Not such a good actress after all

For very obvious reasons I’ve been in a great mood all week, after all it’s not an everyday occurrence – not even for me – that a great scheme works out just as planned, without anyone knowing that I was the brain behind all of it.
Well, at least that’s what I thought until Cromvik visited me in the HoK yesterday afternoon. He came over to me with a huge smile on his face and an enormous box of pralines in his hand. He put them down on my desk and evoked a privacy shield around us.
I raised my eyebrows in confusion. “What’s going on?”
“Officially? Nothing,” was the cryptic answer.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked when he didn’t immediately go on. He really ought to know that I can get a liiitle bit impatient if I want to know something.
His smile evolved into a full grin. “Well, it isn’t much, really. I just wanted to give you these as a little thank you.”
Ok, now that announcement made me a little wary. He wouldn’t be talking about the whole new-dean-thing? “Whatever for?” I gave myself nonchalant. “I mean, honestly, if this is about the research I helped you with the other day, I have to say, I was only doing my job, as usual.”
“Oh, come on,” he answered. “You know full well what I am talking about. I wouldn’t put up a privacy shield if I were here just to thank you for doing your job.”
“I really have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” I tried once more, although, in retrospect, I can’t tell you why I even bothered. Wishful thinking, probably.
Cromvik sat down in the visitor’s chair. “Alright. If you need me to spell it out… When you had that little “episode” – “ (I swear I could almost see the air-quotes around that word) “- in the level-4-room, that already stroke me as odd. Then, you go on a five week long vacation trip to the human dimension and come back just after a new dean was announced. It just reeks of an alibi. Now, I’m not saying I am mad at you for what you did – I never liked Jarix, and I’m sure if he hadn’t so “conveniently” been discovered doing his secretary, it would have been him that the dean gave his position to.”
I tried very hard to keep my face completely blank and spoke in my haughtiest voice, “First of all, Ishta-urges are nothing to joke about. You don’t have them, so you can’t possibly know what they do to one’s psyche. Plus, as you said yourself, I was on vacation off-dimension – I’ve got the pictures to prove it – and everyone knows it is impossible to work magic in Imprana from somewhere else. So, how could I possibly be responsible for anything that happened here while I was gone?”
He leaned back, quiet for a while, and when he answered it was with a tone that seemed a little disappointed to me. “I see. You don’t want to tell me. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, after all we aren’t exactly best buddies. I would have loved to know how you did it, though. Must have been one great scheme, that.”
Before I could say anything – not that I actually knew what to say to that – he got up and lowered the privacy shield. “You are one fascinating imp.”
With that he turned around and left, leaving me… well, stumped. What am I to make of this?

