Chapter #57What You Found in Rosalie by: Seuzz   Joe looks around the basement. "You think that's what all this set up was for? Taking stuff out of people and putting new stuff in?"
You nod. "It fits with what I know about the place and its history. The Still hasn't worked right in decades, not since Grandmother was a little girl. She only knew how to work the one trick. But I bet there were lots of settings, so you could swap out pieces and parts of people." You look over the bits still hanging from the ceiling. "Like, you could probably pull the anima out of one person and put the anima from a different person inside. Like a soul swap. Pull imago off one person and put it onto someone else. Swap out essentia. Speaking of which--"
You scramble over the bottles, still laying their corner. "Frank's and Joe's essentia is here, but there's some other stuff that we need to check out. I used your magic dingus to confirm which bottles had your essentia, but I got a third hit. This bottle here--" You pick up the one that has Rosalie's name on it. "The disc said this stuff is also special."
"Like Stellae special?" Joe asks, hurrying over. "The cute girl?" He grins at you, for you're looking like Rosalie at the moment.
"Unless I got the labels switched around," you say. "But the disc gave a positive reading."
Joe pulls at his lip. "The disc picks up anyone and anything that's got real juice in it," he says. "The odds that there was a Stellae here are pretty remote. And if the town's been trying to breed their own special kind, it might just be a really potent form of their own essentia. Something to do with the humors rather than the planets."
"How can we tell?"
"We can't, not by looking at it directly," Joe says. "The thing to do is make a chart, like I did for you. Interview the girl." He looks at you expectantly.
"I haven't got her memories in here with me," you point out. "Only Grandmother's. But they're in a mask back at the house."
"I guess that's one thing to work on," says Frank, who's been listening. "But the big job will be putting all this stuff back together again." He glances around the basement with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
"I don't think we'll have to," you say. "And besides, we'd have to build lots of new parts to repair the stuff that got ripped out. But give me a day or two to think things through. Maybe we can reconstruct it so that we can use the sigils directly without the machinery."
"Then what was the point of all the machinery, if you can just do it with sigils?" Frank sticks out his lower lip truculently.
"It was a way of getting the essentia and all the rest into those bottles," you say, sounding more confident than you actually feel. "I bet it also had to do with setting up the organ. If you tie it into a machine, anyone, not just a magician, to pull it all off. Look, just shut up," you add as he opens his mouth again. "I wanna get this all figured out."
"See if you can make it snappy," Rick advises. "I've still got a deadline hanging over me."
So excited are you that you hardly need the added incentive.
* * * * *
You divide your time between reconstructing and recombining the sigils you'd found inside The Still and reviving Rosalie. First, though, you sit for a diagnostic interview with Joe. It doesn't take long; only a few questions, and Joe concludes that the old witch had no special planetary influences on her. That doesn't mean the special essentia is Rosalie's, but you and Joe both have a hunch that it is.
So you turn to reviving the girl in golem form. It's simple: You pull Rosalie's substantia out of the bottle, leaving an unencumbered golem on the floor of the church basement. Onto it you place the mask that you'd copied her body and memories into. The resulting fake is frightened and confused when she wakes, but you (in Frank's form) and Joe quiet and reassure her, and then Joe questions her and draws up her chart. He grows thoughtful as he proceeds, which is enough to tell you that he's finding out interesting things. He takes a very long time about it, and is very quiet when he's finished and you've taken the mask off the golem again. "So, was it her essentia that set the disc off?" you finally ask.
He nods. "Definitely. And she is a Stellae. Was a Stellae," he corrects himself.
"Could be again," you say.
"It would be interesting to revive her fully," he says, staring at the floor. "It's quite a combination. Sulva and Glundandra."
"Another Sulva, like me?"
