When Adon returned to the room where he and Rosslyn had left the spiders, he sat atop her left shoulder, engaging in quiet, telepathic conversation.

They were relaxing, bodies and minds drained after their long night’s labors.

The calm, pleasant mood completely disappeared as they came through the door. At first, Adon saw Goldie emanating the gentle green glow of healing magic, and he was excited.

Then he saw Samson, just inches from Goldie—surrounded by an aura so wretched and foul that it made Adon physically uncomfortable to look at it.

Yet the energy was also familiar.

As Rosslyn stood-stock still in the doorway, Adon stared at his brother and tried to understand what that power was that surrounded Samson and why Adon felt that he knew it from some prior experience.

“What is happening to Samson?” Rosslyn murmured, her voice full of concern. Adon could tell from the surface of her thoughts that she had never seen anything like what confronted them before.

Samson’s body looked like it was slowly beginning to lose its luster. His exoskeleton was turning from its brilliant red and yellow, shifting toward an unnatural and lifeless gray.

I’ll go to him! Adon sent, not targeting his message but sending it to everyone in the room. He wanted Goldie to know that Samson was in trouble too.

The butterfly flapped his wings and rushed toward Samson, and Rosslyn stepped in, following quickly after him.

Then Adon saw the aura around Goldie move. For a moment, he imagined that Goldie had reacted to his message instantly—but no. He saw the green glow had flickered because whatever was draining Samson’s power seemed to have paused in that task and reached out to take Goldie’s Mana. The healing magic around her leaked out in Samson’s general direction, though from her stillness, Adon decided she was still in the void, working on her magic at this moment.

Is Samson able to direct this at all, or…?

Adon continued trying to figure out what was happening as he shot toward his younger brother. As he touched down near Samson, he felt some of his own power drain.

He did not allow that to worry him. He pulled on his own knowledge of healing magic and surrounded his body with the green aura. Then he reached out and touched Samson, trying to fix the damage that had already been done.

Adon saw a tiny difference in his brother’s body—a slight recovery in the red and yellow coloration of his exoskeleton. Much more drastic was the sudden feeling that his power was being drained.

The butterfly suddenly remembered exactly where he had encountered this sensation before. It was in the void.

As he was about to say something about this, Rosslyn knelt beside him and touched Samson with her left hand, likewise coated in green healing aura.

No! Adon sent, his voice wild. We have to get away. It’s going to drain us dry!

Adon, what is going on?! Goldie’s frightened voice chimed in.

The butterfly managed to pull himself back from Samson slightly, though he still felt the drain on his power even as he inched away from his brother. He turned to Goldie and saw the green healing aura was still pulling away from her body. It was moving toward Samson faster now, flickering like a candle in the wind, draining so quickly that Adon felt certain she would empty her reserves of power in a minute or two.

Rosslyn let out a surprised, pained yelp, and Adon looked back at her. She was pulling her hand away from Samson’s body with a wince as he turned his head. He saw that the flesh of her palm had withered. It looked like an old woman’s hand now. The green aura around it had vanished, pulled into Samson fully.

Probably because she was the last one still touching him. It functions on proximity.

Adon felt himself growing weaker, and he flapped his wings and forced himself to get some distance from Samson’s body. He still felt the drain, though it was not as strong.

The entity that has hold of him wasn’t able to reach me at this distance before, Adon thought. He felt certain of it. Which means that it’s getting stronger quickly. Or hungrier.

Help me…

A thin, tiny voice wafted up from the tiny figure on the floor.

Samson! Goldie’s voice could be heard next, and Adon saw her moving to protect her son with her body however she could.

Bro! The tiny spiderlings were rushing toward Samson, too, now, sprinting across the floor toward their rapidly diminishing big brother.

Everyone stay away from him! Adon shouted in his mind.

There were physical reactions from all those around him in response to the noise, but Adon barely noticed them. He activated mental magic, and he reached out to Samson with his mind.

At the next moment, Adon found himself in the void.

Some distance away—a distance that did not appear to be related to the physical distance that separated them in the room—he saw his brother.

Samson stood there, physically touching a statue that Adon recognized. He vividly remembered the day that he had felt his power drained by an entity that seemed to represent illusion magic.

Get away! Adon yelled psychically. That thing is going to kill you.

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But his brother seemed to be too weak to move.

Adon whipped his wings back and forth, flying with more force than he ever had before—perhaps more force than was possible for a butterfly in the physical world. He reached his brother in an instant, and then Adon yanked on Samson’s body as hard as he could.

The two arthropods tumbled away from the statue, its hold instantly broken.

Adon found himself back in the room.

His brother must have returned from the void immediately, as soon as Adon broke the connection, because Adon saw Samson’s body take two steps forward, wobble, and then lie still. His entire form had turned a sickly shade of gray.

All of the room’s magic users leaped into action at once. Goldie, Adon, and Rosslyn each engaged their healing magic and closed the distance with Samson in a flash. They all laid limbs on the tiny, slightly withered carapace and began pumping energy into Samson almost at once.

Adon observed that Rosslyn’s hand was also healing from being exposed to the aura around it. The wrinkles that had suddenly appeared were just as quickly fading as her skin returned to normal.

That’s a relief, he thought. Samson wouldn’t want that on his conscience. He already sympathized with her losing an eye. If he was responsible for crippling one of her hands, I can’t imagine how he would feel. Or how Rosslyn would feel.