Major schemer at work

It might have not gone unnoticed that I haven’t been writing for quite some time. Now you might have wondered or even been worried what could possibly have happened to me that was keeping me from venting my emotions in this blog. Well, what can I say, sometimes I can be a teensy bit lazy, plus I’ve been taking a leave of absence from my job for the last few weeks. There have been a number of reasons for that, just one of them being that I wanted to not be around when a certain plan of mine caused visible results. Not that I had reason to hide my involvement in said plan - can you see me looking all innocent right now? - but honestly someone had to do something about the whole new-head-of-university thing. Best someone with important information on the topic. But more about that later.
Let’s start at the beginning. Seven weeks ago I found out that our current dean wanted to step down and appoint profassur Jarix as his successor. (How did I find out? Looky here) This didn’t sit well with me. Honest as I am, I am the first to admit that I don’t like Jarix. He is a conniving little suck-up. While I could live with that, he is also incompetent and that I really can’t condone in a dean of the University. Maintaining my House of Knowledge takes a great amount of funding and that funding has to come from the University. So, I need a dean that is intelligent and capable enough to procure sufficient funding for the University and its most important institution. I gave this dilemma quite some thought and came up with the perfect candidate.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, it’s not Cromvik. While he is the one profassur I actually like, that is the very reason why I don’t want to have him be the dean. See, I want a dean who can procure the necessary funding for my HoK and who will be susceptible to my demands, but I sure don’t want a dean who actually comes to my HoK, talks to me about my decisions and – gasp – wants to give an honest opinion. In short, Cromvik being dean would ruin our friendship, and that I don’t want.
My candidate is profassur Naremc. He’s decisive, persuasive and good at what he does. Plus, he is open to suggestions but would never even dream about checking up on anyone. He just assumes everyone does what he thinks is best. Fine by me – I’ll just do what I think he thinks is best :-) if you get my drift.
Now, how to get the dean to change his mind? Difficult question, that. The key is obviously to discredit Jarix while building up the dean’s opinion of Naremc. So, I thought to myself, what does the dean value? Well, family is most certainly one of the top five, as is punctuality, decisiveness, patience (he hates people who get impatient when he rambles on and on without actually saying anything) and, oh yeah, sucking up to the boss.
Naremc has punctuality and decisiveness down pat. He has a long-time girlfriend wich should be close enough. What he has a problem with is sucking up to the dean and especially patience. Not exactly something I could easily change, but where there is a will, there is a way, I always say.
Jarix on the other hand is good at all five points, especially at sucking up to the dean. He and his wife have been married for a few years already (though he’s cheating on her – with his secretary! How very unimaginative!).
So much for the background information, now what to do about it? Without being associated with anything that happens, mind you. Meaning, I had to find a plan I could set into motion and then leave, so when all played out, I wasn’t there. But that meant also, formulating a plan that I wouldn’t have to oversee. And there are always unforeseeable things. A foolproof plan, that’s what I needed. Not the easiest thing to get, but then I can be very stubborn and very determined if I want something.
What followed were two weeks of intensive scheming. In the end it all came down do a relatively simple plan.
Step 1: I set a magic-trigger on one of the shelves in my HoK. When triggered it would send a meeting request to the dean as well as Naremc with an urgent request to meet at the same day at exactly 3pm. This would ensure the dean saw Naremc’s punctuality in contrast to Jarix’s no-show because of
Step 2: On another shelve I set a magic-trigger that would create a notice send to Jarix’s secretary asking her to come into his office for a little make-out-session.
Step 3: I stole the answer letter (granting a sizeable amount of money) to one of Naremc’s project proposals out of the mail room, to be put back on the day of the emergency meeting. Thereby ensuring that Naremc would be in a good mood when meeting with the dean which would give him a lot more patience with the dean’s ramblings.
Step 4: I asked the dean to come down to my HoK to discuss some “important shelving issue” in the room for level four stones. While in there I “accidentally” lost control over my Ishta-urges, having a strong episode, and thereby proved that I needed a five-week long sabbatical to get myself under control again. Just enough time for a nice holiday off-dimension – because everyone knows you can’t do magic in Imprana when you’re not there. Here, the only hitch in my plan happened. The dean brought Cromvik to the meeting for his expert opinion and when I had my “episode” it was Cromvik who caught me before I could fall and carried me out of the room. Now, I’m in no way saying it’s a bad thing being carried around by the handsome Cromvik, but the guy knows me quite well and so I was a little nervous about whether he would believe my little act. He didn’t say anything, though, so I guess I really am an awesome actress :-)
Two weeks later, from out of the human plane, the Black Forrest in Germany to be exact, I then connected to Asmodeus and, in his body, brought back the stolen letter to the mail room and walked over the trigger set up in step 1. Then, at almost 3 o’clock, I set off the second trigger. Afterwards, all I had to do was wait and enjoy my vacation.
When I came back this week and got told the shocking news that Jarix had been caught in flagrante delicto with his secretary and that the dean had chosen a thrilled Naremc as his successor when announcing that he would step down at the end of the year, I acted super-surprised and hid my satisfied grin until no one was looking.

