"Alright, Will." Lucy points at you and your brother, under Scott’s mask, and shrills at you. "What’s going on here? Who’s that guy, and why he’s wearing Scott’s mask?"
"The ‘guy’ over here is my idiot brother", you growl back. "He was snooping around and got the genius idea to put on something he shouldn’t have!"
"Hey!" The hairs on your back go up as your brother replies in a rippling baritone far deeper and scarier than the squeak he usually makes when he argues back. "You could'a avoided all of this if you hadn't tried fucking me outta what was mine anyway! And now I can’t get out of this...thing!" He grabs his face.
"Teaches you not to mess with what’s not yours."
"No." Lucy jabs at you with a finger. "It teaches you not to mess with things you’re not supposed to!"
"Well, ex-cuuuuuse me, Princess!" You'd yell at Lucy some more, but you catch the expression on Taylor's face. "Alright, alright!" you exclaim, and throw your hands into the air. "So it’s all my fault, even if I tried not to tell this dimwit about our stuff, and tried not to lead him here, and tried to tell him it was dangerous to—"
"Cut it out, Will," Taylor says. "You two have a lot to explain, though."
Lucy pushes up to Robert, who with widening eyes tries backing away. He backs up into the wall with a thump, and freezes as Lucy wraps her fingers around his temple. She murmurs and pulls, and a mask comes away in her hand. Robert, in his native form, materializes, folds up, and falls to the floor. Lucy makes a face at you as she gives the mask back to Taylor. "Give me a good reason," she tells you, "why I shouldn’t throw that shit away."
--
While Robert's passed out, you briefly relate how, after you took a brief nap, you found him inside, how he confronted you, and how after a brief scuffle where you clearly tried to take Scott’s mask away, he surprised you by putting the mask to his face. Taylor seems satisfied, but Lucy presses the issue. "I’ve told you, Will, that shit is dangerous. It ruined my life, Taylor’s life, and if we weren’t here and he had run away, it could have probably ruined your brother’s life too. When are you gonna understand it, dammit?"
"No, it’s you who doesn’t understand!" You grab one of the masks. "This not the problem! Blackwell is! And while he has the book, we can’t do anything! What if he makes Taylor the next evil clone? He could capture you again, and nobody would be capable of stopping him!"
"Blackwell is the problem because he has that damn book!" Lucy retorts. "I’m not saying we shouldn’t stop him. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be doing the same thing he’s doing to stop him!"
"She’s right, you know."
"You too, Taylor?" You turn your backs to them, fuming. "Blackwell has something we don’t. He has the advantage. We only bought us some time; if we don’t do anything—"
"Then why the hell haven’t you gone and gotten that fake me off the streets!? I’m sick and tired of this place; I thought I was going crazy before Taylor took me out, and I live in fear thinking that I’m gonna meet my double and she’s gonna do something bad to us! But instead of using your brain to figure out how to stop her, you’re here playing around with those things! Will, this isn’t helping us! It’s not helping you, it’s not helping us, and now your brother’s mixed up! So tell me one good reason why figuring that out is a good idea, or do yourself a favor and burn all of that away!"
"No!" Your heart starts to race as you listen at Lucy’s proposal. "Are you crazy!? This", you speak as you grasp Blackwell’s notes, "is the way we can deal with him once and for all! That way, we’ll know how to deal with the clones, see how he does everything, be one step ahead of him--"
"We could do that with the book", Lucy points out.
You immediately latch to it. "Exactly! But because we don’t have the book, we can--"
"And what will you do when we get the book?"
As you’re about to speak, you realize the meaning behind her question. She set you a trap, and you just triggered it. She made you think.
You drop to the floor, ass first. "I dunno."
"Exactly. So do yourself a favor and destroy that."
"And stay being a nobody, right?" Your throat starts to hurt.
To your surprise, Lucy kneels down before you and says something that, for a moment, chills you to the bone. "Who says you’re a nobody?"
You look up at her. "I’m not a jock. I’m barely one of the smart guys. I dunno what I’m gonna do when I graduate. The only girl I ever met dumped me for someone who’s better looking and has a better future."
Lucy makes a wry half-smile. "You’re better looking than you let yourself look."
Your stomach starts to rise, either from pleasure or because you're going to vomit. "Y-you really think so?"
She wrinkles her nose. "Try getting a haircut and dressing a bit better. You want a girlfriend? I bet there's some who’d look at you if you just cleaned up your act. And you'd have to be really dumb if you’re not smart enough to figure out what to do with your life." She remains silent for a moment, then sends another curve right at you. "So is that why you want to play around with this stuff? Because you think you’re a loser, and it'll help you not be a loser? Look at what it did to Taylor. This stuff's not gonna help you."
You look at the bin, in your father’s handwriting. "Will’s Arts and Crafts Mix." The one moment where you genuinely felt your father was proud of you. Replicating the experiment in the book was nothing. Replicating the experiment in the primer was likewise nothing. Copying the Libra Personae just from notes and scribbles, to the point you could do the same spells that it contains? If there was a Nobel Prize for magical theory, you’d be a line to it.
Magical theory. You’ve never been so excited to do something, anything, in your life until you got the book...and even then, you never realized it until you lost it. It was the notes that started your fascination; they contained the spells, and if you deciphered them, you could have your own copy. And when you got the primer, you realized there was a world beyond the Libra. The dream about the planets made it very clear. It only took you until now to realize it.
Give a little thought about what you want to be in the future. You want to be a magician.
You could get Lisa back. Or why just Lisa? Why not step higher? Why not Chelsea Cooper? Why live in fear of Lester "the Molester" Pozniak, when a simple spell could bring him to your knees? The possibilities open to a magician are endless. With ample time to study, you could unravel the secrets of the Universe. The Libra first. Then, the world of magic itself.
And then, it sinks into you. That’s probably exactly how Blackwell thinks. Lucy sees it in you, and that's why she's trying to stop you. And now, your brother is knocked down on the floor, because you mindlessly dragged him into this.
Lucy’s right. This has gotten too far. Magic is dangerous. It ruined Taylor’s life, and he didn’t even have the book. It’s ruining Lucy’s life, because of someone unscrupulous that owns it. And, now you realize, it may have ruined your life as well.
You stand up and grasp the book with the sigils. You see your research, and how it looks like the writings of a madman. It would be best if you just destroyed it.
And then...what? All that’d be left is to stop Blackwell. Give Lucy back her life. Destroy the Libra. And then...you’d be the same loser you ever were. No...worse. You know magic exists, and rather than exploit it, you simply ignored it. There’s a world of possibilities that you could do with it.
Like dynamite. A simple stick full of destructive power, made for noble purposes, but exploited by people that were unscrupulous. So shocked was his creator, Alfred Nobel, that he devoted a prize to reward those that would advance technology for the betterment of mankind. Magic isn’t the problem. Not knowing how to use it, however, is.
You don’t have to be Blackwell. You can be better than him. Master magic to stop him from doing any more harm. Figure out how to use the Libra for good...or if not, how to stop it from doing more harm.
You turn around, and you look at Lucy and Taylor. Blackwell doesn’t have the real deal. You have something that he doesn’t. Friends.
And thus, you look at a fireplace, hidden deep within the basement. You hold the book in one hand, and Scott’s mask in the other.
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