As you can imagine, this did quite a number on my 13-year-old self.

Then the words were joined by several more beneath he originals.

How may I be of service?

Now, I'm no idiot. I'd read Harry Potter, and as a result I fully knew the risks of dealing with books that occasionally liked to converse with their reader. Then again, I had a freaking book that could talk!

Well it couldn't talk, just write, but that's still a ways above what most of us are used to, right?

So, after about 10 minutes of standing there looking down at my desk I finally managed to eke out a whisper.

“What are you?"

The writing in the centre of the page vanished and new letters began to weave their way across the top of the paper.

I am the Nocturne Compendium. My pages hold the combined writings of over two millennia's worth of arcane lore. I have been modified and updated by hundreds of highly capable practitioners of dark magic. How may I be of service?

Well, wasn't my new book just a Little bit full of itself?

“Dark magic?" I forgot to whisper. No one cared.

Instead of the conversational answers I'd been given before, the book's pages began to turn of their own accord with such speed that they sent air rushing across my face. The sensation made me realise that I'd barely been breathing and I let out a quick gasp as the page suddenly fell open toward the end of the book. I'd noticed as those pages had been rushing by that all of them were completely blank, as was the one the book had selected until writing began again.

Glossary:

Dark magic - The branch of magical Lore devoted to the study of magical energies aligned with the dark realms.

Well that didn't sound too good, did it? Now that I remember that first interaction with the Nocturne Compendium I almost shudder. I can't possibly tell you how amazingly lucky I was that I picked up that book and none of the others. The Compendium is almost unique in that it is one of the few things created by people in my profession that isn't designed to hurt anyone using it who shouldn't be. For example, if you happened to read the first three books on my office bookshelf without my permission then you'd spend the rest of your very short life as a leprous donkey with dysentery

Since other warlocks are often similarly protective of their stuff, a lot of knowledge gets lost when we die. The Nocturne Compendium was an effort to fix that. It won't hurt anyone who reads it that shouldn't.

It just makes no sense to them. This is because it's designed to be passed down through the generations, amassing more and more knowledge as more and more warlocks use it for their work. I found out Later that the warlock who owned it before it came into my hands had died before he could successfully pass it on. Since we're not too morally uptight about stealing from the dead, the book decided that I was its new owner.

I won't go into the entirety of my first conversation with that book. I didn't know what questions to ask back then and I don't enjoy reminiscing about all the idiotic ideas that came into my head. What I will tell you is that the book turned out to be everything it said it was. It could quite easily reproduce the writings and accompanying notes of long dead warlocks at my command. It even had illustrations; most of which made me feel sick.

I took the next day off school to stay home and read the book. All it took was a quick word to my mother that I didn't feel so well before she gave me an absent grunt of acknowledgement and I hurried back upstairs. I'd found a collection of articles written by a warlock to his apprentice during the 13th century. These articles outlined the basics of using dark magic.

This brings me to my next Little fun factoid. Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to actually use dark magic?