Chapter #60The Return of the Stellae by: Seuzz   They're plotting against you.
You shouldn't be surprised. You aren't surprised, except by the fact that one potential conspirator has opened up to another. But that's what you get--you suppose--for pushing Rick into Nate's business.
At the moment, you have to play for time. "I guess it's a possibility, Nate," you say. "I'd know how to do it. But Grandmother took the stuff from me. After she got her new fav'rites."
"Could you get it back?"
"I dunno. You know how tight she keeps her stuff. But if yer askin' about the possibility, well, I gotta ask you somethin'. You talkin' about copyin' Rosalie's face and pretendin' to be ... Pretendin' to be the person what's got it now?"
Nate says nothing. Caution prevents him from making an overtly damning confession.
"Well, let's say that's what you're talkin' about," you continue. "Who pretends to be Rosalie? Who gets that power?"
"Can it be shared?"
"Nope. Or, if it can, only Grandmother knows how. So only one person gets to be Rosalie. If that person has a partner, what's in it for him?"
"Favors?"
"What kinda favors, Nate? Rosalie was my intended, you know."
You let the inference hang in the air.
Nate turns away with a soft grunt. "It's a lot to ask of a man."
"If it's to be partners, it should be shared all the way, Nate. 'Specially if one of 'em--meanin' me, I assume--is supposta run a awful risk by gettin' the makings back."
"An' what if you got Rosalie's face, and the power, Will?" he retorts. "What would you share?"
"It's a lot to ask of a man, like you say. But I'd be willin' to share my bed, I think, with another man, ifn' he happened to have my face."
Nate twists in his seat to stare at you. "You sayin' you'd have relations with a feller 'at looked like you, Will?"
"Wouldn' you, Nate? I mean, with a feller 'at looked like Nate Shabbleman?" He turns away. "If you was to start runnin' the town, cuz you was lookin' like Rosalie," you continue. "You'd wanna make sure the town constable was your partner, right?" You shrug. "I could live with the promotion. If'n you could."
You can hear Nate swallow thickly.
"I'll leave the choice to you, Nate," you say. "You pick the person that gets to be Rosalie, and the person who gets to be her squire."
"I'll have to think about it," he mutters.
"Do that. I won't kick either way. Better take me home now."
After he drops you off, you trudge into the shack where Will Shabbleman has hung his cap for the past ten years, ever since his parents died. You turn on the light and lean against the dresser, staring into the mirror. His pale face, with those thin, bloodless lips and that lank hair and those feverish eyes, stares back. "You know what you have to do, Will Shabbleman," you tell the golem. "You know who's moving your legs and working your mouth and telling Nate Shabbleman what he wants to hear. You know who your master is. Play along with Nate, but keep me informed every step of the way.
"Yes, Will," you say on his behalf. "Everything I hear and say. Everything I do, it is to serve you."
You close your eyes, and retreat back to your own body.
* * * * *
The next morning. It takes you longer than you'd like to copy the sigil on the basement floor, for it's a tremendously complex piece of work, combining as it does four different sigils, each capable of being activated independently. Joe offers corrections the few times that you make a slip.
"We'll start with some fresh substantia," you say, rubbing your hands together as a light tremble runs through your body. "Doesn't matter which we use." You roll one of the heavy bottles into the center of one of the interlocked sigils. You hold your hands out palm down and mutter the activating incantation; with a soft pop a lump of raw golem flesh appears in the center of the four sigils.
From your pocket you take a pen with a steel nib and hunch over the mass. "What are you doing?" Joe asks.
"Putting a remote sigil on it," you murmur back. "Carving it into it, actually. This way there won't be any goop for anyone like Rick to detect."
"But that means it won't be a golem when it wakes up."
"I'm going to put my own anima inside it, so--"
"Are you sure about that?" he gasps.
"With the remote, I'll be able to move in and out. If we merge at least once a day, I think we can keep aligned."
Joe falls silent until you finish up.
