This is my account of the events that aspired, expired and inspired on the first day of spring of this year in and around the structure that was then known as the silver tower, but which may, due to recent events explained in this document, be in need of a name change.

This chronicle is based on conversations with all of the surviving wizards involved, and with those pixies who could be found and believed after the events (see related parchment "The sound of Laughter: Hunting pixies by means of auditory clues").

The assault started at exactly 9:23 in the morning when about twenty pixies decided to attack our glorious tower of knowledge and research because, and I quote: "It was the first day of spring and we didn't have anything better to do, besides you lot are too stuffy! Have some fun! It all fits into the metaphysical events of transcende ...ooh, there's something shiny over there!"

Other pixies confirmed that the attack was primarily "just for the fun of it".

9:23:00 AM - Frontal assault

The pixies decide to go for an organized assault and split up in thirty groups. Since there are only twenty pixies to begin with, about half decide that their first target should be the department of mathematics so this division can be worked out and they duly teleport into the tower randomly, trusting to chance theory to get where they want to be.

The others head for various doors and windows.

9:23:12 AM - The lay of the treasury

Several of the pixies who had teleported appear inside the treasury. This is a common phenomenon with pixie teleportation, and it is explained by my esteemed colleagues with either of the following theories:

a) Pixies are attracted by large concentrations of shiny things
b) Pixies, unlike humans, are not affected by the laws of Murphy. Therefore the worst thing that could happen for us was going to happen, even if it was the best thing for them.

Luckily the treasuries are guarded by the most potent of pixie-quelling forces known to man: Shinies. The four pixies who appeared here were found five days after the battle staring big-eyed at all the treasure and drooling while wondering where to start.

9:23:14 AM - The massacre of the volatile magic room

Unfortunately, the treasure room was not the worst place imaginable (for us) for pixies to be. Therefore Murphy duly sent five pixies into the volatile magic storage room. This is the room where we store things that can go boom.

9:23:17 AM - Things go boom

The volatile magic room blows up, taking the whole top part of the tower with it.

Wizards 3 - Pixies 0

9:23:18 AM - Classy confusion

One pixie teleports straight into Professor Merhièn's class on changing reality. The Professor's only reaction to this is looking up from his book briefly and giving one known prankster student a detention for using magic in class.

9:23:46 AM - The gates, they are ... wait, now they aren't

Three pixies, Emblin, Sterje and Firesong, individually assault the great stone front door. Simultaneously

• Firesong throws a fireball at the door
• Emblin starts picking the diamond lock
• Sterje uses magic to paint the door bright pink

The tower gate was made in ages past using knowledge that, luckily, is long lost now. It is highly magical and intelligent. Therefore, despite not being affected at all by any of the pixie spells, it teleported itself to a different dimension to avoid further embarrassment. Later it was asked about this cowardly behaviour:

Highmage Alcian: "Soooo where were YOU when the going got tough, eh?"
Gate: "I was, uhm, on my tea break"
Highmage Alcian: "You don't have tea breaks. You have NEVER had tea breaks."
Gate: "Then it was high time I took one."
Highmage Alcian: "You are supposed to be impregnable!"
Gate: "I am. They never took me, nor did they get past me. "

9:23:54 AM - On windows. Well, through them.

Four pixies decided to enter through the windows. Now it should be said that pixies don't have an eye for glass unless it is polished shiny, so they didn't even notice it when they went straight through the glass of the windows, shattering them.

9:24:06 AM - First counter-defensive

The first counter occurs when Professor Merhièn, by now slightly annoyed at the pixie in his class, decides to use it as an example of how to change reality by casting the spell flesh to stone on the pixie. This reveals to all his students (or would, had they paid attention) that he had flunked the class on enigmatic creatures, for pixies are beings of magic and thus his spell reflects back and turns himself to stone. His students only noticed the change several days later.

Wizards 3 - Pixies 1

9:24:24 AM - The hallway of horror

Emblin, Sterje and Firesong enter the great entrance hall of the tower at the same time that about half a dozen wizards get there from different directions.
Magemaster Arghlin, who had been rudely awakened by the loud bang of the volatile magic room going boom and who is by now standing rather sleepily next to his door wearing his nightclothes, sees the pixies and fires a ball of fire at Sterje.
Magister Yliander Udilon, who stormed down the stairs after the big bang left him fearing that the tower was collapsing, spots the pixies too and fires a charm enchantment at Emblin.
Second arcane lorekeeper Redlin Opral, coming from the kitchens, which he later claimed he was inspecting (though reports from the kitchen staff differed), glances at the pixies and fires a stream of unearthly energy at Sterje.
Janitor John, who had been cleaning the hallway, throws his broom at Firesong in revenge of the broken windows.

