Penthos tutted. “Magic knows not light or darkness. It is the Power Elemental, that predates any such concerns,” he told her archly, somewhat sabotaged by the smug smirk that always crept onto his face when he was pontificating. “Besides, what need we fear the Dark, when we have you to show us the way to the Light?” For a moment he was trying on a new expression as he looked on her, that was something almost as grotesque as his experimental subject, and that she could not in any way read.

“Well…” She was ashamed of her doubts. A priestess of Armes should just know the right path. Look for the brightest light, her teachers used to say to her. Well, it was night, now, and the forest had been dark, and this battered old clutter of stones was dark, and the spider was very dark indeed, but… but the prophecy was sufficiently unambiguous to show that these horrible creatures were the key to Darvezian’s defeat. And she believed in the prophecy, didn’t she? Or what had it all been for?

“Now, my own focus will be most entirely upon the vast works of magic that I shall enact,” Penthos explained airily. “Moreover, this magic shall not go unnoticed across the world. For miles around those who are sensitive to the powers elemental shall know some great work is afoot. Hedge wizards and wise women shall wake with splitting headaches. Necromancers shall dream ill dreams. Sages and sorcerers shall look anxiously at the stars, or whatever it is those amateurs do when they know they’re outmatched. Moreover, the things of the enemy will take note, and I think it rather likely we shall be disturbed. To you, my companions, I give the task of ensuring that nothing disturbs my all-important concentration.”

Lief, Harathes, and Cyrene looked less than enthusiastic about this, but Dion nodded. “Fear not,” she told the magus. “We will defend you, just do your work.”

By now the increasingly agitated spider had been corralled and herded until it crouched in center of the jumble of stones, and Penthos turned to it. “This is going to hurt,” he told the creature, although Dion suspected it could not understand him. “However, you’ll be paralyzed almost immediately, so… that’s… something.” Penthos, rhetoric stumbling, scowled a little. “Let’s just get to it, shall we?”