Cary maintained her balance as the world shifted despite Emilia’s clinging and despite her own inner ear’s ringing complaints. The stone archway before them did not connect to any building, at least none that Cary could see. In face, the only feature of the massive plain that had changed in the least was the archway.

“What is this Joshua?” Cary hesitated at the arch as the others walked in with amused expressions on their faces.

“As I said, this is the Sanctum Sanctorum.” He waved Cary and Emilia after him. “I assure you, I give you my word, that as long as you do not offer violence to those within, you will not suffer attacks from the same. In fact, I urge you to resist attacking anything you find within this campus.”

Cary wanted to ask, “what campus,” but she was weary from her flight and the others retreated from her into the archway and vanished as they did. Magicians were absurd people on face, so perhaps this was some sort of test. It would make sense based on what Cary know about magician kind.

She stepped into the archway ahead of Emilia, with her hand firmly wrapped around Emilia’s own. The air shimmered around them and the archway vanished.

The same open field surrounded them, but now small colorful tents decorated the landscape. And the field was much larger than Cary originally thought, perhaps a thousand yards square, though when she stared into the horizon, it shrank and expanded as she did so.

People moved between the tents with purpose, each of them bound for some task or esoteric activity. At once, Cary noted that she was hardly the only demon here. A full-fledged Temptress walked through the grounds with a dark green robe concealing everything but her raised tail and the peaks of her wings. She was taller than the other students, except for the massive ogre who approached them.

He had a short horn jutting from the center of his head and a squished eye directly below it. That central orb glowed red with an inner light while his other two eyes looked normal, right down to their dark brown irises and black pupils. Two pairs of overly large fangs jutted up from his underbite almost all the way up to his squashed nose.

The ogre wore a floppy hat that had gone out of fashion sometime in the fourteenth century. As if to toss style to the wind, he also sported a long flowing black robe that opened in the front to display a paisley pink and orange vest. His pants were simple brown woolen trousers held up by suspenders. A silver chain led from his left trouser pocket to his vest pocket. As Cary stared at that chain, it moved of its own accord.

Books weighed his left arm down, carried under his armpit and bound with a leather strap. His right arm bore a gauntlet that looked entirely out of place with the rest of his clothing, not that they matched especially well. It was burnished brass with carefully overlapping sections that moved with liquid fluidity. Delicate silver inlay over the brass shone in the sun and reflects speckled light into Cary’s eyes. It made her skull itch. That gauntlet grasped a long square staff. It looked more like a tower than a staff, with four cylindrical rods at the corners providing a scaffold for a myriad of gears, cams, and pistons. They moved in time with the Ogre’s gait, which carried him directly before Emilia and Cary.

Instinctively, Cary stepped between the ogre and Emilia. “How can we help you?” She spoke the words through clenched jaws as she checked the ogre for additional weapons.

Cary’s appearance seemed to surprise him as he blinked at her and stepped back. Removing a monocle from the inside of his robe, as well as a small cloud of moths, he rubbed the glass on his sleeve and held it up to his right most eye. The central eye shifted toward purple as he peered at Cary.

“Ah, I see. A form-trapped Formless One! Fascinating! My my young lady, your nature makes you virtually oxymoronic! How rare! Tell me, how did you come by your present condition?” The ogre left the monocle in his eye as he glanced between Cary and Emilia.

For a moment, Cary almost answered the ogre without thinking. But she shook her head and said, “What is your name, sir? Who are you?”

The ogre pulled his head back as if Cary bit his nose and he needed to shake her off before he could speak. “Well, my name is, or rather I go by Boris these days. So please call me Boris.”

He shifted his staff to his left hand, awkwardly shifting the books as he did. At the same time, as the staff separated from the gauntlet, sparks and tiny lightning bursts shot between the gauntlet and the staff. Extending his hand to Cary, he said. “And what are you called, Formless One?”

“Uh, please call me Cary.”

“A fine name! A fine name.” Boris peeked around Cary’s arms where she held them at her sides. “And what about you, young lady? You…” Boris hopped and clapped his hands. “You are the Consumer dear little Joshua informed us about. What was your name…” He tried to pull a book out from his side as if he’d forgotten both women, but the staff remained in his way. Glancing between the staff and his books, he jammed the side of the staff between his teeth and juggled the book into his right hand.

While this happened Emilia squeezed Cary’s arm and stepped forward. Cary whispered to her, “I do not think he’s dangerous… or well, he is certainly dangerous, but I do not believe he is dangerous to us right now. Go ahead and tell him.”

“Sir, my name is Emilia Olren.”

The ogre looked up, the staff clenched in his oversized jaws. “Mrphrlrrr!” He shook his head like a dog and spat the staff back into the crook of his arm and replaced the book back into the loop of leather with the rest. “Marvelous! Olren… I’ve not heard your surname before Joshua mentioned you. We will definitely have to conduct a genealogy! Fabulous!”

