The portal network path to Arcadia is reasonably well-labeled, but not in a way that inspires confidence that it will be so next week. When she arrives at Arcadia, she emerges out onto a large open quad space with a big sign saying, "WELCOME NEW STUDENTS!"

There are a handful of little stands for housing assignments; May probably wants the one that says "Latin Alphabet: Q-Z"

Assuming it's by surname, she sure does!

She is among WITCHES now and DOES NOT HAVE TO WALK!!!!! She drifts over to the Q-Z stand a few inches off the ground.

"Hi!" says the girl behind the desk, who looks like some kind of fire elemental with a skull. "Name?"

"Mabel Mariko Swan."

She rifles through a box beside her and presents her with an ornate golden key with twinkling red stones in the base. "This is your room key! It will open any on-campus door that your student account authorizes you to enter. It should be supernaturally difficult to lose but if you manage it anyway come by the residency office, which is here," she points to a blue circle on a map she pulled out of the box at the same time. "You're in Suite 32 of Claviger Hall." She points to a red circle. There are a variety of other colors of circle, with a key to one side clarifying what all the colors mean. 

"Thanks! Is this map mine to keep?"

"Yep!" 

Then off May goes to her new home! Zoom.

Claviger Hall is beautiful. 

It looks almost but not quite like a cathedral, from the outside; the architectural style is fully Gothic, except where the stained glass windows are smaller and more numerous than they would be on any cathedral, and some swung wide open, and there are certainly no crosses anywhere. Some architect clearly put a lot of work into the building, and another artist into all the stained glass (which has fully secular geometric designs, once she gets close enough to see), because this is the most charge she's ever gotten off a building. 

Inside, it looks more like a normal college dormitory, but a particularly tasteful one; every public lounge and hallway isn't necessarily decorated in a way that goes with any other, but they're arranged in such a way that you never have to see two things that clash with each other at once. 

Suite 32 is on the second floor. 

Oh, gorgeous, she loves it already.

She flies up the stairs and lets herself into 32.

Suite 32 consists of a common area with four individual bedrooms branching off of it. About two-thirds of the common area is taken up by a living room or lounge sort of area, while the remaining third is taken up by a kitchenette separated from the rest by an island countertop. The living room has one big squashy couch, a big squashy chair, and three beanbags in three different colors. 

Sitting on one of the beanbags is a pale, dark-haired girl with her excessively long canine teeth sunk into a very red apple. She looks up when May enters the room. 

"Good morning, I'm May!"

She pulls the apple off her teeth. "Good morning! I'm Ava. You're a wulong, right? I got a book about different witch races before I came here."

"Yup! I'm afraid I did not get such a book and I don't think whatever you are was one of my options."

"I'm an Empusa." She opens her mouth wide to gesture at her fangs. "Vampire witch."

"Huh. Uh, I awakened from a mundane background a few weeks ago and don't know the answers to any questions you may or may not get all the time."

"I awakened from a mundane background six days ago and haven't had time to get asked them."

"Oh, how convenient. Do you vant to suck my blahd? I'm told it's now blue, though I trip a lot less now I can float so I haven't seen it yet."

"Uhhhh...I'm good, thanks," she waves her apple, "Lunabella has magic blood fruit. That they export. Drinking from an actual person sounds kind of, uh, intimate? Honestly? Like an uber-hickey." 

"Legit, I do not especially want to donate any - wow, magic blood fruit is a very cool concept given that there are vampires - do you also have to eat normal food?"

"Nope. Biologically, I'm pretty much dead!" 

"Is that... uncomfortable?"

"Absolutely not, it's great. Biology is incredibly gross when you actually pay attention to it and now I don't have any, I never once felt as clean before I activated as I have since my first shower since." 

"Huh, I hadn't really thought about it that way. I guess you're not the rotting kind of undead - I got that option but it was basically the first I struck - so you're just like, not sweating, not shedding skin...?"

"Not sweating, not shedding skin--technically all my skin's dead but it's not the kind of dead where it sloughs off, so--not using the bathroom, not getting acne, not having my period, not risking infection any time I get a cut, not accumulating tar in my lungs every time I walk past a smoker, not expectorating horrible gunk every cold and flu season. --I mean, a lot of these problems witches have magical solutions to anyway, but I just do not have to think about it anymore. I'm a huge fan."

"I'm glad it works for you! Especially with the apples, those are seriously clever, yay Lunabellan botanists. Do you have like, sunshine, garlic, silver, etcetera issues?"

"Not really! I mean, garlic smells worse than it ever did before, but I don't have to breathe except to talk, so it's no biggie. I'm told other types of vampire have it worse."

"Oh, how many kinds are there?"

"I dunno, I have a class about vampires but I haven't done a lot of research into that side of the family, so to speak, over the past week, I'm much more excited about witches."

"Totally legit. Are our other presumable suitemates here yet, and if not which room have you claimed?"

"Not yet. I have that one," she says, pointing to the one on the right nearer to the hall than the window.

"Alrighty." May inspects the remaining three rooms for distinguishing features.

The rooms against the outside wall have windows--clear glass, not stained, and regular sized. The rooms against the hall do not. Aside from that, they are very much alike. 

May can FLY and will take a windowed room. She pulls out her packed items from her landscape and starts setting up, Starry Night and all.

While she's doing that, the door to the suite bursts open again, and two unfamiliar voices can be heard from the living room speaking with Ava. 

