Haku continued to experiment for quite some time. Thanks to his guinea pig he had been able to understand many things. However, it hadn't been exactly easy.
The young dragons had a major problem with keeping captives: they had to keep them hidden from Neytiri. If their mother had noticed that a newcomer had been present in her territory, she would surely have been enraged. So Haku and his siblings had to make sure she didn't notice them. This is somewhat problematic, since dragons had the best senses in nature.
In the case of Sinar, the son of the ogre Sarpa, it hadn't been very difficult. For Neytiri not to notice him, it was necessary to make him invisible to her sight, hearing and smell. For the sight, it was enough to find a cave, well hidden in the side of the mountain. For the smell, Haku and his siblings had placed some very strong and annoying smelling herbs and flowers in front of the entrance to the cave. Finally, for the hearing, there had been no problems: since Sinar was constantly bound and gagged, it was impossible for him to make the slightest noise. In that way, there was no chance Neytiri would have noticed him.
But Freyar's situation was different. Haku couldn't just shut her mouth: in fact, he had a precisely outlined plan on what to do with her, and for that he needed her to be able to speak. But that meant there would have been nothing to cover her screams. This problem had plagued Haku for many hours, but in the end he had found the solution: the very first thing he had learned after coming into the world, obviously after his name and the ones of his brothers and sisters, had been the different types of rock and minerals contained within the cave where his egg had hatched. He had learned that some rocks were able to absorb sound better, preventing it from spreading too much; consequently, if they could find a cave made of the right material and intricate enough inside, they could safely keep the fairy prisoner.
Thus, Haku and his siblings had looked for a suitable place while Freyar was still unconscious. It took them an entire day, but they finally found it. It was Corgorin the one who had discovered it: it was a rather small cave set quite a long way from the nest. Its interior was made of a porous rock that effectively absorbed sound, and moreover the cave was very deep and spiral-shaped, so to get out the sound would first have had to go all the way up and would have continually banged against the rock walls that would absorb it until it disappeared altogether. Even if Freyar had screamed ten times as loud as her fairy lungs allowed her, her cries wouldn't have been able to reach outside.
It was the perfect place. Haku and his siblings then used some clear crystals to reflect the sunlight into the depths of the cave; it wasn't much, but at least they wouldn't have to work in the dark. While dragons' eyesight was excellent, and moving in the dark for them was like moving in broad daylight, it was still preferable to have a light source. To obtain these crystals they had again asked Neytiri for help: Haku and his siblings had pretended to want to admire their mother's incredible fire, and she, taken by pride, had erupted from her mouth a torrent of flames so hot that she had literally transformed the dust into glass. The little dragons had just had to wait for it to cool down and break it, and then they placed the fragments in the cave to reflect the light correctly. After that they'd just had to cover up the smell using the same method they'd used with Sinar, and that was it. Freyar was now invisible to Neytiri, and they could do whatever they wanted with her. Or rather, Haku could do whatever he wanted with her, using her to increase his knowledge as much as possible.
In the first place, he had established that the magic and crafting techniques of the fairies were decidedly superior to those of the ogres and in part even to those of humans. If the work done by a fairy was a 10, that of humans was a 7 and that of ogres barely a 3. For example, one of the healing potions she had stolen from Ethan, and therefore that had been created by humans, limited to healing if poured on the wound, while those of the fairies contributed in part to regenerate the lost piece.
Haku foresaw this. When Ethan had described fairies in his diary, he had spoken highly of their extraordinary magical knowledge. According to his notes, much of the fairy magic was unknown to other races, and perhaps only the elves knew more about it than they. It was precisely that immense knowledge that allowed the fairy people to survive for all that time, despite the fact that they were much less numerous than the other races. In fact, as Haku had already established some time ago, the ogres weren't the only danger: even the nearby human kingdoms wouldn't have disdained conquering the fairy people. However, their magical superiority wasn't to be underestimated. Add to that the fact that the fairies would have home court advantage, a war would become much more difficult to sustain. Appropriating their magical knowledge, however, remained the desire of many people; Haku himself wasn't exempt. If he hadn't been interested he certainly wouldn't have kept his guinea pig alive.
Thanks to his continuous experiments he had learned a lot. His knowledge of potions had several improved. He had discovered that there were three major types of potions: those for defensive use, those for curative use and the one for offensive use. Those for defensive use improved defense stats, such as providing immunity to poisons or strengthening the skin; those for curative use healed wounds and canceled negative magical effects; those for offensive use, finally, caused considerable damage to the opponent. Given their nature, potions for offensive use had to be thrown at the opponent (unless someone was able to find a way to make him drink them); this decreased their effectiveness, but still ensured considerable damage.
There were many potions for offensive use: flames, weakness, slowness, poison, diseases... Haku had tried them all, obviously on his guinea pig. He had also discovered another interesting thing about potions: they were rapidly absorbed by any non-organic matter or in any case not directly connected to a living body. Which meant he could pour them on a weapon and that would have acquired the properties of the potions. Obviously this was temporary (Haku had calculated that the effect lasted no more than seven hours) but it was still a good bonus in terms of combat. For example, Haku could pour an offensive potion on the tips of his claws, being very careful not to touch the skin; it was enough to wait for it to be absorbed and immediately his claws became even more lethal than usual.
