“Malaspina, Alzur and Idarran, it has been proved, took small, ordinary creatures to their workshops to create giants from them, like those centipedes, spiders, koshcheys and the devils know what else. What then, they asked, stands in the way of taking an ordinary little man and transforming him into a titan, into somebody stronger, able to work twenty hours a day, who’s unaffected by illness, who can live fully fit to a hundred? It’s known that they wanted to do it. Apparently, they managed to, apparently they were successful. But they took the secret of their hybrids to the grave. Even Ortolan, who has devoted his life to studying their works, has achieved little. Bue and Bang, who dragged you here, have you observed them? They’re hybrids, magical crosses of ogres and trolls. The marksman Pastor? No, in fact he is, so to speak, in the likeness and image, the completely natural result of a cross between a hideous woman and an ugly man. But Bue and Bang, ha, they came straight out of Ortolan’s test tubes. You may ask: why the hell would anyone want such hideous creatures, what the hell would you create something like that for? Ha, I didn’t know that myself until quite recently. Until I saw how they ripped the woodcutters and charcoal burners apart. Bue is capable of wresting someone’s head from their shoulders with one tug, and Bang can tear a child apart like a roast chicken. And if you give them some sharp tools, ha! Then they can achieve a rip-roaring bloodbath. When you ask Ortolan he says that hybridisation is meant to be a way of eliminating hereditary illnesses, and witters on about increasing immunity to infectious diseases, or some such old fogey’s nonsense. I know better! And you do too. Specimens like Bue and Bang, and the thing you tore Idarran’s plate off, are only fit for one thing: killing. And that’s good, because what I needed were killing tools. I wasn’t certain about my own skills and capabilities in that regard. Unjustly, as a matter of fact, as it later transpired.

“But the sorcerers of Rissberg go on cross-breeding, mutating and genetically modifying, from dawn to dusk. And they’ve had numerous successes, they’ve produced so many hybrids it takes your breath away. They think all of them are useful, meant to make people’s lives easier and more pleasant. Indeed, they’re one step away from creating a woman with a perfectly flat back, so you can fuck her from behind and have somewhere to put a glass of champagne and play solitaire at the same time.

“But let’s return ad rem, that is, to my scientific career. Not having any tangible successes to boast of, I had to create semblances of those successes. It was easy.