Immediate thanks for Phrykyh for editing this chapter, as he always does.

Three lines, and then story. I am -good.-

Questing
X-Men/Mage: the Ascension
by Matt "Smoot" Bowyer
 

Chapter 7 
 

Alexander sat down in the chair at the end of the table and leaned forward. "The nature of magic has been the most controversial topic for mages. There’s no definite answer to the question of ‘Where did magic come from?’ There are, however, two main theories. One states that the ability to alter reality comes from within the mage himself, and the other claims that the ability comes from external powers instead – be it spirits, deities, or whatever have you. The bottom line of the matter is, no one really knows just what magic is.”

He looked over at Bobby, who was leaning back in the high-backed chair, hands folded across his stomach. “What we do know is that the ability to use magic is a pretty rare phenomenon. Mages seem to be a rarity. Only one mage is born for every two or three thousand people.”

“That’s still around two million mages,” Hank noted.

“Two million people with the ability to alter reality is still quite a formidable force,” Scott said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Not all of these two million mages are affiliated with each other,” Alexander replied. “In fact, a good amount of those probably have no idea what sort of powers they have and burn themselves out before anyone can reach them.”

“Burn themselves out?” Bobby asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I’d imagine that Alexander means that they overuse their powers,” Hank said. “Think about it, Robert. If you were suddenly greeted with the knowledge that you could do whatever you wanted to do, with no constraints, you’d test it. And I believe this ‘Paradox’ doesn’t discriminate.”

Ian grinned. “Someone’s following us. Basically, yeah. If someone Awakens and tests out the boundaries of their power, they could seriously screw it up. Die, or maybe even worse.”

“Worse?” Bobby turned to Ian.

“Yep. Lock yourself out of your own brain. You try living for a hundred years completely closed off from yourself.”

“Merde,” Remy said in a low voice. 

“Now, wait one moment, before you continue,” Hank said, spinning his chair around so he faced Alexander. “You sounded like you meant more than the conventional definition of ‘awakens.’”

“Ah,” Alexander laughed. “That’s just the term being used for the time when a mage discovers their powers. Awaking to the dream, you could almost say.”

“That explains that, then. Thank you. You were saying?” Hank replied, scribbling in the notebook again.

“Let me ask you guys a question,” Ian said, hopping into the chair next to Bobby. “When you discovered that you had your powers, what did you do? Did you just not say anything, or did you try to find someone else, anyone else, going through what you were going through?”

“We were contacted by the Professor not too long after our changes started to happen,” Scott replied. “Since then, he’s either been contacting other suspected mutants, or they’ve come to us for help. Occasionally, we run into another group that’s already formed.”

Alexander nodded. “Mages did essentially that. Groups of them banded together, if for nothing else than companionship. As time went on, people did the things that people tend to do. They had arguments over beliefs, over styles, over almost anything imaginable, and splinter groups formed. Then, more groups would break off from the splinter groups. Some of them would ‘join together,’ sharing their beliefs with one another and maybe compromising both styles into one. Basically, they grew as communities, and had the same problems any community would have.”

“There are nine major schools of belief around today, at least that we’ve seen,” Margaret said, speaking up for the first time. “All of them are banded together under a code of general beliefs, which is why they’re not actively trying to destroy each other. Collectively, they’re called the Traditions.”

“The Traditions believe in the supernatural aspect of magic, and as a general rule, they want to reintroduce it into society and return the world to the times when they, the mages, flourished,” Ian said, rising from the chair and walking back across the room. “They fight to free the minds of the general public, termed ‘sleepers’ by a good number of mages. They fight against rationalization, practicality, and the overwhelming spread of technology. They figure that if you can get everyone to acknowledge magic and its abilities, Paradox will vanish, and everyone will live happily ever after.

“This, of course, is absolute and utter horsecrap.”

Logan chuckled despite himself. “Safe ta say, then, that the group o’ you ain’t part of the Traditions.”