He had tried it with a potion of fire: after having poured it on his claws he had gone to look for a prey and once he had found it he had skewered it with them. The result had been that the affected spot hadn't just been ripped open, but it had also been engulfed in flames. The prey was burned to death in a few minutes without Haku having to do anything.
Another time he had tried a freezing potion. He had again poured the potion on his claws and tried them on another prey. The unfortunate creature had found its left side completely frozen, which had even prevented it from walking. Haku had simply had to go over and bite its neck off. Haku had determined that those potions would have been very useful to him in the future. They could not only improve the hunt, but also better protect him and his siblings against possible dangerous opponents.
Even with weapons he had made progress. He wasn't actually interested in the weapons themselves (his own body was already a living weapon) as much as discovering how newcomers could upgrade their tools with mana. He already had some knowledge from Sarpa, but the ogres were too ignorant of magic to be trusted. Their method was based only on channeling one's mana into the weapon, and nothing more. Haku was sure there were more efficient ways to use mana, and the fine fairy weapons would have provided some answers. After much experimenting he had discovered several interesting things.
First, he'd noticed that all the weapons he'd stolen, or at least those used in conjunction with magic, had runes carved into them or stones set into them. Both functioned as a catalyst: the person using the weapons poured the mana they had into the runes or stones, and then they activated the magic. The runes, it seemed, called upon a certain magic, allowing the user of the weapon to use only that magic. In contrast, stone-set weapons had no limit: they required more mana, but the user could use whatever magic they wanted. The only limit was the element that this stone recalled: apparently with sapphires you could only use the water element, with rubies the fire element, etc. In either case, if the rune or stone were destroyed, the magical weapon would have became a common weapon and it could only rely on its user's mana to continue to work.
Despite all of his discoveries, however, several questions still remained for Haku. Many of the items in his possession could not be tested on Freyar, as he was too unaware of their use. if he picked the wrong item and healed her by mistake, he would have been in trouble. The druid was helpless at the moment, but if she returned to her full strength she would have been very dangerous.
Yet that was part of the reason he had kept Freyar alive. He had told her that he didn't intend to ask her anything... but he hadn't specified that he wouldn't have accepted her help if she wanted to reveal something to him.
If it weren't for Freyar's knowledge, Haku would have just experimented on some animal in the valley. Instead he had voluntarily chosen to torture the fairy, because he wanted to break her. Being continuously used as a guinea pig, sooner or later the fairy, in order to make the pain stop, would have revealed to him the use of her objects without Haku even having to ask her.
If Haku had asked her directly for the use of the items and used torture to make her confess, Freyar would have clung to her pride and she wouldn't have given up so easily. Instead, by pretending nonchalance and indifference, Haku caused the fairy's mind to deteriorate day after day, and she was more and more desperate and had repeatedly begged him to kill her to put an end to her torment. Haku had made sure that her torture would never end: when he was done with his experiments he let his sisters 'play' with the fairy, so that she was tortured twenty four hours a day. It wasn't difficult: after all, by now his sisters had learned to be stealth enough to leave the nest while their mother was sleeping, and they returned the next day before she woke up.
His sisters had been happy to help him, especially the more bloodthirsty ones like Sisna, Glausar and Kialandi, who had discovered to love playing with food before eating it. After all, they too understood the importance of gaining more knowledge of their enemy's abilities, so they had no complaints about torturing the fairy. Just like Haku, they too didn't feel any empathy for her.
Dragons weren't a compassionate species. In their eyes, every living thing was nothing but a means to an end, whether that end was eating or otherwise. It didn't matter whether such living beings were capable of speech or not. Of course, it wasn't impossible for dragons to learn to consider other races as equals: it had happened, from time to time in the past, that a dragon befriended a newcomer. But these were events more unique than rare. Normally dragons thought only of themselves and considered everything else as unimportant. A dragon like Haku, who genuinely cared about his siblings, could already be considered an anomaly.
For Haku, all that mattered was his family; the rest of the world could even have been destroyed as far as he was concerned, unless such an event threatened his life or the ones of his siblings. And his brothers and sisters shared that feeling: they were related by their blood and by the fact that they helped each other, but they felt no empathy for other races or even other dragons. Indeed, some of his sisters still agreed to join their group not for family love but for the benefits, though this was slowly changing; this showed how selfish and careless dragons were by nature.
Haku had expected that Freyar would have resisted for a long time, instead a week was enough for her to give up: "NO! STOP! PLEASE!"
"Shut up. You're distracting me" Haku grumbled without any emotion in his voice, preparing to cut the fairy's skin with one of the stolen daggers.
"No, no, stop! I'll tell you what that is for!" Freyar screamed with tears in her eyes. "It's... It's a dagger of wind. T-The rune on its handle summons wind energy. It can move the air like a whip in a radius of fifty meters"
If he wasn't a good actor Haku would have smiled wickedly. Instead he feigned indifference. "Mh. Well, thanks for telling me. So this is no longer needed" he said putting the dagger away. "As a token of thanks, I won't do anything to you for the next ten minutes. Enjoy this moment of peace, then we'll try this" and he took a green acid potion.
"No! I can tell you what that is for too!" Freyar screamed in terror. "It's a high-level damage potion. Just pour a drop on the skin to dissolve it, but it leaves anything non-organic intact. This makes it perfect for murder..."
Haku listened satisfied as the fairy unreservedly extolled all the characteristics of the potion. He had succeeded: he had broken her. Now she was at his disposal.