“We cannot take that anywhere!” Harathes yelled at him. “The spider we could have stuck in a crate, in a cage. That thing looks like a demon. What sort of a—!”

“Harathes!” Dion silenced him with a gesture. “Penthos, listen to me, can your magic, your Power Elemental, not bring the thing that one step closer to human?”

The wizard’s furious expression sagged. “You too?” he asked her. “When I have done this vast act of magic for you, only at your behest?”

“We all know you have done this at least in part because it amused you to make the attempt,” Dion told him firmly. “So tell me, can you… refine this magic you have made?”

Penthos spluttered. “It is done. It is irreversible. I, Penthos, set my seal on this. Just… buy it a hat or something.”

“It’s stopped screaming,” Lief observed, into the appalled silence that followed the mage’s remark.

They turned to see the thing in the circle observing them. Its lips were moving again, as though imitating their own speech. Their twitching, flabby progress, every minute on the verge of slicing themselves open against the creature’s fangs, exerted a horrifying fascination.

Then the sounds began: choking sounds, yowls like a dying cat, spitting, guttural croaks, each one closer to something that might be called speech, until it slobbered and grunted out a recognizable phrase: “What—what have—what have you done—done to me?”

Penthos crowed with delight, argument forgotten. “And speech as well! I admit I was not sure the faculty would take. Yes, they communicate among their own kind, but you cannot imagine the differences, in the senses, in the mind, and yet it speaks?”

“What have you done to me?” the thing in the circle demanded, more clearly. Its voice was accentless, strangely resonant, raw from screaming.

“You are reborn,” Penthos told it, “rejoice, therefore.”

They all saw it bunch to spring, but it seemed to be having difficulties with its limbs, awkward as a newborn faun in those early moments after its transformation. Penthos held up a hand, and the creature recoiled as though slapped.

“It may not cross me, nor may it flee,” he declared. “I am its maker, and it is bound to do as I say. And the Light of Armes will compel it, you may be sure. Its base nature is not altered. You will have to resort to threat and punishment if it seeks to cause mischief or returns to its bestial ways or eats someone, but you shall have governance of it. Stand, monster!”