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From the Drakons of the Peninsula, who could tell the future and heal wounds, Strix took venom and blood.

From the half-human Water-Serpent spirits of the world's Southernmost jungle, who could ensnare and consume men's souls, she stole shed pelts.

Haunting the battlegrounds of the Worms, she took their blood as it was spilled, their venom as it was sprayed, their flesh as it was torn apart.

Finally, she filled in the genome of her blended chimera with that of several giant constrictors.

With a most ill-advised séance, the vengeful woman found out that whatever uncanny powers her grand serpent-monster was born with, it would, like all snakes, be born knowing how to use them. How convenient, she thought.

And when it was born, he was great and terrible.

The monster 'stood' only by holding himself up from the length of powerful coils below his waist.

Above it sat a body of Heraclean muscle, and he was covered snout to tail tip in black, gold, and brown-red scales.

Strix had built a spiritual fail-safe into the creature, only to discover - by the creature's own first words - that it had been disabled.

She named him Zeboul, for he was a prince among his own kind.

"Aren't snakes self-governing?"

"It's an idiom."

Those that did not kneel would be conquered.

"Mother, how does a snake kneel?"

"I'm not your mother, Zeboul," Strix had said. "You were born fully formed, you don't need an upbringing."

"All right, okay, but how does a snake kneel?"

"It's an idiom."

So, he was obviously intelligent enough to follow commands, and seemed to do so naturally. In retrospect, rejecting the parent thing might have been a good way of maintaining discipline, but Strix had no idea how to feign maternal emotion and no real wish to. Besides, the creature could smell human emotions very easily.

What followed were tests: what his powers were, and what they did.

The pythonic terror was very strong, and very tough. The numbers of this were irrelevant, save that he well outperformed the best recorded strength of a Herald. He was shot point-blank with a mortar, and suffered nothing more than worry as to why anyone would shoot him with a mortar.

Zeboul's belly was the clincher, though: even on the inside he was invulnerable, and once a human or any organism with a mind was inside him, he could rewrite their emotions and desires to suit him. Any enemy could become a minion.

All was not well, however. The first bad sign was that Zeboul insisted the human test of this brainwashing power be somehow "positive" (whatever that meant). He swallowed a homeless man and cured him of alcoholism. It was creepy.

The second bad omen was that, on explaining the necessity of vengeance upon Lamia, Zeboul interrupted her to ask if he "looked okay", if he had "come out like she wanted".

The final bad sign was when she commanded him to destroy the city, and Zeboul replied, "But then no-one will like me."

So it was that Dr. Strix, after accomplishing a great feat of engineering, quit ultravillainy, and left Garland City for good. (She eventually married a policeman.)

"What?" Zeboul asked, the moment the door closed. The engraved faces of owls stared back at him from the doors. "What...?"

A text came several hours later, informing Zeboul he could keep the money she stole for the experiment (she'd accomplished him well under-budget). He could also sell the lab equipment and remaining samples online for a couple of million.

So he did.