Sterje deftly dodges both the fireball as the unearthly energy, while Emblin steps out of the way of the enchantment with remarkable ease. Firesong has no problems at all avoiding the broom, but being thus distracted doesn't spot the other spells that all blast into him and, due to the laws of additive magic, turn him into a pink elephant.

Wizards 4 - Pixies 1

9:24:36 AM - Kitchens

Two pixies entering the tower through windows find themselves in the kitchen. The kitchen staff, being humans that are less attuned to the arcane than their bosses, cannot see the pixies. When the pixies start playing catch with oranges however, the cooks presume some wizards have gone invisible to steal food again and set off defence mechanism alpha: a complex machine built for them by gnomish inventors which upends a bag of flour over the invisible culprits (gnomish inventors will make a complex device out of anything).

9:24:38 AM - Hallways

Magister Yliander Udilon halts in the middle of a spell he was forming that would have turned Firesong back to her normal form, reasoning that a huge elephant has in fact less destructive potential than a pixie. The other wizards present simply ignore the elephant in the room.

9:24:46 AM - Room of future echoes

Emblin and Sterje, fleeing the scene of carnage and elephant poo that is the hallway fly upstairs and into a random room which happens to be the room of future echoes, where prophesies are made. The two pixies look around for just a brief moment before starting a game of marbles with crystal balls. The shockwaves of this game cause earthquakes all over the near future.

9:24:52 AM - Room of equational balance

Pixie Loki, fleeing just in time from the explosion in the volatile magic room enters a random room and finds himself in what had been his goal: the room of equational balance, where researchers study the arcane knowledge that is advanced mathematics. The walls of this room are made up of a giant abacus, whose patterns are used by the wizards to perform complex calculations. Or, from the point of view of the pixie: Loki finds himself in a room full of thousands of small shiny beads...

Several weeks after the battle, when wizards had gone back to work, Second arcane lorekeeper Redlin Opral concluded hat the universe was donut-shaped and carried on the back of a giant dragon and was promptly carried of to a madhouse by his fellow researchers. He was joined there shortly after by Magister Pzar of Zhar, who after one look at the abacus curled up in a fetal position and whimpered.

Wizards 4 - Pixies 3

9:25:00 AM - An overview

At this point it would be beneficial to the reader to get a clearer picture of the situation and of the immediate battle field, which at this point moved up to the first floor of the tower. Find therefore here a map of this area.

Locations

1. Entrance hall (floor 0)
2. Staircase down to floor 0
3. Staircase up to floor 2
4. Wizard's quarters
5. Magical Armory
6. Broom Closet
7. Supply cabinet
8. Accounting department
Misc.

1. The pink elephant previously known as pixie Firesong
2. Magister Yliander Udilon

 

9:25:01 AM - The Armory

As the battle of the pink elephant continues, some of the quicker wizards sprint to the Tower's Armory on the first floor (5) with several pixies in hot pursuit, and lock themselves in.

9:25:12 AM - Conquest of the broom closet

The pixies that followed the wizards up start opening random doors to find them and thus encounter the broom closet. Momentarily confusing wizards with witches they cast flying spells on the brooms which dart in all directions at once, knocking out Magister Yliander Udilon (b) in the hallway below who was still focusing on the elephant and didn't duck.

Wizards 4 - Pixies 4

9:25:18 AM - The storage closet

While the brooms are flying, the pixies continue opening doors and thus make their way into the supply closet where the wizard kept all the paints, chalks and candles needed for drawing magical circles. The pixies welcome the unexpected ammunition resupply.

9:25:24 AM - Start of the accounting subwars

In their search for the hidden wizards, the pixies move on to the next door, which turns out to be that of the department of accounting (8). Here they encounter their fiercest opposition yet and two pixies evaporate on the spot as the ancient boredom of accounting cancels them out, magic to antimagic.

Most of the other pixies in the vicinity immediately divert their attention to this new foe and come to the aid of the only pixie to survive the opening of the door.

