"Wake up," a cold voice boomed in the silence. Alcina jerked awake, her hands instantly grasping for her head, fingers burrowing into her damp hair. Her body felt heavy and lucid as her skull pounded and stung. A feeble groan was all she could mutter through chattering teeth. She couldn't move her right foot, something seemed to be weighing it down, or perhaps it was broken.
The ground was freezing and covered in a sheen of moisture. A shallow dripping sound echoed in her ears from somewhere nearby. She slowly opened her eyes but recoiled in agony as the sudden light blinded her. She gasped curling herself into a pained mass as she shut her eyes tighter than she had before. Everything hurt, as if she had taken the worst beating of her life.
"Wake up," the voice barked again. Alcina resisted the instinct to tremble, though her muscles stubbornly quaked under her tender skin. She scrambled away from the voice, feeling around with her hands until she had backed herself away into a corner. A harsh metal noise scraped and followed her feet. She was in chains.
"I… I'm dreaming again…" her voice scratched. The raw sound of her own throat disturbed her.
The stranger scoffed, "No. I am afraid you are not…"
"This must be a dream," she sniffed with a chill, trying again to open her eyes. Slowly, very slowly, she rolled her eyelids back. At first a blur of light stabbed through the enclosing darkness, changing the world around her into shapes and forms that grew ever clearer. The stone cubicle around her was some kind of prison, much like the cell in Venice. The walls were dark and dripping while the floor was coated with sloshes of rotting hay and melting slushes of snow.
Her eyes squinted heavily to the far corner, searching for the voice. Her vision still somewhat blurred, she could make out two dirty boots protruding from the shadows on the opposite end of the chamber. The only visible attachments were two gloved hands and the beginnings of forearms resting on top of the stranger's knees; their face hidden from the few beams of light entering through crumbling portals of broken bricks in the wall.
"Do you know how you got here?" the voice rumbled humorlessly. The sound was muffled somehow, almost fluid. Alcina felt a faint tickle in her ears, involuntarily making her body shudder. Bringing her fingers to both sides of her head, her body jumped again as her stomach tied itself into knots. On her finger tips were fine drops of warm, murky, blood dripping elegantly from her ears.
Her first instinct was to panic as her senses hit her like a flood. Where was she? How did she come to be here? Who was this stranger interrogating her? Was she going insane? My God… Ezio. Where was Ezio!? Her heart felt as though it might leap from her throat. "I have no memory of this… of anything…"
"You look startled," the voice pressed, almost sounding amused as he read her weakened expression. "Allow me to stir you memory… you suffered a rather harsh blow to your skull. My apologies…"
"You? Who are you?" Be calm, she scolded herself. Don't let him control you and your emotions.
"No," the voice said shortly. "Let us start with you." The stranger slowly cracked every knuckle underneath his black gloves in a painfully casual manor. "Why did you come back?"
Alcina was speechless as she deliberated her options. Should she demand to know what had happened to Ezio? What if he had escaped and mentioning would only endanger him further? She was just so lost… what had happened to bring her to this place?
Stalling was her best idea. "I have no memory… of anything…" she muttered, clearing her throat with a wince.
The boots in the corner said nothing. The distant dripping was like an ominous ticking clock, counting the silent seconds between them. After a long while, the boots stretched out across the floor as the left foot crossed over the right and the hands disappeared into the darkness. "I have plenty of time to wait as you try to remember."
They both stalled in the cold chamber as Alcina tucked her knees beneath her chin, the shackle on her ankle grinding again at her side. The silence was all but infuriating for her as the bite of her awoken panic began to ebb. Relax, try to remember… she coaxed herself.
She sighed loudly, burying her face into her knees, letting the warmth from her lungs warm her body. Then she began to rewind her thoughts, retracing every step she could.
Ezio… my angel… She formed his sculpted face in her mind, his dark eyes and warm skin, the teasing smile she melted over. She remembered the rush of his embrace, of their last embrace. Where had it been? The tunnel?
She remembered the chain of events that had led them there. Ezio's friend being captured, the look of fear and determination on his starving face. She remembered entering the darkness, and clinging to Ezio's side as he guided her through the maze that only his eyes could see.
She concentrated hard on that last solid memory. She could feel the cold emptiness of the tunnel, surrounding her deeper into the empty mouth of the dark. Her lips trembled to a straight line as she shut her eyes tighter, replaying the past in her now sparking mind.
The memories began to fall into place, still dark and hazy. "What is that sound?" she remembered muttering to Ezio, feeling the heat of his shoulder against her cheek.
"Do you not recognize it?" he mused. She strained to hear the vibrating echo from the tunnel. It was a faint humming, rolling through the dark in a harmonizing drone.
"They are hymns amore. We are beneath the Bascilica de Santa Croce." The sound of heavenly scriptures began to fill her ears, bounding through the tunnel in an intertwined chorus. The voices whispered, then erupted into a crescendo of elegant repeating melodies, growing and growing with each step they took.
She smiled to herself, embracing the enthralling masterpiece that resonated into the tunnels as if it were a gift to their ears alone. But the joy was sharply short lived. Just as quickly as the songs had enraptured her, they transformed into a terrible choir of wailing and groaning. Screaming to her in foreign words, telling her to go, to get out. She clenched her teeth and buried her face into Ezio's shoulder. She immediately recognized the voices, as they were the same ones that refused to stay within her reoccurring nightmares.
