"Most people can't see their Guide, or they can and they forget about them when they grow up. Like an imaginary friend. It's very common for magic users to have one, although almost none of them really put that together. My Guide looks like a very large eagle made of shadow. I named him Phineas when I was younger." She pauses thoughtfully. "They don't really intrude into our Plane very much. Phineas did, for some reason. He used to scare my... family to death."

Fortescue, at the last minute, switches to family instead of Mirabelle, not wanting to go down that road. It's not inaccurate, either. Her parents had paled at their sightings of her Guide. Now, of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty. All of the Guides look different, depending on what Plane they come from, and Phineas was from the Plane of Shadow, with the most stigma behind it. Blood magic, the only forbidden school, was attuned with Shadow. It was no wonder they'd insisted on her becoming a warlock, rather than a magus. But that's not how it had worked out in the end.

"But he was always very polite. Just... very detached. Different. Not that I expected differently, as we think the Guides are more or less immortal. He's probably ancient. Not to mention inhuman, by nature."

Maybe that was what they got out of humans, somehow. An increased lifespan. It was hard to say, without any sort of study on the matter. But that wouldn't happen any time soon, not with Blood magic being forbidden. Magus' were the only ones who could access the Planes at all.