"Now let's give him his magic back." You retrieve a glowing bottle that has "Joe Durras-essentia" written on its label. You place it in the center of the second sigil, and surround it with ten candles. You light each one, murmuring the name of a different ousiarch for each. Again, with palms turned down, you mutter an incantation. The bottle glows, and eight of the candles snuff out. You raise your voice and cry out the third incantation.
The flames of the two tapers rocket toward the ceiling; the air fills with a fizzing and popping sound. With a single, strong word of command, you activate the sigil. The air screams, and a line of hot fire races from the bottle toward the golem. Flames engulf it. It burns hotly but briefly, and then all the lights go out.
You blink away the phantom lights from your eyes. The two candles for Arbol and Viritrilbia have melted completely, leaving small pools of smoking wax; the bottle is now dark and empty and seemingly covered in soot.
"Now to fill that 'hole' Rick says he felt." Joe still looks dubious as you pull out a freshly made band containing a copy of your own anima and lay it on the third sigil. Another incantation, and an arc of spitting lightning briefly connects the band and the golem.
"And now to wrap him in a skin." You pull your mask off and lay it in the fourth sigil after flipping the face to the unaltered physical and mental imago of Joe Durras. You draw a deep breath. Your voice trembles as you utter the last incantation, and two bolts of lightning arc out to the golem.
In the center of the sigil, a naked Joe Durras blinks his eyes open and sits up. He smiles narrowly at you. You smile back, and advance on your mask.
And then it's gone.
You blink and look around. The naked Joe is now on the far side of the basement, grinning. He holds up the mask. "Looking for this?"
You suppress a nervous swallow. "Come on, don't horse around."
"Who you talkin' to?" he chortles. "Me?"
"Or me?" Another Joe Durras, as naked as the first, appears next to him.
"I coulda told you it'd be like this," golem-Joe sighs.
"Don't be a jerk," you tell the new Joe, the one with the mask. He lets you advance until you're nearly atop him, then he steps to the side--
--and materializes on the far side of the basement. "Keep away," he sings. His twin vanishes.
"I wanna have fun too," you say plaintively.
"Why didn't you say so?" he says from directly behind you. You leap and wheel. With a smile he hands the mask to you. "Frankly, I'm dying to see if it works."
A hard tremble runs through you, and your knees nearly buckle as you sit cross-legged and put the mask to your face. You flip through faces until the control sigil appears, bringing with it the portals to the other faces. One of them glows far more brightly than the others, and you plunge into it--
* * * * *
You blink down at Will Prescott, who's fallen over to the side, and bite back a smile. You look up at golem-Joe. "Is that you in there, boss?" he asks cautiously.
A sensation like molten gold boils within you. It feels familiar, natural, easy to manipulate. You form a gossamer shell around you--your illusory twin--and with a little concentration dive into the streaming river of time. The world darkens into a purple twilight as you stroll over to the golem; he and the rest of the world are frozen until you're standing directly behind him. You step back into the regular time stream, and slide a tendril of control into the sock puppet you left behind. "In the flesh, so to speak," you make it say. You dip into it a little deeper, and are now looking at the golem from the front and from the back, simultaneously. "Gimme your clothes," you make your immaterial double say.
"What are you going to do with me?" the golem asks as he disrobes.
"Sorry, but I don't need you anymore," you say from behind him. He spins around. Again, the world turns a purple shade as you cock your fist. "Not with the real Joe being back and all."
* * * * *
You disassemble that golem before reconstructing Frank using the same process. "Stars, this feels good," you say as you flex his invisible "fist of Malacandra" for him. "I bet that fake out there has been missing it."
"So call him in and ask him," a voice says from the corner of the room. You wheel: It's Rick, lounging against the wall.
"Stars, Rick," you gasp. "You're always popping up."
"Well, I got a message for you from Will Shabbleman," he drawls. "Nate says he wants to be Rosalie. That's the message. What's it mean?"
"It means--"  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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