May floats out of her room. "Hi there!"

"Hi! I'm Emily, and this is my sister Edie." 

"We looked more alike when we were human."

"I would imagine so! I'm May, it's nice to meet you. Are you recent awakenings too?"

"Yep. Was yours natural or guided?"

"Guided, I met a lady called Penelope in her shop a few weeks back."

"Glad to hear it. Ours were natural, that tends to happen under unfortunate circumstances, we don't really like talking about it." 

"On a less depressing note, what are you, we didn't really get much in the way of an infodump."

"I'm a wulong. I recharge off having art around me, one day when I am big and strong I will be able to turn into a ginormous fuckoff dragon. What're you two?"

"You recharge off art? I am so jealous--I'm a Luxal and she's a Lilin, do I need to unpack those--"

"Not to me," Ava says placidly. 

"Ava's apparently read about all of us in a book, but I didn't get either of those options, or the book, so yes please."

"It's in my bag if you want to borrow it," Ava says, reaching over to rummage in her purple messenger bag.

"Luxal means I recharge off of ambient expensive metals and rocks, which is, like, fine, but way less cool than art--Luxals have an associated metal and gem--my metal is steel," she pulls back the cuff of her sweater to reveal a sort of round patch of shiny grey on her wrist, "my bones are made of it and I have patches of it on my skin, and my eyes and core are made of my gem, which is opal," her eyes are kind of unnaturally sparkly, dancing flecks of blue and green, "and if I die you take my core out and immerse it in a bath of my metal and I get better. Lilin means we've got a demon ancestor of some kind somewhere. Sort of like a D&D tiefling except those don't go to Hell when they die. Like, not the way a dead human would, you can summon her back." 

"And the ordinary Lilin way of charging is to break personal taboos but I would instead simply live off of Emily's Kisses if if I did not instead have Charge Swap." 

"Personal taboos? That's so dreadfully inconvenient, presumably if you're premeditatively doing that all the time you kind of stop having the low-stakes breakable kind after a while... what's your swapped charge?"

"Resisting things! I'm told it's the Vanir one, and also that I can pass for a Vana if I hide my wings and tail. It's great because it counts, like, resisting authority or social pressure, which means I get mana from speaking truth to power, but also resisting internal urges, which means I get mana from not slapping idiot authority figures!"

"- gosh. So I guess you're going to get really into local politics or something?"

"Arcadia seems to have fewer idiot authority figures than I'm used to, I'll probably just read dumbass internet comments without starting any flame wars."

"I have never heard of a better reason to read dumb internet comments!"

"Neither have I! It's the only good one I've ever heard at all, although I wouldn't be shocked if there were some other magical reason--oh, there's a thought, I bet some poor Lilin with the baseline charge method could get somewhere egging the idiots on. I know I'd want a long shower if I did that."

"If I were for some reason stuck charging in a way I couldn't reliably and reasonably do I'd seriously consider, like, working for Alphazon, I bet they pay in Kisses."

"Yeah that would work less well for me. On account of how everything I know about non-magical capitalism tells me that Alphazon are probably exactly the kind of people I get charge for not telling off."

"Huh. I haven't read up on them that much yet."

"They're a big corporation with pretty much a monopoly on doing big corporation things on this side of the Veil. I'll buy that they're less awful than Gilded Age monopoly-trusts but, like...Big Tobacco used to advertising that smoking was good for you until the Surgeon General made them cut it out. Disney got the copyright on Mickey Mouse extended even though there was no actual legal reason to do that. I guess the fact that shareholders can't sue them for putting long-term gains over short-term gains might help, but like--I read somewhere once that people as individuals have free will, but people in aggregate can always be predicted, and in aggregate, corporate management is not your friend." Pause. "Wow, that didn't even pretend to be well-cited. Uh, if you want to ignore everything I just said until I can give you a bibliography, that's totally fair."

"I am taking eleven classes so no rush but unless I feel like starting a competing business I will probably just coexist peacefully with this one, you know?"

"--Oh, yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, I wouldn't be getting all this mana off of not picking fights if I endorsed picking the fights, if I endorsed picking the fights I would just pick the fights."

"Understood!"

"I've got a very combative personality but I try not to let it turn me into an actual asshole."

"Well, I'm glad you managed to get your charge swap, I assume that's difficult if Penelope or equivalent isn't managing things for you."

"Yeah, it just sort of happened, we're very lucky things didn't turn out much worse." 

"What kindsa magic did you guys all wind up with? I'm capped at rank three for now because of a complication thingamabob so I'm putting off lots of stuff I want to take, but I'm a Lucasatan warlock and I have a rank or two in like seven things plus my fancy tiara that bypasses the limit, come to me if you break a leg."

"Aren't...most people capped at rank three?" Ava asks hesitantly. 

"...are they? Wow, that makes my thing look like a much better deal in retrospect then, I won't be capped at rank three forever, I just have to do my warlock quests for a while first."

Edie pulls out her phone and looks up some statistics. 

"Rank three is the most common maximum rank; about one in five witches can reach rank four, and then about one in seven of those can reach rank five. But it's not a totally random distribution, apparently, like, if you have rank-five potential, and you have kids with someone with rank-five potential, then your kids will probably mostly have rank-five potential. And then also there's the occasional unfortunate who can't use anything higher than rank zero, apparently."

"Gosh. I'm going to get to some rank fives, it'll just take me some errand-running."

