Let me put it this way: you sure as hell don't learn it in a day. The easiest way is to simply summon up a demon and offer your soul in exchange for magical knowledge. The demon will do exactly the kind of thing I do and just slice off the excess power for itself and use you as its Little battery for the rest of your life. Of course the problem with that, as the book thankfully outlined several times, is that the energy your soul gives out is the main thing that powers your own magical ability. So you end up knowing the ins and outs intimately but only being able to conduct very minor spells. It's also not a very good idea to make contracts with others if you don't have a firm hold on your own soul, especially not if it belongs to a demon. I'd elaborate but frankly I don't have the stomach for it.

So I had to start from scratch. Self-taught initiation to magic involves a lot of work. Every night I read more of the Nocturne

Compendium and most of my days in school were spent trying to force pencils across my desk with only my willpower. I didn't flag behind in my classes. To tell you the truth, after spending so much time in the library I knew most of what my teachers were going to say before they said it anyway.

It took me three years before the pencil moved

I remember it wasn't long after my 16th birthday and I was sat at my desk at home, taking a break from some coursework. I turned to the constantly-stationary pencil on my desk and almost absently thought about moving it when it finally obeyed and rolled a few inches across the wooden surface. At first I thought it was just some other factor.

It wouldn't have been the first time I'd gotten my hopes up only to find I was taking the credit from a gust of wind or someone slightly knocking the table. So I tried again and sure enough, nothing happened.

Back to work I went until after 10 minutes or so I did the same thing again and once more the pencil moved a few inches toward the end of my desk. This was cause for excitement. I'd managed to get the mental gymnastics correct for a while but I lacked the necessary focus that the monotony of writing out school coursework had finally given me.

I swear, you have never seen anyone so excited about a pencil in your entire life. It took me only three minutes before the thing finally rolled off of the edge of my desk. By the end of the night I could roll the thing back and forth across the desk and spin it around on the spot.

It had started.

The main reason I'd kept up with the attempt at rolling pencils for three years via telekinesis was the consistently-interesting reading material within the Nocturne Compendium. That's right, three years in and I still hadn't read a tenth of its contents. What I knew was that pencil pushing was only the first step on a very long road.

It took me three months before I could levitate a feather an inch off of the ground. Levitation is a hell of a lot harder than pushing since you have to balance the forces involved. Flicking it up into the air was easy but getting it to hover in place? Not so much. After that I started pushing heavier objects. Do you remember me telling you that the power of a soul depends on the person? A very creative, determined, and emotional person has much more of it than someone who isn't all those things.

Using dark magic makes that energy flare up more and more. It's like a muscle. The more you use it, the more powerful it gets.

By the end of the year I could have sent that damn pencil flying across the room and skewered you in the eye with pinpoint accuracy.

My studies continued with fresh interest and more years passed as I advanced to basic alchemy and practicing with the four basic elements.

I was lucky I didn't poison, drown, bury, suffocate or immolate myself.

So by the time I hit 18 years of age, I decided that I was a man and that it was time to summon my first demon.

Naturally, being an 18 year old male I wanted my first demon to be a succubus. I'll admit that this was Largely because the pictures of them in the Nocturne Compendium had gotten me through a very lonely adolescence. I didn't exactly ignore the warnings about the nature of succubi, but that isn't to say I was fully prepared for what I was getting into either. Here's some of what the book has to say about them:

Succubus - A creature birthed in the realm of lust and dark desire, the succubus is often sought out for its unnatural allure. It is one of the few demons capable of evolving itself as it ages. Initially the creature resembles a particularly thin and physically weak woman with few traits that would betray her demonic nature. Though the true origins of the succubi are unknown, it is suspected that the creature is born of a broken heart. Initially a relatively weak demon; if the succubus is allowed to flourish within the dark realms it can become incredibly powerful. Whilst in the dark realms, the creatures will often engage in mass orgies in order to feed from the greater power of the realm itself.

Once it has consumed the required amount of energy, it will grow long claws at the fingertips. Upon reaching this stage, the creature can feed on the magical energy of other demons via any sexual act resulting in physical orgasm and often destroys its victim in the process. The succubus also tends to explore the other dark realms as it grows in order to feed from different demons and expand its own powers.

It is possible to discern how powerful these demons are from their physical appearance.