Mage the Awakening - Reign of the Exarchs.pdf

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Reign of the Exarchs
TM
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Proof of Faith
JIM: Where we going?
Jim’s in the back of the car, behind a pane of smeary scratched plastic fl agged with worn and torn stickers
that say “Driver carries less than $100” and “Passenger’s Bill of Rights.” It’s a wide, blocky car and an ob-
noxious shade of orange. The back seat is one wide ribbed, rubbery bench with bites taken out of its hide.
The fl esh inside is spongy yellow foam. Everything smells like cigarette smoke and mold.
It used to be a taxi. It used to be Lance’s taxi — and still is, off the books — when Lance was using his old
name. His mundane name.
LANCE: Wouldn’t you like to know. Hell, man, if I could know in advance where
I was going to be buried, I might ask, too.
JIM: If your bosses wanted me dead I’d be dead already.
LANCE: It’s not all up to them, chief.
JIM: I think it is. It’s sure not up to you what happens to me.
LANCE: We just don’t off folks in our back yard, is all.
Lance is driving. When Lance talks to Jim he looks in the rear-view mirror or just leans his head near his
shoulder, as if ricocheting his voice off the ceiling into the back of the car. Lance is thin, sweaty from being
out in the sun earlier that day, with a junkie’s haircut and a worn-out Sex Pistols shirt, tattered into stylish-
ness. He’s sitting on his leather jacket. His deodorant’s worn off and the box of Camels in his pocket has gone
soft with sweat. He fi shes it out, craning his neck as he lifts himself up near the roof of the car, and tosses
the pack on the dashboard. When he yanks the car back into his lane the pack slides along the dashboard
to the passenger side of the car, where Hector catches them without looking.
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HECTOR: Nobody’s getting killed.
LANCE: We’ll see.
HECTOR: Just don’t think it’s safe to talk where your people might come and
listen in.
LANCE: Of course, we could do whatever we want out here and just make up
a story for our “bosses” later on, if we wanted.
HECTOR: Besides, the man who will decide what happens with you is where
we’re headed. How you act will make him make up his mind to keep you or
not. Play along and we’ll have to go to the considerable trouble of keeping you.
Somewhere.
Hector’s sitting shotgun, almost sideways, with his back to his door. When he talks to Jim he looks out of
the side of his face at him, or sometimes looks right him, always looking away between sentences. Hector’s
head is a leathery orb with a furry black buzz cut, fat eyebrows and squinty little slits for eyes. He’s got the
posture of a street thug and the demeanor of a school teacher. When he catches Lance’s cigarettes he pulls
pack off the sunny dashboard and stashes them in the open ashtray under the radio.
JIM: If you’re gonna kill me, I’d like to use the bathroom fi rst.
HECTOR: We’ll be there in like an hour. Hold it.
JIM: Who is this guy who decides? He’s not Consilium if he’s out here, right?
LANCE: You never fucking give up, do you?
HECTOR: You’ll meet him when you meet him.
JIM: What is he, one of your mystagogues? Archivist? Inquisitor?
Nobody says anything.
JIM: We caught wind that you had some librarian, some researcher, out in the
suburbs. That where we’re going?
Lance hocks up a jelly of phlegm and looses it out his window.
JIM: How am I supposed to play along if I don’t know what I’m supposed to
do?
LANCE: By keeping your mouth shut, is how. Dick.
HECTOR: He asks, you answer. No sweat.
Jim’s wardrobe has been narrowed down to his jeans, sneakers and a white t-shirt. Jim’s hands are in his
lap, bound with a plastic zip-cord. All along the base of the windows and around the door handle are glyphs
and magic marks, written with a black Sharpie. When they put him in the car, Jim tried to touch the door
handle but couldn’t — the glyphs they wrote on the back of his hands pushed him away, like two negative
magnets. When he tried to say even one spell, the words turned to screeching static in his ears.
Lance pulls his cigarettes out of the ashtray and squeezes the pack, sniffs it.
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LANCE: Fuck.
JIM: Interrogation?
LANCE: Fucking sucks.
Lance tosses the pack out his window.
JIM: Interview?
HECTOR: That depends on you. Answer what you’re asked and it’ll all be real
polite. Doesn’t have to be ugly.
LANCE: Unlike your “pylon,” we don’t bust into your shit and spy on you.
JIM: If I’m gonna be polite, I’d like to use the bathroom fi rst.
HECTOR: There’s a bathroom there.
JIM: Yeah, but your fella’s gonna want to get down to business, right? We walk
in, he’s gonna be eager to see me.
HECTOR: You’ll be fi ne.
Jim leans to look out one window. He has to stretch to keep his hands away from the heavy feeling of
the glyphs on the door. They’re driving down a four-lane road with a wide median of dead grass. Beyond,
the world is a row of orderly houses with low green lawns. Huge man-shaped towers made of steel gird-
ers straddle the world with their hands on their hips, holding power lines up off the ground, between the
people and the sky.
A cloud of tiny black birds lifts off one sagging power line and wheels in the air. Doing laps on an invisible
groove in the sky.
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JIM: That’s not what I see.
Lance chuckles to himself.
HECTOR: How’s that, Jim?
Jim nods with his head.
JIM: I don’t see this turning out well. Today.
LANCE: Nice. You play to that
stereotype, man.
HECTOR: What is that, Jim? Fate?
Or a tip from your Exarchs?
Jim shifts back into his seat.
JIM: You don’t believe.
LANCE: No shit, Jim.
HECTOR: Call me a skeptic.
JIM: I don’t know how, after everything you’ve
seen, you can not believe. I mean, I can under-
stand how you might doubt, ‘cause it’s not always
easy understand the word — I mean, damn — but
how you can accept the Watchtowers and not
the lords, I just don’t get that.
HECTOR: You may hear them, Jim, but I think you
can understand why I might not just take your word on
this, you know? The word of a guy who was thinking
about killing us? You tell me you’ve got these gods
on high who say you’ve got to get us in line?
LANCE: Fear tactics, man.
HECTOR: But can you—
JIM: You say “gods”—
HECTOR: Jim, for one second, man, please. Can you
imagine why it is that I might not want to convert
blindly to the religion of a dude who was fi xing to
kill my crew?
JIM: You say “gods.” I didn’t say that. They’re not gods. I mean, that’s awfully gener-
ous of you, and I’ll agree that they’re godly or godlike, but this isn’t Zeus shit I’m
talking about here. That’s human folly. That’s seeing lightning and calling it a god.
HECTOR: I haven’t seen the lightning, Jim.
JIM: No. Yes, you have. Ordinaries see the lightning and call it a god. You people
see Watchtowers, see the world change at your fucking word, and you call it
whatever it is you call it.
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