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6th footnote [text] target practice

I have a couple of suggestions for the would-be marksmen fervently preparing for the upcoming tournament:

Magicians are widely considered to be the best choice for target practice. Unfit and unfashionable, they can be seen at a thousand paces in their gaudy attire and offer a moving target.¹ I suggest saving a target and using a magician!
Don't bother entering the actual contest. Instead, list your wishes here and I might deign to grant them once I've been declared Lord for a day.

1 - Don't worry about one outrunning your shot. Magicians are too fond of their food to be anything but slow and rotund. The majority of them mask this by wearing cleverly designed pants that are thirteen sizes too small and somehow conceal all that extra flesh. It's not a pleasant sight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Excuse me?

That depends on what I'm excusing.

You sound as if you've a problem with mages.

You would too, if the stuffy, self-important louses kept waking you up in the middle of a multi-decade nap.

I don't think problem with really does it justice though. Vendetta against, maybe? (They deserve it, too.)

A vendetta. We deserve to be used as target practice because you feel we're an inconvenience?

Exactly! Good to see that you're catching on!

[Pause. We? We?]

Oh. You're one of them.

[Deadpan.]

I knew there had to be more. You're worse than that really nasty fungus that grows between toes. No matter how one scrubs his essence, there's always more.

Because someone woke you up is no reason to pump them full of arrows.

I have done nothing to you. You didn't even know I was a mage. How could you possibly assume to know anything about me?

You're obviously forgetting why your kind keeps waking me up. I don't generally fancy risking my essence, traipsing about after some holy hair dryer that you just has to have.

And just because you've done nothing doesn't mean you won't. I've met hundreds of magicians and I bet you're no different.

I have no idea who you are, other than just another fool with an idiotic grudge against mages. I don't want to hear your voice, let alone risk your 'essence'.

Oh, good. You're one of those people.

[Tired of this voice? Bartimaeus can fix that! When next he speaks, his voice has lowered an octave and, for the heck of things, picked up a booming echo.]

If I had a pound for every time I've heard that rhetoric, I might have to lay off the chocolate-covered imps. You're not interested until you need or want something, then suddenly ol' Bartimaeus is the first "demon" on your speed dial.

[He's... taken aback by the sudden change in voice. But what comes next makes it very clear to him what's going on.]

A demon? I will have no deals with demons.

[No deals with demons? CHALLENGE: ACCEPTED.]

I've heard that one before too. There's something about a magician having the upper hand and being perfectly safe from my vengeful wrath in his neat little pentacle that makes him disinclined to cut a deal.

Edited (tweaking all the phrasing) 2012-01-28 20:44 (UTC)

No, I don't think you have. I don't want anything to do with demons. And any mage who does is nothing short of a fool!

Did you fall out of bet this morning?

[Sudden shift in tone? Maybe. Bartimaeus is questioning why a magician would not use a demon (spirit) as that is what their powers are reliant on in his world.]

What kind of magician wouldn't have anything to do with a demon? That would make you a normal, boring old commoner.

I'm a mage. My magic comes from the Fade. From myself. I don't need any blighted demons to heal, or cast my spells.

What a ridiculous story! Next you'll be telling me that you don't wear form-fitting pants.

I don't. They chafe.

[BRB, laughing hysterically.]

This is rich! A magician that doesn't use spirits and won't wear pants! What's next?

[The laughing's reduced to snickering now.]

Let me guess: You don't want to rule the world.

I wear pants, they're just not... skin-tight.

[He sounds offended -- well. More than usual.]

I don't. I have no desire to be in charge of the entire blighted world. I'd prefer simply being in charge of my own life.

[Bartimaeus revels in the sound of an offended magician, sorry. Well, mage. Whatever title they are masquerading around under.

He also revels in another bout of laughter.]

What a ridiculous joke! Are you trying to moonlight as a comedian?

A mage that doesn't want to rule the world. When pigs fly.

[A pause as he thinks about that.]

When pigs fly without being loaded into a catapult or imitated by a spirit of any sort.

It's no joke. I have about as much desire to commit world domination as I do to become Tranquil.

So I will thank you to keep your blighted prejudice out of these books.

You're telling me that you're a mage that doesn't use demons and just wants to settle down with a darling witch to raise a family of pacificist mage-babies?

And you're expecting me to believe that.

I didn't say anything about settling down or families. You're putting words in my mouth. Which isn't entirely surprising.

All I want is to use my magic, and be left alone. I want other mages to be free to do the same. I want nothing to do with demons, or domination.

There you go, off on an impossible tangent again. Using your magic? Everyone knows that magic comes from the spirits. All that a mage does is enslave us to do it by drawing a few petty circles on the ground and muttering incantations best lost to time. At least give us some credit.

This Fade of yours is obviously another name for the Other Place, and your spells are just cleverly disguised imps.

Magic has nothing to do with trapping spirits. At most, a medium might call on them for their help, and send them back to the Fade afterward. The only enslavement is done to the mages themselves, by the blighted templars.

You know nothing of my world, of my magic. You know nothing of the slavery and injustice we face every day. You will be silent, fool.

6th footnote [text] target practice

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