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?"

"Hm. I don't know, Sorceress sounds nice and powerful but I'm sure anyone who fails to be just as dangerous with an Academic bent lacks imagination... I don't mind dusty tomes or obstacle courses though tomes sound like they'd teach me things at the same time... on the other hand an hour a day of activity would keep me nicely trim... I'm not too worried about a few years one way or the other but I admit that reverse-exponential growth is aesthetically irritating, it's a pity I can't go moonlighting as a Warlock while Sorcering or Academing most of the way..."

"Can, actually - if you are a Neutral, perk for that lets you do two growth methods. Still have to pick a thing to really be but pick up power points either which way. Can be two things, like so - or three if you buy it twice -" Point.

"...oh. Huh."

He looks at that thing she was pointing at.

"It's pretty expensive just to be slightly more boring, but... there are advantages to containing multitudes, aren't there. People don't know what to expect from you."

"You could be so surprising, yes."

"And I could serve in Heaven... or, well, serve Heaven, which I'm sure is just as good. Without the risk factor of being deemed unworthy, and thereby well and truly fucked."

And he's never been good at resisting temptation.

He starts grabbing stars. "Alright, we'll call that the tentative plan - I want to be an Erinyes-and-Neutral-and-Nymph, with the Neutral and the Nymph bonuses, and I'll be a Warlock with, hmm, the Sorceress charge method as backup, four times faster is hardly peanuts. What kind of magical goodies does Chanabiel want me to have, in her wisdom?" He takes a peek.

Chanabiel, in her wisdom, wishes to offer him 20 points' worth of:

- a single Golden Fish (2 points), which if tended appropriately builds a surplus of spiritual energy which can either be sipped when convenient or harvested all at once, after a decade of maturation, as a vegetarian if not strictly vegan alternative to human sacrifice. (Hint, hint!)

- an Alchemist Stone (6 points), which can turn obscene quantities of transmutation reagents into a permanent catalyst, stored in his Rod, that can mimic them for Hexing purposes. (He'll learn about all that Rod and Hex stuff later. She thinks he'll enjoy the efficiency of this doohickey, though.)

- a Nymph Vessel (2 points), which does seem awfully convenient given his hybridization plan - it can provide infinite clean mineral water, in addition to pre-nymphed water if he has some obscure use for that. (Generally that side of it is used by non-nymphs.)

- a Magic Talisman (18 points), taking the form of a platinum diadem with one great black pearl, which will grant him rank-5 control over the magic of Dominion; the design has slots for Dominion shards, as well. (She knows how mortals value their safety and privacy, and she can't say she disagrees with the impulse.)

- a Cosmic Pearl (10 points), which will allow him to give himself one additional affinity, in addition to allowing him to brew up a potent alchemical reagent more or less at will and empowering his elemental magics as long as it's on his person. (This one's just nice to have, especially when it's keyed to your soul so that you don't burn it out getting the extra affinity.)

- a suit of Mythril Armor (2 points), which will protect him from a frankly outrageous amount of punishment, protect him from extreme temperatures, and feel like he's wearing nothing at all. (Sue her, she likes the crusader aesthetic.)

- a Sun Shard (4 points), which will let his Rod transform into a dizzying array of highly effective melee weapons aesthetically similar to lightsabers without losing its normal functions. (Again, sue her: it's cool.)

- and, as a signing bonus absolutely free, the knowledge and equipment necessary to tattoo magical runes into his own skin, and a value of 1,000,000 Kisses. She's not exactly hard up for the cash, and the tattoos are just neat, she thinks.

Also, she knows he didn't really ask, but she's so looking forward to getting to know him. It'll be a learning experience for the both of them.

"Are they always like that," Tom asks Nia somewhat blankly.

"No, many much less personalized. Poke the others to compare if you like."