"Yes, let's hear it - also to figure out if the rest is deadweight enough I should just drop the investment despite how nice that addition sounded."

"Rank zero is Sending. Text messages or phone calls or images in your brain. Blockable, but amazing utility. Rank one gets you Identify, public deets about whatever you are looking at. Never fumble for a name at a party again. Always know what kind of shiny rock you have found. Rank two and this works on magic things, and get a status spell to let you keep tabs on whether your quiche has burnt or your infiltrator has been cursed or somesuch. Augury comes at this rank also and is the one that gives you omens that the perk would refine for you, going from 'positive/negative/neutral' to 'positive/negative/bring an apology gift' or what have you. Starts at thirty minutes and goes up from there. Rank three improves these and adds spells Map, Archive, and Foresight: get a picture of what's around you, photographic memory, and battle meditation sort of thing where you can see half a second into the future. Rank four which is what you need for your perk makes all of these jazzier - read a book by touching it, instead of having to photographic memory each page, say - and also adds one where you can aim at something or someone you have mapped for improved range and going around corners even if this is not usual. Rank five you hide from other maps, yourself or other stuff, and all your divination spells are superultracoolest, like identifying weaknesses and status giving more facts about what they are doing or even thinking and your old maps updating themselves."

"That last rank is tempting... but the kind of tempting that Curses and everything on the level with Curses is, not enough to make me take it right now and damn the cost. I'll practice for it."

"Sticking with four, all right. Good for your stacking. Witchery! We are all related back far enough and our zillion-greats grandma gave us all a present. Rank zero gets you basic bitch hat and rod and robe. Without more ranks it takes ten minutes to get dressed and you need tailoring help to make them fancy. Garment replaces what you have on unless what you have on is magic and does not come with undies. Rank one getting them on and off is much faster and you can redesign them without a tailor, turn the rod into the broomstick form and it will be about a bicycle amount of fast. Rank two your outfit is more all-occasions suitable, any weather, keeps the rain off, self-repairing. Broomstick keeps getting faster, and at this rank also catches you if you fall off. Also gets a magic windshield so you do not eat all the bugs. No longer need to wear a onesie. Rank three, put the pocket in pocket dimension. Store rabbits in it - they will be on pause, alive but stasisish - and pull them out of your hat. Draw wand from sleeve. Always have a spare pencil. Broomstick is better and turns into a magic carpet if you want more space for passengers. Rank four, garment works like invisibility cloak, extends to anybody on your broom or carpet with you. Still don't fly anywhere the FAA is looking. Able to tailor for other people. Rank five, hide your whole self in your hat. Mess around with your pocket dimension same as you mess with the embroidery. Holodeck sort of deal, things are not real but very excellent illusion. Guests in your hatland can appear at home whenever they want. So can you, or just come out where you went in."

"Hmmm. The storage sounds really useful... yeah, I'll take it. The fifth-rank necromancy should mean I'm not hurting for self-defense, right, I don't need to save up to pour points into elements?"

"Elements are classic for combat but five ranks of necromancy is not to be sneezed at. Three of Witchery?"

"Yeah. Lay on, Macduff."

"You will want one point of Alchemy to brew your pearl with, yes? Making medicines, stims, dyes, poisons, fireworks, grenades, aphrodisiacs, silly pranky things. Probably stop at one since you will have affinity for it later."

"Quite right."

"Will you want a familiar any time soon?"

"...mm. How much of a vulnerability are they? How much of an asset?"

"You can summon one at rank zero, most any animal you want, this is so easy you can do it by accident. They are smart at like well trained dog levels. If it dies you can resummon it. Ranks are for letting it be a channel for your magic - send it to map places for you or point at anybody you are cursing, say. Two ranks and you can talk to animals. Not make them do your bidding unless they want to for some reason but they will understand and you will understand. Three ranks and you can pick up some quirks from the animal - not exactly what it is actually able to do, more its mythology, I mentioned snakes with bad idea fruit awhile back I think. Crows and such can make you smarter this way. Four ranks you can turn into your animal and familiar can turn into a human! It gets human-smart at this rank. Still subby about it though. Rank five, nine lives, since cats are most popular and traditional. Kicks in before you do any other immortality shenanigans, you wake up safe in bed if you die any which way. Refill the supply if you drop below nine by saving cats - get them out of kill shelters is standard."

"I'm shocking myself, but I think I do want a rank. Having a garter snake who can sneak through someone's vents and lay a curse on them, speckled band style... and for quite cheap, too."

"One rank, one point. Eleven left to assign today but endless possibilities later on. Next! Runes! Enchantment - etch a rune on a thing just so and it is magic ongoingly. Or embroider it or paint it. Expensive and slow especially at high ranks but then you have swag. First rank gets Luck, Fertility, Courage, and Chill. All usable backward, for bad luck, contraception, anxiety, and heat. Also an augment rune, for weapons and protections - you pick an affinity, same as the ones giving you discounts on things, and resist magic that has the affinity, or do more damage with it. You could put it on your rod to use for casting, or just get a sword and put poison potions on it or something, whatever. Rank two gets Disease and Heavy, again reversible, useful for sterilizing your tattoo needles or compensating for being floaty with the complication that makes you floaty. Rank three adds Talent, reversible, and Wind, not really reversible but versatile. I have a Talent bracelet, use it when I am trying to learn anything to take notes with. Rank four, Spell and Warden, not usable backward. Spell lets you attach something else to an object, make it borrowable - cursed jewelry, make your snake a doodad that lets it hat-trick into your hatland. Warden is one to be careful with, dispels or suppresses magic on contact - very elaborate rituals to get it on a thing without disenchanting itself but good if you want to poke around dangerous places. Rank five adds Time, Protection, and Relic. Time preserves a thing from wear and tear - aging, say, or put it on your fridge and never find surprise mold in the back. Protection charm will absorb damage to something or someone, put it on something sturdy. Relics let you copy relic magic onto other things - doesn't get you a second use of your cosmic pearl for affinity but does let you share the passive benefit around."

