"Regarding Belial. For now let him do as he wishes, ask the question before every book, you know the drill. Elder Agnes, what is your estimation, when the body will be ready?"
Voice of the old witch answered, "At the moment he is one meter and once centimeter tall. It is a height of a child between three and five. His body is still absorbing the supplements – we can tell it by his skin color that is just light brown, later it will become almost black. If we continue as planned, he will be fully grown within three years. Then we'll have five to seven years to use him in our operations, after that the only option will be to discard him."
This time Nick almost dropped the glass for real, 'I knew it! They are raising me here like a turkey for the Thanksgiving! Basically I have only ten years left!'
"It will be enough." The grand elder started to give instructions again, "Just let him do his thing. Don't fall for the contracts anymore. You have seen how the stakes are getting higher – soon it will be someones life! I can't afford to loose any of you. So, until we capture the beast and bring it here, everything remains as it is. Elder Silvio, if you won't be able to contain your curiosity, I will send you to Aurora or maybe even another continent!"
"I'm sorry, grand elder, I won't come out of my room." A hushed voice sounded.
"Even better! Now …"
Nick didn't wait anymore. First of all he was afraid to drop the glass, second – this all was way too much. He had to think, plan and more importantly – he had to calm down! He got back in his bed while panting heavily. He was not disturbed even by Elsa's breathing or how she hugged him and almost squeezed to death. Nick couldn't sleep and couldn't even think. Everything was just mixing together.
'Rank six beast … test … brown skin … three years … discard …'
He fell asleep only when the sun rose up.
The positive thing was that no one cared about him and he was let alone to do his own thing. Two days later from the balcony Nick witnessed how an army of disciples led by two dark red robed figures left towards the mountains. His mind was not calm enough to read, so he just practiced all three Qi techniques and some physical exercises afterwards.
He tried to think of multiple ways to escape, but everything ended with an inevitable capture. He was just too small to run away and even if he hid somewhere, he could not hide forever.
One month flew by until Nick finally got back to his normal self. He started to visit the alchemy girls again and fool around the library.
When one of the girls told him a secret that their elder has gone to capture a rank six beast, Nick obviously outwardly didn't believe that was possible. She explained that the elder had developed a tasteless and odorless paralytic poison and will succeed for sure.
Nick claimed that such a 'random poison' could not harm a rank six beast and then they had a bet that even Nick would be able to withstand this poison. Needless to say – he couldn't. He passed out for three whole hours from a microscopic dosage at the tip of a needle. Now to his fake great regret he had to call the girl 'my queen' for ten straight days. Obviously one of the small bottles containing that paralytic poison several days later disappeared. But the lab was big, who knows where could it have rolled to and this incident simply was not noticed by anyone.
While 'fooling around' Nick unfortunately had few more accidents with unstable rank two beast cores. None of the elders was 'free' to teach him, so he 'to his deep regret' had to rely on Elsa's help. The beast core box at the grand elder's workstation was quite big, so no one could tell how many he used up or if any were missing.
The grand elder and others kept avoiding him until seventy five days after the last elder council few dozen people, carrying a huge cage, solemnly entered the sect.
At that time Nick was practicing on the balcony as usual when he heard the commotion below. Down there he saw a huge cage and few people around it. Judging by the pale looks and bloodied clothes, one could easily tell what transpired. The sect had lost a huge number of members.
For the first time in a long time Nick was happy. It felt a bit weird, since many people died, but they all were mass murderers and were involved in the death of his second mother. Why wouldn't he be happy?
The grand elder also came out to watch.
Nick turned to him, "Why don't you pull the cage up here and put it on the balcony?"
"Huh?" The grand elder was surprised, "Why? You want to see the bird closer?"
"Hahaha!" Demon laughed out loud, "I have seen flocks of shadow eagles in my life, but they seem to be extinct these days. If I am correct, there are no rank seven and higher beasts around anymore, am I right?"
"Rank seven?" The grand elder's surprise did not lessen at all. It was the common knowledge that the rank six beasts were the strongest existences in the world!
Nick pointed at the grand elder's wristband, "Do you think that thing was made from a dog skin? Anyway. You obviously intend to make this bird your mount. If you are going to try and make the soul contract down there while he is permanently agitated by people running about, you will most likely fail. It's a simple basic knowledge!"
Word 'contract' around Nick always made elders jumpy, so it took few moments for the grand elder to understand, "Thank you, Lord Baal, for the reminder. I got confused for a moment because we call it a 'slave seal' these days. Probably the concept is still the same."
"Uhu, 'a slave seal'. Sounds appropriate, hahaha!" Nick laughed although wanted to cry. He knew that the slave seal was actually meant for him.
Then grand elder gave the command to get the cage upstairs. It took a lot of ropes, pulling and pushing until few hours later they managed to secure the cage with the bird on the far side of the balcony.
