Compared to the Salamander, which had sent Baruk into violent convulsions, this was far gentler.
Bowtruckles were creatures of nature, and their magic carried none of that tyranny. The seed entered politely. Once it slipped into the magic channel, Baruk's native magic merely nudged it aside rather than resisting.
A thin blue-white glow surfaced around the eight eyes, spreading beneath the carapace before settling into a hazy corona that slowly brightened and dimmed.
Regulus kept his hand pressed to the dorsal plate, letting natural magic flow inward.
With the Salamander, Verdant magic had acted as a buffer between two stubborn powers. Here, there was no such conflict. Bowtruckle magic and Verdant magic sprang from the same well, both working through connection and affinity.
Bowtruckle magic flowed through Baruk's visual branch, while Baruk's magic flowed back into the new module. They took to each other almost immediately, with hardly any rejection.
The new module rooted itself in Baruk's magic circuit.
As everything settled, the blue-white shimmer around the eight eyes condensed into tiny white points ringing the amber orbs. Most of the time, it was little more than a faint film, visible only up close.
Regulus withdrew his hand and watched.
The Salamander had been passive. Magic went in, Baruk met the fire, and fire affinity activated on its own. Nothing needed to be learned.
This was different. The magic was connected, but the spider would have to figure out how to use it.
Baruk clearly sensed the addition. It cocked its huge head, eight eyes searching for the unfamiliar presence. It reached, missed, and tried again.
Impatience quickly followed. Its chelicerae clacked twice as all eight legs shifted restlessly on the velvet cushion.
Regulus didn't hurry it.
Instinct came free. New skill had to be drilled. Two different things entirely.
Baruk tried again, closing several eyes, opening them, turning its head toward one direction after another.
On some attempt he'd lost count of, the white points flared. The corona sharpened, pure white light pushing through the carapace to cover all eight amber eyes.
Its body locked. Every leg went still, as though the spider had startled itself with its own light.
Then it froze in place. It had felt something, and that something wasn't in the burrow. It was outside the hollow.
Webs and rock filled the nest. Nothing grew here. To see results, they'd have to go out.
Regulus patted the dorsal plate. "Come on. Let's go test it."
Baruk scrambled up and skittered to the burrow mouth, poking its head out for a look across the hollow. Aragog and the swarm still crouched far out along the rim.
Then it struck out on those long legs for open ground beyond the hollow, Regulus behind it, Hermes trailing after.
He'd watched the whole thing in the burrow. Extraction, replication, rewriting, casting, buffering.
The magical operations meant nothing to him, but he'd seen the outcome. White points around the spider's eyes.
What he wanted now was to know what those points could do.
Outside the hollow, the Forbidden Forest canopy closed overhead and let down not a scrap of light.
An hour, maybe two, since they'd gone into the burrow. Regulus kept a rough count in his head.
He glanced at the surrounding trees and fixed his bearings.
Aragog saw him emerge and started forward, body half-risen. Regulus turned his eyes toward it, and the great spider stopped.
It settled back down, no longer looking his way, all eight eyes tracking Baruk instead, from the lip of the hollow out into the clearing.
It saw the change. Something new ringed its offspring's eyes, faintly white, faintly luminous.
Different from before it went into the burrow. Changed again.
This child of his was different yet again.
Baruk paid Aragog no mind and climbed straight out of the hollow toward the trees further off. Aragog followed.
In the clearing, Baruk halted before an old tree, eight legs sunk into soft leaf-rot, spider head tilted slightly upward.
For the first time, it felt what stood around it, and the shock rooted it in place.
The white points blazed. Pure light rippled outward in ring after ring, vivid against the dark red bristles.
"...talking..."
The words came broken, thick with the wonder of stumbling into a new world.
It went quiet, eight legs motionless, the whole spider leaning its attention toward those trees.
The points brightened further, the halo streaming out from all eight eyes in thin filaments, groping toward everything nearby, reaching to touch.
Every tree in that forest. Roots clasped beneath the soil, branches rubbing in the wind, each one giving off something faint and blurred.
Alive. Standing. Growing upward.
It had never known this forest lived. Never known those silent standing shapes had been murmuring all along.
It listened, rapt, wonder thickening in all eight eyes.
Then the wonder congealed.
Its chelicerae sagged. A foreleg raised halfway stopped in midair and dropped back to the ground.
The head lowered. The white points still burned, but the light no longer pushed outward. It pulled back, folding in.
It had heard something else. The trees around it didn't like it.
