"Three things we could do from here. Look at the major magic - elementalism and the rest. Look at the minor magic, which is a bunch of scattered pieces that do all kinds of things but only come in simple chunks, not the scaling ranks like major magic. Or look at drawbacks and restrictions, that make your life harder but give you more natural power to put into other things. I usually recommend going in that order, starting with the major magic."

"I'll take your recommendation there."

"Alright. Elementalism is simplest to explain in broad terms, so let's start there. Windkeeping I mentioned, and you can take that easily even as a warlock. The others are firecalling, waterworking, earthmoving, naturalism - that's plant magic - psionics, and metallurgy. You can pick one of those, if you're not a sorceress. They'd also be relatively costly, since you don't have affinity for them. Psionics lets you mess with people's minds and at high ranks make psychic force objects and weapons, it's scary as hell. All of them let you manipulate more, faster, at greater range, the more ranks you learn. They also protect you from harm by that element - by rank three, you're immune to nonmagical harm from the element. And some side benefits - windkeeping protects you from damage or unconsciousness from acceleration, waterworking both lets you control cold and protects you from it, earthmoving protects you from blunt force trauma, naturalism makes animals refuse to attack you. ...Psionics would make it so you're impossible to traumatize, which given our previous discussion might be uncomfortably relevant to your life."

"Those all sound like nice things to have... what is being impossible to traumatize like?"

"...you know, I think the best way to convey it is probably just to reach for psionics and stretch it to the third rank and think about it. I don't know that I understand it, or could explain it, better than 'you still have terrible things happen to you and it just doesn't haunt you' and that seems probably wrong."

Reaaaach?

There's a whole lot else to it, stuff you can do to people's senses and inflicting migraines and blowing out all someone's muscular coordination with a psychic sword.

But the defensive thing, it's basically... something happened to you. You remember it, you know everything that happened, but there's no reflexive associations. Nothing is ever going to shock you by feeling similar to your 'trauma', even if you experience exactly the same thing again. So it's there, but it's not traumatic. You could lose your family and almost die in a car crash, and you'd still be sad your family was gone, but you wouldn't be bothered getting in a car, or being suddenly brought up short like a seatbelt, or hearing whatever the last words your sister said before she was splattered across the windshield of the truck that hit you, or, or, or... It would simply not bother you.

It's pretty disconcerting, really, because it's giving you this obviously traumatic example and it just does not register as something that might cause traumatic associations.

"Well that's weird! Maybe better than not having it but it's weird!"

"...yeah. I think definitely better than not having it, it's not like you couldn't be sad, or angry, or anything else about the metaphorical car crash. But - definitely weird."

"All of the elementalisms look really cool though."

"Not gonna lie, they are. Flashy, too, sometimes people do elementalism as performance art. I did a sand-dance with another sorceress I was dating, once, she had had earth and wind too and we planned this whole beautiful duet. Some elements are prettier than others - metallurgy is mostly only good for combat past the early ranks - but it's great."

"Are people gonna think you were being pushy if I pop out a siren sorceress just like you?"

"Not unless I kept turning out sirens and sorceresses way more than chance, which I don't. And except for the other awakeners it isn't their business that I was the one who awakened you, anyway."

"Is it like, private for some reason?"

"So, there are two ways of awakening. This way, where someone guides you through it, and spontaneously, which is sudden, usually traumatic, and makes all the choices spontaneously without the input of the new witch. Guided awakenings produce better-adjusted witches, and also more useful witches, so all the Big Eight factions have a vested interest in funding awakeners. And part of that agreement is that we don't play favorites and we fade into the background as much as possible. It's your business, just as much as if you'd awakened naturally without anyone helping. I usually keep in touch with my new witches because I can help you girls network, but if you want me to buzz off, I buzz off, end of story."

"Is it all girls?"

"Mostly. Everyone who awakens becomes female by default, and it takes a little power to switch to male, even if you were male before. So witch society is about 80/20. Also pretty firmly homonormative."

"...how do the, uh, the Watchers feel about that, is the Pope getting stuff wrong somehow...?"

"For that and a variety of other reasons, Veiled society is generally... noticeably more liberal about gender and sexuality. The Watchers don't have an overall official opinion on it, and I'd think if the Catholic contingent frowned on it I'd have heard about it, Catholics are, you know, pretty common. But possibly there are multiple Catholic suborganizations in the Watchers and some of them stick to the mortal Pope's word more than others. Maybe the usual interpretation is that souls don't switch gender when you awaken and that's the important part for whether it's a sin, I don't know. The sense I got from Selaliel of being vaguely confused about a lot of mortal doctrinal disputes matches what I've heard from celestials in general. My church definitely has its preaching influenced by that, assuming that the angels are probably more focused on what Jesus cared about than the picture mortals have from centuries of interpretations and translations."

"Well, that's confusing. I guess I'll talk to a priest. Are there more Popes on the more Earths?"

"I know there's at least one who's in on the Veil, but I don't pay close attention or remember, sorry. I'm Episcopalian and not all that observant."

"Yeah, legit." What do all these powers that aren't elementalism do?

Back to magic! Much safer topic than religion.

The big list is Alchemy, Runes, Curses, Hexes/Transmutation - Witchery, Familiarity, Necromancy, Consortation (with demons), Portals, Divination, and Aethernautics.

Curses, Hexes, Necromancy, Consortation, and Divination are currently pulled inward and 'green' with the warlock affinity. The others are academic magic (except Familiarity).

"So this will be a little harder to see, but every one of these schools has a few elemental affinities. Like Alchemy is tied to water, nature, and life. They'll be cheaper if you have any of the three. For a siren, that's beasts and wind, so Hexes, Familiarity, and Consortation. Witchery and Aethernautics are universal - they're tied to every element and so they're easier to learn for everyone. What schools should I explain first?"

"Sirens aren't demonic, right? You said there was also a thing about summoning angels..."

"Everyone with a beast affinity is tied to Consortation. Demons are kind of bestial, mostly, so it's not ridiculous, but yeah it's still weird. Ministration - angel summoning - doesn't show up as easily because there's some Fate manipulation stuff happening there. So, you essentially need to promise that you'll tie yourself to the Watchers for a while to learn that starting now. But because awakening is weird, you can't just promise, you have to put a little energy into tying a loop of Fate that guarantees that you'll spend a few years with them, learning how to better use Ministration and advancing their cause and so on. If you do that, and you can only do that with one faction or your fate gets too tangled, then it opens up and it looks like all the types of magic you can see here. Here, if you want to choose to trust the Watchers, the fate loop thing is over here..."