"Much better! I'll take that. All right, who's next?"

"That's everything discounted for warlocks. Discounted only by affinity you have... alchemy! Portals! Windkeeping! Earthmoving! Naturalism! These are all what they sound like but I can do more details if they sound shiny."

"I want to go through all of them but it's cool that alchemy and portals are first because they definitely sound shiniest. Tell me about alchemy."

"Potionmaking. You get a cauldron and set it on your magic brazier - most people do not have these - and you put in ingredients. Millions of possibilities. Yours will have a signature style, maybe all smelling of raspberry or being a little fizzy or something. One dose generally two cups, but reducible down to a drop if you let it simmer long enough, some people have pill presses if they don't like to drink theirs. Stimulants - coffee-ish things, or more specialized - curatives - make your own painkillers or allergy meds - novelties - hair dye, sugarfree sweeteners, stain remover, suchlike. Each rank lets you make these better, fewer side effects, harder to replicate with local chemists' corner store, but higher rank potions have ingredients you do not find at the local grocery likewise unless you substitute with more mana. Rank two you can do fireworks! Rank three you can make splashy grenade potions. Rank four you are good enough to bring dead people back if they are not too dead yet, do cosmetic funsies like giving you a tail or whatever. Rank five even very dead people provided there are remains sit right back up if you sprinkle something on them. Love potions at this rank extremely serious business. Memory altering potions, shapeshifting potions. This is one you can do cottage industry with even on this Earth, just say it is a homeopathy and no one will look too hard."

"Fascinating. I love it. Does it cost the same as divination or is it more expensive? I definitely want at least one rank but I don't want to spend too too much on it."

"One rank one point, two ranks two, three ranks four, same as divination."

"I'd better not get ahead of myself. I'll stick to two ranks for now. Next up: portals?"

"Portals! Three kinds. Portkeys, swap between places with passengers, on a schedule or if you are a bit silly at random. Gateways, just what they sound like, walk through the door and be somewhere else. Rifts, like gateways but not on doors - just holes in space, you trace the outline to make it. Very very sharp edges, beware. Breakable if something too big to go through swats them, more durable higher ranks. First two want sacrifice of things - more expensive than a taxi per mile the first time but you can keep using it a lot or charge a toll. Rank one, rifts are six inches big, range of a hundred meters about, pull little things from the fridge or attic without getting up. One portkey or gateway at a time, fifty miles tops. Have to see both ends for rifts, have to have been both ends for the others. Rank two, double range and double inches on your rifts, up to three portkeys and gateways at four times the range. One-way rifts to elemental planes usable for keeping your buffet hot or ice cream cold. Rank three, again double range, triple inches. Twice as many portkeys and gateways, they can go eight hundred miles. New elemental plane available, power your house off the Storm Proxima with a jumper cable. Keeps going basically in this way - new thing at rank four is water proxima rifts, auto-stop if they fill up wherever they are so you can put one in your favorite tank or pool or aquifer and not overflow it. Rank five no limit to number of portkeys and gateways, run a whole interplanar port your own self if you like. Can place rifts by dead reckoning and no range limit. New proxima is Void, slurps things into it, don't do it near your you, they're creepsome and whispery and things in the void disappear after not too long."

"Creepsome and whispery, oh my! I think I'll take two ranks of that to start with, though depending how many points I've got left over after my current rampage I might come back for more. Who's next?"

"Windkeeping. It is like being The Zillionth Airbender. Also covers electricity. Rank one, mimic hand tools with pressurized wind - careful of sawdust though, goes everyplace when you stop concentrating and it all goes out - mimic slingshot, mimic normal fan from the hardware store. Rank two, higher power winds, hot or cold, optionally ultra-dry, never buy another bath towel. Stabilize your tool-ish winds for air chairs, air shelves. Static charge if you want one. Fly without your broom. Rank three, gale force, knock over a van, put some zap in your windy constructs so they swat people with a tazer in addition to a cannon strike. Immune to g-force, zoom as zoomy as you want. Survive in vacuum, no need to breathe and no explosive decompressing to do. Rank four, you are Storm X-men, make a cloud rain or hail with temperature change. Make a tornado for your arts and crafts. Voltage like a full on power line - stop hearts, or restart them. Rank five, make air out of nothing! Herd clouds for a great big storm with lightning! Lightning bolt things straight up!"

"I won't say I'm not tempted but it seems a bit silly to be flying without my broom when I'm putting so much work into my broom. What else you got?"