“Hell no,” Ian said sharply. “But anyway, I’m getting off topic. There are nine schools of thought inside the Traditions. Margaret?”

Margaret nodded, and dug inside her purse for a moment, finally producing a small notebook of her own. She flipped through it and then settled back in her chair. “The first group is the Akashic Brotherhood. The Akashics are the Eastern mages, for the most part. They believe that the mind, body and soul are all part of a greater whole of the person, just like the person is part of the greater whole of the universe. They embrace the style of the body, becoming completely aware of yourself, and returning to a simpler state of life.”

“Basically, these are your Thursday night Tao Chen instructors, with the whole shaved head and a Fu Manchu thing going, teaching about ‘moving like the crane’ or something like that. This is the Bruce Lee idiot who’ll tie a blindfold over his head, spout off some ‘honor’ crap, and make you feel guilty for weeks after completely stomping his ass,” Ian said with a huff.

Margaret grinned. “The second Tradition is the Celestial Chorus.”

“I got this one, Margaret,” Ian said, not even trying to mask his vehemence. “The Chorus is your general Bible-thumping Jehovah’s-witnessing doomsday-preaching money-laundering hymn-singing corner-shouting Koran-waving devil-screaming TV-evangelist organization, never looking out of their damn holy books to see what the hell is going on in the world.”

Alexander ran over as Ian was running out of breath at the end. “Ian’s had some bad encounters with the Choristers before,” he said meekly as he steered Ian away by the collar of his shirt.

“What do you mean, bad encounters!” Ian shouted, trying to work free. “I just told them that right there, and they –“

“They tried to drown him in holy water. Thought he was the devil,” Alexander replied, shoving Ian back down into the chair.

“Maybe I am!”

“Shut up, Ian,” Alexander sighed. “Just shut up.”

Margaret snickered, having watched the whole exchange with a smile on her face. “The Choristers are a pretty hard-luck group when it comes down to it. Religious zeal tends to be the deepest, and both the easiest and the hardest to combat. When the world started getting modernized, people started feeling that religion was passe, and that zeal faded. The Chorus is the loudest voice for protecting the people, though. They’re good people. Most of them.”

“Yeah, not the ones that tried to drown me. The devil, indeed....” Ian trailed off, glaring darkly around the room.

“Anyway,” Alexander said, turning away from Ian. “Next on the list, Margaret?”

“Um, the Cult of Ecstasy,” she said, flipping the page in her notebook.

Ian perked up. “Margaret, think you could field this one? You were a member, after all.”

Margaret reddened, and glared at Ian. “I was a member of it for one reason only, and for two months. Don’t make me drag all the skeletons out of your closet, Summers.”

Remy grinned widely, and poked Bobby with his elbow. “Now dere’s a familiar phrase, ne-c’est pas?”

Alexander arched an eyebrow, but shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “The Cult of Ecstasy is pretty misunderstood, too. A lot of people think it’s all one big crazy party for eternity, but that’s a misconception. The Cult does use a lot of, well, questionable methods, but everything has a purpose.”

Margaret nodded. “The Cult tries to reach the definition of ecstasy; a sudden, intense rush of emotion and feeling that throws the Cultist into a trance. It’s in that trance that they can break down the barriers in their mind and the limitations they think they have. They use methods like drugs, pain, dance, music, and even sex to reach that level of emotion or trance, because they’re the most reliable methods. They’d know. They practice all those pretty regularly.”

“Sounds like the Hellfire Club,” Warren noted uneasily.

“Or your average public high school,” Hank said cheerfully.

Ian grinned. “The Cult doesn’t push drugs or sex on anyone, or anything like that. It would defeat the whole purpose.”

“Yeah. You have to reach that state of being willingly, or the empathy and the ‘understanding,’ they say, are all lost on you,” Margaret added. “It’s like losing yourself in a moment. That’s the best way I can describe it.”

“Makes enough sense. What’s next?” Alexander asked.