"Exactly as ridiculously tempting as I've come to expect from the utility magics. I'll take two ranks for now, just because I'd feel like an ass if I couldn't keep myself from flying away in a stiff breeze under my own power."

"Two ranks two points, here you go! Next can be one you probably do not care about. Aethernautics. Track where planets are. Float, fuck with gravity. Fold space a little starting rank three. Rank four you can bop around in the aether to go to other realities - that part is pretty cool but so much investment to get to it. Rank five you can do teleport lock sort of thing, leave radioactive spacefuckery lying around to make people mad, fuck with your age and relationship to time."

"I think you're right - four and five are tempting but it sounds like it's dead before then, and everything is tempting. Except the rubbish, obviously."

"Quite. Similar utility but much smoother progression: portals! Being a witch at all lets you see and use them, regular humans can't. Basic kinds are, one, objects that ker-swap between point A and B and bring folks along; two, enchanted doors or arches that lead somewhere else when they are turned on; three, rifts from hither to yon, very sharp edges. First two kinds last forever but are expensive to make and for some reason of exceeding stupidness it is per mile even though distance is precisely the thing to be spat at here; rifts are a little tiring but not expensive. Ranks mostly numerical in sizes of rifts, number of sustainable gates and doodads, and range on all these - starts at six inches going sixty feet for rifts, one doodad or one gate at a time not more than fifty miles. Fine to visit aunt across town or pull soda out of your fridge without getting up, not very phenomenal nor cosmic, but it goes from there. Rank two you start being able to put rifts to proximas - elemental planes sorts of deals. Fire and ice to start. Hot plate for your potions, ice tray for doing Coldstone Creamery mixins, whatever. Rank three adds an electrical proxima, jump your car or mine bitcoins or something. Rank four adds Water proxima, on-demand fire hydrant but it stops when it's underwater so you can put one in your water tank. Rank five takes the brakes off how many gateways you can hold, you can do a whole interdimensional transit system if you want at this point. Also adds Void proxima, little black hole sort of situation, stand well back. It whispers. Says things like 'come here' and 'don't you want to know what it's like'."

"My god the temptation does not stop coming. One rank, under dire protest, I'll probably come back and sprinkle leftover points over everything later and it's harder to give up ranks taken than to just take fewer in the first place."

"Your stack is not too top heavy at all," she says approvingly. "Elementalisms! Your current affinity trio only gets you the discount on Psionics, I recommend not picking up any others till you pearl on Nature and get three more, though you can pick up another out of affinity now if you want. Psionics! Any of it reduces vulnerability to memetic hazards like looking at Cthuloid horrors and being traumatized by the regular car crash horrors. Might want to pick up especially because you could otherwise get traumatized about your forthcoming awakening. Rank one you can hide a smallish thing from one sense of somebody's or make it look like something else - good if you are a card sharp or do not want your mom to see your vibrator. Give people headaches, optionally triggered by things like looking at a Picasso or whatever. Those things both keep getting numerically more bigger harder better faster stronger etcetera. Rank two, add psychic constructs - chairs, ladders, reading glasses. You can sit on climb and wear them but if someone else tries they will go right through them like a ghost that makes your arm fall asleep. Range on that starts at five meters and gets better from there. Rank three! Teleport kerswap line of sight, not too far but it'll get you out a window or up on a roof or something. Four, you can make the headaches stick forever if you are very mean, nailing somebody through the head with a construct object knocks them out cold like in superhero movies, teleport goes a whole mile, and you can now go aprowl in people's mindscapes, smashing their mind windows and tagging their mind bridges and leaving behind mind cuckoos. Five, in a mindscape you can bust out the mind nukes or do a mind find-and-replace to correct all their typos or whatever - these things could be fixed because they have backups in the soul but it is at least so hard. Slide into the ethereal realm to tromp around the psychic impression mirror universe. Make something an antimeme, nobody unprotected can remember it exists."

"...huh, the psychic constructs sound a bit like that mimery power. I don't think I need any of it urgently enough to take it today - I can substitute headaches with Curses, I didn't take the mimery in the first place, and I don't do trauma."

"Yes, mime power is not unrelated technically speaking. You say you don't do trauma now but recall when you have a therapist in ten years that I warned you. Shall we go over other elementalisms that it would be silly to take today or nah?"

"Mm, I think I'll get the picture better when I'm not retaining a two-hour-long scattershot lecture. So let's move on. What else is there, even?"

"Factions! Especially important since you are about to forget this ever happened for a while and not follow up on whatever you decide, I can pinch Fate a little to make you wind up hither or thither. Big factions all have special magic that outsiders can't usually get. We've got a couple schools, a couple fairy feudalism situations, the literal moon, edgy cults, and the pan-Abrahamic interfaith society. What shall we add to the two hour lecture?"

"Absolutely no pan-Abrahamic societies. Everything else sounds neutral-to-positive, can I get the elevator pitches?"