"I have rank three psychotics, nothing else that high yet, and haven't yet had time to try to push that particular envelope."

"I am starting a movement to call it psionics instead because psychotics sounds like we are having breaks with consensus reality. ...in a way other than the way where consensus reality must be maintained in a state of ignorance."

"There has got to be a better way. But sure, Psionics sounds better, I can use as much not-sounding-like-an-axe-murderer as I can get." She flicks her spade-tipped tail. 

"Did you take psionics on purpose or did it just happen?"

"It just happened, but it's pretty neat. I can do this!" 

She teleports over to the kitchenette. 

"That is neat! Most of the non-teleporting uses looked kind of dubious to me so I didn't nab any even though it's in-affinity."

"Really? I mean, abusable, sure, and I don't actually plan on being an addiction counselor consensually giving people cigarette-triggered migraines, but the psychic constructs look like a nice non-lethal option if I need to fight something and I'm very in favor of the defensive aspects."

"Yeah, there are definitely some good reasons to have it and I'll probably grab it eventually, I was trying to optimize for getting things that were more comprehensively useful rather than a couple useful bits in with some things I didn't foresee using. Also I don't need the psychic constructs because my tiara'll let me do hard light objects."

"Oh neat! Like Green Lantern?"

"...if Green Lantern does hard light objects, sure? I don't read comics."

"I don't either--well, not superhero comics, much--it's just, you know, pop culture osmosis. But I think the Green Lantern powerset involves hard light constructs and flying! So."

"I am absolutely certain that the Green Lantern powerset involves flying, they're like...space cops. Can you, oh, do a skintight forcefield, so it doesn't look like you're shielded, but also if you get bonked on the head with a frisbee you're fine? I vaguely feel like that might be something Green Lanterns can do but I might be getting it mixed up with something else." "

"Huh, I'm not sure. The hard light objects can be soft and have weird material properties, so I guess I could make an armor layer of it, but I'm not sure that would be comfortable."

"So probably not worth it as a precaution against ambient frisbees but maybe something to try if you get mugged." 

"If I get mugged I think starting to glow would tip off the mugger about things not being as consensus reality would have it! I'm not actually sure how I'd handle that situation."

"I was mostly using that as--metonymy, like, apparently it behooves witches to learn self-defense."

"If I am mugged by a supernatural being then yeah for sure."

"Hopefully that shouldn't happen here, though!"

"That is the hope! It seems like a lovely place where everyone will at least one of already have their own whatever they'd want off me or at least understand that relics aren't very thievable."

"Obviously I'm not going to mug you, but if I were, I wouldn't be after your relics," Ava suggests. "I mean. I, personally, have these lovely blood apples! But, like, there are in fact some very unethical ways to use other witches as batteries."

"A good point."

"But Arcadia does work hard to disincentivize that sort of thing. When I was signing up for extracurriculars I found all kinds of weird kink clubs."

"Okay now I'm curious."

"Do you know what vore is?"

"Who gets mana from vore?"

"Lamias."

"Wow, okay."

"That one I had as an option but it did not seem to have notable advantages."

"Not compared to Wulong, no, Wulong's fantastic. If your only other option was Wither...I assume you got offered Wither, you said a rotting kind of dead and I don't know of anything else that fits that description."

"Yeah, I got offered wither and would have taken lamia instead just for quality of life reasons even if it would be hard to get mana. Or, apparently, kinky to get mana."

"Some people don't even have Neutral as an option because they were born whatever they are."

"Well, I assume those people are used to it. Are there big populations of not-necessarily-witch species that - I guess there must at least be a bunch of 'fey' whatever that covers in Alfheimr? -"

"I don't know much about that, I just know that some people are born things because it was in the foreword of my species book."

"Well, I'm taking anthropology, sounds like the sort of thing they'd cover."

"Yeah, probably!"

"That'll be interesting."

"What classes are you guys in?"

"I am in so many art classes. Also some other stuff. I've got a general elementalism seminar and a consortation lab and a chemistry class."

"I shortlisted a bunch of art - it behooves me to get into art now - but pruned it down to just jewelry when my list was way too long even for a person who doesn't need to sleep anymore."

"I just really like art! And having my sister around. Hence the consortation." 

"I'm taking a class in Aethernautics and two in runes and a seminar on the magical perspective on world war two and a class on dreamwalking--that's a Lilin thing--and a double-length class in Psy--uh, Psionics--and one on magical genetics."

"Ooh, those all sound so cool... this school is awesome. I'm taking a digicasting class even though I don't have any ranks in it yet, and runes and hexes and alchemy, and magical anthropology and econ and civics, and a newly awakened warlocks seminar that I'm hoping will cover any huge gaping ignorances I have, and voice lessons and physics."

"Nice! I don't have any ranks in Aethernautics either."

"I'm taking a botany class, for obvious reasons, and a course on Lunabellan history, for related reasons, and classes in alchemy and runes and hexes and necromancy for magic, and then also a literature course and intro to mechanical engineering." 

"Nice, I wanted a literature but I had to cut stuff."

"My older sister majored in computer science when she went to college but she made sure every semester to have a literature-related class in there somewhere so that she wouldn't have an excuse not to do self-care."

"I take it she's not a witch? My mother got all excited and tried to find Penelope's shop but couldn't spot it, she was hoping that it ran strongly enough in the right side of the family..."

"Oh, no, she's not a witch. I, uh, was also a natural awakening, nobody in my family had any idea magic existed before this, she graduated from college this past June, nobody else in my family has been checked for potential yet."

