These failing magicians are, however, very impressionable and the Hexalotl's freedom was eventually won due to an intrepid spell from a boy called Linus and the ghost of his great grandfather, the Great Hexalotl Oom. Between them, they flummoxed one of the Skree brothers into revealing their only weakness, which was to be read silent poetry from a silent book.
A silent book is a book with no words, but the chaotic spirit of a potentially epic story. The power of a potential story is far more powerful than any finished story, so after hundreds of nights whilst the skree were sleeping, Linus would stare at the blank pages of a book imagining the epic it could contain, imbuing the air around it with a terrifying power.
When finally read out loud, one Monday morning, it was astonishing. So astonishing it caused the stunned skree to diminish perpetually and the Hexalotl to be free forever. Here is an excerpt from that book: