"Your father's--Jack Morgan is your maternal grandfather?"

Nod. 

"My real name," he sighs, "is Johann Faust." 

"--Faust like Goethe and Marlow and Mephistopheles???" 

Protective shoulder-squeeze. 

Nod. 

Caio: Do you recognize that name?

Bella: Only vaguely. Faust sounds German, I didn't take German. Mephistopholes sounds Greek.

"You...know, how some neutrals have the ability to gain power through the means of another class than their own." 

"--Are you saying that you are in fact not an Academic but a Warlock. Did you decide to follow in your infamous ancestor's footsteps for somefucking reason? Consortation is serious business!" 

"I was human and Eliza was dead," he snaps. "My mother wasn't a witch and my maternal grandfather refused to give any hint of magic existing to a descendant of such an infamous diabolist, and the love of my life was cold and lifeless and I had no idea that there was a place you could find elixirs that could heal her, all I had were the notes that my family kept locked up but never destroyed, that was my only path forward." 

Hug hug hug. 

"Mephistopheles hasn't bothered us in a while," she murmurs. "He though Johann would be an easy target, young and desperate...he thought to take advantage. I couldn't bear it...I snapped. It wasn't the easy kind of natural awakening. But all at once--I'm not a hazard, not yet, but I had two ranks of most of the elements at my disposal, and...and I did my very best to scare him off. And he hasn't bothered us in a while." 

"...Wow. Okay, well, this is. Not great, obviously, but." Sigh. "We can't help you if we don't know these things! Are there any other important secrets anyone has been keeping?" 

"...I'm, uh. Also a mimi hybrid. Oread cougar and Mimi liger, with the Zooarch transformation, which helped with the whole trying-to-scare-off-a-devil thing." 

"--Okay, you know what, fair and awesome, I feel slightly better about that now. Anything else?" 

"If I say, I have secrets but they don't involve Consortation or anything like that, can we leave it at that for now?"

"For now."

"I don't have any weird secrets! I was super not expecting to stumble into this many secrets today." 

"You we weren't specifically planning to tell, you're Lisao's friend more than ours."

"Fair enough. I'm not planning to spill the beans regardless. Melody, don't get in too much of a snit, this actually totally makes sense to keep secret." 

She pouts but doesn't otherwise object. 

Bella: So consortation is sort of like breeding mals but heavier duty?

Caio: Or like, finding mals that already exist, and making deals with them?

Bella: Or maybe like mythological demon summoning, they aren't very nonmythical around here.

"--Sorry, you probably need, uh, context. On that. Where should I start...?"

"What is consortation?"

"Summoning and/or dealing with demons slash devils."

"Which are....?"

"...Uh, beings from a dimension called Hell that is one of the places you can go when you die, but don't want to."