"Earthmoving. Makes you resistant to blunt force trauma, up to 'immune unless it's magic' rank three. Rank one you can teekay a bucketful of dirt, sand, mud, pebbles, all together or in fourish masses. Also makes you good at digging. Amount and force and range of earth and rock you can do stuff to goes up by some times each rank. New stuff at rank two is molding stone like clay, or making it ten percent its weight to haul around. Third rank make walls or towers or spikes or whatever erupt from the ground, instant barricades. Rank four, fissures and canyons, little earthquakes, catapult or skate yourself around with rocks. Rank five, make rocks explode, make them permanently light so you can build a floating city, concentrate earthquake power on a single spot to obliterate a whole mountain. Not on this planet with that one please, the mundies know where all the mountains are."

"Oh, that sounds like it would be so much fun for a less delicate flower than me. Maybe if I have a point or two left over after all my other nonsense. What else?"

"Naturalism! Plants and animals and mushrooms and even slightly germs. By rank three, immune to nonmagical harm from these - poison ivy for breakfast and run with the bulls as a morning jog and be fine. Talking to plants makes them grow faster for real, make them tastier or spikier or whatever. Animals that might already have something to say - cats, dogs, dolphins, the smarter ones - you can get the gist and give the gist to them too. Teekay of plants like plant is a snake or something. Rank two, all of this better and more animals have something to say. Graft traits from one thing to another thing without having to learn genetic anything about it - within kingdom only. Rank three, animals in general just as good as people and much more cooperative when you have things to say, go back to normal when you are done. Rank four, all of this better in all the usual ways, range and speed and such, and also an animal can stay smart after you smarten it and so can a plant. Rank five mostly numerical betternesses but also the awake plants can move themselves. I made my big butterflies myself."

"Your big butterflies are very charming. All right, let's see... how much have I spent so far, and how much is there left to cover? Maybe I have room to indulge myself, or maybe I have the opposite of that, let's find out."

"On four ranks Witchery, three Divination, two Alchemy and Portals, one each Curses Hexes Necromancy Consortation, and also Levitation and Broom Beast and twice Hybridize and your turning into a mist business, you've spent twenty-three points. Started with thirty, so, seven left to spend or supplement them with complications."

"All right. And nothing left to spend it on that I haven't already heard about? Then I should take another hard look at the drawbacks now that I know they make me permanently more magical than I could've been otherwise, and then figure out what else to spend points on." She sighs deeply. "I'm just not sure I can countenance a third nipple, even if it gives me extra magic. I like my skin! I like all of my skin! I like the number and placement of nipples I currently have! I do think I want to restrict Consortation, though. That gets me one more point than buying one of it, right? And I should decide if I can manage to have a taste for monster fighting, and, what else, figure out if I can soothe my wounded dignity enough to be willing to fumble quests... are you sure I can't just be paid less for the same work, I have to do the work badly?"

"Restricting Consortation instead of buying one rank for negative one points nets one point yes. It is not necessarily quest fumbling, it is a - fate thing - that must slow down how much you gain favor, and we cannot ask Hestia, from here, if she can sidestep by paying you half price. But it could be being distracted by more important things for quests, or refusing them for reasons, or messing up someone other's quest while on your own - it will just somehow happen to work out that you are paid half what you would be, somehow."

"...well, Hestia's supposed to be very chill about work-life balance, so maybe she'll understand if I just get very selective about my quests and try extra hard to do them right... and I can try to ask her about half pay when I get the chance. I'll take it. As for fighting monsters... I guess the question is, will windkeeping be useful to someone as flight-specialized as me besides in the redundant 'fly without my excellent broom' way? Because if so then I should take lots of windkeeping and the monsters to pay for some of it. And hope that future me does not curse my name for making her get into fights."

"Windkeeping remains useful! Can be for flying by most of it isn't. Most particularly useful if you find it awkward using broom as wand while it is broomish - did you want to take that?"

"Let's say three ranks of windkeeping and the monsters thing. Where does that leave me?"

"Again seven points, unless you do want the thing where you cannot do magic sans wand, would get you four more."

"Yes, I'll have the thing where I can't do magic sans wand. And the thing where I gain power slower and need to cross my fingers that Hestia will give me a pay cut if I ask for one. And restrict Consortation instead of taking a bonus point for it, and my clever little addiction if you still think it'll work."

"Addiction to the fantasizing? Think so."

"Right. Then I think I had a clever trick in mind where I was going to require exercise to do magic and then compel myself to exercise—how much exercise do I need, to make it work? If it's going to take two hours out of my day I may reconsider, that's a lot of hours all told. If it's twenty minutes I'll probably do it."