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In the Forbidden Forest, the place Sargeras pointed to was where the stench of miasma grew thickest, and where the webs hung in such dense layers that they formed a suffocating curtain. From within that choking gloom, a massive bulge could just be made out, its shape looming like some unnatural growth. Twisted together from earth, rotting branches, and thick, rope-like strands of spider silk, it rose up into a grotesque mound, the entrance to a nest that resembled a monstrous tumor squatting in the dark.
The air itself carried eerie noises. There was a harsh, grating hiss like leather rubbing against leather, and mingled with it came the slow, deliberate drip of some viscous liquid, falling one drop at a time. Tap… tap… tap… Each sound echoed faintly, heavy with menace.
Suddenly, less than ten paces to his left, from behind the swollen trunks of a giant cluster of fungi, several pairs of ghostly green lights appeared. They had been drifting forward at a steady, almost hypnotic pace, but now, all at once, they froze in place. Then, as though commanded by a single thought, every one of those gleaming eyes swiveled toward where the intruders stood.
Sargeras slowly raised his wand. Without a word, a Severing Charm sliced through the air. In an instant, the wall of webbing ahead was ripped apart, torn to shreds along with several small spiders that had just begun to crawl through.
A spray of foul-smelling ichor splattered across the ground. Limbs as black as chitinous knives were severed and flung aside.
Kestrel's heart pounded so violently she thought it might burst from her chest. From the darkness to her right, a shadow the size of a carriage surged forward with terrifying speed.
She reacted on instinct, flinging out a Full Body-Bind Curse. The arc of magic struck its target, and the enormous spider released a piercing screech. Its eight long legs faltered, movements turning clumsy and sluggish, before its weight crashed down onto the damp, slippery earth.
"Do not waste your effort on the ones that flee," Sargeras said calmly. Without even glancing back, he flicked his wand with casual precision. A crimson bolt lanced out, striking the creature in the head just as it gathered itself to leap again. "But if any of them dare to lunge at us, kill them where they stand."
The words had scarcely left his lips when the shriek was cut off. The massive body collapsed inward, dissolving almost instantly into a rancid pool of stinking liquid that steamed faintly in the chill air.
"There are too many of them," Sargeras continued, his tone steady, untroubled. "And in the Forbidden Forest, they have no natural enemies. Here, they're no different from an invasive species."
The two women with him did not fully understand what he meant by invasive species, but the swarming tide of spiders pressing in on all sides gave them an immediate, visceral sense of what such words implied. The phrase needed no further explanation.
The path into the nest was transformed into a road paved with death, a trail marked in blood and broken limbs.
Nightingale advanced like the deadliest of assassins, each strike swift and precise. She unleashed Severing Charms, Blasting Curses, and waves of frost magic in seamless succession. Every giant spider that dared to surge forward met the same fate, either carved apart where it stood or hurled back, its broken body smashing against the cavern walls with bone-splintering force.
Even in the heat of combat, she never forgot her purpose. With practiced efficiency, she wove magic to harvest the venom sacs from the massive spider corpses, storing away their deadly value even as the battle raged around her.
At the same time, any threat lunging from the flanks or creeping up from behind, whether it was the strike of enormous venomous fangs or the spray of corrosive poison, was instantly deflected. Kestrel's wards flared into being again and again, invisible shields intercepting each assault and casting it harmlessly aside.
To her own astonishment, she found her body reacting faster than her thoughts. The moment danger approached, her magic surged forward almost on instinct, as though her nerves and muscles had learned to respond before her mind had even caught up.
Sargeras, meanwhile, moved through the battle like a dark master of death itself. The shadows seemed to answer his will, and spiders collapsed before ever reaching him, their hulking forms falling lifeless without a cry. He avoided fire magic, however, restraining its destructive power so as not to damage the venom sacs that Nightingale was so intent on gathering.
The three of them fought without waste, not a single motion unnecessary. Together they advanced like cold, relentless reapers, every step leaving the ground behind them littered with ruin. Very soon the path was carpeted with sticky webs torn apart, fragments of shattered exoskeleton, splashes of foul green ichor, and glistening chunks of viscera.
The sweet, moldy stench of decay that had once lingered in the cave was completely drowned beneath the heavy reek of blood and the acrid tang of scorched flesh.
From every direction rose the cries of the Acromantulas: shrieks of rage, wails of terror, keening howls that clawed at the ears. Together they merged into a deafening dirge, a dreadful symphony of death that made the scalp prickle and the skin crawl.
Yet the three moved as one, their coordination flawless, their advance unstoppable. With sheer force of will and blade-sharp spells, they carved a road straight through the swarming mass, driving deeper into the nest and forcing their way to its hidden heart.
When they finally burst through the last curtain of webbing, the sight that opened before them made all three raise their brows in grim surprise.
The cavern beyond was vast, far larger than any natural hollow. It felt as if the belly of a mountain had been hollowed out. The walls and vaulted ceiling were blanketed in layer upon layer of spider silk, packed so thick it formed a white, glistening shroud, like some grotesque carpet woven from sticky threads.
But it was not the webs that sent a chill crawling up their spines…
It was the ground!
Piles upon piles of bones lay heaped in mountains!
Human skulls with hollow sockets stared upward from the mass, their silence more chilling than any scream. Shattered ribs jutted out like broken spears. The thick, heavy bones of horses lay in twisted tangles, and countless animal carcasses, too mangled to even recognize, were strewn about as though discarded like refuse. All of it was half-buried beneath matted spider silk and layers of grime, as if the forest itself tried to smother the horror, only to make it all the more grotesque.
