I felt exhausted by the time I had arrived back in my sanctum. With a flick of my hand, my staff was magically sent sliding back to its original position. I did not exactly want to do anything other than sleep, but I knew it wasn't time. Be it partial curiosity that had always been building up since I obtained it, or just a wish to get it over with, I wanted to examine the book.

The candles that Aragor had lit had burned out, but as they were Murith and thus magical in nature, they had repaired themselves to a level they could be relit. It was not for my convenience that I reignited them with a wave of my hands, but more so for the figure who had found their way into my sanctum.

"And why are you here?" I sighed. "Sitting in the dark, no less."

"I figured it'd surprise you. I forgot about the whole eye thing." A truly honey coated voice responded.

My sanctum contained my many books, my many trinkets and my piano. It also contained a small bed, more of a makeshift bed I'd say, and a very large desk that I used for my various writing purposes. Sitting at my desk at that moment was a girl of significant height, with long limbs and pale, almost purple skin. I knew her as Silvi, a Moon Elf.

"I would lecture you on entering places you do not belong, but I have a feeling I'd be wasting my breath."

"There is no need to be so frustrated." Silvi gave me a wry smile. "I didn't touch a thing."

"Lies." I spoke bluntly, walking past her as she stood up to embrace me. "I know when you are lying, Silvi."

While the elf dressed in beautiful clothing, silk garbs of red and gold that left little to the imagination, I found her disgusting. It was not because of her physical appearance, which while displaying a few obviously inhuman qualities like rows of sharp teeth was still fairly gorgeous, but because the very existence of Silvi bothered me greatly.

Make no mistake, Silvi was not like Iris. The latter was bad for my health because she, for some reason, held affection towards me that clouded her judgement. Silvi wished that I was dead, and actively worked towards that goal every waking moment of her day. It was to be expected, she was my slave, marked by the black collar around her neck.

And I was the man who butchered her family, children and all.

"You took two quills, a bottle of ink and a Relic of Tambor. Part of a slab. You can keep the last thing, it only causes impotence in men who read it. I'd like my quills back, though, I don't want to have to buy more."

She gave me a smile as she lay everything, including the small slab, on my table. She did not have any weapons on her, I'd know, but I was still wary of having her in arms reach. It bothered me that all the women in my life were either ghosts or dangerous. I briefly considered making new friends.

"You can leave now." I motioned with my hand. "Unless you'd like to dance the witty dance with me. You'll joke about how you love me so, while plotting to poison my tea. I'll laugh merrily as I remind you that your mother and father turned on each other in desperation as I used them as fuel for my research."

For a moment I saw her expression falter. It was cruel of me to remind her as often as I did at what I had done to her. To her family. But it was something I did anyway, as I had to remind her that I was not a harmless person. I had a feeling that ignoring her, or Mone forbid trying to support her, would give her the courage to outright attack me.

"Very well. But you'll know where to find me if you need me." She put on her normal cat-like grin as she began to leave. I turned to avoid it, if only to not have to look at her damned face anymore.

"Yes, yes. Your private quarters that you share with Beni because she's so enamoured with your figure. That damn scatterbrain would keep goats in her room if she found their balls alluring." I tapped my chin. "I said that as a joke, but on second thought I'm pretty sure she would."

I heard the door close behind me as Silvi left, and a small bit of tension left the room with her. She was the only slave I had ever actually owned, though many had come and gone in my life as resources for this and that. Slaves were a vital part of the empire, but they were also vital to many of the experiments and research the Seven Black Sorcerers did.

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"Six years and she still finds herself shaken by the loss of her family." I muttered.

"Of course she would. She's normal." I heard the ghostly voice again. "Normal people do not simply forget the pain of the past. They merely dull the pain."

"You find me cruel?"

"Very." The voice of my deceased sister sighed. "But I've grown numb to your cruelty, Wulfram the Defiler."

"That," I turned and waved my hand, summoning a figure out of the air around me, "is not a name I like to hear from you."

While fairly see through, to put it one way, the figure of my sister appeared. Though she would be much older, if one counted the years of a spirit as real years, she still retained the appearance she had upon her death. She was small, had long and unkempt black hair, and dressed in rags. It served as a grim reminder of our origins.