Wizards 6 - Pixies 4

9:25:30 AM - The accounting subwars continue

Drawing swords of magic, three pixies charge into the accounting department but are halted in their (air-) tracks by the unlikely opposition of head-accountant Master Ferdinand with a logarithmic ruler. Things start moving very fast.

9:25:31 Ferdinand parries the sword of Mystral and ripostes Frya
9:25:32 Mystral ducks under the ruler and stabs at Ferdinand but he blocks the sword with an eraser.
9:25:33 Pixie Morgaine tumbles over the head-accountant to flank him but gets distracted by a golden hairband the latter was wearing. Trying to steal it in mid-tumble proves tricky and Morgaine ends up in the dusty departmental library.
9:25:34 Assistant accountant Destreth uses the ledger for 985 as an improvised flyswatter and catapults Frya into the library as well. Mystral and Ferdinand continue to stab at each other ineffectively.

9:25:38 AM - Animation

Meanwhile two more pixies rush to the scene, but get their directions wrong and instead of the accounting department break into the magical armoury. To the great dismay of the wizards hiding there they decide to animate all the weapons and armours there.

Wizards 6 - Pixies 7

Interlude: The Library of the department of accounting

At this point it is important to inform the reader about some of the history of the silver tower, and bring you up to date with some recent discoveries.

Through the ages it has occasionally happened that a wizard studying at the silver tower meddled in things man wasn't meant to wot off. After the wizard in question came to his inevitable gruesome end and his remains were swept up and buried (if there was enough left of him to do so) the invariable problem was: how to dispose of his spellbook. For you see destroying a normal spellbook is hardly a walk in the park and these spellbooks tended to be more powerful than average (or at least more icky). The task of getting rid of the spellbook was therefore usually left to a suitably clever person.

Now it has recently been uncovered that several of these clever persons in the past had gotten the same clever idea. It goes somewhat like this: Accountings is boring. Nobody sane is ever going to read a boring book. The best place to hide this book would be to rebind it in a cover saying "addendum to the extended balance sheets of the year 742, vollume 8-c". In fact so many people in the past had had this ingenious idea that the little accounting library had over the years grown to be the greatest concentration of powerful black magic books in the world.

We now return to the pixie Morgaine, currently on a bookshelf in the department of accounting.

9:25:43 AM - Light Reading

Morgaine, recently demoted from the battle to a dust ball on an accounting library shelf, recovers and instead of rejoining the fight decides to catch up on her reading, opening a random book.

9:25:44 AM - Light Writing

Morgaine gets bored by the "Additions and amendments to the fiscal law of the city states" and starts randomly swapping letters in it, rewriting the whole book in seconds. It is reputed that the book now contains a valid answer to the eternal question of life, the universe and everything, as well as the secrets of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of youth and these would have been of inestimable benefit to the universe in general, had Morgaine not turned the book into a chicken next. As it is, research mages are working with licensed linguists and vets to try and unlock the secret of all secrets: that of chicken speech. The first step in this exciting research seems to consists of them trying to decipher the handwriting on doctor's notes.

9:25:51 AM - Going stellar

Meanwhile, elsewhere, pixies make their way to the sandy gladiator pits of the combined astronomy/astrology department where they discover a treatise on the existence of high-density stars whose core consists of multi-billion-ton diamonds. Unable to resist the lure of the largest shinies in the universe, two pixies set out immediately and were last spotted messing up a nearby star system, unrepairable damaging the constellation of the 'sleeping cat' - now known as the 'sleeping cat with a smiley face painted on it'.

This anecdote led to later research into distraction mechanics, a form of pixie defence that relies on posting a note on your front door informing the pixies that greater shinies can be found at your neighbor's place. The research was ceased after the lobby of concerned pixies filed numerous complaints following some unfortunate accidents where two neighbors both had such a sign.

Wizards 8 - Pixies 7

9:26:05 AM - Sen'thadr's Spellbook

Back in the accounting department, Morgaine opens up another book which - due to events explained earlier - happens to be the lost (presumed destroyed - as soon as the courthouse is rebuilt a certain teacher in alternate reality will have a lot of explaining to do) spellbook of the great (but unfortunately slightly megalomaniac) summoner Sen'thadr (last seen being swept into a rather small bucket after an unfortunate summoning of ALL the lords of hell - who weren't team players - simultaneously, but I digress). Unknown even to this late master of the art however, was that if you take the spells from this spellbook and combine them with that of Ardhil's book of chaos (conveniently located right next to it on the accounting shelf, courtesy of the late master illusionist Dhendril, who will be given a stern talking to as soon as a suitable medium is located) it opens a gate to pure chaos and summons .... the Ur-pixie.

9:26:08 AM - The summoning

Being wizards, all of us at this point sense the great disruption of the balance caused by the summoning in progress (all of us except Master Thimweed who had a particularly rich dinner the night before and wrote the whole affair off as the usual hallucinations. Why exactly roast beef would normally cause hallucinations remains a mystery, but authorities inform me they are questioning the cooks) and thus we immediately shifted our focus towards the pixie Morgaine to prevent the summoning (except for those of us who instead shifted their focus to getting out as fast as possible, a not altogether incomprehensible position).

9:26:10 AM - The summoning disrupted

Head accountant Ferdinand is the quickest to respond to the imminent threat and with the razorblade precision of his ruler he launches one of the pixies he was still fighting into a ballistic trajectory, knocking over a large clock right on top of Morgaine, who is knocked underneath the shelf by the impact and momentarily loses track of the spell. The chaos gate is also hit by the clock and just as matter and anti-matter react to form one heck of a mess, so do the chaos of the gate and the order of the clockwork react to form ... well, nobody knows, unfortunately, as those from our side who witnessed the event later would not talk about it (or at least, not without going on a rampage with a claymore first) and all the pixies came up with mutually exclusive stories.

9:26:18 AM - Plan of action

The threat temporarily waived, some wizards start getting "organized". Unfortunately these particular wizards were all research students, arguably the worst kind of people to get organized about anything. Realizing there's little time, they set out to the experimental magic hall to - as they later claimed - face the threat with all means available. When questioned later they vehemently denied they were merely using the pixie's distraction to muck about with high-power magic without supervision.

9:26:22 AM - Book Rugby

Back in accounting, Head accountant Ferdinand leaps towards the spellbook Morgaine was using, but the pixie surprises him by suddenly flying up one meter, causing him to miss. This was about the only thing Ferdinand had not counted on, having readied all the counterspells he could think of.
Morgaine does not get much time to gloat however as her upward leap smacks her straight into the bottom of a higher shelf.

9:26:25 AM - Book Rugby continues

Morgaine rounds angrily on the bookshelf and with a vicious spell turns it into a heap of smoldering embers, completely destroying the financial record of 950 till 975 (a task the accountants themselves had been trying to achieve through more traditional means for ages, they therefore secretly welcomed this development).

Meanwhile the spellbook that Morgaine in her distraction (and due to the need for two hands to cast the spell) had dropped is caught in midair by the pixie Tremorwing, who himself is caught in midair by assistant accountant Sander, who himself is caught in midair by the pixie Firesong. Since the latter was at this point a pink elephant (who had gotten bored downstairs and decided to come take a look what the racket was all about) this was not too good for the health of poor Sander (or indeed Tremorwing).

To make matters worse the rest of the accounting department at this point jumps on top of the elephant as well, creating one big heap of humans, pixies and elephant, all trying to get the spellbook.

Wizards 8 - Pixies 8

9:26:30 AM - Halftime

Unknown to everybody without the benefit of hindsight, the war has now reached its halfway point (or what will be known to be its halfway point as soon as is known how long the whole war will take, which we know now to have been seven minutes, but which is a mystery to people involved at this point in the events although it will remain a mystery for only another three and a half minutes, after which the survivors will - as we do - know that this is indeed the halfway point, or was, since by then it will be in the past for them just as it is for us now. If this side note confused you, you are advised never to travel through time.)

So far neither side seems to be chalking up a decisive victory, with an equal number of casualties on both sides.

9:26:34 AM - The fight for the spellbook continues

Tremorwing, still at the bottom of a pile of accountants that are grappling for the spellbook, escapes by teleporting out from the bottom of the pile to the top. Fortunately he then spends so much time gloating that he doesn't notice Head accountant Ferdinand sneaking up on him with his ruler and snatching the book away.

9:26:36 AM - Ferdinand's ankles

Before the esteemed Head Accountant can get away, he is kicked in the ankles by one of the pixies.
The sharp pain causes him to drop the book which is caught by the pixie Morgaine, who immediately flies up to the ceiling with it.

