Night had fell before I finished my mixtures. The rats I had caught a few days ago were restless in their cages. If I had gotten good herbs, they wouldn't be for very long. And I hoped I did get the right ones. I was filthy and tired from my day's work. If it had been all for nothing... Let's just say I wouldn't have been happy. All day, I was out scouring the Chetwood forest for possible poisonous plants, that I could use as a weapon. It was hard work, and I hated having to do it myself. I had to keep my identity secret. If someone were to catch doing my experiments, a lot of questions would arise... and that would be counter-productive.
I finished brewing my concoctions. Each plant had it's own solution in it's own vial. I had written notes about every one of them. The only missing information in the resumes was whether or not they were poisonous or in any other case, useful. I took the first vial and emptied about half of it into a small bowl, which I placed in the first rat's cage. I had purposefully given them only small quantities of water per day, making them very eager to drink. As I thought would happen, the rat quickly started drinking from the mixture. At first, nothing seemed to happen. The creature simply walked back into it's corner and sat. But then, it seemed to me as though it had trouble keeping it's eyes open. Next thing I knew, it had fallen asleep. A soporific drug could always be useful. I went on to the next mixture, and proceeded to do the same thing as with the first rat, though I changed rat, of course. It was impure now, after all. Who knows what reactions could happen between plants. I watched my new test animal drink from it's bowl. Nothing happened to it. It simply went back to doing... whatever it was doing. The same happened with my third, fourth and fifth brews. I was starting to get mad, until I tried the sixth one. A few seconds after it sipped it's concoction, it started to choke, until it finally died. I had my first weapon. I continued my work. Many mixtures were ineffective, one made the rat drunk, another made it paralyzed. I wasn't very satisfied with those ones.
I finally got to my last two. I tried the first one on the animal. It lay down and died. Not bad. I went to my final brew. This one made the rat choke slightly and spit out blood. It seemed to be in great pain. I was delighted, sure it was going to die too, probably in a day or two, if my estimates were correct. It probably destroyed the user's insides. As I wrote down my notes, the other rat suddenly woke up from it's death-state. With a shock, I realized that the mixture didn't kill, but only made it's drinker go into a death-like slumber. When I had checked on the rat earlier, I couldn't even feel it's pulse, and it seemed as if it wasn't breathing. I smiled to myself as I wrote everything down, excited with my new tools. Now, to find a human to test them on...