Margaret glanced down at her notebook. "The Dreamspeakers."

“These are your nutcases,” Ian said, rising from the chair and walking the other way around the table. “These are your spirit-friends who wake up every morning and go hump a tree, or something.”

“Tree-huggers?” Bobby asked, grinning despite himself.

“Tree-huggers, tree-humpers, whatever. They talk to spirits, and... they talk to spirits. Do they DO anything else?”

Alexander shrugged. “Not really. I mean, to them and a lot of other people, what they do is really important. To the three of us, though? It doesn’t really matter. I have no need to talk to a spirit, therefore I don’t care.”

Margaret shrugged as well. “It’s a little harsh, but they’ve really lost a lot of sway recently. We’ll move on. Next up is the Euthanatos.”

“The death mages,” Alexander said. “The Euthanatoi are the most distrusted mages in the Tradition, save maybe the final group we’ll cover. Anyone dealing that much in death and decay is a little weird to start with, and the Euthanatoi embrace death as a wonderful part of the overall life process.”

Ian grinned. “This is right down Kevorkian’s alley, to drag out a dead reference. The Euthanatos mages do kill people, but apparently not as some creepy sport. They think that they are the ones who have the ‘burden’ of shuffling the mortal coil off of everyone else. They’re really methodical about it, too.”

“Odd,” Warren said, leaning back in his chair. “Just... odd.”

Margaret nodded. “That’s about what we think, too. Anyway, moving on... the Order of Hermes.”

“Ah, our ever-lovable Hermetic bastards,” Ian said with a grin. “The Hermetics claim to be the grandfather of the Traditions, and that they thought of the whole idea of joining up in the first place. These are the old-school mages, for lack of a better term. You are never going to find a group more stuck-up in their own practices nor set in their ways than the Hermetics.”

Alexander nodded, walking around the other side of the table. “The Hermetics are an important Tradition, there’s no doubt about that. But their main problem is the political system they use to govern themselves. It’s pretty easy for that group to get so stuck in their own pride and their own inner politics that they don’t pay any attention to what’s going on outside.”

“I was part of them for about half a year,” Ian said, pacing around. “The greatest asset that the Order of Hermes has –is- their pride, actually. Since they’re so sure that they’re the ‘grandfather’ of the Traditions and all, they’ve been steady in keeping a history of the whole thing. From what we’ve found, they’ve got one of the more extensive libraries on magic, too, and that’s why we know as much as we do.”

“Not to mention we have a whole library’s worth of their books crammed in the back of Alexander’s van,” Margaret said with a smile.

“Oh, yeah,” Ian said with a grin of his own. “Remind me to tell you guys about that later. Now, though, we need to keep rollin’. Next?”

Margaret flipped to the next page in her notebook. “The Sons of Ether. Alexander?”

Alexander walked back and looked over her shoulder for a minute. “Right. The Sons of Ether are the Traditions’ version of a Science Club. Etherites like to be the first to reveal some magical new invention or new method of doing something, and if someone beats them to it, they’ll find out another way of doing it that’s better than the first. They’re great scientists, but most of them seem to have a few screws loose.”

“Not to mention that it’s impossible to talk to more than one of them at once,” Margaret said, agitation in her voice. “It’s amazing how two people can have the same theory, do the exact experiments, and come to the exact same result, and still be able to write a forty-five page thesis on why their idea is better than the other’s.”

Alexander nodded, and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, they’re pretty good like that. Like I said, they’re great scientists, and I’ve gotten some great little tricks from my time with them, but they can be confusing as hell.”

“Two more, Margaret,” Ian said, jogging back to his end of the table. “Let’s hear ‘em.”

“The Verbena,” she replied, tucking her legs into the chair.

“The Verbena, indeed,” Ian mused, scratching his chin. “The Verbena are the mages of legend. ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ and all that rot. They’re not outdated or anything, but their methods are pretty medieval at times. Merlin mages.”