Glossary of Terms

I’ve recently noticed that I am throwing around a great many terms on this blog which are not understandable for Humans. Nice Imp that I am I made up a glossary of terms for all you non-Imps out there. I put it on a separate page that you can reach via the link on the right side bar. You’re welcome to tell me if there is a term missing.

Fire!

Some students make me want to scream and throw things at them. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my library all content, when all kinds of magical alarms started blaring. A huge cloud of smoke was flying up from between shelves at the back of the building. I ran towards it, raising my magical reserves as I went.
In the aisle between the memory stone collection and the book collection a fire was raging, and in the middle of the havoc stood a young student, looking forlorn and frightened. I immediately formed a magic bubble around the fire and sucked the oxygen out until the fire died. Of course, that meant that the student also couldn’t breath for a minute, but I so didn’t care about his discomfort in that moment. I did make sure he was still breathing when I burst the bubble, nice person that I am.
I checked the shelves. Magic fires burn fast and hot, so I was not surprised to see that a large portion of the books had been burned. The cases of the memory stones had fared much better, as they are protected against all kinds of disasters, but the shelf boards underneath them had given out, leaving the stones in a messy pile on the ground.
The shaky voice of the student hardly made it through my murderous thoughts. “I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean… I just wanted….”
He broke off and his eyes became huge when I looked at him. I know I must have been a frightful sight. I’ve had this reaction before when I put on my angry face. “I know full well what you wanted,” I spat out. Of course I knew. Young students always want to try out new talents immediately and they constantly overestimate themselves. They think just because they learned the how’s of something from a memory stone, they can just command whatever new ability they gained. But that’s not how it works. Knowing how to do something and getting good at it are two very different things. One always needs to train a new ability. Which is exactly why there are training centers everywhere. “Training” in a library was just plain stupid.
This dumb kid deserved to be punished severely. Unfortunately I have been forbidden to hurt imps, so I had to come up with something that wouldn’t hurt the little fool and yet gave me some satisfaction.
“Don’t move,” I told the youngster and went back through the shelves a bit. I picked up a level one stone and took it back to the kid.
I whacked the case against the idiot’s chest and he clutched it with shaky fingers. “This is a memory stone that will teach you how to restore burned things. Unlock it and get to work.”
The restoring spell is a relatively easy one, but it needs utter concentration and it is tedious work to reconstruct anything with it. Meaning: it took the kid hours to get everything back to its original state and by the end he had enough training with the new spell that he, from now on, at least is able to restore anything he burned by stupidly trying out his gift.
I really would have preferred to kill the little critter, but at least it was fun to watch him get the hang of the restoring spell for the rest of the day.

Asmodeus

Having a library pet is a great thing; it gets rid of rodents and keeps you company. Having an azectlotl as a library pet is even better. Azectlotls are easily described. Just imagine a cat that is as big as a German shepherd dog, with black fur and white stripes. Azectlotls are rare and intelligent animals. They are also dangerous, because their bite is venomous and their claws sharp enough to rip through any kind of clothing. Their high intelligence allows them to bind telepathically with Imps. If I concentrate on Asmodeus, I can merge with his mind and share his body. This is a very practical thing. It allows me to prowl through my House of Knowledge, making sure everything is as it should be without leaving my desk – and without anyone knowing I am there.
This afternoon this proved particularly helpful. I saw the dean of the university come into the HoK together with one of his close buddies, who also happens to be one of the universities most esteemed profassurs. They walked right past me into the depths of the library, surrounded by a mysterious aura of secrecy. That, obviously, made me curious and I merged with Asmodeus.
I followed them on my velvety soft paws into a deserted corner and hid behind a shelf to listen in on their conversation.
“Why have you brought me into the library?” profassur Jarix asked and the dean answered in hushed tones, “Because I have to talk to you about a delicate matter and in the university one never knows who might be magically listening in on a conversation on account of all the magic already permeating the air making it impossible to detect a spy-spell.”
Interesting – and how practical that the mind-merge between imp and azectlotl works entirely without magic. They had no way of detecting me.
“I have an important matter about which I need to talk to you about,” the dean went on. “I want to know your answer before I go public with the announcement so that everything is settled by the time anyone finds out just to make sure there won’t be any plans to hinder the progression of the planned out succession because that would merely cause an unnecessary upheaval among the staff and no one needs that.”
“What are you saying?” Jarix asked as soon as he got a chance to get a word in edgewise. Did I detect a hint of excitement in his voice? Did he expect this conversation to go where I thought it was going?
“Jarix my good friend I have made the somewhat difficult decision that the time has come for me to step down as dean of the university after having done the job for more than a century and of course I need a worthy successor for the post which in my opinion can only be you as you are the most esteemed profassur at Knobblyville University and after knowing you for many many years I know that you are more than qualified for the job which is why I am asking you now whether you feel ready to step into my shoes once I’ve vacated them.”
“My dear friend. I regret that you want to step down as dean, but I am honored that you want me to be your successor. I thank you for asking me and will strive to be as great a dean as you are.” Jarix answered, his polite tone unable to hide his glee.
I sneaked away and then unmerged. What a juicy tidbit of information. My mind is still reeling with all the possibilities offered by my newfound knowledge.