"Yep. Interesting, given that you have the same birthday. Same day, same year, you noticed that. And you and her even look a lot like each other. Well, her and Will Prescott look a lot alike, even when Will Prescott isn't wearing her face. But Glundandra--"
"Like Dad," you say, for you know what that means, given that you're inhabiting Frank Durras's form at the moment.
"Yep. That makes her the second one. Well, the first, technically. We thought Malaika was the first, that the second hadn't been born yet. But Rosalie was older than Malaika, which means Malaika was bringing up the rear."
"How long does that give Dad and Fyodor?"
"Ten years? At most?"
You are not Frank Durras, but you feel the unease he would feel. Glundandra is Jupiter, the king of the planets, and the Stellae who have him as their ousiarchs preside over the Stellae Errantes. There are never more than four in play at once, and when the two successors appear, the incumbents never live for more than a score more years. "And what happens then?"
Joe lays back on the cold floor, staring at the ceiling. "Then Malaika become head of the Stellae. Assuming, of course, that Rosalie doesn't become the head."
"She wouldn't, if we don't revive her, or they never find her."
"What if they did?" Joe's expression darkens. "What if they found her, and--" He abruptly shuts his mouth.
When he doesn't finish, you lay back on the floor and wipe your hand over your face. The sigils for your puppets--Will Prescott, Monique Travers, Frank Durras, and Joe Durras--appear. You plunge into the latter, and find yourself staring up at the ceiling. The faint shadows left by the golem's words still echo in the empty place where its mind would be.
What if they found her, but it was Will Prescott inhabiting her body, lurking inside it, manipulating it, the way you are manipulating the golem of Joe Durras?
And what if Rosalie Stewart wasn't a mere golem? What if she had been revived, restored with her essentia, and with an anima--maybe her own, maybe the anima of another--inside her? What if she looked and acted just like Rosalie Stewart, but had a remote sigil inside her, and Will Prescott was operating her body?
Or what if you swapped essentia with her? What if you used the reconstructed Still to remove your essentia and gave yourself hers? What if you turned yourself into the missing Glundandran, and presented yourself to the Stella?
What if you became the head of the order? With Frank and Joe Durras, and Rick Bredon, and maybe others, as your puppets?
"Yeah, what if they found her, and it was really you?" a voice asks.
You sit up sharply. Rick Bredon detaches himself from the wall where he'd been leaning.
"How long have you been there?" you demand sharply.
"Long enough," he says. "Long enough to know what the kid was thinking, and what you'd be thinking after--" He mimes switching faces, then squats beside you. "It's dangerous, trying to fool the old man. You never know what he might pick up on."
"We don't have to decide right away."
"But we should decide pretty fast. I have to tell the old man something when I report back in."
You don't have to decide what to do about Rosalie any time soon, but you have to decide what to do about Rick. "You can't go back while you've got that anima band on you."
"So take it off me," he says sourly. "Pull Rick Bredon inside out, like you did with Joe and Frank. I won't squawk."
"Really?" you ask cautiously. "I thought-- Well, you remember how Frank and Joe acted when they had anima bands on them. They didn't like the idea of me taking them off them."
"That was Joe and Frank. Yeah," he says dryly. "It's a bit like committing suicide." His dark eyes flick over to your face. "It's me in here. You. Will Prescott. And if you took the band off Rick, it would be like killing me." His face becomes drawn, and he hunches his shoulders. You realize he's trying very hard not to look at The Still. "But it's no fun being here. You wouldn't like riding around inside his body, seeing the things he can see."
"But that's because of his essentia. Joe says that's how come he's so twitchy."
"Yeah, it's a nasty gift, like poisoned chocolates."
"But the other Eldibrians in the Stellae-- Maria doesn't have Rick's problems."
"She's got Perelandra as her other ousiarch. Lucky Rick, he's got Malacandra. He gets to see the things he has to fight."
You stare at Rick. Joe's thoughts come quickly: "But what if we could change that around? The Libra has spells for modifying imago. What if there's a way of doing it for essentia?"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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