Chapter 337: Chapter 337: Baruk’s Grievance and the Magic Seed
Baruk paced circles at the door, restless.
A two-meter-long Acromantula crouched before the stone cottage entrance, all eight eyes fixed on the doorframe. Barely four feet wide. He lifted a foreleg, measured it against the gap, lowered it, measured again.
Confirmed. He wasn’t getting through.
He shuffled sideways and considered the window.
The window was narrower than the door. He pressed his head against it, eight eyes lined up in a row peering inside. The center pair caught Regulus sitting at a desk. The outermost two saw nothing but a blur of stone wall, blocked by the frame.
He tilted his head. Left pair of eyes flush against the glass. Still couldn’t see everything. Tilted right. Now he had Regulus’s profile.
Then Regulus stood, crossed to the other side of the desk to grab something, and disappeared behind the wall. Baruk swiveled his head back to the left. Regulus had already returned to his seat.
He backed away and settled in front of the door, legs tucked beneath him, both primary eyes locked on the firelight leaking through the frame.
Once, he’d been palm-sized. The doorframe had been a castle gate to him then, wide enough to stroll through any way he pleased. Now, restored to his natural size, that same frame was a barrier he couldn’t cross.
He wasn’t frantic. But he was, in his own way, hurt.
Since joining Regulus, he’d never spent a night outside alone.
The desk drawer at Hogwarts. The table corner and rooftop at Grimmauld Place. The pillow’s edge in the Cornwall cottage. Wherever they went, there was always a spot that was his.
Now he was out here. Regulus was in there.
Baruk rose again and circled the cottage, footfalls thudding softly against the ground.
Stone walls, rough mortar joints. He could climb them easily enough, but the roof offered nothing but a chimney. Climbing up wouldn’t get him in.
He circled back, flopped down at the door, and scraped his forelegs across the ground twice, gouging two shallow furrows in the dirt.
Then he stood, circled the opposite direction, came back around, and lay down again.
Eight legs splayed across cold flagstone. Both primary eyes fixed on the crack beneath the door. Firelight seeped through, painting a thin orange line across his head.
He pressed his face against the gap, eyes half-shut, chelicerae clicking open and closed once, twice, then going still.
Lying here versus lying inside. Only a single plank of wood between them. But that plank made him feel wild again.
---
Regulus sat inside, unbothered by the commotion outside. A Fireproof Stone Box rested on the desk.
The interior walls glowed a dull red. A bed of hot coals lined the bottom, and several Salamanders lay draped across them, their orange-red bodies nearly indistinguishable from the embers in the flickering light.
Adults ran six to eight inches long, flat-bodied with stubby limbs, blunt rounded heads, tails accounting for a third of their length.
Dark grey scales lay in tight, fine rows along their trunks and legs. From shoulder blade to tail root, irregular splotches of vivid orange-red dotted their backs, bright as fresh paint.
At high temperatures, those splotches emitted a faint glow.
The belly scales were paler, a washed-out cream, thin enough to reveal the faint pulse of blood vessels beneath.
They looked perfectly content on their coal bed, limbs spread, chins resting on embers, tails idly swatting at flames.
Every so often one rolled belly-up for a turn, stubby legs kicking at the air before flipping back over.
Nothing rare. Easy to keep, easy to handle, even easier to use.
Regulus opened the stone box and lifted one out, setting it on the desk.
Away from the coals, the Salamander was not pleased. Its orange-red splotches dimmed. It scurried across the desktop, four stubby legs clattering against wood, head swiveling in search of a heat source.
It reached the table’s edge, poked its head over, tested the air temperature, and retreated.
He placed his palm over it and released his verdant magic, wrapping the Salamander in it.
The connection formed with almost no resistance. Salamanders were low-intelligence, small-scale magical creatures. Minimal total magic, simple structure, virtually no defensive instinct. Verdant magic touched it and flowed straight through.
He pushed his perception deeper.
The Salamander’s magical structure was extraordinarily simple.
He’d seen the Mandrake’s seven-and-a-half loops. He’d seen the Whomping Willow’s two-and-a-half. The Salamander didn’t even qualify as a loop. It was closer to a straight line, head to tail, with a single tendency running through it.
Fire Affinity.
That tendency permeated every part of its body. Scales, blood, organs, bones. Wherever the magic flowed, fire couldn’t harm it.
Not insulation. Not heat resistance. The magic itself carried the property. When flame met that magic, it simply lost its ability to injure.
The same category of thing as the Mandrake’s decomposition tendency or the Whomping Willow’s shock propagation. Magical creatures carried innate tendencies in their magic. That was their mode of existence.
But beyond fire immunity, the Salamander had nothing. It couldn’t run fast, couldn’t bite hard, its skin wasn’t even particularly thick. An owl could snatch one up without a struggle.
Single-structured. Purely functional. The entire species’ magic served one purpose: making flame harmless.
Its fire affinity was potent. An adult could sit in a coal bed without a single scale changing color. But that was it. That was everything.
Many other magical creatures were far more complex.
He sank his magical perception into the Salamander, found that thread of fire affinity, and began extracting.
Verdant magic coaxed the Salamander’s power outward, condensing at his fingertips into a small orb of orange-red light. Not bright. Hairline patterns drifted across its surface, and it sat warm in his palm.
He cupped the light, closed his eyes, and began replicating the structure in his mental workspace.
The Salamander’s magical structure was a single node. Detect flame, activate. The tendency switched from dormant to Fire Affinity, and every drop of magic in the body took on that property instantaneously.
Clean, legible. In his mental workspace it took less than thirty seconds to produce an exact copy. No branching, no hierarchy. Just a single point.
A Magic Seed. The material embodiment of the fact that Salamanders don’t burn.
The Salamander on the desk had gone still.
Every orange-red splotch on its scales had faded, turned to a dusty grey-brown. Its four legs lay limp against the wood. Its tail had stopped moving.
Eyes half-closed, pupils dilated, reactions sluggish. It no longer searched for heat.
Not dead. But badly depleted.
Having its Magic Seed pulled was like having its core ability ripped out by the root. Most of it, anyway.
As long as the extraction didn’t drain them completely in one go, they survived. They just went dormant for a while.
Whether they ever recovered was their own business.
Regulus placed it back on the coals inside the fireproof stone box and left it to bask.
The Salamander touched the heat source and pressed itself instinctively against the nearest ember. Its legs twitched once, faintly, and then it was still.
For good measure, he took two more adults and extracted a portion of magic from each, then fused all three magic seeds together.
The juveniles were spared. Too small, too little magic. Poor extraction samples.
Three adult Salamanders lay on the coals, scales dull, motionless.
He glanced at them and moved on.
Whether they returned to full strength was not his concern.
When the time came to work with rarer, higher-tier creatures like Occamies or Demiguises, he’d put real thought into minimizing extraction damage.
Salamanders weren’t worth the effort.
Next was Baruk.
