"Are - souls just birds there? The familiars I get, the bird soul thing's a bit strange."
Prime follows Spring, closing the door behind himself. "That will not be the strangest thing you hear today. A literal god took the picture."
"Bella. Bella I think we just hit epic level this is the best day."
"Not all souls in general are birds. His is a coincidence, and her species is limited to birds; she's a witch."
Prime raises an eyebrow. "I have no idea what you're referencing."
"My boyfriend here is a huge nerd," explains Bella, "both in the useful inventing real life spells researching real useful runes casting helpful magic sense, and also in the sitting around with fellow nerds pretending to do all the above in the persona of a fictional character according to rules involving a lot of arithmetic."
"What kind of magic have you got? Ice is a witch, her Adarin and this one are both mages, Iobel and Edarial are both spellbinders, and I'm an acolyte of Perinixu, who's a healing goddess."
"Uh, the both of us do the kind with runes - draw diagram, chant in non-native language, boom, it's more complicated than I just made it sound. And there's also species-specific stuff, different for each of us because we aren't the same thing."
"You... Aren't the same thing," he says, looking between the two. "Is this a plane with multiple species that look exactly the same?"
He pats the still-cackling Darren's shoulder. Pat, pat. There, there. Let the megalomania out.
"We're shapeshifted," Bella says. "We have medallions for it - that's presumably more of the runes-chanting-bam magic, that made them, but the art's been lost."
"Uh, he's a peryton, but - don't tell anybody what I am, somebody has already sent two monsters and a lot of goons with instruments of torture after me about it," winces Bella.
"... Extremely racist goon squad. With torture. Of course. Do you need help with them?"
"The goons and both monsters are dead. We still don't know who procured them."
"I thought my job description this time was taxi," he drawls. "Am I both taxi and scrying guy? Alas, I'm so overworked in my retirement."
"If they were suffering from pox and whooping cough I'd take care of them. This one's your department."
"I will try scrying. But first - I believe our others are impatient for a portal. Thus the job description of 'taxi.' I should do that first, I think, before I resign myself to being the mage equivalent of a blood hound."
"Okay, but if a monster crashes into our apartment and spirits me away you need to save me."
"... Sorry, what?"