proof of stupidity

Last weekend I visited a medieval market in Knobblyville together with a friend of mine. She isn’t much into dressing up, but she loves watching people stare at me in one of my creations. You see, I love dressing up. So, last weekend I wore my beautiful Robe à la Francaise, which I made according to the human Rokoko fashion.
Therefore people were staring at me and taking pictures of me all the time. I love the attention. As we strode over the market, looking at all the beautiful goods on sale and enjoying the ambience, I noticed that they were advertising a costume contest for later that day. Anyone interested could take part. Obviously, I decided this would be great fun and I could possibly even make some money out of my hobby.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know where to register for the contest so we just asked one of the imps at a beverages stall and she said we only had to show up in time for the start of the contest.
I looked at the plan that lay out at the stall. 17:45. That meant we had quite some more time to spend shopping and people watching. As the time neared 17:30 we went to the stage, already discussing how we would spend the price money – not that I was overly confident, but it is a great dress. There was a band playing on the stage and lots of people standing around but none of them looked like competition for me.
The band played their last tune and went off stage but no one announced the costume contest and then we noticed a huge sign that said this was stage 1. There was more than one stage! Were we at the wrong one? We hastened – a lady in a Robe à la Francaise never runs – to the nearest beverage stall and checked the listings once more. There it was, costume competition stage 2. Damn.
Off we went right across the whole market trying to reach stage two before it was too late. But when we got there the stage area was curiously empty. Again there were no competitors, but I could make out the herald I had seen doing the announcing before. We went to him and asked him whether they would start with the costume competition now.
He raised his eyebrows. “We just finished the competition.”
“WHAT?” it broke out of me. “But it says on the schedule that the costume competition starts at 17:45!”
“That’s impossible,” the herald answered while getting out his own copy of the schedule. “See here-“ he pointed at the relevant entry, “Costume competition starts at 5 o’clock and lasts approximately until quarter to six.”
And there it was on black and white. I had read the schedule wrong. How embarrassing! Luckily the herald was a nice guy and didn’t laugh at us all too much.

