These habits continued into school, but gained a malicious twist. Artak and Wanwier would steal items from their teachers and hide them on their enemies who would then be expelled. One day Wanwier was caught stealing and was expelled. When he told his parents, his mother began to whip him with thick horse-whip. The boys’ hen-pecked but kindly father, unable to bear his sons yells, tried to stop his wife’s beating. Something snapped in the twins’ mother, and she grabbed a wood-axe, swung and lodged it deep in her husband’s chest.

Young Artak, beside himself with grief and anger, jumped onto the table and kicked his mother in the neck, killing her. The scared and grief-stricken twins took what they could carry and fled together into the forest.

They lived a harsh life for three years, but became experts on the wildlife around them. Already good at stealing, they became stealthy as well. Artak’s brother specialised in stealing and using brute force to kill, while Artak preferred brewing potions and killing his prey indirectly.

Artak’s first encounter with poison was when his big toe was bitten by a snake. The young herbalist was ill for two weeks. Examining the remains of the snake that had bitten him (which Wanwier had killed) Artak realised that if he were to kill a snake and take its venom, he could inject it into other living creatures. He studied this idea for many months, carefully examining every snake he encountered. After a run-in with a bright yellow toadstool, Atrak discovered that the snake venom had vegetable analogs.

It was three years after the snake bite that Artak first successfully injected poison into a mobile target. His victim was a wild pig, which died in just three minutes. Artak’s main lesson from the pig was learnt after weeks of nausea following a large helping of poisoned pork chops.

Another of Artak’s passions was jumping, encourage by many hours spent watching baboons jump from tree to tree. Artak always did aim high and on his sixteenth birthday he decided to try to jump eight feet across a river. It was no wonder that he broke both legs. If the water had been any deeper, Artak might not be alive.

At the age of seventeen, Artak became split up from Wanwier. On a rare journey to the village of Benturu, the unsuspecting boys were attacked by a vicious tramp. He grabbed Wanwier, but Artak managed to escape. After recovering from wounds suffered in the tramps attach, Artak took up his dagger and some of his strongest poison and sought the terrible tramp. He found Wanwier in a cave, untied him and told him to flee. Artak then took Wanwier’s position and with his poisoned dagger behind his back, pretended to be his twin. When the tramp came back, Artak stabbed him in the stomach.

To show his first human victim, Artak left his symbol on the wall of the cave. It is a back-to-front "S" shape symbolising a snake and it has an arrow in its mouth symbolising the use of poison.