"Please, get us out of here…" she breathed into his shoulder, gripping tightly to the fabric of his cape. The rest of their travel was a concentrated blur, as her every thought now focused on not crying out in fear.
"We made it," Ezio reassured her. He had led them to a narrow ladder that they both used to climb to the surface. With ease he slid back a stone palette covering the exit allowing light to pierce into the cave in a heavenly blaze.
She then remembered his hand reaching for hers, pulling her into the streets of Florence. She took one last anxious breath before rising up from the earth, leaving the darkness and the voices behind her.
She exhaled a cloud of steam and shut her eyes tightly. It was as if she had transported from the prison cell to that very memory. She could see it, her city, sprawled around her in a frozen, empty, sallow graveyard. This was no longer her Florence.
Faint snowflakes fell into the open air, looking more like ashes than pure crystals. She was reminded of the burned village, full of death and plaque everywhere she looked. The fear of a rampant plague in Florence again left her guts in knots.
"That noise… do you hear it?" Alcina turned an ear to an empty alleyway, littered with empty baskets and crates left alone in the icy street. The noise stirred in the distance like the soft drone of a crowd. But where were the people? They kept quiet and cautious as they followed the sound. Every window had been barred and every door shut as the streets and markets were abandoned.
A tiny giggle sent a chill up her spine as she glimpsed the shape of a small child fleeing down a narrow alley. She gasped aloud, ducking after what she saw. She could hear Ezio call after her but she was already gone, having darted between two lone buildings. She sprinted blindly past every corner, her stride never being quite fast enough as the soft cherub laughter riddled from up ahead.
The cold began to burn her lungs, until at last she slid to a stop, nearly colliding right into the child. Eyes wide and chest heaving, she stood face to face with a small boy who smiled sweetly at her with large, frozen, eyes. What happened then Alcina would never be able to explain. She watched with terror as the child vanished into the snowy air like a ghost, leaving behind a faint wisp of breath on the breeze. Alcina spun in every direction, but she was now alone, alone with her madness.
Her lungs panted with shock, her heart now thundering in her ears. What had just happened? An abrupt jerk at her wrist made her jump as Ezio's hand held her in a cautious grasp. "You can NOT run away from me now. We need to stay together. We do not know what is waiting for us carina…" his voice trailed off into the air, leaving only a blast of warmth onto her face.
His eyes raised from hers, looking even more cautious than they had before. He listened carefully to the soft sound of the distant crowd which was now raised to that of a dull roar. "We are outside the square," he muttered with difficulty.
He had been right; just around the corner was the main square from their past. As a child, she had always known the piazza to be used for events such as foreign markets, festivals, public announcements, but the most popular… executions.
Alcina could feel Ezio's grip on her wrist melt as his face fought off the crashing flood of emotion. "This is…" he stopped himself and cleared his throat. He didn't need to finish, she knew what he had tried to say. This was the place where his family had been murdered right in front of his young eyes.
He slowly stepped forward and around the final blind turn as the soft rumble of the crowd lifted from the frigid air. The square was packed to each corner with people. Alcina gaped in awe at them; their faces were thin, their eyes sallow and blank, as their clothes all resembled that of street beggars. All social classes and walks of life now strangely and ironically the same. They all cheered together in bloodlust, thrusting thin and frail fists toward the sky. "Oh fair Firenze… what have they done to you…"
"Ezio we have to help them…" she whispered. Ezio's mouth was plastered into a thin, infuriated, line as he too was filled with growing rage.
"Look," was all he murmured. In the center of the square stood a large platform, the same bloody alter where his father and brothers were hung.
In the center of the stage, a poor soul proudly stood, his wrists bound and his thin body had clearly been beaten. She knew right away, this was Aldo. His eyes scanned the crowd, his expression was placid and calm while his eyes wept for his once proud city.
"This traitor is charged with the crime of aiding the enemies of Rodolfo Salvatore, protector and savior of Firenze! The same enemies responsible for releasing the plague among us! For years, our Lord Rodolfo Salvatore has saved us from the assassinos, who steal, murder, and destroy throughout Italia with their barbaric and heretic ways! Conspiring against our Leader is met with the just punishment of sound lashings, followed by public execution! Does anyone here object?" the guard loomed over Aldo with a dark grin, retrieving a glimmering sword from it's sheath.
The crowd began to cheer with delight, "Kill him! Kill the assassino for what he has done! Kill them all! Praise to Salvatore for his mercy!" Alcina's hands flew to her mouth in shock. Rodolfo had poisoned their city against them…
Aldo lifted his head in their direction, spotting them immediately at the back of the crowd. His eyes showed no fear as he mouthed as his last words. Although the two of them could not hear over the roar of the mob, Ezio could clearly make out what had softly left his bloodied lips. "Nothing is true… everything is permitted…"
The guard raised his sword as Ezio bolted into the crowd, pushing and fighting his way to the stage, leaving Alcina frozen outside the mass of bodies. She commanded her body to move, but it refused. She watched hopelessly as Ezio's white cape fought through the crowd and leapt to the stage, but he was again too late…