"Forgive my dearest brother. He sometimes forgets that things can just be fun."

"Hey, not judging. Just saying, don't fill up on bread before the main course."

Ariel guides them to the register, where she pays for the clothes. There's a convenient changing room nearby, where they can put on their new clothes.

"Gotcha."

Gavriel and Herod walk together in the same compartment and emerge a few minutes later. Gavriel basically got a simple color scheme for the both of them, dark with a few bright accents. They appear to be using the same size, which makes things tight fitting on Gavriel, but loose on Herod.

"So, how do we look?"

"You look great," she says, mostly looking at Herod. "Let's get you over to the office so you can get registered."

"Thank you." He grins. "So, I am not actually sure what attending school here entails. Like, what do you do when you are not escorting people?"

"Classes feature heavily. There's sports, both superpowered and otherwise. There's virtual reality machines that can put you in an interactive illusion where you fight other people in similar machines, those are really fun. For me, at least, I don't know how you feel about violence. There's also actual combat arenas, where you can fight people for fun or over rivalries, imagined or otherwise. There's a bunch of different clubs. That sort of thing."

"I wonder if the virtual reality thing wound help with our vices. Your world does have a lot of options to have fun."

"Speaking of that, is there non-combat violent fun options?"

"Gav."

"Are we talking like wrestling or like whips and chains? If the former yes, if the latter I should introduce you to Xan."

"Mostly chains. But he is into the other things, too."

"And yes, you should introduce me to Xan."

"Fair warning, he's shorter and skinnier than you but he can probably toss your ass across a room even without magic, so don't underestimate him. And he's got a boyfriend, but they're not exclusive or anything."

"Oh, he sounds dreamy. And me and Herod are not exclusive either, so it's all good." Wink.

"Could you wait until we have settled down before flirting with people on my behalf? We have nothing besides the clothes on our back and spellbook of useless spells."

"If you want useful spells, we've got a magic program that can help with that."

Herod stops on his tracks. "I would like that very much."

"How's your magic work? How do you make new spells? Can I see the book?"

"Huh, how it works depends on the specific kind of magic. For humans, our humans at least, they get spellwords, which are the spells I talked about. I have never created a new spell, but it's supposed to be a very intuitive process. Often using meditation and memorizing existing spells to figure out a way how to mesh them together. Ah, and when a person is born as a human they get their own spellword, which they can use as many times they want, but have to figure out how to unlock. But anyone with a spellword can memorize other people's spells, but it's a fire-and-forget kinda deal."

He offers her the book. The pages have very loopy writing and the occasional diagram. They are all completely opaque to her.

"It's useful, but kinda boring. Empowering vices are way more fun, you get a bit of a specific power and a 'vice' as a drawback, none of this writing and reading spells for hours to no end."

"Wow, that's nothing like our magic. We just have to gather Essence and then do a bunch of mental backflips to make it do what we want." Demonstratively, she conjures up a globe of red light and tosses it into the air, where it bursts into sparkles. 

"Ooh, pretty."

"That sounds way more versatile than ours. How long did it took you to learn to do that?"

"Took me about five minutes. Takes most people weeks, if not months. I'm a Wiz-class mutant, means my brain instinctually gets magic and it's easier for me to use, in addition to generating more Essence than a baseline human. One of the many ways in which I personally am unfairly lucky."

"Wow. and becoming a Wiz-class mutant is not something one can... acquire?"