"Maybe the magic genetics class will address this."

"It might not address it in useful specifics, it's only the first 100-level course, but it's not like I can't do more advanced independent research." 

"And you can ask your teacher questions."

"I sure can! I wonder how much of a genetics nerd she is compared to Mom, it'll be fun to find out." 

"Is that what your mom does?"

"Yep! Mom's a genetics professor, dad's an engineer. What about your parents?"

"She's a kindergarten teacher and he's a police officer." May produces one of the crayon artworks. "I took all the chargey-est souvenirs from the ones she's brought home."

"Awww!"

"That's great and I love it."

"Mm-hm! They were mostly presents for her specifically so I'm just borrowing them, I'll gradually swap them out with other stuff as I find things I want as decor or maybe go in as a classroom assistant with her one day and see if I can get any dedicated to me in particular, but they're working for now."

"I have a bunch of heirloom jewelry and stuff with me for charge purposes."

"Cool. Maybe we can go in together on metal decorations for our common area?"

"I love it. --I actually have the ability to generate metal and gemstone stuff from my body, but just my own metal and stone--opal's fine, opulence wise, but martensitic stainless steel isn't exactly a luxury good."

"We can go to a craft fair or something and find somebody who does metal sculptures and sniff out something manaful."

"Yeah! And opulence is bolstered by the craftsman's skill--several of my art classes involve metalworking--this is gonna be great."

"I love being a witch." She spins in the air.

"I love being a witch!!!"

"I love being a witch too, even if I don't have you guys's investment in pretty metal things."

"It's pretty great. Do you guys have any long-term goals yet?" 

"I have... research avenues? About the masquerade, and what the fuck is up with Hell among other alternate universes."

"--Well, I sure do agree with you on researching Hell."

"What she meant though is we're saving up for Arch-Restoratives for our grandparents."

"- the tiara is a lifeweaving tiara, the thing where it does Green Lantern stuff is kind of secondary. If that, uh, helps."

"--Does lifeweaving bring back the dead."

"Needs there to be some meat on the bones but yes."

"--Cool, I'm texting Dad to see if his parents were embalmed."

"Grandpa would've had to've been, he had an open-casket funeral, remember?"

"Right, right. Well, that's--really awesome--are you charging for this service, if so how much--arch-restoratives are really expensive and I haven't actually heard of lifeweaving yet so it's probably not less rare than those, you could charge a lot probably--"

"Uh, I'll have to start charging if I get swamped but I'm not yet swamped and don't want people to be dead? Some, uh, market-sensitive rate for my time, it'll take a while, and covering the mana cost, that'll do me."

"That is awesome. Okay, we will pay you those things and, also, you get first dibs on anything I make in my art classes and don't desperately want to keep." 

"Snazzy!"

"Come to think of it, are there any objects you currently have where your current versions are non-art and it would be preferable to have art versions? I like to keep that kind of thing in the back of my head." 

"Uh, my iPod is not particularly artistic, my... clothes that aren't my mothergifts, the ones that I still have, those aren't... I don't have all that much stuff, I get the sense that I'm about to be very rich but I wasn't last month."

"Fair enough. Well, embroidery isn't something I've gotten into yet, but I know anything about digital art and how to print stickers, if you want for your ipod."

"Ooh, some for the ipod and my laptop would be great."

"Awesome, I will get on that." 

She pulls her laptop out of her backpack and settles into the squashy chair with it. The top of her laptop is decorated with a thin layer of the same opal as her eyes, shaped to cover the entire flat surface. 

"She likes to have projects."

"Convenient!"

Ava gets up to inspect the laptop cover. 

"Damn, that's nice," she says admiringly. "Do you do phone cases?" 

"Probably, but not yet. This is glued on." 

"Well, it looks cool." 

"Thank you, I have a biologically-gifted aesthetic and I am going to run with it." 

"Biologically-gifted?"

"--Well, I mean, steel and opal are part of my body now? I think they count as biological even if they don't count as organic."

"Oh, I see what you mean."

"I like your color scheme too."

"Thanks! It is also, to use your term, biologically gifted."

"It seems more appropriate than 'God-given' under the circumstances."

"Yeah, I still don't know what to make of the divinity situation and applied theology was one of the things I cut."

"It's sort of weirder for us, because we're...Jewish." 

"We weren't, like, super religious before, but that does not make me one bit more inclined to accept what the Watchers have going on."

"I thought they were doing a pan-Abrahamic thing?"

"I'm not super impressed by the extent to which it isn't Christianity in an inclusive hat."

"And I'm not either, and I'm less, uh, fault-seeking, than she is."

"Huh. Okay. I was an atheist last month so I need to like, find a book on my patron and stuff at minimum."

"What was your patron's name again?"

"Lucasta! She is apparently newish and not known to mundanes and her portfolio is altruism and mortal agency."

"Well, I am way too culturally Jewish to be a warlock, but those sound like neat things to be a god of!"

"I think so too! She's where I got the lifeweaving tiara, it's a very good bribe."

"--Ooh. Yes it is."

"Do you get charge off the tiara as a bonus? It looks pretty arty."

"Charge is actually based on the meaning of the art to the original creator, not how pretty something is, which is why the crayon drawings work, but yes, apparently whoever put it together - I'm not sure if it was Lucasta herself - was sufficiently invested."

