"Nope. Hi."

"I'm Xan, codename Hemomancer. This is Leo, codename Scion. Nice to meet you. Do you mind if I set up an anti-eavesdropping charm? Just out of habit, you know," he says, rolling his eyes at their observers.

"Bella-codename-Flicker. Is the charm on us persons or on the location? Will it prevent me from talking to my sister or is it more specific than that? And does Hemomancer imply what I think it does?"

"Location; nobody outside the bubble can hear anything we say unless specifically addressed, so your sister should be fine. If it implies that I do blood magic, yes; if it implies that I do magic using other people's blood, no. I'm quite conscientious about it."

"I am fine with the privacy charm as described. I was not forming any guesses about where you got your blood."

"People have some odd preconceptions about blood mages, say, turning them into meat puppets or boiling the blood in their veins. I can't imagine where they get the idea."

"Nor I," says Xan piously, dripping spontaneously generated blood onto an oddly shaped black crystal. The crystal turns red, and he tosses it to the center of the table.

"I lack such preconceptions, given where I'm from, but I will of course form postconceptions in a hurry if I hear of any cases of such a thing being done."

"The meat puppet thing is completely impossible unless you're using much more unpleasant magics, and the blood boiling is hilariously inefficient, given that it takes a vial of the victim's blood and three rituals under three distinct new moons. Besides, it's not like there's not a million other ways to kill someone. I was making a joke about the fact that Xan's an asshole and people think he's going to use the ancient and forbidden majyyks on their blood, sorry for the confusion."

"Not my fault it's so easy to scare freshmen."

"Rewarding activity, that?"

"The freshmen in question happened to think they were superheroes and that I was a nefarious villain of some kind, for some reason. I was considerate enough to show them the faults in their reasoning, but they didn't take it so well. And after I went to all that trouble not to permanently injure any of them."

"Somehow I have the impression I'm getting a filtered story."

"Somebody told them about that time Xan sacrificed a puppy to Gothmog on the quad, and they turned out to be more into animal's rights than anyone expected. They tried to ambush him in the forest, he wiped the floor with them and monologued about the great and terrible vengeance that he had spared them from, then left them tied to the flagpole naked and covered in manifested blood. They think they're our nemeses now. It's very irritating. He does that kind of thing a lot."

"...And, just to be clear, is there actually such a thing as Gothmog which accepts puppy sacrifices and did Xan in fact attempt to fill this void in Gothmog's life?"

"There is such an entity. He has been known to accept sacrifices; the puppy was not accepted, because the 'sacrifice' was actually just a red team exercise for campus security, and there was never an actual puppy. I eviscerated an illusion that looked a hell of a lot like one, though. Which is the part that people tend to remember."

"To be fair, it's not like it's that out of character for you."

"If one sacrifices real puppies to Gothmog what are one's likely motivations?" inquires Bella.

"He's a sex demon. Specifically 'depravity', I think. So... something along those lines."

"In case you hadn't heard, I am a fish out of water from a world lacking such commodities as demons, so I don't know if 'those lines' mean that you get signed up for his annual pinup calendar or you get a surprise demon orgy on your birthday or the object of your dubious affections is mind-controlled into relevant proclivities or what," Bella points out.

"It's not like I've done much research on the subject. Dealing with demons is significantly too high-risk for its level of reward."

Leo clears his throat. "I also haven't done much research on this particular case, but applying general principles says it's closest to the last one. More 'the object of your affections gets a little push if they would otherwise be on the tipping point' than mind control, though. Something like 'oh man, what a good day I've been having! What's that you say about depravity? Oh, hell, why not!'"

"Noted."

"Yeah, still fairly creepy. But it's a lot less so than some of the demons around, there are definitely some who would just go straight for the mind control. Manipulating probability to improve your luck with the ladies is fairly vanilla, as demons go. Though come to think of it, Gothmog's thing might be more of a pheromone deal anyway. Dammit, I'm gonna have to look this up when I get to the Mystic Arts library now."

"That's my next stop, I have homework and my powers test isn't till later. But I imagine I will be distracted by shinier objects than demonic hazards once there."