The mask now has your image in it. Time to seal it up, so that it can be worn.
The second spell, like the first, doesn't tell you what you are making. It only gives you a list of ingredients, some instructions, and a complicated sigil.
Fortunately, you already had extra supplies on hand, for the sealant—the "membrana", the book calls it—doesn't use anything that doesn't go into making a mask, and it calls for rather less of it, in fact:
A small quantity of wood ash, a small quantity of quicklime, a spoonful of wet plaster, a spoonful of olive oil, a scrap of wet paper, a metal bowl, flame.
At least this spell does not stink when you execute it. You combine all the ingredients in the bowl, set it on the sigil, and run your fingertip three times around it. You set it on fire, and when the flames have gone out a few minutes later, you have a thin, paste-like stuff that you can apply to the inner surface of the mask with a paintbrush. It dries fast, and quickly turns transparent. Only a faint glistening shine to the interior of the mask tells you that it has been closed up and can be worn.
You were a little confused the first time you executed the spell, because there was no change to the page -- no mysteriously appearing stain or any other sign -- to indicate that you had successfully executed it. On a hunch, you laid the sealed up mask on the page, and when you lifted it the page fluttered loose. On the reverse it basically tells you what you already know: You have now sealed up a mask, it cannot absorb any more images, you can wear it—
Well, you can wear it if it is someone else's persona. Then you can put it on, and when you wake up ten minutes later you will find yourself transformed (inside and out) into their physical duplicate. You won't have their memories, though, or any of the personality traits or talents. But you'll just like them -- at least, you'll look like them at the moment that you put the mask on them. If they have gotten a haircut or a tooth pulled, or gotten a cut or amputated a limb, well, too bad. That change will not show up in the mask.
That doesn't mean that you can't change the appearance inside the mask. You can put on mask and get a haircut, for instance. The haircut won't do anything to your hair, of course, and if you get cut or if you lose a finger or (God forbid!) an arm, you can just take the mask off and you'll stop bleeding (and your own arm won't fall off). But if you put the mask back on, you'll continue to bleed out.
But you won't leave a trail of blood. That's one bizarre thing about the masks. Though they can bleed and shed (and drop other, um, fluids and solids) like a real person, the stuff that comes off them vanishes after a few minutes. Snip off some hair, and a few minutes later it evaporates. Same with blood and saliva and everything else. Everything that falls off or squirts out will disappear after a few minutes.
There's some other funny things about the masks, and what happens when you get them around the real people. For a start, although you can wear masks of other people, you can't wear a mask of yourself. It will go into you and knock you out, but it will come out again a few minutes later, like it is trying to copy you, even though it's already got your image inside it. But even though it looks like it's trying to copy you, it won't. So, like, take the example above of making a mask of someone, putting it on, and getting a haircut. If the real person tries to put it on, they won't be able to wear it, even though the haircut makes the image in the mask look a little different. But when the mask comes back out of them, it won't have changed or updated. Instead, it will still have the new haircut.
The same is true if it was the real person who got a haircut -- you can't get the haircut into the mask by trying to copy them with it again. You'd have to make a new mask.
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