This choice: Tack, er... talk with Nash • Go Back...Chapter #117The Cost of Shapeshifting by: imaj   It turns out that Nash wants to examine you in the garage for some reason. It’s a normal garage in most ways. Shelves filled with cans of paint and toolboxes, a garden house hangs on one wall and there’s a lawnmower in one corner. The car is outside though, and the garage door is down.
Instead the middle of the garage is taken up with a couple of impromptu workbenches where Nash has set up shop. There are toolboxes there too, but the tools in them don’t look like anything you’ve seen before. One or two leave you feeling some trepidation.
“Kick off yer shoes fer me Will,” says Nash. He’s standing at one of the workbenches, more interested in its contents than you seemingly. He turns round, his mug of coffee in one hand, an odd looking implement in the other. A simple haft fits into his hand, five prongs spring from one end, each one tipped with what seems to be a broken razors.
His thumb moves on the shaft and the whole damn thing starts spinning. The broken blades glow a dull red. More than a little freaked out you back up a couple of steps, your bare feet almost sticking to the cold floor. Your head darts left and right looking for an exit.
Then Nash plunges the device into his cup of coffee. With a hiss a cloud of steam rises from the mug and Nash withdraws the now inert device guffawing. “Heh if yah could see the look on yer face,” he says taking a sip from his warmed up coffee. “Lemme get the tools I’ll need.”
He turns back to his workbench and starts fiddling around with it. After a few minutes he faces you again. Now he’s wearing complex looking glasses with arrays of dials an extra lenses hanging off them. He flicks a lever, lowering a green tinted pair in front of his eyes that have the added effect of making them huge. “Shirt off,” he instructs you brusquely. “Pant’s too.” You hesitate momentarily. “Nuffin’ I’ve not seen before,” adds. Reluctantly you disrobe
You stand shivering, clad only in you shorts, while he moves round you. Nash peers closely at you, pausing only to switch out lenses on his glasses or run an odd looking tool over some part of your body. He whistles tunelessly to himself as he works. Periodically he goes back to one of the workbenches to fetch another tool.
“You can putcher clothes back on Will,” he says after a while, taking a few steps back from you. Shaking from the cold you grab your discarded clothes and fumble back into them “I got an idea what the problem is,” he explains. “But I gotta look at the Libra first to make shuah I’m right. Come back after lunch.”
*****
You return the garage mid afternoon. Nash has pushed his workbenches as far back against the wall as he can. The Libra lies in the centre of the cleared floor of the garage, surrounded by a complex pattern of sigils, apparently drawn by Nash himself.
“Whoa there Will,” shouts Nash as you enter. You stumble to a stop, your feet just short of a chalk drawn sigil. He hops and skips round the floor with a surprising grace. Nash takes an odd route to get to you, no doubt influenced by the patterns on the floor. He takes a cloth from a vest pocket and kneels down on the floor, rubbing out the sigil with it. “There,” he says standing back up.
“That’s, uh… quite a lot of work,” you say waving an arm vaguely at the floor.
“Ain’t it just,” grins Nash enthusiastically. “Dis ting,” he adds pointing to the Libra. “It’s somethink else. I could spend years on it. I can admire the way it’s put together, just not the ting itself.”
“Did you find out what you needed to though,” you ask. “About me?”
“Oh that,” says Nash as if your problem is a far more mundane concern than continuing to investigate the book. “Shuah. Yah ain’t ganna like it though. Yer substantias been altered.”
You blink a couple of times. “My what?”
“Yer substantia,” he repeats. “The material bits of you.”
You take a couple of moments to think. “But I knew that already,” you reply. “Kali worked out that I wasn’t really me anymore, but more like a golem.”
Nash sighs and shakes his head “Why does no one ask me ‘bout dese tings. She missed the mechanics of it,” he explains. “Shuah, yer mostly golem now but when yah went in an’ out of the Libra somethink else happened.” He pauses and the cigarette shuffles from one side of his mouth to the other and back again. “Aw dammit to hell. The reason why dey can’t work out your second ousiarch is you aint’t got one.”
“I… They… What,” you stutter, not quite believing what you’ve just heard. “That’s impossible,” you finally settle on. “Everyone has two ouisiarchs.”
“Oh yer had two,” explains Nash. He carefully works his way round the garage mopping some of the sigils he has drawn. “Then yah passed through the Libra. It left the Sulva untouched and it clean lopped off the other. As sweet an amputation as I’ve ever seen. It’s like your walking round with only one arm and leg,” he finishes, scooping up the Libra from its position on the floor.
Your legs seem to fail beneath you and you stagger over to on old crate by one of the walls. You sit on it, unable to process what Nash has just told you. “But I’ve used other ousiarch powers,” you protest. “Joe’s ability to force people to tell the truth months ago,” you say, remembering back to the time when you inexplicably copied one of Joe’s abilities.
“Done it since then,” asks Nash.
“Joe said something about Perelandra on the drive up here,” you reply. “And I seemed to be really good at making Joe feel better when Rosalie and I did the twin thing a few days ago.”
“Lemme try somethink,” says Nash, fetching a couple of his tools from the workbench. He points them at you. “Try Rosalie for me.” You shift to Rosalie and he runs the tools up and down your body. “And back. Looks to me like you showin’ all those other ousiarchs is your essentia tryin’ to comp’nsate for the fact your missin’ half yerself.”
“That’s kind of useful though isn’t it,” you say hopefully. “Being able to use lots of different powers?”
“Not good fer balance Will,” he says, putting the tools back down. “It’s like yer walking round with a crutch because you got one leg missin’. Ting is yer sayin’ the crutch is better than having a leg because you can paint it diff’rent colours. Yah would be better off with a second ousiarch.”
You slump against the wall. So that’s it then, you’re some sort of magical cripple, doomed to only be half a Stellae. What now? You don’t really feel like going back into the house. To be honest, you don’t really feel like doing anything at all.
“Still here,” asks Nash.
You shrug apathetically. “Bit upset about the whole stuck with just one ousiarch thing,” you say quietly, trying to hold back the tears.
“Yah ain’t stuck with just one Will, I tole you,” says Nash exasperatedly. “Yah would be better off with a second ousiarch. You get to choose.”
“What,” you stutter. It can’t be that simple, can it?
“Well, yah ganna have to tack with Charles a bit,” explains Nash. “It’s a job for him to get yah all set up with a new one, but he’ll let yah choose right enough.
Hope soars in your breast and you leap to your feet. “I could speak to him now couldn’t I? It wouldn’t take long would it?”
“Well I’ll write up a memo explaining the problem and you can take it to him…” begins Nash.
“Forget the memo,” you interrupt. “You can come and talk to him right now. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“I tink I got a pretty good idea,” says Nash with a wry grin.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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