"Who wouldn't be invested in something like that."

"If they're mass-produced? I have no reason to think they are but if it was a very convincing plastic toy from Target that happened to have been gloriously enchanted it would probably not count as art. ...I guess maybe glorious enchantments can count as art, I don't know if that's a valid medium for wulong purposes."

"Oh. I guess if the magic and the construction were totally separate that would make sense. It's not a plastic toy from Target, though, I think I'm getting some opulence-charge off of it."

"It is very shmancy." Pat pat.

"It has my totally irrelevant approval."

"I also got a hydron and some much less pretty sunglass dealies but it's definitely the big ticket bribe."

"What's a hydron?"

"This thing!" She appears it. "You can make different potions all at once in it, or combine them."

"Ooh, fun." 

"Potions seem very cool." 

"Yeah, I'm excited to learn 'em."

"In addition to art, I also like scavenger hunts, so the idea of picking up weird idiosyncratic magic substances whenever it comes up and then having them be useful for potions later is very satisfying." 

May giggles. "Probably at low levels it's more like grocery shopping - maybe literally - but I bet there's weird stuff - oh, there's a thing on my long term to-do list that involves melting a cosmic pearl to shift an affinity, for squeezing more stuff into one's power, that one didn't sound complicated, just involves the rare pearl -"

"Ooooooh."

"It would be nice to have an affinity that goes with potions."

"Yup! You can only have a limited number of affinities at a time so it's probably ideal to finish up buying ranks in one before you switch it to another."

"I will definitely make sure to buy all the fire elementalism I want before ditching it." 

"Why fire? I'm planning on air but haven't committed so I'll hear arguments."

"--Because Lilin are fire affinity."

"- right, of course. I'll get the hang of all this sooner or later."

"I'd take wind over fire for sure, if I didn't have an affinity for either. I've been considering Naturalism for my one non-affinity elementalism but I'm gonna do more research before I decide."

"The plants one?"

"Yeah! It seems really cool to be able to be able to create arbitrary plant matter on demand. Plus being able to grow plants from seeds to full reproductive maturity in minutes would be fantastic for genetic experiments, or trying to develop new breeds of things..."

"Would it work on exotics like Ava's apples?"

"Good question! Things like that are why I need to do research first!"

"There're so many things to find out about and learn to do! Lucasta should give me some errands already! - or, like, maybe not this week, I just got here, but soon!"

"I guess she's probably on your research list."

"Very much so, I'm planning to case the campus soon and then head to the library to check out a book on her. Assuming there is one."

"I would be deeply, deeply astonished if there wasn't a library."

"It's the book I'm not sure exists, I know she's up-and-coming but I don't know how recently so."

"Oh. That makes sense. I mean, probably even if there isn't anything else she'll have, I dunno, if not a whole holy book at least a pamphlet...you know, the Talmud wasn't exactly written in Abraham's lifetime, you could probably get in on the ground floor of shaping her religious tradition if you wanted." 

"Maybe! I'd want to know if there are other warlocks under her purview and stuff before I start writing scripture but it is not an unappealing notion."

"There...probably are? If, like, anyone other than you has heard of her, you're probably not the first? I'm guessing? But I don't actually know enough about warlocks to speak from authority I suppose."

"Yeah. I had lots of options, it's plausible she's made a hundred offers and I'm the only one who took it - I considered Hekate."

"That's...the Greek cthonic goddess of magic, right? Does she do the whole Maiden-Mother-Crone thing or am I getting her mixed up with someone else."

"If she does it didn't come up in my consideration but quite possibly. Goddess of magic, less ethically aligned but it would have been steadier more predictable questing."

"Well, Greek god, those aren't the most ethical folks even if you ignore Ovid."

"I think the female ones did less randomly raping mortals but yes. I'm satisfied with my pick and my bribe."

"I dunno, you hear about it less but there's Selene and Endymion...plus I don't know for sure that Aenas's dad consented to Aphrodite's advances unimpaired. But that is a fucking excellent bribe, yeah."

"I should figure out how much a Kiss is so I can tell you how much mana I'll need for the ritual..." She starts minting one.

"Good call." 

"You know, they act like regular metal in most ways, but I can't eat them." 

"You eat metal? I guess that's of a piece. Maybe they evaporate when used and eating them is too much like taking their mana out or something."

"Luxal saliva renders metal soft and pliant! Which is actually very useful for artistic purposes, I can just lick one edge of a penny and smoosh it together with all the other licked-coin-edges to get some neat copper scaling."

"Oh, fun, does it retain this property outside of your mouth? It could be an art supply."

"It doesn't retain this property after it dries up and I wouldn't be surprised if some people were weird about handling someone else's spit but, also, I wouldn't be surprised to see bottles of the stuff on the shelves of whatever craft stores there are around here. Or maybe people who want to use the stuff tend to make arrangements directly with a source! Finding out will be an adventure, I'm sure."

"Speaking of what's around here, do you three wanna join me in casing the campus? I'm not planning to venture to the town today unless campus is smaller than I expect, that I'm intending to save for the weekend, but still."

"Fuck yeah!" Ava exclaims, leaping up. 

"I'm in. Maybe you and I can do aerial reconnaissance while the groundpounders take the footpaths." 

"I can take a passenger on my broom." She produces her wand and broomifies it. "- as long as they're not much more than twice as heavy as me, and I'm surprisingly light now."

"I will have to pass on account of my bones being iron. Well, steel, which is mostly iron and doesn't weigh a ton less."