When Nick saw the two escorting elders, he could not keep himself from smiling. Apart from the tired faces and bloodied robes, elder Jan had his left sleeve freely flap in the wind. Nick really wanted to ask if elder Jan has 'lost anything' during the trip, but for safety reasons decided to quickly turn around and take a look at the eagle.
The cage was a simple cube with each side of approximately five meters long. The material it was made of was some sort of metal that Nick didn't recognize. The poor animal inside looked even worse than the elders. But even all covered in blood it was a majestic and beautiful. The color of it's feathers seemed to change with the lighting intensity. In sunlight it was bright gray and dark gray in the shadow.
'Will it be pitch black at night?' Nick wondered to himself.
Of course, he was mostly focused on what the three old freaks were talking about. Besides 'sorry that happened', 'our losses are too great' and similar unimportant nonsense, Nick caught the phrase 'elder council three days later'.
He had heard everything he wanted and turned to leave. When passing the grand elder, he said, "Not a bad mount you will have there, that is in case you did not break its wings."
The grand elder was still upset after seeing that elder Jan has lost his arm, "Nothing is broken, it's just paralyzed now."
Nick returned to his room, took bath, ate and slept early. Today were formed some new alterations and additions to his plan.
The next morning after the usual procedures he went out to the balcony again. The grand elder was surprised to find out that the Primeval demon had a new hobby. He had taken a stack of papers, a big bowl of ink and a pen. Belial sat close to the cage and was drawing the eagle that was still passed out in the cage, eyes closed, his beak under the wing. One could think it was dead if not for the subtle breaths.
No person is free from curiosity and even the grand elder was keen to know how do the drawings done by Primeval demon Belial look like, but he, possibly, was never so shocked before. The pictures were incredibly … ugly. The grand elder was 283 years old, but in life he had never seen anyone so talentless in drawing!
Nick couldn't be bothered with an insignificant detail like that. Of course, he knew he wasn't an artist – during his years he only did sports and learned languages. He never knew how to draw and sing, not to mention how to play any musical instruments. Thus he sat there without caring about the world, while humming and drawing.
The grand elder looked at the weird sight, shook his head and went back. Nick continued to draw for two days, carefully monitoring the bird. The pile of ugly bird pictures was already half of his height.
In the afternoon of the second day he saw eagle's eye opening a little.
"Don't let them know you woke up. Shut your eye!" He whispered and continued to draw.
The bird's eyelid trembled and, after a second, closed.
Nick inwardly had a sigh of relief.
"So you can understand me, good. After a moment I will start throwing small pebbles at you. Every third will be a beast core. I will try to throw those as close to your wing as possible – you just hide them for now and eat in the dark. Also, no matter what happens, don't show you have woken up."
Nick drew few more pictures, then picked a small stone, threw at the bird and yelled, "Wake up, you idiot! I have been waiting for two days to draw you!"
Then he took another small stone and threw, but missed this time.
"Aren't you supposed to be a very strong and proud being? Why are you still lying there like a dead chicken?" He threw next 'stone' so close to the bird that it rolled under it's wing.
The shadow eagle was a rank six existence. If he couldn't tell when a beast core was at his beak, he would really be no better than a dead chicken. Eagle opened his eye a little bit, a thin line showed his black eyeball.
"Open your eyes for me!" Nick didn't stand in ceremony and threw another pebble right above eagle's eye. It immediately shut and remained like that for the rest of the day. As an intelligent being he had already understood that this weird brown kid was trying to help him out.
Nick continued cursing the eagle and throwing pebbles for a while, but then it seemed he got bored or may be tired, went towards the cage, kicked it with a shout 'stupid chicken!' and left. Only the eagle heard him whisper 'I'll find a way!'
Nick made a bet that the eagle had a better hearing than humans, even the Qi masters. His whispers where so soft that even he himself barely heard them. But the bet payed off, at least for now.
The next morning Nick read a book, then brewed some mixtures at the alchemy table. Then pretended to be bored and with words 'you will wake up for me today!' went out. The grand elder didn't really pay much attention to him, he was still going through stacks of documents regarding the last expedition, lists of lost apprentices and deputy elders, the purchases elder Ernest had made, reports on progress of different departments etc. It was a tedious job for the grand elder, but someone had to see the whole picture, make decisions and plan for the future. In addition, later today was the elder council and they had a lot to discuss.
Nick exercised a bit, while watching the eagle. Then threw some pebbles at it. Then cursed, then threw some more. Afterwards demon seemed to be bored and went to elder Jan's alchemy department to fool around with the girls.
In the evening Nick 'disabled' Elsa early and waited at his door for the elder council to start. Silently praying, he opened the door, quickly glanced around the great hall and slowly crawled towards the library. Nick knew that this time it will be much more dangerous. It was unlikely elders will dine and drink happily with the losses that the sect suffered.