Erinyes sounds like fun but he should check other options first... Lilin sounds thematically pleasant but he doesn't have rules, so that's a bust.

He traces his mental fingers over two more. One of them feels strange, fake, like something that shouldn't be real; the other, like skin, but... ah, not just any skin. What kind of magic feels like the inside of - well. He can ask.

"What about these?"

"That's the one which makes you a child! Changeling. Very good shapeshifters but stuck at 'child'. Mana from identity theft but discount on magic that lets you get it some more convenient way. Bonus thing is better shapeshifting. And that one is nymph! Solid choice, girlfriend is a nymph. Water fey sort of situation, mana from people wanting them or what they have on offer. Go into advertising or just be pretty at people. Bonus is a quite good mana storage thing with imbued water."

Being an eternal child and fucking with people about it sounds hilarious but not like a life choice. Being a nymph... hmm.

"The nymph bit is just people wanting me, not me wanting them? I've got one of those boutique sexualities that's less reliable than anyone would like."

(It's the easiest way he can find to explain something that approximates the truth. He can fuck anything that moves, and does whenever it seems helpful, but the ones he wants are the ones who he can hurt - not with whips and chains but with a glance at their stomach, a seemingly careless word to the wrong person, showing up at their workplace to deliver a chocolate croissant and leaving everyone asking how do you know him? And after a while it stops being nearly so fun. Boutique, indeed.)

"That's right! Fortunately the mentioned girlfriend is stunning gorgeous, charges up walking down the street or snapping a chat. But I digress."

"How lucky for her."

He points at another two stars, this time more or less at random; he's starting to run out of new ones. "What about these?"

"That one is lamia. Swallowing folks whole for mana - needs a soul, so generally not the family dog. They can sometimes be all right afterward apart from knowing forever they are technically vomit. You trade everything waist down for most of a snake. Bonus is for getting extra magic from eating a witch. Other one is orc; they get mana for having children so many many people have a little orc. In their heritage. Not at home eating pureed peas. Usually. Bonus makes you keep going like a video game character even if totally messed up."

"Wow. They can't all be winners."

...that one, that one smells like blood. He points at it and the two next to it, the bland one and the shiny one. "Run me through those three?"

"Empusa! Basically vampire. Mana from vampiring folks. Animals do work for this one but not as good; also there is this botanical option from the moon. Bonus for superspeed and superstrength - extra on top of the regular amount - plus seeing in the dark and also for being mist. Fog. Not noticed missing. Then neutral, which is being a regular human pretty much. Not this exact regular human, you can change a bunch of things and will also be a girl most likely, but regular human. Actually, empusa lets you change less but will still make you a girl... Mana from sleep. Perk for being a little magically tougher and getting to have some of a second one of those -" the class sparks. "And then daeva, which is irregular human. Tall cartoon superhero looking deal. Mana from people around them having emotions, lots of people about whatever or fewer people about them specifically. Perk for controlling your body, doing the monk thing of making your heart beat very slowly and being warm in the snow and all that."

He likes blood fine, but needing to drink gallons on gallons of it to live sounds dull. Daeva... there's potential there.

"And then - ah, only one left? What's that one."

"Mimi! It would give you your own fabulous ears, I am a similar thing called an oread, let's see... ah, must be at least two mimis up the family tree, you could have no ears at all and be a snake one or some ears as a rat mimi. You get some traits from your animal, like fitting into spaces of exceeding tininess or something. Perk gets more traits and they can be more mythological sorts of things if you wish to be the snake that can make people eat bad idea fruit. Fastest charging method of anybody! Just need another person to pat you on the earless head or give backscratches or something like that."

Tom nods along for much of this.

When she reaches the bit about him requiring physical affection for his magic to work, he looks like he might bite her, for just a moment, before he schools his expression to one of mere disgust.*

"No," he says, succinctly.

*Of course, their conversation taking place in a metaphorical representation of a non-physical plane, none of this is actually conveyed via facial expression. But the flickering of his aura is pretty vehement.

"Ah, to each her own! Which ones do you want to hear more about?"

