Baruk's business was more or less settled.
Regulus glanced up and found Aragog waiting at a distance, not daring to come closer, all eight eyes fixed on Baruk.
He beckoned.
Aragog clicked a few times at Mosag first. The female had little intelligence and understood almost nothing, but she knew her mate's meaning.
Bewildered, Mosag turned, dragging her swollen abdomen across the webbing, and hauled herself back toward the burrow.
Only then did Aragog approach, edging nearer, its clustered eyes sweeping back and forth across the white points ringing Baruk's own.
It pressed in further, chelicerae parting slightly, brushing along Baruk's body, head lowered to take in the smell.
Changed again.
Not the way it had changed last time. Aragog couldn't read it, but it knew this child of his was different once more.
Its main eyes found Regulus while the rest kept scanning Baruk, unwilling to give up, sweeping and sweeping and turning up nothing.
An idea took hold.
This wizard had worked on Baruk twice. First it stopped fearing fire. Now it had gained something else. Talking to trees?
It wanted that too.
"You said," Aragog rasped, hesitant, "that I could make one request."
Every eye it had turned on Regulus. "Make me like Baruk."
Regulus regarded it, calm.
Then he turned his head and threw Hermes a look.
Hermes happened to glance up at the same moment, and their eyes met.
He dropped his gaze, caught out.
He'd said the same thing minutes ago. Nearly the same tone, even.
What the spider wanted and what he wanted were the same.
He and a spider, asking the same person for the same favor.
Regulus looked away and back to Aragog, offhand. "You're sure you want to spend it on this?"
Aragog faltered. It began to think.
One pair of eyes held hesitation, one held greed, one held calculation.
At first it had only judged this wizard whelp as something not to provoke. He set fires. Better to endure and give ground.
Then it had watched Baruk transformed and understood the wizard did more than burn things. He held methods that could rewrite the foundations of an entire species.
Fear of fire had been carved into Acromantulas from the moment they cracked their shells. He'd erased it.
Now the ability to speak with trees, another thing no other Acromantula possessed.
Which meant what this wizard could give ran far beyond what it had first assumed.
But Baruk was no longer only its offspring. Baruk was the wizard's spider now.
It had nothing to trade. Nothing but that outstanding request.
That request was its only chip, and only worth anything if the wizard honored the debt.
Fortunately he did honor it. No sign he meant to weasel out.
And precisely because he honored it, spending it carelessly would be foolish.
Take the same treatment for itself? Could it bear to?
It had watched both abilities take root. It wanted both.
But every time, what the wizard gave Baruk was something new.
First fire. Then trees. What would the third be?
Trading its one request for something already seen, when what came later might be better, stronger?
Then it would have lost out.
It was a thinking spider. It never lost out.
"...No." Its chelicerae folded shut, the light in its eyes dimming. "I'll hold on to it."
But it wasn't finished. It had another angle.
"Let it leave offspring." The lesser eyes flicked toward Baruk, the main pair staying on Regulus. "It and the females of the colony."
Then, after a pause: "Will its offspring be like it?"
Something stirred in Regulus.
A decent line of thought. He wanted to know that himself, whether Baruk's descendants would carry the magical traits it now bore.
Magical creatures bred no differently from ordinary ones. Spiders produced spiders, not birds, and magic passed down bloodlines like everything else.
But Baruk wasn't a natural product anymore, though Acromantulas as a species had never been natural to begin with.
Whether an artificially modified organism would pass on its modified traits, nobody could say.
And even if it would, the timing was wrong.
If Baruk was to have offspring, that came after it was complete. Breed now and you got half-finished work.
"It's my spider." Regulus spoke without hurry.
Baruk crouched beside him, eight legs braced, head tilted slightly up, chelicerae clacking twice.
"Breeding's possible. But every mating has a price." He looked at Aragog. "What are you offering?"
Aragog went blank, the light in its clustered eyes scattering into confusion.
You control even this?
Mating and breeding were the order of things. Spiders bore spiders, and those spiders bore more, generation after generation.
Baruk was an adult male, a healthy specimen. Mating with the colony's females and leaving offspring was the most natural sequence imaginable. It was owed its own brood.
Arranging females for its own child, and now there was a price to negotiate?
Were all wizards this unreasonable?
Power meant you could forbid a spider to mate?
Do you not mate yourself?
It wanted to argue. It knew arguing was useless.
A wizard who could put a price on mating would hardly care what a spider had to say.
The light in those eyes went from confusion to collapse, from collapse to grievance, from grievance to resentment, and finally withdrew altogether, leaving nothing but a suffocated frustration it couldn't voice.
It forced out a sentence. "...What can I give you."
Regulus was quietly amused. He kept it light, not pressing. "Think about it. Come back when you've decided."
Go on. If you can work out what I want, I'll thank you for it.
