Iron Station Savage Masks IC IV

[mmdeforrest]

West Side Base, November 1
Building the Janus Mirror
One way or another, John reflected as he worked, Zylas was getting ready to leave. It seemed strange to him that he almost regretted that coming change. They were about the same age and had similar interests. It would not take much to cross the line into friendship.

The leap of faith it would take to trust him enough for that and cross the line had grown short.

He wondered, trying to push the echo of the opening notes of the piano from his head, how Seraph would take that confession in their next One-on-One—if he would accept the truth about Zylas’ relatively good nature or if he would add possible Stockholm Syndrome to his growing list of psychological conditions.

The song was still there.

John could not have explained to anyone where he had heard any of Taylor Swift’s new album—although it being played in the background of any or all of the coffee shops he had stopped in while shopping for Stones of Vanuusha was the most likely explanation. He certainly did not recall anyone at the base professing an interest in her music or in the work of Bon Iver. Wherever he had heard it, “Exile” served as a good reminder of the kind of thing Emi and Grayson were living through at the other points of the triangle that was forming.

Mastroianni threatened to draw that triangle up into a tetrahedron.

John pushed that thought aside as he reminded himself that he stood a better chance of avoiding the dragon than he did avoiding Taylor Swift’s music while out and about.

“I can see you staring, honey,” Swift sang, “Like he’s just your understudy/Like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me.”

There but for the Grace of God….

He closed his eyes.

And there I may yet go, he reminded himself. Right now, if he could not assemble the Janus Mirror properly, his primary contingency plan centered on making Grayson a more viable suitor—a stronger rival. Depending on how things went, it was still a part of his branching contingency plans.

“Yes,” John recalled Grayson explaining in last week’s nightmare as he looked adoringly at Emi. “Without his arrival, I might never have been pressed into action. And without his kind words, I might never have found the self worth and courage I needed to complete this song and offer it to you.”

That threat was not just a jealously-fueled worst-case scenario dredged up by his subconscious.

Mr. Shaw had noted that potential.

Emi had confessed to having a soft spot for him.

John had seen the song he wrote.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he prayed. Please don’t let it be a prophetic dream.

His secondary plan, which had even worse potential outcomes, involved a combat that, no matter its outcome, threatened to give Mastroianni the opening to being a comforting, stable presence—someone who was there for her as she mourned one or the other of the current rivals for her affection.

Earlier today, he had promised Emi he would not let it come to that.

John raised the jeweler’s headband loupe he was wearing to help him with the detail work and pinched the bridge off his nose.

He needed better options.

He needed to figure this out for her.

He promised he would figure this out for her.

He set down his Dremel rubbed his eyes, remembering Kid Vitrian asking why he and Miss Menagerie couldn’t just magic away the problems they were facing before the broken rave mission.

That was part of the trick for him as well as for the performers who competed annually for a Merlin. He, like they, had to make it look easy because if all the pieces were not in place beforehand, it simply wouldn’t work. There was so much more required than just speaking a new reality into existence using Angelical. He needed to know the correct formulae so that he didn’t unbalance the forces involved and harm innocents.

He needed to be prepared. Always.

Like he hadn’t been with the Homunculus.

He picked up the oak dowel he had shaped into a handle. It had taken him a surprising amount of time to find the piece of wood that he sensed would be able to channel the forces he would pass through it without bursting into flame before his casting would be complete. At least picking up pieces of wood and inspecting them was normal for Lowe’s in a way that walking across the campus of Bastion with a picnic basket was not.

John turned the handle in his fingers, inspecting it again. He might have been able to improvise something in the field to channel those forces—either from what was at hand or by using his own power to focus the energy in a controlled manner. But it wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to attempt when a bloodthirsty, homicidally-inclined dragon was bearing down on him.

He set the handle back down and leaned back, stretching before looking at the alchemical equipment.

He liked Grayson. He didn’t want to kill him.

He looked down.

He was worrying the back of his left hand again.

He didn’t want to have to kill again, period.

He put the loupe back on and picked up the Dremel again, using his magic to help steady his hand. He guided its flexible extension into place and traced the glyph that would sit beneath the locking nut that would be beneath the cap nut.

He blew the sawdust out of the hole and tested the fit of the threaded rod that would run through the handle and secure the Janus Mirror’s loop. Once he secured the nuts in place, the glyphs he had scribed would draw the pieces together, tightening them more than was mechanically possible.

He carefully laid out the pieces of the framework. Just to its side, within a silk cloth, rested the mirror — alchemically silvered and ready to be set within its rotating frame.

“I gave so many signs,” Swift sang.

John didn’t like the ending he was seeing if this didn’t work.

And even if it did, the song left the issue unresolved. Yes, the couple within it had broken up but it remained a duet with both participants struggling with their regrets, just as Emi and Grayson had never gone on an official date but paired up on more than one occasion to go somewhere and do something together.

He didn’t want to consider their regrets.

But here he was.

“We always walked a very thin line,” Iver half protested and half pleaded as John fitted the mirror into its frame.

Even if it did, he thought as he began to assemble and hand tighten the pieces of the mirror, the ending was far from clear and there threatened to be more crying than all three of them could do.

And he was pretty sure he didn’t like the thought of being cast as the next guy who wasn’t funny.

He tested the motion of the mirror. It swung back and forth freely. With Kate’s makeup mirror back home, one side magnified while the other was normal. In this case, the two sides would capture and reflect more than an image.

The rare earth magnets were strong enough to hold the mirror it in place when their faces aligned with the supporting ring but not so strong that they prevented him from spinning the loop.

John focused his will and spoke Angelical, asking the cap nuts to tighten and pull all of the pieces together.

There was a quick flare at each of the connections as the metal tightened enough to fuse. For all intents and purposes, it was now a single object rather than an assembly of parts.

Given the power he was about to channel, he would sleep well tonight. At least that was what he hoped as he raised his hand and readied the spells that would transform the object that was, at his command, floating from the surface of his workbench and into the center of the circle at the heart of his workshop.

It might be the solution to fighting the dragon without fighting it that he needed. But given how much magic he would be passing through this particular Janus Mirror, there was no way he could test it before he took it into the field.

The spell would consume it.

It would be trial under fire.

It was a less than ideal option, but it was at least an option.

Not bad for just over 24 hours.

He didn’t even listen to this kind of music.

He tried to rub the blurriness out of his eyes.

So why couldn’t he get the song out of his head?