"Oh, and what about the blood magic, three points seems cheap enough, does it synergyze with the FLESH magic?"

"The death sense strikes most people that way, I suspect, but there's a fair number who take great comfort in always being the most dangerous person in the room even if they're down a rank on every other magic they have. Levitation's three. Switching things for your rod is mostly useful in a fight - carry several things and use whatever's best, even armor - though if you're a fashion plate it's convenient to keep a whole wardrobe a moment away. Blood witchery lets you manipulate liquid blood with great force and speed, outside a body or inside, within about a hundred fifty meters, and burn blood to replace magic - a drop for rank one, a vial for three, and two liters for five. Material components can be substituted with ritual humanoid sacrifice, where you need 'innocence' to get past rank three. More inconvenient than Hespatian Umbramancy, and without the more enjoyable alternative costs."

"Oh, blood to replace magic looks super useful, I'll take it. Ritual sacrifice... pass, especially if there is a more convenient version in Hespatian Umbramancy. How does it work? Is it some kind of shadow magic?

"Also, what do you mean by 'more enjoyable alternative costs'?"

"There's an elemental plane of shadow, and a variety of interesting things to be done by invoking it. The invocation rituals can take blood sacrifice, but most of it you can substitute sex. Rank two makes you a silent sneak for a day or hear prophecy for five minutes or be inspired for a week. Needs a partner in dim light and either everything's visible or nothing is. Rank three, ritual sex, make a field of darkness, or see in darkness for a month, or a month of fantastic luck in business. Rank four, four people getting sweaty and witnesses besides; gain a bond that lets you slip through shadows to the dark plane and bring others with you, or separate a shadow into something mostly used as an assassin."

Simone is thoroughly distracted now.

It might take her a while to reply.

"You don't strictly need to take it, of course; most of my coven's gotten rank four going, since all you need is to help with the ritual. Not every time we meet is such a... special occasion."

Is she acknowledging the distraction? No. Is she teasing Simone to make it worse? Oh yes.

"I... seeing through shadow or incredible luck for a months seems incredibly useful. I think I may be able to... tolerate the cost associated. Or be a witnesses, I guess. I'll definitely take at least four ranks of it, especially because I don't think I have anything at rank four, and I need some for balancing."

She's thoroughly flustered.

"You mentioned a coven? How does that work? Is it just... a group or is there some kind of more magical bond between you?"

"There are a few important groups of witches in general. Mine, which is of course the best one, is the Hespatian Covens. We're, well, the originals, where the myths come from. We were old when Egypt was young and we've never let anything stop us; mortals, monsters, rival witches, laws, Outsiders, nothing. But Hespatia is split into many groups which don't interact and being secret from each other is part of why we survive. I started my own coven, because I was... displeased... with how my great-grandmother treated her new recruits. Some covens get cavalier about sacrificing their people and not careful about their promises. They're powerful, to a woman - no one can challenge them on it, and they can afford to be careless. That's not how I work. If you're in the covens, you have power backing you up, and if you're my coven, you have a promise in blood that it'll be there when you need it."

"I'd like that. I'd like to have someone I can trust to have my back."

She's not blushing or laughing anymore, just looking Tesera straight in the eyes.

Good for her.

"I thought you'd have good taste. Oh, as long as I'm mentioning politics, one warning you really must get: Outsiders. If you read Lovecraft, you know the idea. Everyone else tolerates each other because we need help against the Outsiders. Don't seek them out, run if you can and try to remove the memories if you can't."

"And if you do try to seek them out, I will kill you and it will be a kindness."

"That bad? Do not gaze into the Abyss and all that? I always thought I'm quite mentally resilient, but that was in a world without magic and - apparently - literal Lovecraftian horrors."

"I'll heed your warning, thank you. And while I am very curious, I would strongly prefer to not die, and the worst thing about this seems that it can interfere with who people are, and I very much like being myself, so I will not seek them out."

"Any other choices I should make?"

"For people? Nothing you desperately need to do now; you could tweak fate to ensure you can go to Hawthorne Academy, who are one of the other groups worth mentioning and perfectly respectable, but you have the raw power to get in without fate's help if you decide later you want to be pushed to the limits of your potential. Oh, and for the small magic, I've been told Prestidigitation is nicknamed for Dungeons and Dragons; if Pathfinder's a similar game, that should be right."

"Yeah, Pathfinder is the quirky cousin. We should play someday, I'm sure we'd be able to tell... interesting stories together."

"I think I'm happy with my choices. You mentioned stability before, though, I should fix that. I really liked the idea of generating metals out of thin air, but I think I should move Metallurgy to fourth rank, and also push something else to rank four."

"That seems like a good choice. Or Portals; you could build both back early if you wanted, the stability isn't an issue as you grow, but they're large chunks. I might suggest improving your Familiar? But then, I've always liked having extra friends around, the fourth rank of Familiarity is the one that tempts me."

"Nah, I love Portals. I was also thinking about Familar for another fourth rank. What does it buy me? It would brings me to... 7 at rank 1, 2 at rank 3, 3 at rank 4, 3 at rank 5, which seems fine with how you suggested to balance it earlier."

"No issues with stability. You'll need to pick a race to swap charge to. Anything I said before, or anything a bit similar to Jotuns. That could get you... bearing children, sleeplike meditation, strong emotions - rowdy concert or an excited lover both work - big crowds, or, that's interesting, voluntarily enduring things you dislike. And... two points spare, too. I can make suggestions."

"Bearing children is a pass, meditation could be fine I guess, strong emotions seems very good, probably more enjoyable than enduring, although I guess enduring is more reliable? How strong would the dislike need to be?"

"Oh, anything else I can pick for two?"

"That comes from Revenants, who are fairly uncommon. My understanding is exercise to the point of pain is the most common, and constant mild irritation is enough but possibly lower, this shows a very high cap to their charge rate but I am not yet omniscient and don't know whether it drops below a Neutral's rate if they're only irritated."

"Exercise I can definitely do, but I think I'd still prefer strong emotions. Seems like it would be still easy to get power and if I'm ever in a dangerous situations that would probably be fuel. Wait, does the emotion need to be from someone else?"

"Technically no, but your own don't count very much. You want either a crowd of strong emotions - for which you count as a crowd of one - or people who are feeling emotions about you. A couple dozen excited people, or one targeted one, are good for high charge; just you, you'll eke out a little but it's very slow. This is one of mine, Daeva."

"Yeah, I'll grab the Dæva one I think. You told me I still have two points left, what can I use them for?"

"Simplest is to bump an elementalism or two up, or Witchery - everyone gets the hat, cloak, and rod, and the Hespatian trick of making the cloak of unrecognizability merges in once the shadows visit and teach you how, but you get bland unchangeable ones unless you buy in, and tailoring is annoying. Or pick up one of the little things. The crossbreeding; the nice broom, if you like that better than getting it with high ranks of Witchery. Or, well, one of my past awakenings very much enjoys the side benefits of physical memorization, though she picked it for fights. You'd be amazed how much of flexibility is just knowing how to twist."