“One in twenty? Is that somehow less apocalyptic than it sounds???”

"Wizards breed true so an embarrassing amount of our population bounceback has always been from individual guys running around knocking up dozens of mundies, but also historically it was less bad, we're not sure why it's gotten worse but the Scholomance isn't that old."

“So these are only wizard mortality rates?”

"That's right. I don't know what non-magical mortality rate you're used to but it used to be that they died more than we did - albeit as babies more than as teenagers - because they got sick and couldn't fix it, but that hasn't been true for a few centuries."

“So mals target wizards preferentially?”

"Mals eat mana. We have it and mundies don't, to a first approximation. So you just made yourself real appetizing and I hope your powers work."

She would ask who even has kids with a one in twenty survival rate but Caio did already answer that question.

Dad may be an undeniably evil person but at least he never failed to care about her.

“Okay. Back home the monsters tend to preferentially target—mundanes—since they’re much less able to fight back. The mana thing makes sense but I hadn’t made that connection yet.”

"Mundanes don't believe in magic, which makes it work less well around them - that includes spells we cast but also mals being anything other than aggressive animals, it's pretty protective for a vulnerable wizard who can't defend themselves to be around mundanes. I went to mundie elementary school in part for this reason."

"Yeah, a mundane will look right at a swampgleep and be like 'that is the ugliest seagull I have ever seen'."

"What the hell is a swampgleep."

"They've got too much wingspan to operate in here very well but we get them around where I'm from sometimes."

“I would say that magic where I’m from doesn’t care if you believe in it or not but one of the conceptual entities has gaslighting as a central focus and I imagine that monsters associated with it actively delight in picking on people who don’t believe in things.”

Actually since most people fear what they don’t understand the Spiral is far from special in this but she’s trying to avoid admitting that her native magic runs on fear.

You’d think that the kinds of people who invent Bigfoot and El Chupacabra would see swampgleeps and so on just fine but it’s entirely possible that those people don’t live long, here.

"Anything else you need to know before we head down to lunch and you pull a thousand cheeseburgers out of your pockets?"

“Not that I yet have the context to ask!”

"Well then, let's all the lot of us head down - would you be so kind as to take point -" Ennis assigns various people convoy positions that happen to leave Kareen in the middle with the enclavers.

Kareen doesn’t know who isn’t an enclave besides Caio but she isn’t surprised to end up in a protected spot when she is these people’s only source of real food.

But also if she sees any mals she’s going to see if Lightfoot plus the battle trio let her put a steak knife through them at forty paces.

Mals do not choose to approach this large coordinated group of well-maintained wizards as they go downstairs and make their way into the cafeteria. Something has taken up residence in the baked potatoes, if she'd like to try knifing that?

She would love to try knifing that!

Battle Demon affects her perception in interesting ways. Even if she never expected to have to fight for her life against something she’d still like this power. She’d just have to take up martial arts or something.

Anyway. Potato mal go bloosh.

It covers the mashed potatoes, and the adjacent brussels sprouts, and the handful of seniors who were already in line look in her direction more betrayed than any child should be about the contamination of their brussels sprouts.

Whoopsie.

Okay, well. Time to pull some particularly fragrant food out of the sack and start setting it out on a table.

Now she has quite a lot of attention. Ennis identifies a few key people and sends Sean to talk to one, asks Suze to speak with another, goes to address a third and fourth himself, and presently people are queuing up for her food, though a few people are suspicious and taking the safe-looking cafeteria grilled cheese and steamed peas and bananas instead.

“Father Christmas doesn’t care if you’ve been naughty or nice! Natural justice doesn’t exist, but human compassion does! I have bizarre powers from other worlds and the enclave kids will confirm it or I’ll know why!”

Bella takes up a position at her elbow to do confirmations on request. And steal fries. "You definitely don't need translation, right?" she asks when some Chinese kids start lining up.

“Right.” She also has a stack of pamphlets of implausible notebook powers that anyone can take.

"People are going to take those just for the paper," Bella mentions, "when the lunch rush slows down you might want to hand out school supplies. - Everyone has an independent work period right after lunch, so we're not in a hurry. Do they look like they're in Chinese to Chinese kids?"