She blinks and shakes her head slightly. "Uh. Both, I guess? I was not expecting... any of that. How... do you tell what kind of nonsense somebody has? Or am I just gonna roll the dice on whether my resurrection method is skull makeouts?"

"It's consistent per race and that's either the first or second thing you'll pick. And everyone I've ever Awakened had the option of Neutral, which is basically just normal human plus magic. And you can back out any time before we hit the big red button and actually perform the metaphysical changes."

"You can buy immortality separately, though it's expensive and you'd be working and saving for a decade or three to get it. There are a lot of Neutrals, so making revival potions and runework contingencies is a common high-end career."

"...how does picking what race you are work? Is this some kind of weird genetic memory bullshit?"

"Yeah, sounds about right. You have, if you're average, blood from six or seven different races in enough quantity to matter. You can pick any of them, and if you have enough recent ancestry you might be able to take parts of two together, and shove some of your natural magic potential into making them fit right. That's pretty rare, but I've seen it twice and they were happy with it."

"What else is on the menu?"

"The other big choice is how you improve. Academics study, Sorceresses practice, Warlocks do favors for a Great Power that's their patron. It's possible you will be cut off from one of them, but I've only seen that once and it was me. Warlocks know who their patron is before deciding, and generally you have several options there."

"...sorry, wait, cut off from what?"

"I didn't get the choice to be an Academic. I still have no idea why."

"...weird. What does 'practice' even mean, anyway?"

"Like weightlifting but with the magic rather than your muscles. Like, with windweaving I might practice lining up a row of empty paper cups and blowing just one out of place today, and tomorrow practice moving ten pounds of weight strapped to a kite. I spend a couple hours a day on it."

"And Academics, what, read up on magical theory?"

"Pretty much, though I think when you're pretty advanced you start writing it, and occasionally doing experiments. Also, each of the three has some other perks, things they're better at."

"Such as...?"

"Academics get efficiency for slow magic, sorceresses get more oomph and more elementalism options, and warlocks get to take some magical artifacts and sort of staple them to their souls so that they can't lose them or be kept away from them. Also warlocks don't usually have diminishing returns to how much work it takes to improve, until they hit their maximum capacity. Warlocks are... weird."

"I'm not so sure I'm keen on stapling anything to my soul."

"Then you probably don't want to be a Warlock. I don't think their patron is quite as stuck-on as their soul-relics, but it's certainly hard to get rid of. Though also, you in some sense already have some of that. One of the standard things everyone has is a gift from a woman far enough back that we're all her grandchildren - hat, cloak, and staff, stuck to our souls, summonable and dismissible at will. They're called 'Mothergifts', though no one remembers Mother's name anymore."

"Spooky. Okay. Anything else to explain?"

"I didn't get to the other four of the Big Six. The religious ones are Watchers and Hespatians. The Watchers aren't precisely 'the Christian witches', they include Muslims and Jews and others and they're not attached to any church, but everyone thinks of them as the Christians. They have ties with Heaven, which definitely exists and has angels, and with a Great Power they think is the Abrahamic God, which other people mostly don't believe them about. Hell also exists, and has demons; a lot of witches can summon weak ones. Nobody claims to be Satan, but there is a Mephistopheles, and he offers his patronage to everyone."

"Concerning. Is he as bad an idea as he sounds?"

"The favors he'll ask for will take less time and less effort than just about anybody's. But they'll be evil, and he does claim possession of your soul, if it ever permanently departs your body, which, you know, is probably difficult but not impossible. I'd recommend against it, but unlike the dozen other pride demons who will also offer to be your patron, there is a certain perspective from which he's a reasonable choice."

"I'm supposed to be fair and balanced about patrons, too."

"...still sounds like a pretty fuckin' bad idea to me. Uh, no offense. Anyway, continue."

"Yeah, I agree, just, well. Anyway, Hespatians. The Hespatian Covens are secretive, and very, very old, though there's kind of a Ship of Theseus thing where the oldest current coven is probably not nearly as old as the Hespatians in general. They have lots of political power, and varying degrees of ethics, there's rumors about assassinations and blood sacrifices and they never confirm anything but don't try to squelch the rumors either. They consider covens families, and if you're in, you have some powerful friends who will go to bat for you for just about anything. Everyone but the Watchers is on speaking terms with them, despite - sometimes because of - the rumors, and they have a lot of very secret rituals which are demonstrably very powerful. According to most Hespatians, they gave up the versions that involved human sacrifice centuries ago, and now it's all voluntary and mostly about breaking taboo rather than blood or violence. But no one denies that those old rituals existed, so everyone side-eyes them when they say that. I think at least four covens out of five have honestly given up the sacrifices, but for the other fifth, who knows? And it looks like they like it that way - probably if you cross a Hespatian they're a modernist, but one chance in fifty that they'll break out some ritual that sacrifices five people to lock away your soul until someone breaks in and destroys their sanctum, or whatever, is more danger than most people want to take."

"Dare I ask what you have to do to get in with the human-sacrificing witch mafia?"

"Well, having never been initiated, I don't know what their initiation ceremonies are like. But they are pretty happy to take in new witches with no affiliation to anyone else. They won't be ride-or-die for you right off the bat, but you'll be in, and within a few years you'll be part of the family. As far as I know. Which is, you know, well-informed, this is my job, but don't ask me to place any bets on it."

"Nevertheless I think I will probably pass. So who does that leave?"