The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

In Which Frank Beats the Crap Out of a Golem

Previously: "Frank the Show-Off" 

"I need you to give me a ride back to Blackwell's," you tell Prescott as you give his phone back.

"Oh, am I still part of the club?" he asks with fake surprise.

"No, you're more like an asshole detector," you retort as you lead him out the side gate and around to the front drive. "I'm going to take you inside when we get out there, and I want you to argue with the guys. Look," you say. "I know you don't have to obey any orders I give you, but please, be a pal, and don't do anything they ask you."

"Nice request. Almost as tempting as asking me to fondle your ass. In fact--" You wheel with a shriek and slap him hard as he follows through on the thought.

* * * * *

"Two Prescotts for the price of one, eh?" Joe grins when he opens the door to you and your companion. "Come on in."

"No," Prescott says, ostentatiously folding his arms and planting his feet. Joe blinks.

"Don't be stupid," you say, slapping at the golem and bullying him inside. "Honestly."

Frank looks up from Blackwell's desk with a frown as you enter. "I thought it'd just be the three of us."

"I only count three," Joe chortles. "One, two, two, three." His finger dances from himself, to you, to Prescott, to Frank.

"Be serious, Joe," Frank says, and his brother sighs as he perches on the edge of the desk. "We don't need that thing here." When the golem just grins back, Frank lowers his head. "Go away."

"Make me," Prescott grins.

"Joe, see him out," Frank orders.

"Come on," Joe says, grabbing Prescott by the elbow. The latter flexes his knees and refuses to budge. The air is tense for a moment, and then Joe jumps him.

They swivel through the library, thrashing against tables and bookshelves as Joe grapples at Prescott. Both grunt softly. Joe should have the better of the fight--he is much stronger--but Prescott just has to fight him off, not win the contest. Finally, Frank stands and with a terrible expression claps his hands. A tremendous boom, like a crash of thunder, echoes through the house. The combatants fall away from each other.

Frank advances menacingly on Prescott. "You're a free agent now," he tells it softly. "But that's no reason to be an asshole. Leave now."

The golem goes very white in the face, but continues to grin madly. "No, this is fun. Make me, tough guy."

Frank stands very still for a moment, then raises his outstretched palm and advances on Prescott. With each step he takes, Prescott takes a step back. At the entryway he trips and falls to the floor, but even on the ground he continues to roll backwards, as though being pushed. Frank disappears after him. After a few seconds, the golem begins to scream--a shrill, inhuman thing, like a pig being squashed to death.

Joe's face splits into a rictus, and his cheeks pale. "Frank really can be not very nice when he wants to not be," he says over the sounds. "Luckily, that thing isn't human, or ... Well, I'd have something to say about what he's doing."

"But Cindy is inside that thing!" you say. You wince as Prescott hits a note you're pretty sure is outside his range.

"A golem of her," he says with a shrug. "Don't worry, I don't think she can be hurt. But--" He licks his lips as the screaming continues. "I'd think long and hard before putting that Prescott mask back on. What's going on out there won't make for a pleasant memory."

The screams abruptly cut off, and a moment later Frank appears. "Well, shall we begin?" he says as he takes his seat again.

* * * * *

Joe runs the subsequent lecture, and as you'd vaguely anticipated, it is long on theory and short on applications. Which is fine, you suppose, since you already know how to make a mask and many of the other items.

"A person is a complex of multiple and overlapping parts," Joe explains. "The physical and mental characteristics--the body, the mind, beliefs, memories, personality, dispositions--are called imago. They are the manifestation of a person upon the corporeal plane. Like when a sphere intersects a plane and creates a circle? The circle is their body and mind."

"And the rest of them?"

"Relational properties. For instance, temporal predicates that link their corporeal bits across the time stream. You can copy their memories, but you can't acquire their histories. On the Day of Judgment, should it ever come, you'll be judged by what you've done, not on what the person you're pretending to be has done." He gets a satirical look in his eye. "So if Cindy has a habit of fornicating, you'll only be judged by what you've been doing while looking like that, not by what she got up to before she met you."

You turn rather pink and give him a stink eye.

"There's also essentia," he continues with a chuckle. "That's the interior state that forms relations with other things, most importantly the alchemical, planetary, vegetative, and other entities that play a role in what is collectively referred to as 'magic.'"

"Essentia,, that's the stuff that gives you guys--" You point to him and Frank. "The Stellae, I mean, their powers."

"Powers, yes, for lack of a better word. It'd be better to think of essentia as a knot at the end of a rope, that we can grasp so we can tug at things."

"Can it be copied?"

He shakes his head. "It would be like trying to make a copy of the knot in a rope without using a rope. If you don't have a rope, how could you make a copy of the knot?"

You look at Frank out of the corner of your eye. "So someone who ... Well, who got a mask of you guys wouldn't be able to do any of your tricks?"

Joe shakes his head again. "You weren't entertaining certain ideas, were you, Prescott?" Frank asks dryly.

"Just trying to understand," you say mildly. If this is on the level, then Frank, surely, is who he says he is. "So masks can only copy the imago?"

"Yeah," Joe says. "Of course, there's also anima, which is the bounding arc encompassing all of a person's internal states, and since it also intersects the corporeal plane it can also--"

"Just stick to imago," Frank interrupts. "That's what the first half dozen spells or so are about. Give him the symbology."

Joe pulls out a stack of paper and retrieves a couple of books from the shelves. The rest of the evening is almost entirely given over to sigils, symbols, formulae, and equations. After a few hours, he lets you go home, taking the notes and the book De Imago with you.

His lecture has filled in a lot of blank spots in your education. At home, after the rest of the household has gone to sleep, you take off Cindy's mask and hide in her closet in your natural, golem state (which doesn't need sleep) and pore over the book and notes until you have a thorough mastery of them. It comes with surprising ease--probably a function of the Uranian/Neptunian connection they say you have to the book, and also the almost tactile familiarity with the sigils that you acquired when you passed from Blackwell's workroom through the Libra. You can find no flaws in Joe's presentation, which gives you an almost unshakable confidence in Frank: no one wearing a mere mask could do what you saw him do this afternoon and tonight. You're a little less certain about Joe, though the fact that the Prescott golem resisted all of his orders and requests certainly suggests he is not under Joe's control, which means Joe isn't Blackwell in disguise.

As the early morning light creeps through the window, you are formulating a new idea. You've had lots of time to think through your own experiences and experiments since hooking up with Blackwell, and you remember the sigil at Justin's that you accidentally brought to life. It was of the same kind that is found in the Libra, which suggests--though it does not prove--that you might be able to execute its spells without access to the book itself. If so, you would be able to make up a mask of your own secretly. By copying someone who is very strong--Seth, probably--you would be able to wrench the Prescott mask from the golem and discover what it knows.

That would be the most direct approach. The alternative would be to conduct some kind of test on Joe, who seems the likeliest to be somehow mixed up in the mystery of the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't magician.

Next: "Joe's Surprising Offer" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"