"I'd be happy to accept a broom ride but I kind of don't want to leave Emily as the only one on the ground."

"Alrighty." May re-wands her broom and sleeves it and sets about checking if she can open her window to fly out of it.

The window swings open easily! There is a latch to one side of it and once that's undone it is triviality itself to get it pushed open. 

"See you guys at the exit!" And out she hops. Without a passenger or the need to go real fast, flying sans broom is plenty good enough.

Edie cackles and dives out after her, her wings snapping out to catch her and redirect her momentum after she's fallen about a meter. 

Emily snorts and heads for the stairs. 

"Is it nice having wings? I am mostly indifferent to my antlers," May says to Edie, pulling off her hat and letting it disappear to display them, "but I turn out to really like having a tail."

"I love having wings! Flying without them would be, like, fine, but--man, I haven't had them long and I'd already rather lose my legs, if I had to give up a set of limbs. The tail's nice, I like the tail, it's expressive, but the wings are awesome."

And if May goes up high, what is there to see around here?

There is SO MUCH to see. 

For one thing, calling the campus "sprawling" would be an understatement. Most of the buildings are taller than you would expect to find on a cozy liberal arts campus of the sort Arcadia so fervently emulates, and they're still spread out over an absolutely massive area. 

There are literally dozens of gardens, at least three different styles of outdoor swimming pool, open quads in several different styles of terrain and, surrounding the campus, the town. 

Oh what fun. She loosely plots a walkable route among all the everything and then dives to join the non-flying party members.

Edie swooped down to land next to her sister pretty much as soon as Emily and Ava had walked through the front door. She is currently cheerfully describing some of the flower gardens she saw from the air. 

"Oooooh. I'm going to have to use some of those flowers as models sometime. I like big blooms and I cannot lie."

"Ooh, silver and gold flowers with patina copper foliage?" suggests May.

Emily faux-swoons. "You're speaking my language!"

Giggle. "There's a pool this way - I'm assuming the pools are not all strictly swimming pools, probably one of them is an aquatic student dormitory and one of them is intended for water magic practice but probably at least one of them is just for swimming in, we should check them all."

"Hm, I'd more expect a visible pool area to be, like, the lawn of an aquatic student dormitory? I assume mermaids and whatever also like privacy."

"Technically mermaid is not the name of any witch type."

"Technically?"

"Naiads can turn into mermaids and back. I mean, they have scales even when they have legs, but they're called Naiads, not mermaids. ...It suddenly occurs to me that we should double-check that mundane words for mythical critters that match up with people who call themselves something else aren't...slurs." 

"--That is a really excellent thought."

"It seems like it might be a little awkward to find out, especially if your book didn't happen to mention. Anyway, the pools could have underwater tunnels to more elaborate 'indoor' pool structures for all we know."

"Yeah, that's sorta what I meant by lawn? If it's, like, the outdoor area connected to their living space." 

"Yeah. I guess maybe if your lawn was a pool it'd be fine for people to use it for random swimming purposes like I wouldn't mind if people did yoga on our lawn."

"I'm probably going to have to learn to swim all over again, what with the iron bones."

"Huh, is it even possible to be able to swim safely with iron bones? I don't know what kind of overall density change that implies."

"Well, when I was a little kid who couldn't really swim yet, I used to paddle around in a life jacket and water wings. I figure if I wear enough floaty stuff I can get my average density back up to something workable."

"Oh, that makes sense. I'm apparently going to be impaired in diving, specifically, and will have a hard time sinking if I want to, so I guess if I want to scuba at some point I will carry heavy stuff. Or we could hold hands and do incredibly weird synchronized swimming behaviors."

Snort. "I have no idea how that would work but it would be worth finding out if it isn't too awkward. I wouldn't put it as that high a priority, though, I've never been so into swimming that it competes that well with, uh, being a witch."

"Quite."

What does this first pool say?

The first pool has a placard announcing itself as the Eva Townsend Recreational Swimming Pool. It's shaped like a sort of fat, roundish rectangle, with a deep end with metal ladders and a shallow end with plateau steps gradually deepening the pool until it gets halfway through the shallow end, at which point the depth is level until it hits the halfway point of the pool, at which point it starts sloping downwards. 

"Looks like this one is the swimming pool swimming pool. Anybody mind if I try out my floatiness, I haven't actually gotten around to it yet."

"Sounds fine to me. Did you bring a swimsuit out here? I can try to dry you off with wind magic after."

"I have rank two in Witchery, my stuff'll all dry off in a couple seconds." In she jumps.

Emily decides that if May isn't going to give her an excuse to try using her magic as a hairdryer she can make one her own damn self. Swimming is... fraught... but wading ought to be fine. 

Edie sits down by the side of the pool and skims the lower edge of one wing through the water. 

May floats like a pool noodle. It's hard to maneuver with her shoes still on, though, so she levitates out after a little splashing around and sits by Edie, where she dries off.

"It feels different from dipping my fingers in the water, but it's... it's easier to, like, feel the correspondences between wing-fingers and regular fingers and between fingers and toes."

"Huh! What's the dexterity like?"

She raises the wing and flexes it. 

"It...hm. It's easier to, like, wrap the digits around something than to hold them there to pick the thing up, does that make sense? The wing isn't designed to exert force in that way."

"Interesting. Did your parents take your awakening okay?"