visiting the Ishta prison

A few days ago I was informed that the Ishta who had attacked Cromvik and me had been caught and was now in the Ishta prison. I don’t know why, but after work I went straight there to visit.
As I stood there in front of his prison cell, separated from him by a see-through magical wall, all manner of thoughts ran through me. He was staring at me, with no sign of recognition. Jaron was his name, but according to the guard who had brought me to his cell, he didn’t react to that name anymore. He was completely lost in his self-made madness. His shiny silver eyes fixed on me but I could see, I was of no interest to him. Without the magical shield this might have been different. Jaron would have felt drawn to me then, because of my strong magical abilities.
I couldn’t help but think that if it hadn’t been for some much needed intervention, I probably would have ended up just like Jaron many years ago.
I heard steps coming from the entrance and ripped myself free of Jaron’s gaze long enough to see who was coming. The guard was bringing a second visitor: Cromvik. Why was he here? I turned back to the cell, not wanting to look at Cromvik. We hadn’t talked since he found out about the silver flecks blemishing my eyes. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I kept quiet, acknowledging his greeting merely with a nod.
For a long time, we stood in silence, watching Jaron sit apathetically on his bed. I noticed that while Jaron met my eyes frequently, he never stared into Cromvik’s. Could he feel that I was much closer to him, to his state, than Cromvik? The thought made me nauseous.
“How did it happen?” his smooth voice echoed through the long hall even though he all but whispered.
I was tempted to ignore his question or pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about, but somehow I felt that I owed him an explanation. “It happened a long time ago. I was young and stupidly wanted to impress someone with my power and my knowledge.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod. “You must have been pretty far along. How did you get out of it?”
“A friend.” I kept my answer short, hoping that he would leave it at that.
“You must have had a strong connection if he was able to talk sense into you in that state,” Cromvik commented and I just couldn’t leave it at that. He had to know the truth.
I turned to him and locked eyes with him. “He tried. It didn’t work. He tried hard and got killed for it. It was his death that got to me. His death that keeps me from giving in to the urges I feel from time to time. His death that brought me back to life.”
After that I left without looking back. I had to get out of that prison, before the memories swamped me and I broke down.

found a new hobby

Humans have invented a cool thing called Cosplay. Basically you find a character in a Manga, Anime or movie and then you replicate said character in the greatest detail possible. Some might call this crazy. I myself call it a wonderful challenge. Just imagine all the kinds of characters out there, just waiting to be cosplayed. Of course, I already looked around both in Imprana as well as the human world and I found a character I would love to cosplay. It is Queen Esther from Trinity Blood. Here’s a picture:


Isn’t it amazing? Ok, it is going to be an awful lot of work and I will need a lot of time and material, but I can’t wait to start. I am very much looking forward to striding around as a queen.

Attack of a lunatic

Knobblyville University is very proud of the fact that they have a large number of well accredited profassurs among their staff. I don’t much like them. Their usually pompous and self involved and treat me like a peasant. There is only one profassur that I can really stand the sight of which is probably why he’s the one who comes to my HoK most often. I bet the other profassurs are always asking Cromvik to bring back their loans, ask their research questions and so on and so forth. I’m not sure how Cromvik thinks about that arrangement, but for me it works just fine. I only have to talk to the one profassur I like.
When I looked up from my reference desk yesterday to see Cromvik enter the HoK, a rare smile came to my lips. His bold features and charming smile were a welcome sight.
“Hi Venimalia,” he greeted me while pulling a form from his bag. “I’ve got a delivery for you.”
One glance at the form and I knew what kind of delivery it was. He had created a new level four stone. See, there are three common levels for memory stones: the easy to open first level that sport a blue color, level two stones for the medium magician in green, and the red level three stones that are hard to handle. Those three levels are shelved in my HoK and freely accessible. But there is the rare ability or piece of knowledge so powerful that it has to be put into a level four stone. Because of their great value and the enormous amount of magic locked inside them, these stones are kept in a vault specially designed for holding them.
Cromvik accompanied me to the heavy duty door that separated that section of the HoK from the rest. Only there, away from prying eyes, he took the iridescent black stone out of his bag. Even through it’s casing, I could feel the magic inside the stone pulsing.
I took the case carefully and left Cromvik to guard the door while I opened the vault with the magic spell only I know. I don’t trust anyone else to enter this special room.
Before I stepped inside, I put up a shield against the magic diffusing out of the stones in the room. Unfortunately, level four stones hold such great amounts of magic that some of it always escapes into the room around them. That is why I have to keep a power collector in the room at all times.
I put the new stone into a shelf and went over to look at the level of the power collector. It was almost full, so I took it with me to give to Cromvik. They can always use some extra magic at the university.
As I got to the door, I heard a loud yell and realized too late that it had come from Cromvik. He was shoved backwards by a strong ball of magic. When Cromvik crashed into me, I lost the grip on the power collector and fell, hitting my head on the stone floor. Through hazy eyes I saw the power collector had broken and tried to get my weary brain to channel the escaping magic.
I couldn’t do it, but Cromvik reacted quickly. He was back on his feet within seconds, channeling the magic from the power collector and hitting the attacker right in the centre of his chest. As hazy as my gaze was, I still saw the silver sheen on the attackers eyes before he went down. He was an Ishta, an imp who had taken to much magic and knowledge into his body, thereby frying his brain and getting addicted to magic.
Cromvik knelt down next to me and helped me sit up. “Are you alright? I…” His words faded away when he looked into my eyes. Most of the time I don’t care if anyone sees the silver flecks shading them, but for some reason it felt bad to have Cromvik know how close I was to becoming an Ishta myself.