"...don't like... spiders."
Baruk turned to Regulus, misery thick in that coarse voice, wilted, chelicerae folded flat against its jaw.
Then it twisted back toward the trees, legs still buried in the leaf litter, unmoving.
Regulus looked at the sulking spider and the corner of his mouth lifted.
The trees didn't like spiders, and why would they? Acromantulas were an invasive species in the Forbidden Forest.
They spun webs and claimed ground, hunted and wrecked, nested between roots, wrapped trunks in silk.
Trees remember longer than anything alive. They knew this thing didn't belong here.
The first time Baruk ever heard the forest it had lived in all its life, it had trotted up eager to say hello, and the first thing it heard back was disgust.
The modification had worked. The effect was even more immediate than he'd hoped.
But connecting the magic only opened a window. Whether the world outside would acknowledge the spider was another matter.
Getting plants to stand with you began with hearing them, even when what they said was get out.
Whether that whole cycle of natural feedback could be verified in Baruk depended on whether this spider could make the forest change its mind.
Baruk, this weighty question rests on you.
He stepped forward and patted the huge head, softening his voice to coax it. "You're different. They don't know you're a good spider yet. Once you get to know each other, they won't dislike you anymore."
Baruk lifted its head, all eight amber eyes turning on him at once, pitiful. "Really?"
Regulus nodded, all conviction. "Really."
"...Baruk... good spider?"
The question tugged his mouth up again. "Good spider."
That did it. Baruk was consoled on the spot.
Its chelicerae spread wide, rattling out a string of clicks, all eight legs bouncing in place as a foreleg shot into the air.
"Baruk... good spider! Regulus... good spider!"
Delighted, it couldn't stop itself from craning back toward those trees, halo brightening, evidently determined to win them over.
Hermes had watched from start to finish.
The result he understood. Regulus had modified Baruk and given it another ability. Straightforward enough.
A spider that first stopped fearing fire, and now grew glowing white points around its eyes and could talk to trees.
One modification, one new thing.
The method, though, was beyond him.
He stared at Baruk now, at the white points flaring again.
Dark red bristles, russet markings at the joints, the scaled keratin plating on the carapace, and now these white points on top of it. Less and less like an Acromantula every day.
The hunger in his eyes was impossible to hide.
Then he turned to Regulus and said it outright. "I want that too."
Regulus looked over, brow creasing slightly.
This technique traced back to Transfiguration: Beyond Form, and the book had been written for people. Every page of it dealt with human transformation. Using it on Baruk was, if anything, using it beneath its purpose.
Hermes was human. A wizard. The muscle Regulus intended to raise. There was nothing wrong in principle with using it on him.
But what the boy had opened his mouth and asked for was to be done to.
Not "Regulus, teach me this." Not "how is this done." Not "I want to learn." Just "I want that too."
That was the whole difference.
Hermes had talent, and his appetite for power was direct. He saw strength and chased it. That was his strength.
But his mind ran only toward becoming stronger, never toward understanding.
Tell him to drill magical control and he drilled it, because Regulus told him to. On his own account he had no interest whatsoever in what magical control actually was.
Tell him to practice Occlumency and he practiced, three steps as instructed, doing exactly what Regulus said, never once asking why.
He obeyed. He executed. He didn't think.
Now, seeing a technique like this, a wizard with any ambition should have wanted one thing: teach me. Learn it and it's yours, to use later, to use on others.
What Hermes wanted was to be modified too.
He wanted the result, not the method.
Baruk was a spider. It could only receive. Hermes wasn't a spider.
And yet he'd opened his mouth and set himself in exactly the same position as one.
Not good enough.
"Do you want to learn," Regulus said, flat and unsparing, "or do you want me to modify you?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned back to Baruk.
Hermes stood there with his brows drawn together.
Learn? Be modified?
What he wanted was to be stronger. Baruk had gotten stronger and he wanted the same. Where was the difference?
He'd asked this way before. Regulus taught what he could teach and ignored what he couldn't, always had.
Why this reaction now?
The answer didn't come to him at once.
But Regulus had dropped the question and walked off.
So he was left to work it out himself.
He'd never liked working things out.
Yet with that question hanging over him, he had no choice.
To learn meant going and learning, going and practicing, the way he practiced Dark Magic. Speak the incantation yourself. Tune the magic yourself. Take the fall yourself when you get it wrong.
To be modified meant someone else did the work while you thought nothing, carried nothing, and lay there waiting for the result.
So Regulus wasn't refusing him?