"They...took the magic part fine! The, uh, traumatic circumstances surrounding it not so much."

"...eep."

"We almost died. They freaked the hell out over that. But, like, in a supportive way."

"I wonder if anyone, like, does die, in the process of the awakening, and then is awakened enough to just come back."

"Yes."

"Oh. Shit, I'm sorry."

"I'm not offended but I think I am done talking about it for now. Is floating fun?"

"Yes, but I would have enjoyed it more when I was five."

"Oh, lots of things are more fun when you're five. Best to do as many of them as possible to enjoy the memories later."

"I wonder if any of the witch types that get stuck looking like kids find everything as fun as kids of the relevant age."

"Well, that would be a much-needed consolation. I'd be fine being something that grew up slowly, to have more childhood, but too much is too much."

"I might've been pleased to never experience the sea change of adolescence if I'd awakened as an elementary schooler into some such thing."

"I see your point. Does everyone who gets stuck like that awaken as a child in the first place?"

"I'd be surprised - Ava, do you know?"

"I guess it's not totally incompatible with what I specifically remember of that chapter of the book, but, uh, no."

"Yeah, not going through puberty has some appeal but going through puberty and back again has less than none."

"Agreed. Is there any - systematic attempt at doing guided awakenings, so people get options and warning and stuff - or is it just, people who get lucky and people who get unlucky, with a big missing middle propping up the masquerade with their ignorance -"

"That was not in my book."

"I'll put it on the list of things to look up at some point." She does this.

"The person who awakened you didn't have anything to say about it?"

"I didn't think to ask at the time but a candidate way to find out is to email her, I did get her email."

"Oh, cool. I don't think Emily got the contact information of the guy, who, uh, told us how to get to Arcadia." 

"I did not. His name was Dan, that's all I know."

"Some guy named Dan just... showed up and told you how to find a portal network outlet?"

"Nnnnno, there was...stuff." 

"But I'm done talking about that stuff for now!"

"Ah, okay, sorry, I don't have enough sense of your timeline to know what stuff is the stuff as opposed to different stuff."

"Yeah, it's fine, I'm putting the warning signs at least a meter away from the hole in the ground, you have not stumbled in." 

"Oh good."

Once everyone is done with the pool, onward to the next cluster of buildings!

The next building they encounter appears to be a class building, with rooms recognizable as lecture halls and labs even though some of the labs have implements totally unlike any used in a mundane science laboratory. 

"I'm guessing this one is for consortation," Emily muses of a room with no lab benches and several elaborate pentagrams sketched on the floor. 

"Presumably. I wonder if all the setup is necessary, it seems to me that it'd really obviate the convenience benefits of summoning demons to do stuff for you if you couldn't do it from the comfort of your dorm. Though I mostly imagine I'd want to summon 'em for interviewing, I have Maid Hand for household tasks."

"I think there's room to draw a few of these in our suite."

"Yeah, but maybe there are additional enchantments in place here... I guess we'll find out. Or, Emily will."

"To be fair my primary intended use case is less dangerous than most."

"Quite! I need to make some art of myself, or commission it, before I'm that thoroughly death-proofed."

"--Oh. Well. What are the necessary parameters, exactly?"

"Well, strictly speaking I am already covered because I have bled a little bit on a thrift store painting I liked the look of, but if something happened to the painting and all other such paintings and sculptures that would be that, so actually my longer term plan is that I am going to make a three-d digital model of myself and have it distributed among anyone who might want to resurrect me via three-d printer, because the criteria for managing this without my having made specific arrangements with blood and a painting are that I have to be accurately reproduced by someone sufficiently interested in doing it, and I'd sooner not gate that on technical skill at art."

"Well, that's a little disappointing to my artist's ego, but I still like the way you think."

"Your ego will have to be satisfied by my charge method and not my resurrection method."

"My ego will just have to get over it. I wonder if one painting can be bonded to multiple wulongs..."

"Huh, I guess maybe? The ritual doesn't strictly seem to preclude it. I don't know why you'd do it that way, though."

"--Well, what I'm thinking is, you want your bonded paintings to not have anything happen to them, and the best-guarded paintings are the famous ones in big museums, but there's a limited supply of those."

"I think if I went and bled on the original Starry Night we'd have issues! Besides, those are also targets for theft, and I think I can bleed on multiple paintings no problem."

"Fair enough. --Aaaaaaand it might be a masquerade breach if you emerged from the painting while the museum was open."

"That too. But maybe I will ask at the Art Appreciation For Wulongs club if there is a less famous well-guarded collectively bled-on painting somewhere I can get in on."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

Onward! Is that the gym there past that garden? Oh what a nice garden.

That is a gym! It is definitely not the only gym. 

Is that a FLYING OBSTACLE COURSE!

"Oh, fuck, that is a flying obstacle course. --Emily do you think you can entertain Ava for a bit while we--"

Snort. "Have fun."

May hops onto her broomstick and goes ZOOM.

Edie does somewhat less ZOOM and more FLAP FWIP SWOOSH but this does NOT stop her from having a MARVELOUS time. 

She does however have to start the course over more often on account of a wingtip clipping some obstacle. 

When May has gotten through the obstacle course at a moderate (not top-speed) clip once she alights back by Emily and Ava. "I'm definitely joining the aerialist club," she giggles.

"Someday I'm going to be able to fly," she sighs enviously. 

"It's so worth it!"

"Is flying on a broom very different from flying without it?"

