Regulus didn't shine the light again. Baruk froze, all eight eyes locked on him, forelegs lifting, dropping, tapping, dropping.
The corner of his mouth twitched. "You want the real thing?"
Baruk was quiet for a moment. His chelicerae opened and closed several times, producing faint clicks. "Yes."
"Last time... the feeling... it faded..." Something unnameable threaded through his voice. "Father Aragog... stronger than me... I didn't... change..."
"You know last time was fake?"
"Know." Baruk's foreleg tapped the ground once. "Want... real... not... fake..."
Regulus studied him.
A spider, injected with a temporary dose of arrogance via Light Source Magic, had developed ambition.
The logic was absurd. But it held.
He thought for a moment. "Show me what you can do. Everything. Full range."
Baruk backed up several paces, then all eight legs fired at once, launching him off the rock. His body shot forward, fast enough to drag an afterimage through the mist.
He sprinted back, raised his chelicerae, clamped them around a boulder beside him. The stone was half his body size. The chelicerae bit into its edge, squeezed, and it crumbled into chunks.
He retracted his chelicerae. A strand of silk shot from his spinnerets, straight as a wire, forty meters to a tree trunk. It stuck. He reeled himself in and launched, slingshot-fast, landing and turning back to look at Regulus.
He waved his chelicerae, snapped them open and shut twice, not caring whether Regulus understood, then bolted toward the nest and vanished through the entrance.
Regulus waited a few minutes.
Baruk dragged a deer out of the nest. Not a large one. Its front legs were still kicking. Not quite dead.
He hauled it to the rock, released his chelicerae, and stepped back.
The deer thrashed once on the ground, front hooves scraping twice, unable to stand.
Baruk moved in, mandibles opening wide, and bit down on a hind leg.
The instant venom entered, the deer's body locked. Muscle control collapsed in a wave, spreading from the hind legs forward. The front hooves scraped once more, stopped halfway through the motion, and the whole body went slack. Eyes still open, but the pupils had blown.
Regulus watched. From bite to death, under a second.
He gave a slight nod. "Not bad."
Speed, raw strength, silk range. For an Acromantula of his age and size, Baruk was strong. The spider's baseline quality was solid.
The venom was excellent. Fast injection, fast onset. But the delivery method was primitive. Bite or nothing.
That was about it.
Regulus looked at him with growing interest.
Baruk was a ready-made test subject, and a willing one. That made him exponentially more valuable than anything coerced.
The next phase of Light Source Magic required observing long-term effects. He needed a subject capable of sustained experimentation who could also provide clear feedback on internal changes.
Baruk also enjoyed being experimented on.
Intelligent creatures generally didn't appreciate someone tinkering with their minds. This one did.
And there was something else that interested him even more.
If Baruk could grow powerful enough to break through the racial ceiling of the Acromantula species, what would he become?
Acromantula had an iron-strong pack mentality, an instinctive obedience to their leader. If Baruk grew strong enough, would he challenge Aragog?
A spider-scale coup?
But before any of that, he needed to see clearly.
"Hold still," Regulus said.
Baruk clicked once, drew his forelegs in, fixed all eight eyes on Regulus, and went motionless.
Regulus threaded his magical perception inward, following the pathways of Baruk's magic, disassembling the Acromantula's magical structure inside his mind and laying it flat.
He stayed inside for a while, and arrived at a verdict.
The Acromantula magical structure was closed. Crude on the whole, primitive, the circuits narrow. Magic left the core, circulated through the body, and by the time it returned to the core, most of it had bled away. Low efficiency.
This was a racial constraint, hardwired at birth. Every Acromantula came into the world with the same architecture.
But hardwired didn't mean untouchable.
Regulus withdrew his perception and sank into thought.
He thought of the Decomposition Curse.
At its core, the curse returned matter to a malleable state. Its underlying logic was to loosen what had already solidified, to make structural units available for rearrangement.
Could that logic be reversed?
Take a sealed magical system, crack it open, hold it in a state where reconfiguration was possible, then introduce a new organizational pattern during that window.
One problem. Every time he'd used the Decomposition Curse before, the target had been a living organism, and the purpose had been lethal. Total structural breakdown. No finesse required, no boundaries to set. Fire and forget.
What he needed now was something else entirely. Partial loosening. Non-lethal. Maintaining structural integrity through the chaos window while guiding reconstruction.
The magical control that demanded was beyond what he could guarantee. He'd need time.
He set that problem aside and moved to the next one. Even if Baruk's magical structure were loosened, letting it reassemble on its own would almost certainly return it to its original configuration. Racial instinct would drive the magic back to its most familiar equilibrium.
For real change, the direction of reassembly had to be different.
He thought of Verdant Magic.
The Forbidden Forest was saturated with magic. Natural energy permeated the soil, the air, every plant and stone. Ownerless magic. The environment's own.
If he could guide that natural magic into Baruk's system during the window of malleability...
Let Baruk's magical structure incorporate external energy as it reassembled, forming an open interface to the outside...
After reconstruction, his magical reserves would still be his own, but the circuits would be wider. Efficiency higher. And he'd gain a permanent channel drawing power from the forest itself. A fundamentally different ceiling.
The direction worked in theory. But tonight was too soon.
Reversing the Decomposition Curse on a living creature's magical structure... how to calibrate the force, how to define the boundaries of what loosened and what held... he needed to work all of that out first.
How long the window lasted, how to channel natural magic into it during that span... without answering those questions, touching Baruk meant killing Baruk.
He'd come back when he was ready.
Baruk still stood in place. Hadn't moved. Eight eyes on him.
"I have an approach," Regulus said, looking back at him. "But I need to go prepare. Nothing happens tonight."
Baruk's foreleg extended, then pulled back. "When..."
"Soon." Regulus patted one of his forelegs. "Don't tell the other spiders."
Baruk's chelicerae clicked once. "Won't tell."
A pause. The chelicerae shifted slightly. "Father Aragog... tell him?"
"Your call."
Baruk didn't ask again. One short click.
Regulus nodded. "I'm off."
Baruk followed him to the edge of the hollow and stopped at the base of the steep slope, letting out a string of clicks, the rhythm slow, each note sinking at the end.
Regulus climbed the slope, glanced back from the top, raised a hand in a wave, and Apparated away.
---
Regulus landed in the pumpkin patch beside Hagrid's hut. The light in the Headmaster's office had gone out. The castle sat dark except for a few tower windows.
He cast the Flight Spell, rose into the air, and drifted toward the tower.
Back in the dormitory, a quick wash, curtains drawn, and he lay down.
Eyes closed. His mind still turning over everything from tonight.
Helping Baruk grow stronger had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse, but thinking about it now, if he could pull it off, the significance went far beyond one spider.
What mattered was the method. Reversing the Decomposition Curse. Cracking open a sealed magical structure, letting it absorb external forces during reassembly, letting it grow into something new.
If the method worked, it wouldn't only apply to spiders or other magical creatures.
Could it work on wizards?
---
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