You gave your little nephew a battered book of magic tricks. He tries one of them. It turned out a book is truly magic.

You gave your little nephew a battered book of magic tricks. He tries one of them. It turned out a book is truly magic. He told you that he knew you’d be proud of him. That you’d know that the magic had happened.

You believed him. You did. It is an illusion of the mind. You did not know. You have no idea. But it happened.

It was his word against yours. The laws of the land being what they are, he won. You knew that you were a liar, that you should have given him a chance to prove himself.

But you wanted the magic. So you were a liar.

You come across a cheaply printed book of magic tricks. You try one out and discover the book is truly magic, and teaches you how to break fundamental laws of physics. You find that the information you have on how to become a successful magician has been completely wrong. You do some research and find out the material had been stolen from a museum and used for centuries. This book is a legacy of that theft, and your experiences make you one of the first magicians to defeat its spell. You return to the museum and give it to the curator, and he tells you to be careful, as it is protected by powerful spells, so even in theory you should not be able to break its protection. You explain that the only way to break its spell is to find a book that can teach you how. The curator asks you to locate that book.

Sometime later, you return and discover that the curator has died of a heart attack, and the library has been closed. You have no way to obtain any of the books. The books are protected by a series of hexes and enchantments, and the only way to get into the library is by using specific magical spells. You find a book on the subject of obtaining a book, which tells you that you must find a source of magic and acquire a book of its own. You have no source of magic. You read the book on acquiring a book, but it is so detailed, and difficult to understand, that you give up and seek out other sources of magic.

After a period of time, you return and discover that the library has been reopened. There is no one in the library, but you see a book titled “The Recipe for Being a Magician.” You read the recipe, which requires that you find a book that teaches you the simplest form of magic, and copy it, and then you must seek out a book of the same sort in which you can copy that simple form of magic. The book you are required to copy is not a magical book, but rather a book of parlor tricks and theatrical tricks, and you have no source of magic. You copy the recipe for the parlor tricks, and return to the library. The curator gives you a key to the library. You find the recipe you were supposed to copy, and a book titled “The Book of Magical Tricks.” You copy that book, and return to the library, only to find the book that you copied missing from its shelf.

You search the library for the book that was stolen from the museum, but it is nowhere to be found. After much searching, you return to the curator’s apartment and discover the curator dead, and his body desiccated and brittle. You return to the museum, and discover that the curator’s body has disappeared, and there is no one there. You search the museum, and find the curator’s body missing from its corpse. You find a note on the wall from the curator:

“The book I was attempting to copy has been stolen, but I was able to capture a fragment of the book. Please help me return it to its rightful place. If you find this, please leave it for me. I am not sure where to go from here. I only ask that you help me return the book to its rightful place.