Some carcasses were still fresh. On several skeletons clung scraps of torn leather, darkened with age and stinking of rot.
Kestrel's stomach lurched at the sight. A wave of nausea surged up her throat, so strong she nearly doubled over. Her face turned deathly pale as she tore her gaze away, unable to endure even a second longer. Nightingale's eyes, however, remained cold. She swept her gaze over the heaps, lingering briefly on several skeletal remains that unmistakably belonged to centaur warriors.
And at the very heart of this mountain of bones lay something even more grotesque.
A cocoon, swollen to many times the size of the others, loomed in the center like a monstrous hill of pale silk. Its vast body quivered faintly with a steady, sickening pulse, as though something alive breathed within. A suffocating pressure radiated outward in heavy waves, filling the chamber with an almost unbearable weight.
Around the cocoon sprawled the corpses of several massive spiders, old and weathered, their limbs twisted and broken in death. They had once stood as vigilant guardians, but only moments ago they had been cut down in an instant by the combined power of Sargeras and Nightingale's spells, their sacrifice proving utterly futile.
Sargeras lifted his wand, its tip glowing with a dangerous red light, the aura of destruction gathering thick and sharp. He aimed it straight at the cocoon.
"Wait! Wizard! Do not… harm…"
A voice rasped out from within. Hoarse, ancient, and soaked with fear, it carried a weight of exhaustion, like the last remnants of breath squeezed from failing lungs.
The sudden intrusion of human speech struck like lightning. Kestrel nearly leapt into the air, her nerves jolting in shock. Nightingale's wand snapped up instantly, aimed at the source of the voice, her eyes flashing with disbelief.
A talking Acromantula?! It shattered everything they knew of magical creatures. The laws of Magizoology themselves seemed overturned in that instant.
The flow of Sargeras's magic faltered, if only slightly. Yet the crimson glow at his wand's tip did not fade. His gaze remained fixed on the cocoon, cold and merciless.
"Show me your head," he said, his voice low, "or I'll blow you and your grave into pieces."
The cocoon writhed violently, the surface trembling as strands of webbing were torn apart with difficulty.
First came a pair of grotesque mandibles, enormous beyond belief, covered in gray bristles and scarred with jagged lines. They scraped free, twitching and quivering in the stale air. Then, slowly, a head emerged, bloated and monstrous, its bulk rivaling that of a decrepit truck.
The spider's cluster of eyes was clouded, no longer gleaming with the brilliance of life. Instead, each of its eight eyes lay veiled in a milky haze, dull and heavy with the weight of age. Its carapace was etched with the scars of years long gone, pitted and dented with the remnants of countless battles.
This was the sovereign of the nest: Aragog.
The monstrous body dragged itself forward, creeping out of the cocoon with agonizing slowness. Each step drained what little strength it had left, every movement burdened by the relentless toll of age.
Its ancient carapace groaned under the strain, rasping like stone grinding against stone. All eight legs quivered as they strained to bear the weight of its swollen, decaying bulk, trembling with every labored step into the open.
At last, when it fully emerged into the wandlight, the truth of its decline could no longer be denied. The once-mighty spider now carried a body fractured with cracks across its shell, its bristling hairs long since shed. Even its deadliest weapons, the venomous fangs that had once killed with a single strike, were dulled, their lethal edge lost to age.
The giant spider shuddered, its eyes flickering to the wand-tip of Sargeras, where destructive red light pulsed with the promise of death. Its gaze then wandered over the torn bodies of its fallen guards, over the mountains of bones heaped throughout the cavern. At last, its clouded sight settled on Sargeras himself.
In those eyes, the terror was so stark, that even Kestrel felt a chill of discomfort creep through her.
"Mighty wizard…" Aragog's voice rasped out, brittle as dry leaves scraping together. Every word was strained by the weight of breath, "please… spare me."
Its abdomen convulsed with effort, the swollen venom sac at its rear quivering into view. A faint, sickly gleam pulsed on its surface. "I know… why you have come. Venom… I can… give it to you. Only… let me live. Spare me… and… what remains of my offspring."
Its pleading eyes wandered toward the cavern's edges, where faint glimmers of emerald light flickered in the darkness. Pairs of small, trembling eyes watched from the safety of the shadows.
"It can talk?" For the first time, Nightingale's voice wavered, her composure cracking as she clenched her wand more tightly. "That's impossible. A XXXXX-class magical creature, untrainable, untamable… it should never be capable of human speech!"
Aragog let out a sound that was part hiss, part bitter laughter, like air leaking from a broken bellows. "Yes… yes, young witch. Normally… impossible. But I… am not like the rest. I am… Aragog. I was raised… nurtured. By a boy… a half-giant. In… a castle called Hogwarts… within the warmth… of a cupboard."
"Hagrid?" Kestrel blurted, the name escaping her before she could stop herself. At once, the image filled her mind of that broad, smiling face, the man whose unusual enthusiasm for dangerous beasts had always seemed both endearing and reckless.
Aragog's massive head trembled faintly, and within those clouded eyes flickered the ghost of something difficult to define, a fragile glimmer of memory. "Rubeus Hagrid… my friend. He gave me a name, gave me warm food… and taught me the language of your kind. He… trusted me, even when I was driven out, cast into this… forest."
The great spider's voice carried the weight of age and exile, steeped in a desolate longing. It was the sound of a creature who had once known warmth, but had long since been abandoned to a cold and merciless world.
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[Chapter End's]
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