Adon felt a surge of gratitude that the Princess was there. While he and Goldie—espedially Goldie—had relatively smaller reserves of Mana than Adon would have liked, the Princess seemed to have a deep reservoir of power. This became more important as Goldie and Adon, already drained from their efforts while Samson was inadvertently sucking their Mana away, ran out.

The green glows around both spider and butterfly’s bodies ran out and were replaced with headaches.

As usual when his Mana dropped to nothing, even Adon’s Telepathy went silent. He was utterly helpless—just an ordinary butterfly for a few moments, until his Mana began to recover.

He and Goldie sat back and watched in silence as Rosslyn, still going strong, continued pouring healing magic into Samson like a firehose unleashing an endless torrent of water.

With Rosslyn’s power flooding into him, Samson’s body healed rapidly. The process looked like a Russian nesting doll being opened at super speed. Layer after layer of skin was shed and fell to his side, each new layer of skin underneath the old one healthier than the last, until his coloration began to gleam from beneath the pile of dead skins that had settled over him.

Only when the red and yellow spider looked his old self—perhaps better, though it was hard to tell, as Samson was partially buried under shed layers of skin—did Rosslyn stop.

I’m alive! Samson’s telepathically transmitted voice carried from beneath the pile. Then he clambered over it and into the space where Adon and Goldie could see him. He looked more than alive—he looked vital and energetic.

Goldie rushed toward her eldest son and crushed him in a tight embrace.

She used Telepathy to chastise him—and express her relief: I was so afraid you would die! You must stay out of that place, it is not safe…

Adon had enough Mana again, so he activated Telepathy too.

He directed his attention toward Rosslyn.

Thank you for saving Samson, he sent.

Rosslyn opened her mouth to reply, but then there was a cry from Goldie.

He is not moving! she transmitted.

Adon and Rosslyn both turned to face Samson, who Goldie was no longer embracing. She instead poked and prodded at him, then looked at her firstborn child from a slight remove as if hoping he would start moving again if she just gave him a little space. Adon thought Goldie would cry if she had tear ducts.

“He will be fine,” Rosslyn said, breaking the suddenly dismal mood. “This is normal. When healing from a severe injury, the body must direct its full attention to recovery. The fact that he moved around after being healed shows that he is still alive. He just needs time to return to proper functioning.”

Adon recalled how Rosslyn had been in her own healing coma while he was in his chrysalis.

She knows what she’s talking about, he sent to Goldie.

The spider slowly nodded.

What do I do to help him recover more quickly? Goldie asked.

“We can mash up insects for him to eat. If his body will consume food while he is unconscious, that should be simple. If not, unfortunately, feeding a spider is not as easy as feeding a human, I suspect.” Rosslyn bent to look down at Samson’s head, apparently confirming that his mouthparts were not like those of a human.

We can at least set him down near a saucer of some liquid that has nutrients in it, Adon suggested. If his fangs are sort of dipped in the fluid, he’ll be able to drink if his body gets hungry or thirsty. I think. Maybe.

Rosslyn nodded. “That is probably the best that we can do.”

Thank you for saving my son, Goldie sent.

“Of course,” Rosslyn said. “I know either of you would have done it eventually, too.”

Hm. Adon could hear the doubt in Goldie’s mind as she thought over what Rosslyn said, though she did not transmit anything. He knew as well as Goldie did that both arthropods were still at the bottom of their reserves of Mana. The reservoirs had only begun to be refilled. It was unlikely that they would have recovered enough power to save Samson in time to actually do anything about the strange power that had gripped him.

Adon had been using Transformation and Telepathy virtually all night long and had burned through huge quantities of energy in doing so. Goldie had been right beside Samson when the entity that had taken hold of him had begun draining power from everything in his surroundings.

The thing that possessed him… Adon wondered what the nature of that being was. Did it just attract anything that wandered in the void, lost?

He knew that he could find that statue again if he needed to. He wished the things in the void could talk properly, like normal life forms. He wanted to ask the shape in the shadows what it had gained by almost killing his brother—why it sat around, waiting for victims like him.

Samson’s rescuers carried his body away from where he stood, paralyzed—they brushed off his younger siblings, who had silently approached the spider and were swarming over Samson, poking him and trying to get him to move or react in some way—and placed him on a bedside table beside a shallow saucer of nutritious liquid.

There, they let Samson sit for the next week.

Adon could swear he occasionally saw the level of the fluid recede slightly, but he could never be certain that Samson was actually drinking.

Rather than allowing servants to come in and change the liquid, Rosslyn took care of the task herself. She seemed to have been affected quite drastically, Adon could not help but observe, by the revelation that some of the staff she had trusted for years were enemy agents. He certainly could not blame her for that.

Goldie was subdued, too. Her son, the only one of her children who was really like her and Adon, was comatose. So her silence also made sense.

It left Adon with a lot of quiet time. The two females in his life were both brooding, and he fell into the same pattern.

Besides attempting to use the Transformation Adaptation to take on a larger form—which Adon continued to do in his time alone—he had little to keep him busy.

How could I have prevented this? What do I do next?

Adon meditated on these questions daily, until he came to what he thought of as an answer, Not a perfect one, but one that would best use his limited capabilities.