He reached for Emilia and Cary growled at him. The smell and aura of magic about this ogre was palpable and strong enough that he sent her protective urges into the red. He took a step back and looked between them. “Oh, is Ms Cary your familiar, Ms Olren?”

Before Emilia could answer, Cary recognized an emergency, one she hadn’t anticipated that might occur among the group of magicians. She spoke for both of them. “Oh yes, Master Magician. I am Emilia’s faithful servant.”

“Rather impertinent for a servant, but I see!” He grinned at both of them and bowed with his right leg back. “I suppose for Ms Cary’s sake I should follow the forms. Ms Olren, I, Boris swear before the Beginning and End and upon the Boundary itself that I will not allow harm to come to you if within my power to prevent it. Assuming you offer no intentional violence to me or mine.” He raised his torso and raised an eyebrow at Cary. “Does that suffice Ms Formless One?”

Cary nodded and stepped back so Emilia could move forward. Emilia cleared her throat and said, “Thank you, Boris. I should mention I guess, that I do not have great control over my Consumption.”

“Of course not. If you could control your gift, why would you be here? This is why I attached the rider about “intentional” harm to my oath. I assumed you will eventually cause harm to someone here, I just hope to be on hand to take notes when you do.”

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Boris put his right arm at the small of Emilia’s back and started to lead her away. Cary took two steps forward, only for a squat, figure with mottled green skin to stop her in her tracks. He barely stood higher than her thighs. He wore a dark brown pointed cap and held a piece of haygrass between his teeth. At first Cary thought he wore the hide of some woolen beast around his chest and lower body, but after a brief examination, she realized that was his actual body hair.

“Where do you think you’re going, familiar?” The goblin spoke with a strange accent, more refined than others of his kind, but still similar enough to human speech patterns to make Cary uncomfortable.

“I intend to follow my magician.” Cary started to walk around the goblin, but he darted in front of her.

“No can do, toots.” The goblin jerked a thumb toward Boris and Emilia who retreated into a large blue tent. “They’ve got official magician business. As for you and me, we got demon business.”

“You are not a goblin, are you?” Cary had tried and failed to keep the disgust out of her voice.

“No, I am not. I’m an Imp. And you better show some respect, toots. I am the head familiar ‘round these parts.”

“I have no intention of taking orders from an Imp…”

“And I’m not some fucking officer. I don’t give orders. I just pass along the rules and make sure that some wayward demon doesn’t burn the place down during a wet, or red, dream.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The Imp eyed Cary with a steady glare. “It means I can see how you’re the kind who thinks she’s above the rules and intends to cause problems. I don’t care who you think you are, as far as I’m concerned you’re an upjumped sligo with pretensions of glory and power.”

Rather than admit she did not exactly follow the Imp’s palaver, Cary folded her arms and said, “what comes next then?”

He widened his right eye and shrugged. “Well, sheeit. Maybe you can learn.” The Imp turned and motioned for Cary to follow him in the same direction the robed Temptress had gone. “This way. We need to get you processed.”

Cary rankled under the Imp’s brusque treatment, but she followed him into a small red tent. The inside was considerably larger than the outside. Rather than red canvas walls, the interior was covered in black wooden paneling that had been polished and shined to an almost mirrored surface. A door opened for the Imp as he approached and he walked in with a steady eye on Cary.

“Dorcas! Time for you to take notes!” The Imp shouted with his squeaky voice into the room as he ran into his office. Cary had to pause to take everything in here. Books lined the walls, thick ones, thin ones, and every imaginable variation of written recording medium from papyrus, to scrolls to modern paperbacks like Cary had seen in the airport stores.

Curios lined the walls, from a small horned skull that suspiciously resembled a dragon’s head to a trio of gold chains from which hung a small azure vial of bubbling liquid. Mist poured out of that vial and gathered over the thick Persian rugs that covered the floors.

The Imp crawled up onto the chair at the back of the room with considerable effort. Both desk and chair were sized for a full human body. While he pumped his chair up to a useable height, Cary studied his secretary.

She was the Temptress from before, as gorgeous and enchanting as her kind were said to be. Now that she had divested herself of her robes, Cary could see the full extent of her ochre skin — a rarity among her species — as well as the curved horns atop her head. She had marvelous lavender irises that glittered in the dim light of the room with golden flecks.

Her wings darkened toward the tips becoming full crimson at the ends. They fluttered behind her despite the still air of the room. Her tail curved up and around the chair she sat in until it lay in her lap like a cat, occasionally twitching at the nearby sounds. She wore a conservative dark green full-length dress, white button-up shirt with a little black tie and a matching coat.

