Once again the armies of darkness are sweeping across the world and this time there may be no stopping them. Only by standing together can the heroes of civilization hope to prevail, but at this hour of their greatest trial the mightiest of their nu...
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“I made a right royal mess of it all right,” said Tragius dismally when he’d finished relating the story of his confrontation with Malefactos. “Yes, I certainly did. I couldn’t have made a worse job of it if I’d tried.”
“Where is he now?” asked Adantus.
“The Gods alone know. One thing’s for certain, though, he’s certainly not in that castle any more. He could be anywhere in the world. In fact he might not even be on this planet any more. He told me he was considering moving to another world, a safe distance away from the Shadowlord and the University, which means he could be literally anywhere in the universe.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Oh well, let’s look on the bright side. At least you can tell everyone about your super magic detector now. About how you picked up his transformation into a rak and how he fled as soon as he found out you knew about him. You’ll be famous.”
Adantus, though, was scratching his bald head thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s another way,” he said. “I wouldn’t give up too soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe there’s another way to persuade him to help us. I had a bit of trouble with a rak when I was younger, you know, me and a few friends. Destroying him was one of the most difficult and dangerous things I’ve ever done. All but three of us were killed, and I was hurt pretty badly myself, but we thought, at least it’s done now. He’s been destroyed and we can all go home. Lick our wounds and get on with our lives. We were wrong, though. We were young then, didn’t know much about raks, and particularly we didn’t know that every rak has an ark. A vessel within which he keeps his soul during his transformation and to which it is forever linked even after it moves back into its own body. We didn’t find out until later that to completely destroy a rak, it’s not enough to just destroy his body. You have to destroy his ark as well, or his soul simply flies back to it, a safe refuge, until his physical body has reformed. Then he's back. Good as new and more powerful than ever.”
“So?” asked Tragius.
“So, if we could get hold of Malefactos’s ark, we’d have him by the short and curlies. The link between his soul and his ark is so strong, so unbreakable, that if you destroy it, you destroy him. He’d do anything to get it back.”
“Yes,” agreed Tragius doubtfully, “but something as important as that isn’t going to be just lying around, waiting for someone to come along and pick it up. It’s going to be hidden in the most inaccessible place he can think of. One of the moons, for instance, or in the heart of a comet. Maybe in another universe even, and it’ll be guarded. With the resources he’s got at his disposal he could call up half the demons of the Pit to guard it. Finding it and getting it aren’t exactly going to be easy.”
“Let’s not underestimate our own resources,” replied Adantus. “We’ve got the entire University to call upon. We’ll just tell them that we need their help to destroy a rak. They don’t need to know the identity of this particular rak.”