9:26:38 AM - The Experimental Magic Hall

Meanwhile the research students reach the experimental magic hall. This is mentioned solely because of the rarity of any student being awake in any teaching room during the day and has no otherwise effect on the war... for now.

9:26:42 AM - The Summoning yet again

Morgaine, out of reach of even Ferdinand's ruler, pages through Sen'thadr's spellbook on the assumption that anything the wizards want to keep from her should be worth a laugh (she later admitted she'd already forgotten calling forth the chaos gate) and reaching once more the dreadful summoning pages resumes the ritual, creating a new chaos gate while the wizards can only watch in dread (those who did not already flee).

9:26:48 AM - But what about ...

Underneath all this, the pile of wizards and pixies (and elephant) starts to disentangle itself. This is a rather frenetic procedure as in the meantime the pixies have made use of their proximity with the wizards to spray the latter with all sorts of magic powders and sprays, ranging from itching dust through nonerasable paint to concentrated sulphuric acid (the pixie responsible for the latter claimed it was a mistake and said she'd only wanted to make the wizard smell like rotting eggs. Hearing this explanation the wizards have offered free alchemy lessons to all pixies as a service to humanity).

Wizards 8 - Pixies 9

9:26:52 AM - Disbanding

Suddenly the whole heap described earlier disbands. The reason for this - the pixies having stolen all the keys carried by the wizards and wanting to find the locks they fit on - will only become apparent later.

9:26:56 AM - Take wing

As high above the summoning continues, wizard Sansildan - known for his flights of fancies - remembers he is a wizard and that thus Morgaine is not really out of reach. With a snap of his fingers he takes to magical flight and catapults himself towards the unsuspecting pixie.

9:26:57 AM - Ooops

Unfortunately, Sansildan had never been too great at ballistics and he misses Morgaine by an arms length (his arm, not hers) and flies through the now fully open chaos gate instead, banishing himself to the plane of eternal chaos.

This is quite convenient for the Ur-pixie who, due to the balance of nature, could not enter the World That Is without a soul passing the other way into his own world. Sansildan's miscalculation (which caused him to be labeled a 'good sport' by the pixies) thus made it possible for this monstrosity to pass through the gate.

The Ur-pixie has come.

Wizards 8 - Pixies 10

The Ur-pixie

A creature of chaos, the Ur-pixie is thought to be the mother and father of all pixies, representing the fundamental chaos of the universe. Where pixies later evolved into spirits of laughter and joy (or at least that's the standing theory, which has many opponents amongst those who have come into direct contact with them), the Ur-pixie is a cumulation of chaos and magic. It has, in fact, the destructive power of the big bang (yes I am aware the big bang was a constructive affair, not a destructive one, but "constructive power" generally does not instil much fear, which is curious considering the kind of things people have constructed over the ages). In short it is not something you would want to have summoned inside your tower.

That aside, the Ur-pixie is magnificent to behold, its butterfly-like wings changing shape and colour constantly and smoothly like tendrils of rainbow light.

9:27:03 AM - Fluttering around

Upon being summoned the Ur-pixie starts flitting around the room at great speed, changing things randomly as it touches them. Thus a pencil cabinet turns into a cow, Head Accountant Ferdinand turns into a vase and the elephant-previously-known-as-pixie-firesong turns into the ravenous bug-blatter beast of traal. Curiously, the book explaining the taxes applicable to importing galaxy-sized dragons remained unchanged. Accountants have so far failed to agree whether this was because the concept was silly enough in its own right, or the tax law was so chaotic already that there was nothing the Ur-pixie could add.

9:27:06 AM - Overload

As this all takes place around him, the aged wizard Gerdrath is seriously considering taking a sabbatical. However after the summoning of the Ur-pixie and the sudden appearance of a Cow and the ravenous bug-blatter beast he decides to save the universe some trouble and go insane instead.

Wizards 8 - Pixies 11

9:27:12 AM - Chaos through the roof

Getting bored by the little there's left for it to do in the accounting department, the Ur-pixie flies up and out through the ceiling (turning it into a yellow pudding in passing) to the floor above - the department of mathematics.