House of Knowledge rules

I am thinking of updating the HoK rules around here. This is my first draft. What do you think? To harsh?

HoK rules

These are the rules of this House of Knowledge. Comply to them or suffer the consequences.

- Seek help! No matter what your HoK related problems are, always come to the reference desk with them. Do not try to solve them on your own. Chances are, you’ll only make them worse, and not just by adding a pissed off Keeper of Knowledge to them.
- Walk in an orderly fashion! I am sure when your mother taught you to walk she also taught you not to stomp or drag your feet. But above all, don’t you dare run in my HoK.
- Cases are essential! Memory stones are very delicate things, especially when out of their case. So don’t let them lie around and by all that’s holy, don’t ever bring two memory stones close together without their casing. That’s the kind of dumb ass move that gets you killed.
- No memory, no shelving! If you can’t remember where you took an item from, don’t just put it somewhere in the shelves. Leave it on your work table or bring it to the reference desk. And don’t think I wouldn’t find out if you shelve something wrongly. I am a very powerful magician as well as one strict Keeper of Knowledge.
- No try outs! If I catch you trying out newly learned abilities inside the HoK the consequences will be dire.
- Tardiness will be punished! Believe me, you don’t want to know what happens to people who bring items back after their due date.

The blind date incident

I joined my parents for dinner yesterday, well aware what that meant. See, an invitation to my parents’ house is never just that. It is always attached to them trying to finally get me a husband. Pretty much since I reached adulthood, they have been pestering me with their wish for a grandchild, and as the years went by, they decided to take matters in their own hand. Unfortunately, their taste in men isn’t always good (basically never, really).
Last night’s candidate was a perfect example for that. Let me give you the first impression I got: thin brown hair, waxy skin, bad posture, fidgeting, wearing a shirt with orange and white horizontal stripes that covered his slight belly and made a futile attempt at hiding his spindly legs. When he greeted me, he was so nervous, the words tumbled out of his mouth without clear order but a distinct stutter.
Not very impressive.
During dinner Hanian kept us “entertained” by telling us all about his work and how much there was of it and how little time he had to do it in. Interestingly enough, in all his anecdotes he came off as the poor hero while everyone else was just evil and out to get him. It soon became clear to me that he was fishing for complements with these stories. I don’t like people who think if they didn’t come to work every day, the world would end. Ordinarily, I would have told Hanian this in no uncertain terms, but out of respect towards my parents I merely nodded politely and swallowed all sarcastic comments with the food.
I really had every intention of sitting through dinner nice and polite, but then Hanian said something that burst through my resolve. I couldn’t help but snicker and once the dam was broken, all was lost. I broke out in peals of laughter, followed by, “Do you own a mirror?”
The rest of dinner was spent in uncomfortable silence only broken by my mothers desperate attempts to draw Hanian out of his moping. He left right after dessert and my mother spend the rest of my visit – which I kept short – with complaining about my behavior. Well, I am not sorry.
Honestly, what would you have said when someone like Hanian tells you (without trying to be funny, I might add), “I’ve got these new sunglasses. They are brown with large glasses. I took them off before I arrived here though. I didn’t want you to think I was a secret agent or something.”

