You now have before you a great opportunity and a great deal of guilt. Cassie will be a great ally with her knowledge of Latin, but do you take away her personality and just make her a puppet or can you let her continue somewhat as before? And if the latter, how much do you tell her? Do you even dare let her walk out knowing what she does about this place even if she doesn't understand the masks or what they really do? She's a chatterbox. It's her nature to constantly make sound about anything and everything. You have no idea how trustworthy. You were stupid to let her volunteer. Stupid!
Still, if you turn her into a true golem, it's as good as taking her soul. Do you want that guilt or responsibility, or power? However, she would obviously be easy to control with you as master, so no need to worry about any of this getting out. Do you trust yourself with that power, and what might Caleb want to do with her? With his horny eagerness for the Garners, would Cassie just become a fuck toy? She is cute and might be fun. She likes you already, so having her to satisfy your or Caleb's ...
"What the hell am I thinking!" you shout inside your mind. Grabbing your head, you close your eyes then shake your head slowly from side to side as you mournfully repeat quietly, "No, no, no, no, ..."
"Will? Will? Are you alright?" Cassie asks.
"Yo, dude," Caleb breaks into your internal battle.
You look over Cassie's shoulder and see him holding the book and pointing to her, but you shake your head "no."
"We need to talk first," you tell him.
"Let's," Cassie replies even though you meant Caleb, and she takes your hand.
Your eyes meet, but you can't think of what to say. Caleb shrugs when you look past her at him, and the two sides in your head vie for dominance once again. Maybe you should remove the mask until you can decide.
"Will, what's really going on? What are you hiding?" she quizzes.
Cassie, it's just ..." You can't think clearly and start to chuckle nervously. Just calling her Cassie seems to be wrong since you know she's just a golem now - a golem with two minds it seems. "Which should I choose? Does it matter since I might as well have killed her?"
"Will? Are you alright?" Cassie pleads now when you stare blankly and don't say anything more.
"He's just too emotional when things go right or wrong," Caleb tries to recover for you. "Maybe the book ...?" He holds it up again, and again breaking you loose to shake you head. He frowns.
"What is that book?" Cassie asks turning towards him.
"Nothing. I guess that's about it, Cassie," you finally manage to let out. "Thanks for the help with the translation. I probably should take you ..."
"What about the follow-on?" Caleb badgers you once more holding the book.
"No need for that tonight," you shoot back trying to get him to shut up
"There's more? I'd love to do that," Cassie offers.
"There's not any more right now. We still have to .."
"That can be fixed," Caleb interrupts already on his way over.
You watch him approach her and push the open book against her before you can stop it. The book starts to glow as usual, but suddenly Cassie is engulfed by the glow as well. After a few seconds, there's a tremendous bright white flash knocking Caleb away with a thud to the floor, but the book remains against her like it's stuck. Then all goes black, and you hear another thud of a collapsing body along with a clatter of solid metal and glass.
When your eyes readjust to the dim basement light, you find Caleb and Cassie sprawled out and not moving. You urgently head to Cassie but stop as you look down and see beside her the book and the blank mask. You turn and touch Cassie finding soft skin with normal color and can tell she's breathing normally.
"Cassie? Cassie?" you repeat trying to revive her.
Her eyes seem to flicker and a low mumble escapes her lips that you don't understand. Something like "tandem adsum" or it could be "damn son of."
Slowly her eyes open and a hand moves to her head. "Did it work?"
* * *
After answering that question a third time and making an excuse of why she's on the floor, you apologize (lying) that you didn't think the experiment or trick would make her pass out. Fortunately, she has her back to Caleb and doesn't see him flat on the floor behind you until he speaks.
"Wh-What happened?" Caleb mumbles as he sits up.
"See, it worked," you tell him as if everything was normal and hoping he'd keep up the pretense.
"So what changed in the book?" he asks scrambling over to look into it thinking you meant the Libra.
It's still open to the spell's page, but you can see there is more writing on it now. Caleb ignores that and tries to turn the page to no avail.
"Didn't work," he mutters softly finally seeing the blank mask on the ground but Cassie in the flesh. He does a double-take, looks back at the Cassie sealed mask on the table, then asks Cassie, "what's the last thing you remember before you, ah, passed out?"
Cassie blushes once more, and you think, "Here we go again," but she is distracted by seeing the Latin text in the Libra and doesn't answer. Instead she turns to look at it with amazement as she is obviously reading or trying to make out the translation.
"Damn. Now what am I going to do?"
You purposely were keeping her away from it so no questions would arise, but you now have even more to lie to her about.
"I recognize some of these phrases you had me translate earlier. I thought those were strange, but some of this other stuff is really weird," she comments running her finger across the new text that's appeared.
"What's it say?" Caleb urges much to your dismay, and you give him an angry look. However, he's looking back and forth between Cassie and the book ignoring you.
"I'm sure it says something about "returns life," but it's ambiguous about what it is referring to. It also seems like "moves one step." I'd need to check references, but it may still just be gibberish."
"Thanks Cass," you say picking up the book and closing it much to Caleb's dismay now. "That's something for another day." You put the book and the blank mask you grabbed as well on the table then turn back as Cassie's phone goes off.
"Oh, hi Lisa," she answers. "Just working with Will and Caleb on their special project from the translation I helped. They showed me how they could do this ..., Un huh. ... Yeah. ... No way! ... Just a minute." she then turns to you and asks, "Geoff's car broke down at the mall. Do you think you, er, we could go pick he and Lisa up?"
"Crap!" you instantly think, but then an idea strikes you about getting Geoff into a mask or making him a golem.
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