Barbara's POV
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The halfling girl woke up with something scuffling over her chest. She felt pressure over her left breast and yelped, jumping upright and batting whatever was over her to the ground. She heard the sound of fabric ripping and saw a long strip of her white shirt stretch all the way from the front opening of her robes to the ground where a small book was chewing on it. She also felt a cold breeze over her collarbones and found that she wasn't decent.
She screeched again, forgetting where she was. Then she pulled the collar of her wool robe shut to cover her modesty. More fabric was ripped and the strand of cloth connecting her ruined shirt to the moving book broke. The devilish tome slurped the cotton with a creaking of leather that sounded much like a gormandizing groan.
A window opened. An older male shouted, "Who goes there?!"
Then she remembered where she was and what she was doing. Freaking out, she looked around but found no evidence of the whereabouts of the large tome that fled from her dorm room. Her distress only grew as she remembered her shattered window and that the book would probably land her in trouble because she stole it from a vault sealed by the headmaster.
More lights came alive in the windows above and around her. She had to get away from there quickly or she would be caught. Barbara felt something bump against her shoe and she looked down. The small book was trying to climb up her leg, probably to eat more of her clothes.
"Show yourself!" The familiar voice of the night watcher came from the other side of the courtyard. Barbara scooped up the book and ran.
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Delicious cotton! My first meal was really worth the wait. I had to climb the lump of flesh and nibble on dusgisting wool, but the cotton of the young woman's shirt was di-vi-ne. However, my meal was interrupted by the rude female. I was still very, very hungry. I could eat a whole bookshelf, I guess. As I tried to come back to finish my meal, the girl scooped me up and ran.
I was dismayed that she was strong enough to keep me from evading her grasp. But if I left her behind now, I didn't think I could keep with her pace. Those long stomping appendages were just too fast for my poor covers. So I quieted down and let her carry me.
As if.
I cracked my cover open and stretched my tongue out. It probed along her robe until I found an opening between the seams. Forcing myself to ignore the taste of wool, I reached inside and finally found the cotton cloth underneath. My tongue split in two and I formed sharp teeth at the inner edges of the fork. Then I cut the fabric into ribbons and a bunch of cilia along the tongue started to move the strips of delicious cotton back to me.
She giggled as my tongue rubbed on her skin, then she yelped and tossed me away as she screeched to a halt. "What are you doing?"
Hanging from her robe by my tongue, I wrinkled my spine, the book equivalent of a shrug as I kept cutting and slurping the cotton. Behind us, some taller people were rapidly approaching as they kept shouting and blowing whistles. Quite rude they were, to make such a racket in the dead of the night.
The girl scooped me back and stared at the eye on my cover. "I'll let you eat the rest of the shirt in peace if you behave. Now, be a good book and stop eating."
I blinked and licked the sides of her waist. Then I frowned.
"Okay, two old shirts!" She offered this as she resumed her jogging.I poked her skin with my tongue-blades. "Ouch! Four old shirts!"
I closed the eye on the cover and withdrew my tongue. I kept a tiny eye on each end of the isnides of my spine and watched as she ran away from the large buildings. She ran to the farthest building in this place and she cursed as a larger woman waited for her near the door.
"Miss Ambrose! What are you doing outside this late at night? And what happened to your room?" The older woman asked Miss Ambrose, if I caught that right.
"I had a mishap! Yes, a magical mishap!" She tittered as if that explained anything. Room ruined? Magical mishap. Book ate your shirt? Magical mishap. Out for a stroll with a gorgeous libram? Magical mishap.
"We will talk more about that in the morning. Right now..."
The folks pursuing Miss Ambrose caught up with her now."
"Ma'am, miss," the guy in a uniform and another wearing robes like the ones the older woman wore approached.
"Did you see a thief running around here?" The robed guy asked.
"A thief?" The woman stole a glance at the girl carrying me. "No, sir. I was just scolding Miss Ambrose here, because she had a magical mishap that ruined her room's window," she pointed up at a rather large hole in the building wall.
"I see," the man muttered. "Well, get it fixed tomorrow. It is past curfew and students should be sleeping."
The first guy, the uniform one (and that uniform looked like a pretty treat, though I dared not try to eat it) glared at the Ambrose girl as if he knew everything. The young woman ignored his gaze as she walked around the older woman and into the building.