memory stones in heat

Knobblyville is currently in the claws of a heat wave, but at least my workspace is always nice and cool. Apart from my personal preferences, this has a very important reason: while the books in my collection don’t care whether it’s hot or cold, the memory stones react very badly to heat. They tend to get instable if they heat up and it might come to the point where they explode. Not something you’d want to happen in a HoK.
As I was musing about that yesterday, an Imp came running into the library and straight towards my reference desk. She was carrying a memory stone without a protective chase. I sprang from my chair and headed towards her: “What do you think you’re doing. Carrying a stone without case and in this heat!”
“You have to help me! The stone is instable and I can’t cool it down and this was the nearest place I could reach. I think it’s going to explode,” the student answered hysterically as she hurried nearer.
My gaze went back to the stone she was carrying and saw immediately that it was too late; the stone would explode within seconds. My assistant was coming towards us from the shelves so I screamed at him to weave a protection screen around the student while I hurriedly drew up all my strength to form a protective bubble strong enough to hold the escaping magic.
The enormous wave of magic exploding out of the level 3 stone hit the student and ripped her off her feet. When the free energy slammed into my shield, I could feel my power draining out of me, but the bubble held.
Once the outward momentum of the magic was gone, it was relatively easy to put the magic into a newly created stone, that I put into my pocket.
A look around confirmed my suspicion that my assistant had gone down as well. The magic wave had to have been too much for him to hold off the student completely. I knelt down by the student and scanned her body with my magic. Thankfully, she was just unconscious, no bigger damage had been done to her brain.
The Imp opened her eyes and I asked her, “Are you alright?”
When she nodded I let out my frustration. “What in the name of all the gods were you thinking? DON’T EVER BRING AN UNSTABLE MEMORY STONE INTO A HOUSE OF KNOWLEDGE. You could have started a horrific chain reaction. Do you have any idea how much magic you could have set free? The whole city could have died of a brain fry!”
“I… I didn’t know what to do…” whimpered the imp.
That was the moment I decided it was high time that I came up with a new compulsory tutorial for all HoK patrons. I intent to install it ASAP, before some idiot actually does blow up the whole city.

teaching shelving awareness

I’ll give you a valuable tip: when in my House of Knowledge, do not, under any circumstances, mess with my system! It could end badly for you. There are huge, big signs scattered around the library that tell the avid reader to always put memory stones and books back exactly where they found them. They even include the helpful aside that you should just leave the stones/books on a worktable if you’re not sure where to put it.
When I made these signs I was under the impression that every student coming to this HoK would read and understand these few simple words. What a naïve thing to think, honestly. I should have known that most imps are under the impression that signs are there merely for decoration purposes.
Since those naïve days I have evolved and developed a system that teaches students the whole putting back thing quite effectively.
In the beginning I developed a spell that would find any misplaced books or stones, so I – or one of my assistants – could put it back where it belonged. Apart from showing me how many incompetent imps there are, this didn’t help resolve the problem, though.
I decided that the first step to my goal was to find a way of identifying those misplacers. I developed a spell that would track the fingerprints of the last imp to touch a misplaced stone or book, linking the punishing spell to the imp in question. Ingenious little trick, even if I say so myself.
Now to the grand finale. I came up with just the perfect punishing spell. Inspired by human Greek mythology – Sisyphus to be exact – I send the offenders a nightmare in which they have to shelve memory stones over and over and over again. The whole time the imps are aware that they are dreaming and that their experience is courtesy of me.
Second time offenders are very, very rare.

