struggling. Such a thing should not happen in the state in which he was in. As he was, he could have asked him about something that happened decades ago, and as long as it was not particularly traumatic or the man was not too young of age, he would have been able to answer. For him to be unable to speak of the past day only really left one possibility.
 
Ricardo snapped his fingers again, and the man slumped like a puppet with its strings cut. Rising over the table, the mage reached over and grabbed onto the man’s arm. In his mind, he heard the tinging noise of metal being struck, followed by the thin humming of a spinning coin and a familiar heat beginning to rise from the depths of his body.
 
He murmured a word and noise immediately struck him. He saw himself on the chair, smiling pleasantly at the person who was watching him, the image overlaid over the figure of the slumped Alonso. He felt the taste of the smoke in his mouth, and the vague heat of his surroundings in a body too large to be his own. Ricardo shook his head, filtering out the unnecessary senses until only the image was left. 
 
He walked back down the man’s memories, past their encounter outside the store, past the uneventful day at the counter that had preceded it, past night time. He began inspecting the memories of the previous day, receding into the proper time of day. Until he had skipped it. Ricardo felt a twinge of pain at the jarring change. He repeated the process to confirm his suspicions.
 
There was a sizeable gap of awareness around the time his package should have been delivered. It was as if rather than altering the memory, someone had pulled that time out and forgotten to leave a replacement. People forgot things all the time, but such a thing was not truly a complete removal of records. A cut at a person’s psyche such as he was seeing was a wound bound to leave scarring behind. Or, at the very least, unobscured tracks.
 
And tracks he did find. He would have wondered if this had been the work of an amateur were it not for the fact that Alonso still seemed hale after this treatment.
 
Slowly, he began piecing what he could together. Fragments of a shattered memory slowly came together until they formed a small, cohesive whole.
 
Ricardo dove into the fragment, eager for clues on the one who had taken his prize. He felt a shiver in his magic, as though it had stumbled over something.
 
“Step away from this.”
 
Ricardo gasped and pushed himself away, severing the connection and sending his chair clattering backwards. A gun had appeared in Alonso’s hand at some point, likely snatched from under the table. Ricardo gathered magical energy, preparing to deflect an assault, but it immediately became clear that had been the wrong course of action.
 
Rather than pointing it at him, Alonso placed the weapon against his temple.
 
Before Ricardo could do anything, thunder boomed inside the room. Blood splattered against the nearby wall. The weapon slipped from what had been the older man’s fingers as the corpse slumped off the seat.
 
Ricardo stared at the scene with wide eyes. Then, after a moment, he realized he was still holding his breath and let it out in a long, shaken sigh.
 
“Me cago en Dios…” he murmured, finally forcing himself to move. He did not approach the corpse beyond for a cursory inspection that yes, indeed, there was a bleeding hole on the side of its head. Losing him like this was a terrible waste. Not only due to the loss of a useful contact, but because the ones holding his reins may well seek reparations, and any organization with such history and spread would have mages under its employ. That, however, was not his foremost concern.
 
He had been too careless, he realized. He should have expected a trap the moment he sniffed another mage’s influence, but he had not stopped to think, and he had no clues on where his catalyst was supposed to be. It was a heavy blow before he had even gotten started, but at least he knew for a fact that what he had gone looking for was not the only item that could qualify as a catalyst within this store. He would have to make do with what he could find.
 
The message he had received while in the man’s memories was still a matter of concern. It could have been another magus involved with the war, but those were not the only ones who might target him at this time. It seemed that he was much sought after as of late, for some reason or another. Ruling out an ill-fated coincidence, the fact that whoever had taken his prize had known when and where to find it worried him as well. Perhaps he might have to have a talk with the servants.
 
He considered sending word home, but quickly dismissed the idea. For the time being, he needed to conclude his business before someone thought it a good idea to explore the noise.
 
 
 
By the time the man left the pawn store, he was carrying two suitcases. It had not even occurred to him that he could have been better off following the warning left behind in the dead man’s memory.
 
[hr]
The room was lit by candles.
 
Not because there was a blackout, or because electrical lighting was unavailable. It was simply that such a thing was not conducive to the specific atmosphere he sought. There was a certain gravitas required by the scene he wished to enact that was more cleanly conveyed by the flickering light of a dozen small fires that casted shadows into the room.
 
[i]Or perhaps it may be more accurate to say that I would rather not draw undue attention to the fact that I brought forth a Heroic Spirit in a dreary basement.[/i]
 
The spacious room, clearly used as storage for the family that occupied the house, was full to the brim with old furniture, abandoned toys and other odds and ends. Cleaning up, making space for his activities, and tossing cloth coverings over the piles of paraphernallia, had taken almost as much effort over the past days as laying down wards around the place. Now, the cloth-covered mounds created a barrier that shrouded the ends of the room in a heavy gloom, such that the fire illuminated only an open space with a circular glyph inscribed atop it in a silver-hued pigment.
 
Ricardo stood before it, a worn article of clothing held in one hand. He knelt, avoiding smudging the summoning circle as he went, and deposited the catalyst at its center.
 
He stepped back steadily, heart thumping rapidly in his chest as he examined the arrangement. The object at its center struck him as painfully out of place, but there was little to be done about that now. If he was going to entertain thoughts of retreat, he should have done that before he had pilfered it from a corpse.
 
The thought helped him stifle his nerves, but bubbling excitement was quick to take their place. If what he was doing succeeded, he would bear witness to the summoning of a Heroic Spirit. Ordinarily, a magus would never be capable of such a feat, never mind going as far as binding one to their will.
 
Though if what he had read before coming to Rome was accurate to the current circumstances, this ritual only [i]pretended[/i] to go quite that far on the surface.
 
He harbored a secret fear that he might be killed by the very individual who would be his one ally. Then again, if his end truly came so quickly, he could only chalk it up to a horrendous starting hand, and that was hardly his fault at all, was it?
 
Driving the thoughts away—he realized he was delaying—the man raised a hand, feeling the energy circulating within him and within this room.
 
“Plata y Hierro como esencia…”