Chapter 226: Aragog's Realm
Felix Harp rarely employed a broomstick for travel, but this situation demanded it. He wasn't keen on spending hours wandering the labyrinthine lair of the Acromantulas.
From his pocket, he withdrew a glass vial and inquired of the eight-eyed giant within, "Can you ascertain the direction?"
"You're venturing into the spider's lair?" The eight-eyed giant asked incredulously.
"Yes, broadening my horizons," Felix responded dismissively.
The giant spider had long discerned this wizard's nature. If there were no benefits involved, it would have simply discarded him into the woods and moved on. This new attitude ant only one thing: Felix had intentions concerning the colony of eight-eyed giants.
Though the lair housed over three hundred Acromantulas, the spider remained unsure. It wisely held its tongue. Felix stowed it in his pocket and flew on his broom, guided by the direction indicated by the Centaur he'd encountered earlier. After half an hour's flight, he descended from the broom.
"Now," Felix waved his wand, "I rember marking three of you with sigils earlier. Let
see where you are."
Weeks ago, Felix had ventured deep into the Forbidden Forest to practice the Shrinking Charm, accidentally trespassing into the hunting territory of the Acromantulas. He had been attacked by a group of large spiders, which, as expected, he had taken down. He had even secretly cast tracking spells on so of them...
Felix swiftly sensed the magical marks' direction. He followed a winding path, where the ground beca increasingly littered with stones, tree roots ford gnarled tangles, and sporadic spiderwebs appeared.
"The silk of Acromantulas is non-toxic," Felix remarked, flicking at the spider silk with his fingertip. The adhesive substance on it had dried, feeling like pliable rope.
"Perhaps it can be incorporated into the Bindweed; who knows what effect it might yield," Felix muttered, gathering so of the white spider silk as he went.
Soon, the whistling sound reached his ears, a series of "clattering" that rged into a collective cacophony. Felix turned to see three or four dozen Acromantulas, each the size of a small carriage, surrounding him.
A minute later.
From a ring, Felix retrieved a tall goblet and proceeded to stuff more than thirty shrunken Acromantulas into it.
After a brief contemplation, he pulled out a glass vial from his pocket and released the initial "prisoner," the first eight-eyed giant, into the wild. Following a burst of intense blue light, the creature finally regained its original form.
"There you go, your companions," Felix instructed, holding out the goblet. "Be careful not to crush them."
The eight-eyed giant stared intently at the tightly packed tiny spiders within the goblet's crevices, flanking its left pincer.
"You, you have them..." The eight-eyed giant's excitent led to a dent in the goblet, causing the little spiders inside to scurry around in panic. However, a translucent mbrane covered the goblet's opening, preventing their escape.
"Explaining them individually would be quite troubleso, so let's save ourselves so effort," Felix toyed with his ebony wand. "By the way, I haven't asked for your na yet. Do you all have nas?"
The eight-eyed giant hesitated for a few seconds before gruffly declaring, "Gok, my na is Gok."
"Fascinating. Hagrid had a creature in a cupboard once, a fellow nad Aragog. Any relation?" Felix inquired.
Gok, the eight-eyed giant, reluctantly admitted, "I am his offspring."
It appeared that even magical creatures had family conflicts. Felix refrained from asking questions like "How many siblings are you?" or "What's your relationship with Aragog?"
Deeper into the Forbidden Forest they ventured, and even during the day, the light grew dim. The towering beech trees, over ten ters high, acted as layers of dense veils, effectively shutting out the sunlight.
Felix Harp waved his wand, conjuring a swirling circle of ethereal blue flas to illuminate his surroundings. The ground, carpeted with fallen leaves, started to crawl with spiders of various sizes. They scurried chaotically between exposed tree roots and leaf piles.
"I recall a rather obscure spell, the Arachnid Repellent Charm, I believe?" Engaging most of his focus in his mind's chambers, Felix muttered an incantation and sent forth a burst of red light. The smaller spiders uncontrollably distanced themselves from him, even Gok, the eight-eyed giant, shuffled backward with haste.
"Funny, nearly forgot about you," Felix scratched his head, then canceled the spell. He applied a levitation charm to himself and lightly hovered atop Gok, the eight-eyed giant.
"Let's proceed."
Plucking a hair from Gok's back, Felix transfigured it into a soft cushion and seated himself.
Gok, the eight-eyed giant, expressed reservations but knew protesting was futile. It grumbled, and another idle large pincer produced a rattling sound, as if releasing its inner frustration.
They resud their journey. The number of fallen leaves diminished, while white spider webs beca more prominent. Along the way, nurous Acromantulas discovered them, only to be Shrunk by Felix's spell into tiny spiders, all tucked into the tall goblet.
They arrived at the edge of a spacious, concave clearing. Illuminated by the blue flas, Felix saw hundreds of colossal creatures in the distance. Vaguely discernible, each resembled a small carriage. He dismounted from Gok and jumped down.
In the center of the hollow lay a foggy, semi-spherical spiderweb. Several Acromantulas approached, and one with white fur atop its head addressed Gok, "Gok, you've brought a wizard here. Have you betrayed Aragog?"
In the darkness, more rattling sounds resonated, evoking an eerie atmosphere within the unseen, lightless forest.
"Gok," the one called Gok shouted in anger, "I've never betrayed Aragog, not once!" Raising a large pincer, it bellowed towards the center of the clearing, "Aragog, Aragog!"
Erging slowly from the mist-shrouded, semi-spherical spiderweb was a spider roughly the size of an African elephant. Its body and legs were a mix of black and gray, and each eye on its grotesque head was veiled by a milky film. It was blind.
"What's going on?" It said, and its two large pincers clattered restlessly.
"Gok returned," the big spider with white fur on its head replied, "and he brought a wizard."
"Who? Hagrid?" Aragog drew nearer, its eight milky-white eyes scanning aimlessly.
"No, a stranger wizard."
"Kill him, I'm trying to sleep..." Aragog grumbled irritably.
"Oh, I think not. I have a hostage," Felix chirped rrily.
"Hostage..." Aragog seed puzzled. It stared at Felix's direction, and its dark gray pincers twitched. "Gok, what have you done?"
Gok, the eight-eyed giant, blurted out in a rough voice, "Old geezer, have you completely lost your mind? This wizard claims to have hostages in that goblet!" It continued with a touch of exasperation, "And they are our kin—more than a hundred of them, all shrunk down!"
Aragog fell silent for a prolonged mont. Just as Felix began to wonder if it had dozed off, it finally spoke, its words more asured, "Who is the formidable wizard intruding upon my domain? I am Aragog, founder of the Forbidden Forest Acromantula colony, and we have a non-aggression pact with Hogwarts."
Felix chuckled softly, "How amusing. I've always wondered about the root of Gok's indifference toward human lives, and I think I may have found it."
"You've co to the wrong place, wizard. We've never hard any young wizards," Aragog said. Its dark gray pincers tapped the ground, and more and more giant spiders erged, standing behind it.
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