"Yeah. I actually have three independent ways to fly, though they can kind of all cooperate. Wulongs can do it, and it's kind of tiring to do it all that way, like trying to go uphill in a wheelchair or swim really fast, but in a way that's more satisfying sometimes? Levitating's effortless, I can just hang in the air, I often sleep like that now especially when it's warm, and that's sort of like flying in dreams, if your flying dreams are like mine, stuff gets closer or farther away but there's not as much sense of movement. And the broom is like being in a convertible with the top down on the highway except in addition to having the top down the climate control and windshield are still doing their jobs."

"Ooh. Interesting. I can get a broom at some point, and I might be able to learn Levitation, but of course I can't turn into a Wulong...at least, I certainly don't think I can. And I'm not sure I'd want to even if I could, being a Luxal is very nice. But I might want to learn to turn into something with wings."

"I can see you in a magical ornithopter harness."

"Ornithopter sounds vaguely like some mildly avian dinosaur but I don't actually recognize the word."

"Uh, like a mechanical wing contraption."

"--Oh. Okay. I definitely like the way you think."

"Oh good. Mind, I have no particular clue how you'd enchant one but I bet we're in the right place to find out."

"I bet we are!!! I'm going to bring this up in my intro engineering class."

"Solid plan."

There's the student health center! There's the cafeteria, which is apparently open twenty-four hours a day! Ooh, look, a gigantic stadium-style structure for student theater and sports and rallies and stuff!

The student health center advertises free contraception charms. Emily considers this sign thoughtfully. 

"I wonder if it's like the pill in that it affects menstruation." 

"Huh, not a clue."

"Why do you even care, Luxals don't menstruate," Ava snorts. 

"--Wait, we don't?"

"...Ah. Didn't come up?"

"And I haven't been one long enough to notice!"

"I still do but not this week so I don't feel a need to stop in and inquire."

"I should get one anyway at some point. Not that I expect it to be immediately relevant, but I wouldn't like to be surprised, you know?"

"Super legit, I should probably do the same thing on general principle. There are almost no boys here but that's less of a guarantee than it would be at Bryn Mawr or something."

"It's not a guarantee at Bryn Mawr either, but there are probably more male witches here than there are trans girls there."

"Plus even if they're not trans, magic does all kinds of things, some of them very inconvenient!"

"--Sorry, are you talking about the thing where awakening forcibly transitions people, or something else."

"For all I know there's a complication that causes people to have, I don't know, viable pollen! Like, there probably isn't because I made that up, but not having read even a description of all the species let alone all the other variations..."

"...Viable pollen. Okay, yeah, that--probably doesn't exist--but I for one am going to go get contracepted right now. Because yikes."

"Well, if you're going I guess I might as well too." In they go.

The dryad behind the desk is happy to assure them all that viable pollen is absolutely not a thing, but also temporary potions or hexes to acquire a dick recreationally are absolutely a thing, and taking precautions sooner rather than later is very responsible of them. 

"We're very responsible," agrees May, taking her free charm. How does one install/wear/deploy this.

Most of the charms are on little pendants to wear as necklaces but there are also bracelet and sticker versions. There is a sign saying that piercing and finger-ring versions are available at a low price. 

Any of them jazzy enough to charge off? If they're not she'll take the necklace.

A few of the friendship bracelet ones give a very mild charge!

It's better than nothing, if she's going to wear it around indefinitely. Friendship bracelet it is.

Emily snags a bracelet one too because it hides under her sleeve relatively well. 

"I will definitely make you something better than that to put it on."

"Thank you. Though apparently whoever made this was at least a little bit invested."

Ava takes a sticker. "I'm not exactly going to sweat it off."

"Can you even get pregnant, given how dead you are?"

"I don't think so, but why chance it when we're here anyway and it's free?"

"I guess empusa had to get into your bloodline somehow."

"That's not my area of expertise," the dryad admits, "or I'd have more to say about it. But you could probably find something in the library."

"Onward!" says May, and she floats out of the health center to proceed through dorms and classroom buildings and the campus store and the mailroom and the faculty offices and the next garden and the next pool, seeking the library.

The library, it turns out, is the largest building on campus even from the outside, and there's some kind of spatial warping going on because it's bigger on the inside. 

There are so. Many. BOOKS!!!

"Ohhh... books..." sighs May, spinning in the air and then zipping up to the organizational system explanation on the wall. Dewey did not account for these subjects.

The library is organized into numbered wings by general topic area, and then into numbered sub-sections of those wings by specific topic; for example, that wing is for ranked magic and divided into various differently-sized rooms based on which ranked magic it is (in general, the rooms for academic-friendly subjects are bigger). 

That's quite reasonable but May is a warlock. She wants to find a book on Lucasta! Where's the deities at?

This room over here, Theology, Celestial Code, Lucasta. There aren't a lot of books about her but there are a few, plus a few more that mention her somewhere. 

May collects up all two of the books that are about her, and a more comprehensive encyclopedia of genuine bonafide deities and their witchy religious practices, and then floats back out to see if there's a limit to how many books she can take.

Limit of fifty books at a time. 

Wow, that's plenty. She stuffs her chosen books in her pockets, freed from gravity, and looks for stuff on:

- the masquerade
- Hell, and other planes
- wulongs, including but not limited to Chinese ones
- lifeweaving
- introductory potion recipes
- one biography of a randomly selected interesting witch, for a sort of cross-section of what might be needful to know about