“The Verbena put a lot of weight into the circle of life, to steal from Disney,” Alexander said. “They have the Tree of Life as a symbol of their beliefs, and tend to be a little strange when it comes to their procedures. Blood, sex, flesh... whatever they feel is necessary. They’re primeval witches, and not the girly New Age ones, either.”

“One more!” Ian shouted, snapping his fingers. “We’ve got one more, and then that’s that. The Virtual Adepts, right?”

Margaret nodded without looking down at her paper. “The Virtual Adepts are the most modern of the Traditions, even more so than the Sons of Ether. Where the Etherites work with science as a whole, Adepts focus solely on computers and the logical thought process. As a result, they’re –“

“Completely moronic in social encounters, haughty, and complete techno-geeks,” Alexander snapped. “The whole problem with the Adepts is they can’t operate outside of their computers and machinery. It’s built in their heads so solidly that they are intent on the fact that they’re powerless without them. Break an Adept’s laptop, he goes cryin’ home to Mommy. They’re worthless. Absolutely worthless.”

“I used to disagree with Alexander,” Ian said, “until I actually sat down and spoke to one of the Virtual Adept higher-ups in Silicon Valley. He spent a good forty minutes talking in this high-pitched voice about the latest and greatest advancement he made with his magic in the Internet. Inside the Internet, mind you. Not just working with it. They try to get inside the ‘Digital Web,’ they call it, to make things happen. They’re nuts. And complete Matrix ripoffs.”

“That’s probably the other way around, but anyway,” Margaret said softly. “The Virtual Adepts are a recent convert of the Technocracy, which is why they rely so heavily on computers and things like that.”

Hank looked up. “The Technocracy?”

Alexander blinked. “We forgot to explain the Technocracy.”

Ian slapped his forehead. “We’re idiots. But only for the next few minutes, then we’re geniuses again.”

Alexander grinned. “The Technocracy is the other side of the coin. If ‘heads’ is the Traditions, with their urge to reintroduce magic to the masses and change reality back, ‘tails’ is the Technocracy, which wants nothing of that.”

“The Technocracy engineered this reality. They started taking away the supernatural elements of life a long time ago, and never stopped,” Margaret said, sitting up a little straighter. “Their main goal is discovering and classifying anything that they feel poses a threat to consensual reality, and either controlling or eliminating it. Namely, mages.”

“And other supernatural beings, too. It’s not just us,” Alexander reminded her.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Still.”

“We don’t know shit about the Techies,” Ian said frankly. “They’re secretive, they powerful, and they control everything. We think they’re kind of like the agents in The Matrix, but that’s just because that’s a blatant Virtual Adept movie, and the Adepts used to be in the Technocracy. But there’s no way that would’ve gotten into worldwide theaters if it was completely accurate."

“Although that may have been why they made Keanu Reeves act in it,” Alexander pointed out with a grin. “Takes away credibility.”

“You may have something there, Mr. Pratte,” Ian replied. “But, yeah. That’s that. Traditions and Technocracy. There’s a lot more mages out there than just the three of us, and a good number of them are more powerful than we are.”

“But what are you?” Scott asked. “You’ve named things you used to be a part of, but nothing that you are.“

“That’s because we don’t belong to anything,” Alexander answered. “We’re Orphans. Self-Awakened. Rebels, even.”

“Bastard children, really,” Ian piped in. “I don’t know about you, but those were some gay groups we talked about. I can’t pick out one philosophy I like, or one mindset I can even tolerate. The Techies are too stiff to hang with, the Traditions are too weird and whiny... these are my people right here.” He pointed to Alexander and Margaret. “’The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.’” Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “Jack Kerouac, On The Road.”

Bobby grinned. “I’ve got that. Great book.”

Scott waited for a moment, and then spoke up again. “So can you explain to us how your magic works?”

Alexander thought for a minute. “It might be better if we show you. Do you have anywhere we can do that?”

Hank smiled widely. “Oh, I think we have that.”