Aragog fell silent, all its eyes resting on Regulus's face for a long moment before drawing back as it sank into thought.
Regulus spared Hermes another glance.
Hermes: a wizard who wanted to be modified rather than learn.
Aragog: a spider that wanted power handed to it, refused to spend its request, and then tried to get breeding rights for free.
One came from animal instinct. Forgivable, and limited.
The other came from human laziness. That was the part that didn't sit right.
He stopped looking at either of them.
Crouching, he laid a hand on Baruk's dorsal plate and pushed his magical senses in.
The new module had anchored firmly. Pale blue-white magic already flowed from the graft point into the root of the visual branch system, joined up with Baruk's original Magic Circuit.
Integration posed no problems. Bowtruckle magic and verdant magic shared a source, so rejection had been slight from the start, and once verdant magic bridged them as a translator, the two had barely quarreled at all.
Connection wasn't competence, though. The window faced outward and stood open. Baruk could dimly sense green things now, but the trees didn't like spiders.
That was nature's own verdict, and no single graft would undo it.
If Baruk wanted to speak with trees, wanted to root itself in the ecology of the Forbidden Forest, magic alone wouldn't do. The trees had to genuinely know it, accept it.
That couldn't be rushed. It would have to stay and grind away at it.
Which suited him. The spider needed time for the new module to knit anyway.
"You're staying." He withdrew his hand and patted the carapace. "Go visit those trees every day. Let them get to know you. Let them learn you're a good spider."
Baruk stiffened, all eight amber eyes swinging to him.
A foreleg came up and hooked the hem of his robe, tugging gently, no force in it. The white glow around its eyes dimmed, wilting along with its mood.
The coarse voice came out urgent. "...Regulus... not want spider?"
Regulus smiled and stepped closer to the great head. "I'll come see you every day."
From the castle to the edge of the forest: Disillusionment Charm for cover, Flight Spell straight over, a few minutes to the treeline, then Apparition the rest of the way. Ten minutes for a round trip.
No effort, no lost time.
Baruk swayed its head, foreleg still hooked in the robe, and started to haggle. "...Twice... every day."
"Fine. Twice."
The leg released and drew back. The spider turned to Hermes. "Little spider."
Hermes raised an eyebrow, checked that Regulus wasn't watching, and stepped up with a hand out to pat the huge head.
Baruk jerked its head upward, dodging, chelicerae snapping open with a clack that pulled his eyes to them.
The other foreleg shot out low and fast, hugging the ground, and hooked the back of his knee.
Hermes landed flat on his back in the leaf litter, robes plastered with shredded leaves.
Baruk retracted the leg and stared down at him, eight amber eyes gleaming, chelicerae opening and closing twice in a smug rattle. "...Little spider."
Sitting in the rot, Hermes looked up at two meters of giant spider and wanted one more than ever.
Something that pushy and that capable. Who wouldn't want one?
He got to his feet and brushed the dead leaves off. The corner of his mouth twitched up and flattened again fast.
He felt he ought to say something. After a long struggle, all he produced was, "Impressive."
Baruk's chelicerae spread wider, head tossing up, another string of clicks rattling out. Thoroughly pleased with itself.
Regulus turned to Aragog. "I'll be here daily."
A statement, nothing more. No threat in it whatsoever.
Yet Aragog's reaction came out strange, eyes rolling, a long pause before it managed, "Understood."
It had been nursing a small scheme: wait for the wizard to leave, then get Baruk alone.
Ask about the white points around its eyes. Ask how the fire trick had been done. There were ways to draw it out.
With the wizard coming daily, that would have to wait.
"Let's go." Regulus waved at Baruk and turned toward the rim of the hollow.
Hermes followed.
Baruk couldn't let go. It trailed after them, eight legs dragging, watching for Regulus to look back.
Regulus looked back and waved again.
A long burst of clicking answered, bouncing between the trees.
Legs braced against the ground, the spider watched his back recede, took a few more steps after him, and stopped.
Regulus put a hand on Hermes's shoulder. A crack, and they were gone.
At the forest's edge, the morning light had turned to noon, falling straight down and setting the dry yellow grass ablaze.
The mist over the Black Lake had burned off entirely. Sunlight scattered across the water in bright ripples, and a few young witches and wizards were already chasing each other along the shore, laughter and shouting carrying over half a lawn.
They stepped clear of the trees into open sky.
The castle spread out beneath it, windows throwing back the light.
Regulus and Hermes walked one ahead of the other through the warm glare, toward the castle.
Near the main doors, Regulus tossed off a remark. "Don't mention that we were out here today."
Hermes nodded.
He always complied with that sort of instruction. He nodded, and his brow stayed faintly knit.
He was still turning the question over.
He and a spider, asking the same person for the same thing.
So what made him different from a spider?