"Jami." I spoke the name with as much warmth as I could muster. "You'll understand why I do the things I do one day."

"I highly doubt that." She mused.

Opening the top drawer of my desk, I found and placed the book that had become so central to many people's lives on the tabletop. That was after I tossed that cursed Relic of Tambor away from me, of course. I gave it a good look, here and there, taking it in with all of my senses. It was a very... blue book.

"I'm surprised Silvi didn't touch it." Jami spoke as she hovered, literally, over my shoulder.

"I'd like to say it's because she knows what's good for her but..." I trailed off. The book had a severely oppressive atmosphere to it that I assumed even those without magical talent could feel. Jami was an exception, of course, being dead.

I flipped the pages of the book. It was thick, with more pages than I thought was necessary, each with a title but otherwise completely blank. The titles ran on for pages, sometimes over a hundred. Things like Great Loss and Redemption, I didn't understand what it was laying out. Perhaps the story of the Mage King?

No. It had a deep power within it, it was not merely a storybook. That was the problem.

"How do I use you?" I could not hide my excited voice.

With my hand over the book I began to speak with the confidence that only magic can bring. I spoke shmala and I spoke vunhal and every other magical word I could think of. Open, I spoke to it in a thousand known languages, open and be mine. Yet it did not open, and no matter how much I tried to force magic onto its body, it seemed untouched.

I felt my face growing hot and my body growing sweaty as I pushed and pushed. But no word I spoke even disturbed the book. It did not react, it merely acted as a barrier, as it was my momentum that shoved me away. I gave up after a while, sighing as I slumped into my chair, waving my face with my hand.

"Damn secretive Mage King." I muttered. "Why can't he merely booby trap his books like everyone else?"

I flipped the pages idly as I tried to think of what I could do next. Spilling slave blood on it was rarely useful to anything not humming and letting out dark sounds. I could try set it on fire, but that was also a hit or miss tactic. I could try throw it at a wall, but Jami would probably mock me for it. So what else could I try?

"Write on it." Jami spoke.

"It's an ancient book of untold secrets, girl." I replied with some hostility. "Of course it was inevitable that I'd ink it."

I sat up and flipped the book to its first page. It simply said Name in the kind of writing style I had seen often in older books. Big, blocky letters with curves and additions that modern writing styles in the Glorious Empire did not have. It felt a bit fancy, like I'd just obtained a very rare book for bards, which made my urge to defile it with my writing grow even further.

For research, I corrected myself mentally, it's for research.

"Name, huh? I suppose that would be... Wulfram Azalea." I dipped my quill into the ink and wrote my name with as much neatness as I could muster, tapping the quill into the ink jar once I was finished.

I was then promptly blasted away from my desk, flipping in the air, and hit the ground of my sanctum with the kind of force only magic can bring. I felt my lungs exhale harshly and my bones creak out in agony. I hadn't prepared for that in the slightest.

"Fucking... Mage King... I didn't think he actually booby-trapped it." I sputtered as I forced myself up, feeling light-headed.

"The ink is gone." Jami spoke as if she was unconcerned with my safety. Having seen some of the things my body had been through, that was fair enough.

"What?" I tried to fix my mask which had become crooked on my face as I walked back to the desk "What do you..."

Wulfram Azalea was gone. It had vanished from the page entirely.

"Parlor trick." I muttered, and it was true. Even I had seen the magical books that ate your ink. It was a mere prank that students at academies played on each other.

"And the magical fist you just took? Parlor trick?"

"Less so." I thought back to the one time I had received a book which shot a gust of wind at my face when I wrote anything even remotely related to air into its pages. This was different.

The sheer power the book released to attack me was dangerous. If Silvi had written in the book, for instance, I would have been sending her corpse down to my storage. I gave my robes a good pat down as I sighed as loudly as I could. I had assumed the book had its secrets, I just didn't expect they'd be so painful.

"That's the last time I take your advice, Jami." I jabbed at her floating visage with my elbow.

"You were going to do it anyway." She spoke as I gave a shrug in response.

On the bright side, I knew how to bully Aragor the next time he came bursting into my Sanctum.