the toilet incident

Alright, I admit, it’s not nice to take my frustration out on an innocent student. But then, who ever said I was nice?
For the fifth time today, a young Imp came to my desk and interrupted my work (reading the newest bestseller I had acquired for the library – purely to be able to index it correctly, of course) only to ask me where the toilets are. Honestly, couldn’t they just use their magic to find the way or something?
So I explained to him how to get there – after all being helpful is my job – in such a roundabout manner that it would take him ages to actually get there. And because it’s no fun to send someone on a scenic tour through the library without watching, I followed his journey with my magic mirror.
In the beginning he looked still fine, but by the time he rounded the fourth corner and there was still no toilet in sight, he started to walk a bit funny. Two corners later he started to hobbly-run. He then took a wrong turn, not that he would know, considering that he was probably totally lost already, and I decided to step in before he peed on my beautiful carpet.
With a broad smile on my face – cause my mood had picked up significantly in the meantime – I went to him and helpfully showed him directly to the toilet.
See, I can be nice ... sort of.

The unconscious student incident

Last afternoon, I went on one of my usual rounds through the House of Knowledge (HoK) I’m in charge of, looking for people I could shush or harass.
When I reached the history section, I found an unconscious Imp lying between the shelves. I know what you’re thinking: Oh my, what happened to the poor sod?
Relax, this sort of thing unfortunately happens quite regularly in a HoK. You see, when one tries to unlock a memory stone but lacks the necessary magical power, it might happen that one’s mind gets locked into the stone. Young Imps often overestimate their abilities and as a result they litter my floors and I have to deal with them. Which means I have to unlock the stone that they got themselves sucked into.
Apart from annoying me immensely, that’s unhealthy. It’s not good to unlock too many memory stones – too much knowledge in one’s brain leads to insanity and I’m already crazy enough, thank you very much!
Anyway, when I picked up the stone, the student had tried to unlock, I saw that it was one I had unlocked before, so at least I wouldn’t have to worry about overloading my brain.
I plunked my ass down next to the prone body and put my right hand on his head while holding the stone with the left. As it was only a level two stone, it took me no more than five minutes to unlock it and funnel the student’s mind through me and into his own head. I shuddered when he went through me. Imagine a wet handkerchief entering your brain through the left ear and then exiting through the right and you will know what I felt.
I hate that feeling, it makes me grumpy, but then that’s why I have a detention room. So that I can let out my bad mood on those who caused it. So, as soon as the student was up again, I brought him to the detention room, all the while coming up with a good punishment.
I made him fill a big vase with raindrops he had to create himself. What he didn’t know was that I used my power to hinder the cloud he was creating from getting any bigger than his head, thereby making sure that it would take ages to fill that vase.
Mean? - Maybe
Fun to watch? - Most definitely.

The dropped stone incident

Clumsy assistants are a pain in the backside, I tell you. Especially when you’re working with memory stones. Generally I prefer memory stones over the books I have in my House of Knowledge (HoK), they’re smaller, lighter and you can use them as often as you like without them showing any signs of wear.
Anyway, I have this new assistant, Shek, and I told him at least a trillion times to be careful when helping me shelving memory stones. I must have spoken in the wrong language or something, because it obviously was to no avail.
Just a few minutes after we had started, the idiot dropped a stone. Of course, he didn’t just let it slip from his hand to the carpeted floor, nooo, he stood on a ladder at the time and the stone hit one of the shelves when it dropped. Naturally, the stone broke, setting free the magic that lived inside the powerful level three stone.
The wave of magic hit us both and we were both whacked back. Him all the way through the aisle and me right into the shelve behind me. I hit my head quite painfully but managed to get around quickly enough to save the wobbling shelf from toppling over and creating a horrendous chain reaction.
When I turned around, Shek was still lying on the floor. After all he was not a powerful Imp at all, which meant that a magical wave of the size we just experienced was much harder on him than on me. Served him right, I say.
I swallowed the urge to kick him for his clumsiness. See how nice I am? Instead I knelt down next to him and patted his cheek until he came around again.
“And that’s why you handle memory stones carefully,” I told him, spacing out the words carefully firstly because he still looked woozy, secondly because I was hoping that it might help my admonishment to sink in this time.