He wrenches himself back to his easy smile. "Hmm... Ifrit sounded good but doesn't sound good enough to be a finalist. Erinyes is tempting; Lilin isn't particularly, ironically enough. Changeling sounds like a lark but not a lifestyle. Nymph is a strong candidate. Lamia and Orc are nonsense. Empusa and Neutral are dull, Daeva is a contender." He only twitches slightly thinking about Mimi. "So let's get the details on Erinyes, Nymph, and Daeva."

"Erinyes are wind and blood affinity - that's transmuting and necromancy and summoning demons and being Storm of X-Men; don't get older than somewhere between eighteen and twenty-six - most witch types do something like this - and if they die anyway they pop up again in a new host body somewhere, though that is put off if they are ritually sacrificed in one of the ritually sacrificing people ways and then they come back a hundred years after instead. Their pain thing charges fast but they only hold a middle-of-road amount of mana at one time. And, anyone physically harming an erinyes spends the next day like the erinyes is their voodoo doll, scratched where the erinyes is scratched and bleeding how they bleed and suchlike. That's the thing with the bonus curse bit - it's a complicated business with getting erinyes blood on a sharp thing while there is a voodoo in play and then putting a permanent pain curse with a spooky scar on the cursed person.

"Nymphs are water and life affinity, for waterbending and portals and alchemy and divination and being Poison Ivy with the plants; they charge fast but without the special bonus thing stuff do not hold much. They have lovely soft scales, and finny horn things, and the horns let them sense what people want. In concept they age a decade per year fast but they wash it off down to eighteen in the shower so it does not much matter. Don't need to eat, but magicify water to make it very yummy and nutritious to drink. Back to life if dead with True Love's Kiss or that kind of thing. The mana draw is by how much people want you or what you tempt them with and how close they are, so, flirting in person better than over text, high-touch sales better than car commercial. Storage perk lets you save mana in your hot tub or make it into mana potions and keeping those on you skips the aging fast thing. Also, bonus affinity, mind, gets you being a psychic who makes headaches happen and curses on top. - you can put points in a magic without affinity but you will run out of points soon if you do it a lot.

"Daeva! Beauteous ubermenschen, tall and strong and untiring and really good complexion and all this jazz. Affinity for body and life, gets you alchemy and transmutation and portals and divination. Charge up going to a football game or on lovely dates, medium capacity but nice and quick. Perk lets you do without air for weeks, perfect birth control and making sure the babies are witches or blondes to have more fun or what have you. Not one of the more interesting but certainly pretty."

"Hm... I am awfully tempted by Erinyes. Do you think people would be too very terrified of me if I took up the way of wings and runny mascara?"

"Well, you don't have to tell them you picked it, if you don't mention meeting me, nor let on if you are not planning a dentist career. But still some yes."

"I think I'd rather moonlight as a dom than a dentist," he muses. (This is true, though irrelevant to his life plans.) "And I can take a bit of squinting, I just don't want torches and pitchforks when I stroll down the street."

"Not much of that, some people have no choice. Oh, also you don't have to make your own mana. You can buy some."

"But isn't self-reliance a virtue? - it's a fair point and I'll keep it in mind if the chains and whips cease to delight me. But, yes, Erinyes for now, with no bonus; what's next? You mentioned tossing lightning bolts on a firing range?"

"Mm-hm! These are," she reorients their view to the cluster of three, "Sorceress, Academic, and Warlock. Sorceresses practice, Academics study, Warlocks curry favor. Sorceresses get affinity for all the elementalisms plus cool familiar-having magic. Academics get affinity for alchemy runes aethernautics portals witchery. Warlocks get bonus magical loot and affinity for curses, transmutation ay-kay-ay hexes, necromancy, consortation ay-kay-ay demon summoning, and divination, and can grow most fast, but must have a boss - you can see who makes you an offer here -" More sparkles.