"Miss Ambrose, you can take room 205b. It's vacant now. Until your room is repaired, you'll stay there," the woman said before the girl could slip away from the three huge people.
"Thank you, Mrs. Cormak," she said, dipping her head low. "May I go to my room now?"
"Yes, my dear. I'll be with you right away."
Ambrose didn't like that. She had a big frown as she climbed the stairs.
Her room was small but I thought the hole solved many ventilation and illumination issues. It was a nice hole and I felt a hint of pride for some reason.
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"What a mess," the girl bemoaned. "And the big grimoire is gone. What do we have here?"
She opened my cover and started flipping through my pages. They were all blank, of course. I projected a small tendril from my spine in the shape of a green silk ribbon and created a small eye at the tip. Then I followed the movement of her hands. Another stretched down her sleeve....
Then she shut me, causing a small amount of pain. I formed two rows of teeth on the other tendril and bit the sleeve of her shirt underneath the robe. I made sure to scratch her foremarm as I went about collecting my meal.
"Okay, okay! I'm sorry I slammed you shut!" She apologized. "Behave now, I'm going to get you the old clothes I promised."
I slurped the cotton and linen ones, leaving the wool pants with a hole in the bottom to the side. The Ambrose girl watched me eat with bated interest.
"You don't like wool?" She pointed at the pants. I retched. "Okay. You can have this one," she tossed the white shirt I was eating back at the large building. When I looked at her with my ribbon eye, she was wearing a new one. With a sigh, she covered her new shirt with her robe. "Oh, no! You may not eat this one, you rascal. A new shirt like the one you ate costs a silver coin!"
I wasn't even hungry anymore. I slurped the rest of the shirt, then relaxed and warbled some pages in a nice gornandizing groan. Ambrose picked me up.
"What are you? I can't {Appraise} you."
Good idea. I shot an {Appraise} back at her.
> > Level 11 female halfling [Wizard]
She took me to her desk and sat by it. She uncorked a vial and I smelled a delicious scent. I stretched the bookmark tendril near the vial but she pulled it back.
"I don't think you should eat this ink," she advised sagely. "Would you let me write on you?"
I couldn't see why not. If she wanted to give me a taste of that deliciously-smelling ink, I wouldn't say no. Not that I could speak, mind you. Ambrose opened my cover and took a quill dipped in ink and started to scribble on the first page. It itched and tickled but I endured it for the sake of ink.
"A bit hard, but it feels like real paper," she gave her verdict. I closed the cover and licked the ink. Ambrose opened it and found a blank page. "What good is a book that won't hold text?" She mused.
I rolled the eye at the end of my red ribbon. Then I made her writing appear again by changing the color of my page. I didn't need ink to write on myself. Ambrose squealed in delight, "Oh, secret writing!"
"Secret what?" The older woman was at the door. I froze my lower ribbon tendril inches away from the inkwell. A cold breeze decided to visit the room and wafted into the corridor, moving past her. "I thought I told you to room 205b, Miss Ambrose."
"I was just... writing in my journal!" She lied, then pulled me up and showed the written page to the woman.
"What is that book? And why does it have such a hideous bookmark?"
Oops. I think I forgot to hide the eye. What a huge mistake for a mimic.
"I think it's cute," she said as she rolled the ribbon around her finger while the woman rolled her eyes.
With a grunt, she gave one last warning. "I'm locking your room with a ward. Take what you need for morning classes tomorrow and go to room 205b. If I see you make a single yawn tomorrow morning, I'm going to keep you grounded the next Matriarch day."
"No! I promised to go shop for stationery with Josie on Matriarch day!"
"Then scram, young lady!"
Before scuttling to room 205b, she took a leather backpack and stuffed it with several things, incluidng a change of clothes and me.
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"I'm sorry, Mrs. Cormak. I need to go back in my old room," Ambrose begged the next morning.
"Why is that?"
"I need a fresh change of clothes."
"I saw you pack a spare uniform. Why are you still wearing the same clothes as yesterday?"
She couldn't tell the older woman that her book had eaten it. I mean, I did. I ate her clothes (and drank the inkwell dry) while we were on the backpack. though I wasn't her book. We were together by convenience. But Mrs. Cormak was very accomodating as she led Ambrose back to her old room, then told her to get changed and hurry to class, whatever that was.