9:27:18 AM - Scrumble

Still in the accounting department, the assorted pixies and wizards present take a bit of time to assess the situation (and clean up some pudding), find out the situation has effectively moved up a floor and scramble up and race for the door (which was not designed to be used by eight people and seven pixies at the same time, though this was only a temporary problem, lasting only until somebody turned the whole wall into thin air).

This is done for greatly different reasons. The wizards, thinking fast, realize that if there's any place to effectively fight an Ur-pixie it's the mathematics department (and even if they fail it's a rare chance of testing chaos theory in practice) while the pixies just want to go where the fun goes.

9:27:24 AM - Exit arrows

Elsewhere the fight goes on. Though most pixies and wizards have now focused around the Ur-pixie, some pockets of combat remain spread about the tower. In the hallways for instance a group of wizards have taken up bow and arrow and are shooting magically glittering missiles at the pixies without in fact trying to hit them (pixies are nearly immortal so what would be the point?). Instead they have enchanted the arrows with self-guidance systems, programmed to fly out of the tower and far far away. The plan is moderately successful, with several pixies following the arrows out of the combat zone, but suffers a setback when one of the pixies wises up and steals the quiver instead.

Wizards 11 - Pixies 11

9:27:29 AM - Mathematical KO

Meanwhile the Ur-pixie, temporarily alone as the wizards and pixies race towards it (but have to move around using the stairs, or at least the wizards have to, the pixies merely follow them to see what else will happen), examines the mathematics department and makes the mistake of trying to understand one of the formulas scribbled on a blackboard (a mistake that is fortunately not often made by students). The mental feedback shock of the formula's complexity knocks it out for several seconds.

9:27:35 AM - Stairs

Trying to out-race the pixies (but not succeeding due to the fact that the pixies do not have to worry about such things as physical fitness or even the laws of physics) the wizards reach the bottom of the staircase. The REAL bottom of the staircase that is, as when they first set foot on the stairs to go from floor one to floor two they found somebody had coated it in slippery oil and they subsequently found themselves on floor zero, in a big pile.

The pixies meanwhile are torn between laughing at this, racing on to find the Ur-pixie, and following the wizards down to see what they can do to 'help'. In the end they decide to do all of this at once, putting yet more strain on the universe and on suspendable disbelief.

9:27:42 AM - Express elevator

Getting frustrated, some of the wizards have now had enough and they combine their power to break away the floor of the entrance hall and raise it all the way up to the second floor, with all wizards on it.

9:27:46 AM - Foiled escape

Two floors lower, the mage Maldahad is fleeing pixies and trying to shake chalk and itching dust out of his hair. Not looking where he runs he does not see that the floor in front of him has in fact moved up two floors and he steps into the hole where the entrance hall used to be, involuntarily descending into the cellars (where he lands on one of the bursars, who was hoping to spend the war unnoticed).

9:27:53 AM - Mathematics

Meanwhile the wizards - after straightening their robes and swatting ineffectively at some nearby pixies - make their way to the department of mathematics, finding the Ur-pixie working out some formulas (or at least drawing bunnies on the blackboard, this activity being often indistinguishable from advanced mathematics).

Seeing their chance they try and sneak in, in order to overpower the Ur-pixie while it is distracted, but find this plan somewhat foiled when the other pixies shout out "Here they are! Eat them! Eat Them!"

9:27:57 AM - More Mathematics

The Ur-pixie, startled by the sudden arrivals, flutters up a bit and - without thinking- changes Magister Zeradin into a toad (an improvement, many of his colleagues would later comment) and the room into a ghastly pink (but then nearly all pink is ghastly). To the pixies' disappointment it didn't follow this up with eating the wizards, however, opting instead to change the numbers on all the rulers in the department randomly. This led to many great (but short lived) discoveries in the field of geometry later. When it was found out that the 'brilliant mathematicians' had simply been using faulty rulers (a suspicion that was raised after they produced a theory stating that the sum of the lengths of the sides of a triangle was always less than the largest side) they first unsuccessfully tried to argue that it was in fact the universe that was mistaken before slinking off in embarrassment.

9:28:02 AM - A solution?

In the experimental magic hall the research students meanwhile prove that there IS some point to their education after all by devising the only known way of getting rid of a pixie: the portable null-magic field. These devices, which are instant death to magic-based lifeforms, are outlawed under the pixie convention, but since nobody except the pixies has ratified that, this fact didn't really worry the wizards.

9:28:05 AM - Personality split

Meanwhile in the mathematics department a disgruntled archmage fires off a teleportation spell at the Ur-pixie, in an attempt to move it to a different time and place. Unfortunately for him the chaos of the Ur-pixie subverts and reverses his spell and instead he is teleported forward into time and space himself (except for his sanity which for reasons of balance was teleported backwards). He was found later by ... but let's not dwell on this.

9:28:06 AM - Smoke and mirror universes

Their colleague disappearing in a puff of smoke meant that the remaining wizards were, well, standing in a cloud of smoke. Because most of them were still wheezing from the attempted run up the stairs most of them now went into coughing fits that due to the fractured causality surrounding them caused cracks in the fabric of the universe.

This is not as severe as it sounds and is in fact a routine occurrence around any wizard's tower and the wizards were therefore in fact relieved at this sign of normality (even if it meant they'd have to get the anti-demon aerosols out again).

9:28:12 AM - Errr

Back in the experimental magic hall, the students discover that while their null-magic field may be considered portable, it is stated nowhere whom it is portable for. After a few frantic attempts at lifting the field source, a crystal roughly the size of an eyeball with roughly the weight of a division of trolls, they decide it's probably dragons.

9:28:17 AM - The wall!

Down a floor, the Ur-pixie is getting a bit bored and flies through a random wall and into the room of elemental knowledge. Pursuit is easier this time because much in line with the nature of the next room, the wall turns from element earth to element air as the pixies pass (and proceeds to slink in a corner in embarrassment, despite forces of osmotic pressure urging it to join the fun and spread out)

9:28:21 AM - Silence

Meanwhile another rarity in the history of any educational institution: students are both awake and quiet in the classroom of experimental magic. The silence is rather sullen and embarrassed though, brought on by each of them realizing - too late - that using a levitation spell - or in fact any sort of magic - on a null-magic field is rather useless.

After a few seconds of blinking, one student comments: "Right. This doesn't leave this room."

It is as yet unsure whether he meant the null magic field or the tale of their foolishness, but it is largely irrelevant for as we will see, both statements were ultimately false.

9:28:28 AM - The room of ... uhm .. well ...

Below the very feet of the valiant-yet-inept students the Ur Pixie looks around in what is ... was ... might have once been .. uhm ...

Well suffice to say we don't call it the room of elemental knowledge any-more.

Just don't ask.

Wizards: many - Pixies: rolling in mid-air laughing

9:28:36 AM - Right. Demons.

As you may recall, about half a minute earlier demonic forces joined the invasion of our poor tower of wizardry. However when they found out they would be fighting on the same side as pixies the demons retreated. When later one was summoned to explain this behaviour, it spoke thus:

"We may have seven and a half arms, twenty tentacles and embarrassing skin conditions, but we still have our dignity."

It then followed this statement with escaping the bounds of its summoning circle, eating an old wizard and dying of indigestion.

I am unsure whether to chalk this fatality up to the pixies but since the whole points I was awarding have become a big mess anyway, I don't think anybody will care.

9:28:46 AM - Towerquake!!!

Remember how I said the marble game in the room of future echoes four minutes earlier caused earthquakes all over the near future? Well, the future is now (or then) and the entire tower starts shaking violently. This quickly knocks over all the wizards, and by proxy all the pixies: they saw the wizards drop and not wanting to fall behind on a new fashion rage figured they should follow suit.

9:28:50 AM - Student Bowling

A floor higher, our valiant students are similarly inconvenienced. However for them the results are more dear as the null magic field source falls of its pedestal and comes bearing down the prone students. Given the previously mentioned weight of said source, this causes what is now considered the most dangerous game of breakdance dodgeball ever (a sport that will later be appropriated by the pixies who, I am told, host competitions every 2.718 years).

9:29:01 AM - Old Man Grumpy

Confused by the sounds of carnage coming from the floor above (it is not used to any chaos it didn't cause), the Ur-pixie frowns up at the ceiling and then does the only reasonable thing its experience can conjure up: it summons an old grumpy man who quickly starts thumping the ceiling with his cane and shouting at the upstairs neighbours to keep it down.
As I write this, he is still doing this as we have been so far unable to budge him. Any attempts to reason with this strange creature only results in him telling us "young scallywags" to get of his lawn.