We've got Hecate, goddess of magic, who approves of his sheer enthusiasm. Chernobog, a devil lord who likes the cut of his jib. The Egyptian god Setcheh, snakey guy. Lupe, Achos, and Ania as a collective (the Algaea, personifications of suffering, "pain" "grief" and "sorrow" respectively) who make offers to most voluntary erinyes. An angel called Chanabiel who thinks she can fix him. Ogmios, Celtic psychopomp and god of eloquence. And some random gods of rivers and forests and places he has probably ever been to who are presumably not spoiled for choice.

He really wasn't expecting to be tempted. Having a master is a mistake he has no intention of making. Chernobog, Hecate, Ogmios, they can all fuck off back to the pits they came from; they're appealing which means they think they know him which means they want something.

But Chanabiel. Chanabiel wants to fix him.

He remembers the first girl who thought she could fix him. It was an accident, that time; she'd seen how he acted, a bitey little secondary-schooler without the masking skills God gave to a rattlesnake, and she with her church-regulation plaits had thought she could save his soul. She came to him, and she said I want to be your friend, and she'd smiled at him, and he'd asked what her angle was, and she'd told him, not in so many words, that he was pretty but he was bad, and that she was going to fix him up 'til she could marry him when they grew up. And he'd thought -

what if I fix you instead?

And they'd become friends. He really did clean himself up, and he had her to thank. He watched how she ate, how she played, how she talked. He learned how people do. And in return he taught her how he did. He acted like he'd leave if she didn't play fair, didn't give as much as she took. She wanted him to dress nicer? He wanted her to stop dressing so nice, would God hate her if she wore her hair straight? She wanted him to come to supper with her family? He wanted her to smoke with him, just a bit, just to see what it's like. She wanted him to date her? Guess what he wanted.

He knew, now, he'd had an easy tutorial with her. She was sheltered, told all her life about the bright lines you never crossed. Once someone like that crossed a line they started wondering about others. And as long as she saw him getting nicer, getting neater, getting sweeter, what was it to her that she might be losing ground? Maybe they'd meet in the middle.

They'd met far from the middle. She got to the middle and he started dragging her back down with him, and she'd sunk so much into the project of Tom Riddle that she couldn't get out, not now, not with her church friends not speaking with her and her family poised to tell her they'd told her so. And she sank, and he flew.

And maybe he could do it to an angel.

"What happens," he wonders, rubbing his fingers against Chanabiel's soft light, "if your patron becomes... indisposed. Towards you or in general."

"If this happens before you hit your power cap? No more errands, no more power. Afterwards I think nothing specialer than your McDonalds boss kicking a bucket. Your power cap is quite high though, you are looking at years and years of magical milk runs and witchy drycleaning pickups."

...not worth it, then. Not worth it at all. Not even in the name of sullying an angel.

"I don't know my preference between Sorceress and Academic without more context on the magics on offer - well, a slight preference for Academic just off the names, but nothing to write home about. Should those magics be next?"

"Sure! Academics get a point of power for about forty hours divided in big chunks studying the dusty tomes and drafting the arcane charts and all this - not too slow if you have no life but if you do, hoo boy. Can for similar time investment but not spending power points get a couple schools of magic, pick something expensive about it. By comparison you are starting with thirty, topping out at a hundred, but can load up on magical fate ballast to boost one time only today. Double duration on things like potions, runes, portals, that you use or make. Some most popular wild magic are academic-friendly like the one that gives invisible servants or the levitating one.

"Sorceresses practice. Start out four times faster than academics, spend an hour a day putting fireballs through an obstacle course or what have you. Favorite wild magic that likes sorceresses is one for not needing sleep and one for being more than one species in most ways. Sorceresses get affinity for all elementalisms, earth air fire water nature psychic metal - no one else can collect-them-all with the elementalisms without doing annoying difficult things - and also having a familiar. Put your soul color, that is this silvery green apparently, into your elementalism to hit harder and reach farther with it, super scary when kicking monster ass. I am a sorceress my own self."

"Either way, watch out, cashing in work for power points gets pricier when it is this way and not from quests, you want to make great big buys all at once so might not see the rest of your power for a couple years if carefully budgeting. Then again, immortality, so what really is a couple years?"