The Academy didn't have standard classrooms. Instead, the students needed to read the next lesson's material beforehand and then the teacher would make them debate the subject or poll them on some subjects. It was quite evident when someone hadn't prepared themselves, and they received the most dreaded punishment of them all. Double homework.
Her practical lessons involved casting precision, speed, and diagram mutability. They used a huge textbook written by some Marlowe guy that explained how to separate a magical diagram into its component parts and then swap them around. It seemed to be quite taxing as Ambrose struggled to perform the required exercises. I kept an eye on the book and found I could do that without a problem. But I was a powerful grimoire, so it came naturally, I guess.
I had to disguise my own diagram and make it appear in front of the girl, whose full name was Barbara Lynn Ambrose, I learned during the day. The instructor caught the split diagram and approached.
"Miss Ambrose, congratulations! I see you finally managed to separate the Essence from the Motivator. Now, swap the latter for the eleven point version. Remember that you need to move the glyphs on the Essence because they cannot overlap with the lines of the Motivator."
Barbara was livid. Her eyes wandered to me sitting on her desk and I winked with my spine-eye. She swallowed hard and nodded. "I'll do exactly as you said, Mr. Collins. Exactly. As. You. Said," she punctuated as she tapped on my cover. I changed the Motivator the way Mr. Collins asked.
"Excellent, Ambrose! You can self-study for the rest of the period!" Collins clapped his hands.
"Thank you, sir," she said as she gathered her belongings along with me and dashed out of the classroom.
The girl deftly navigated the corridors and entered a damp room without any males. She moved to a stall with a smelly hole in the middle and took me out of her backpack. Staring at my ribbon-eye, she interrogated me.
"You can use magic!"
Yeah, doh. I was a [Libromancer]. I didn't even need to draw diagrams in the air; just having them on my page was enough to cast a spell. I opened my cover and flipped to a page where I'd drawn a diagram for the {Nightlight} cantrip. Though I had only 120 MP at the moment, the spell base cost was fifteen MP with a maintenance cost of one MP every minute. Powering the diagram, the spell did its thing and the glowing ball of light sprung to life above me.
"You can use magic!" She repeated herself. I shut my cover and withdrew the ribbons. "I'm sorry if I offended you. Are you a grimoire?"
As I had an idea of how to communicate with her, I felt extremely stupid. I mean, I had a MInd score of 4 when the base score for a simpleton was a 10. But I was a baby mimic. Baby Bibliomimic, I mean. I opened my cover and started to write on the first page.
> Barbara: "You can use magic!"
>
> Me: "Yes, I can. I have a spellcaster Class."
"You are a grimoire! A living grimoire!"
> "I might be. I might not. I am a mysterious tome."
She giggled and snorted. "Can we be friends? You need to stop eating my clothes. I can't believe you ate my shirt and my... other... unmentionables. "
> "It takes a lot of food to make a genius. You should be honored to feed me."
"Powerful and modest!" She snarked. "What a combination!"
> "At least I can draw the bloody diagram the way your teacher wants."
"Ouch," she flinched playfully. "You broke my heart, Grimo."
> "Who the heck is Grimo? And how are you alive with a broken heart? I thought you meaty creatures needed those squishy organs to survive!"
The girl laughed again. Maybe she had some internal damage, after all. "You are Grimo. Unless you already have a name. And I don't have a literal broken heart."
> "I see. I reject the moniker you intend to imprint on me. Grimo is too simplistic. You are welcome to call me... The Netherbane Syllabus."
Of course, that wasn't my real name. A mortal didn't have the breath necessary to say it out loud, nor were the small pages of my body large enough to contain it.
She smirked and raised an eyebrow. "I'll call you Nethe, to abbreviate it. I'm too much of a simpleton to say your full name," she self-derided.
> "I guess it can't be helped. Nethe it is. I'm hungry, Barbara."
"You can't eat clothes. Or ink. Clothes and ink are too expensive. What do you eat besides clothes and ink?"
> "I think I would like to eat some fine paper today. Not parchment, mind you. I believe making paper imitation with animal skin is gross."
She let out bell-like peals of laughter. "Alright, paper it is. I bet we can find some paper with delectable ink in the rubbish bin or something."
> "Yes, please do. But I won't eat tainted paper. Make sure to clean up my food before you offer it to me, mortal."
She sputtered and bent around the waist as she mocked my requests. "You're the boss, Nethe. Let's get you a banquet."