Tak

Experiments - Part 2

     There was a victory party in the palace, just as if they'd left the entire Yinnfarsian army dead on the field, but for Tak, Barl and the others who'd conspired against Khalkedon last time, it was a fearful, subdued affair as they tried to avoid the attention of the rak. They even avoided each other, in case they were seen speaking and their masters grew suspicious, but they still dreamed of freedom and were determined to carry on communicating whenever they could.

     Tak did manage to meet two other freedom seekers. Green eyed Talpha-Ja, a man about his age, and Alustra Jarel, renowned for her ivory white skin. He shared with them what he'd learned about raks from Molos Gomm's library over the past couple of years. The information was sketchy and incomplete, as Khalkedon had taken great care to purge every library in his realm of all references to his kind, but the other wizards received it gratefully nevertheless and shared with him what little they'd learned themselves. It was enough that they parted with a sense of satisfaction. Knowledge was power, after all, and they would continue to gather all the knowledge they could until they found a way to destroy their terrible undead master.

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     There was nothing more they could do for the moment, though, so they all returned to their own homes to continue with their individual researches. Tak arrived back at Castle Nagra to find that his latest clutch of lizard eggs had hatched out into a particularly hideous batch of monsters, which he disposed off before searching back through his notes, trying to find where he'd gone wrong.

     It turned out he'd set himself a particularly difficult task, and years went by in which he had more success with other forms of life, including some that turned out to be quite useful to him. He bred a larger variety of chicken with three times as much white meat as an ordinary bird, for instance, and which he bred in one of the courtyards to sell in nearby towns and villages, those far enough away that their inhabitants didn't know him to be a hateful wizard. To them, he was nothing more than a particularly successful bird breeder, and they didn't need to know that the birds they were eating contained more than a little horse and caterpillar.

     Another of his creations was a golden flowered bush which had the multi-faceted eyes of a housefly dotted along its branches and which screamed like a banshee when it spotted anything moving in its vicinity. He was delighted to find that it was hardy enough to survive out in the open all year round, and he planted them all along the road leading to the castle, to warn him if anyone tried to pass by unannounced. Jack Nowl, on one of his occasional creeping visits to spy on his hated enemy, was indeed surprised by them, and fled back home in terror to spread more tales of demonic goings on up the mountain road.

     To Tak's delight Gal-Gowan was also surprised by them, the next time he came to summon him to battle. He had to answer some hard questions regarding the half animal plants, but he was able to convince the red wizard that they'd been created accidentally by the randomised waste magics that emanated continually from every wizard's laboratory. Gal-Gowan accepted this, as the deliberate creation of new forms of life was very high magic, which only the very greatest wizards were capable of, and he refused to believe, despite all the evidence of Tak's brilliance, that the young man was capable of such a feat.

     Despite these successes, though, he continued to have no success with the horned lizards, but this only spurred him on to greater determination and made him try formulae and procedures he made up for himself, surpassing Molos Gomm's own experiments. Even after five years, though, the only result of all his efforts was a stunted breed which did indeed have wings, although too weak and feeble to allow them to fly, but which had paid for even this minor triumph by losing their legs. Still, it was nevertheless the only viable result of his experiments, and so he cherished them and looked after them, hoping to eventually be able to correct their shortcomings and produce a breed of flying reptiles that he could really be proud of.