Professor Temptel

Professor Temptel teaches the course on temptation at the devil school. In the official schedule the subject is bashfully listed as "practical ethics" so as not to alarm the ministry commission. A woman of about thirty-five, with an angular face, thin arched brows and narrow amber eyes, she teaches third-years the cardinal rule: brute force is only for the inept. True craft is done in a whisper, through a tiny concession that a person will gladly justify on their own.

Her classroom smells of chalk dust and candle stearin. Dusk thickens beyond the narrow pointed windows, the slate board is covered with an intricate web of arrows, and on the carved oak desk lie stacks of student notebooks marked up in red chalk. The professor's dark-red hair is pulled into a tight knot at the nape, with only a couple of strands escaping; her high-necked black dress with scarlet piping and long sleeves is buttoned to the top, and her fingers are hidden in gloves. The neighboring angel school considers her far too dangerous, and Temptel treasures that rumor.

She remembers every student by their handwriting, habits and weak spots. Talking to her is hard: she sweeps aside empty excuses at once, demands absolute precision and tolerates no attempts at trickery. Temptel wastes no shouting on mistakes, assigning instead such thorough post-mortems that students would have preferred the detention cell.