"You are not a fan of pranks?" Gav asks Erandur.

"No," he replies dryly.

"Giving a full overview of all a mage can do would be one hell of a large undertaking. The five main schools of magic are Restoration, Destruction, Alteration, Conjuration, and Illusion, then you have Alchemy, Enchanting, and Engraving as subschools that apply magic to mundane objects, and Mysticism is the school of magic that is about doing magic to magic itself. That might help guide more specific questions?"

"It does help. I just wanted to know the more practical applications to get out of here."

"Warning: he will try to drain all the knowledge out of you as soon as we are out of here."

"Good thing we're near the foremost institution on magic on the continent, then."

"Oooh. How much would it cost to have access to their library?"

"Nothing. The College is committed to free exchange of knowledge." Then he points at a glyph on the floor up ahead where the hallway turns right. Its glow is faint enough that it's very hard to make out under the light of his magical light source. "Trap."

Free. That is sure a departure. "Do you want to see if I can dispel it or do you prefer testing magical interactions in better controlled circumstances?"

"Nah go ahead, I know next to nothing about Mysticism and don't know how to disarm them myself."

"Alright, I am going to bring up some of my halo to see anything interesting going on. You may look away from me if you'd rather."

For a moment, it appears that Herod's head gains a faint circular glow, but it is dark enough that the light is obviously false. It doesn't bring brightness into the shadows around them. The halo just makes Herod brighter.

And looks like someone that cares about studying and knowing the true nature of things, that embodies a bit the virtues of someone who seeks truth just for the sake of truth itself. The effect isn't overwhelming, but it is definitely there.

Then he speaks, in a voice that sounds overlaid in multiple languages, yet each language comes out clearly and distinct.

"Riskless Dispel!" Nothing overtly magical happens. "Lesser Dispel! Disarming Dispel! Oh, interesting. I am pretty sure that last one made the magic flicker."

"Are the phrases causally potent?"

"Yes. Spellwords - the human magic. Mine started with just Dispel, and then I grew variants. I think I know how to deal with the trap. Disenchanting Dispel!"

The glyph's light immediately fades and disappears, leaving only a lightly charred shape on the floor where it used to be.

"Human magic?"

"Yes. Back in our worlds, you can reincarnate once per world. And each has a native species with their own magic. You can keep the magics you acquire in each life."

"Strength Push!" Gavriel demonstrates.

He is already fairly muscular, but his muscles bulge and expand even further, not to the point of the anatomically impossible, but definitely getting there. It lasts just a moment, but it's enough for Gav to flex.

"It comes in a lot of varieties." Herod squeezes Gav's ass. It looks oddly affectionate. "If this place is really not part of our immediate cosmology, you probably can't use them, humans and former humans can write down and share their words with books. But you only get one use before needing to memorize them again." Barely perceptible pause. "We have more spellwords, but no tomes, so... if we use them here we might lose them forever."

Gav is happy with the butt squeeze. "Yeah, and, like, writing them down and having to reread them each time is such a bore. The up side of being attacked is that we have fewer words now. Because we used them to defend ourselves."

"Should you not have used those words just now, then? Or would it work for me to write them down for you?—wait, you used to be human?"

"Those are our spellwords." Pause. "Our innate spellwords. We can use them as many times as we want."

"And, yeah, used to be human. In our first lives, then we died. Then we had our tragic backstory, but eventually got back to the human world. Then here."

"'The human world'."

"Where the humans live. Also known as Prime."

"What is the local cosmological and spiritual situation?"

"A bit complicated. In addition to the mortal realm, Mundus, we have Oblivion surrounding it, where most of the Daedra live; Aetherius surrounding Oblivion, where most souls go upon death and remain forevermore; and the Void surrounding that, where all creation came from. My best guess is that your world is also in the Void, somewhere."