“Ahem. If you’re done ogling my secretary?” Both the Temptress and Cary jumped as if they’d been caught in the middle of some form of impropriety. “Good. Now please state your preferred form of address for the record.”

“Dorcas…” “Cary…” both of them blushed at their awkwardness. The Imp’s gaze slid to his secretary. “Not you, woman. Just her.” He jabbed a stubby, fur-covered finger at Cary. “So Cary, right? Do you have a preferred pronoun?”

“She/her is fine.”

“Excellent.” The Imp eyed his secretary who’d begun recording Cary’s answers. “Now what magical abilities do you have? Innate only, I don’t care to hear your fully litany of spell-knowledge. That can come later.”

Cary pursed her lips. “I can assume various human forms, the form of a Temptress, and that of a Stone Maiden.”

The Imp cocked his head to the left. “That’s all? No Greater Demons or the shape of a chair. Or I don’t know, anything at all?”

It galled Cary to admit her curse to this little rude Imp. But she cleared her throat. “That is all. I can sense magic to a lesser extent, though that is inconsistent. I possess keen senses.”

“Don’t bother writing that last thing down, Dorcas!” The Imp’s behavior made Cary want to throttle him. But she just clenched her fists into her side. “Do you have any other skills?”

Only when she tried to hold back did she recognize the enchantment that had been laid on her. What impressed her the most was the fact she hadn’t felt it fall over her in the first place. She wasn’t exactly resistant to magic, but she had been around it long enough to recognize the signs. Whoever laid this enchantment was a master among magicians, powerful enough for his abilities to come to Elelele’s notice. “I possess an eidetic memory as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of rare spells and magical rites.”

The Imp’s head twitched at her final answer. Dorcas regarded Cary with a degree of awe. Before the Imp could pose his next question, the door behind Cary burst open. “Grigo! I swear I told you…”

Cary reacted automatically, her mind moving before she became fully conscious of the threat or its exact nature. She assumed her stone form and spun to face the intruder, clamping her hand onto her neck. This woman was the exact twin of the secretary, Dorcas. Only instead of librarian-like clothing, this woman wore the robe Cary had seen earlier. With the front split open and the woman choking in Cary’s grip, Cary could see that she wore a loincloth and veils better suited for a sultan’s harem than an English countryside office.

“Help?” The woman’s voice slid between Cary’s stone grip.

A shock from behind made Cary’s body twitch as she reverted to her human form. The Imp, Grigo, pushed her out of the way.

“Are you okay my darling Esme? Did she hurt you?” The Temptress leaned down to the Imp and ruffled the mop of greasy hair on the top of his head.

Cary continued to twitch from whatever electric attack Grigo had directed at her. She turned to look at the secretary, Dorcas, to find a look of naked malice on her face. Grigo was as much the target of that glare as the new Temptress, Esme. When Dorcas spotted Cary looking, she blushed and dropped her eyes to the floor, as if guilty over being caught. As beautiful as Dorcas and her twin were, Cary had a feeling that dire consequences followed shortly behind anyone who involved themselves with those three.

Still, as per the name of her species, Cary found herself sorely tempted by Dorcas. At the very least, she wanted to learn more.

Grigo and Esme spent a few minutes consoling each other and flashing grumpy looks toward Cary. Once they were finally done, Grigo shooed Esme out of the room with a series of goodbye kisses and fondling that would have turned Emilia’s face purple.

“Okay, now that that is over, don’t attack my wife again, you stupid demon.” Grigo walked back to his desk shaking a gnarled glass rod at Cary that she recognized as a fulgurite. “Next time I will shock you bad enough that you’ll lose bodily control. That’s always hilarious.” Once he was situated, he looked around the room, slammed his hands on his desk and shouted, “Dorcas! Where were we?”

Her expression remained dark. “We had just asked Cary about her skills and abilities. I believe you were about to cast doubt as to the veracity of her claims.”

“You’re damned right I was! Eidetic memories are hogswattle! Close your eyes and describe my office.”

Cary sighed. This was one of the first tasks her master had set her to. She had recorded the name of every book she had seen as well as every part of the room in her line of sight. Covering both eyes with her palms, she proceeded to recite the titles and the descriptions of the books, starting from the stack of slates behind her to the right.

“Okay, holy shit! I take it back, shut up!” Grigo did not let Cary get halfway through the room before he stopped her. “You just do that shit every time you step into a room… know what? I don’t care. Just make sure you write it all down, Dorcas and make sure the bosses get it.” He waited for Dorcas to finish writing before he pointed at Cary again. “About those spells you know. I think we have a perfectly good posting for a demoness of your talents. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it…”

Cary’s stomach clenched. She didn’t think Grigo liked her enough to actually help her.