Constans rolled up his sleeves as Bethen prepared to depart, not reaching for his own staff; in point of fact he hadn't brought the damn thing. It always seemed rather embarrassing, lugging around a big stick everywhere one went, and Constans considered it a point of pride not to lean on the crutch (Literally, get it- it’s a… nevermind) of a focusing device to make his spells more effective. Anyway, who would ever have thought they might need to bring weapons to do inventory?
"Remember, that's the other side of the tunnel, not the Veil," he replied with a cavalier wink just before both of them stepped into the gloom of the stacks.
To keep pace with the other apprentice Constans listened carefully for footsteps in the echoing chamber, but it wasn't long before the sound became strangely disorienting, sometimes dying out, sometimes seeming to come from entirely the wrong direction. How were they going to flush out this… whatever it might be, if they couldn’t even keep track of each other? He wasn’t really concerned about safety, more in the spirit of the chase. What was there to be worried about, really? Despite his joking, they should both be able to take care of themselves. Even a single mage would always be a force to be reckoned with as long as they were clever (and if there was one thing he had to credit Bethen it was intelligence), so he could hardly imagine that either of them might be in real danger.
He’d begun almost to get bored, seeing nothing abnormal in the gradually fading torchlight, when he heard a scraping noise in the darkness ahead. Halting, he listened. Soon came another, similar noise, and something like… chittering? Maker, how embarrassing would this all be if they’d gotten so worked up over a rat! He jumped around the corner with a soft “Aha!”, prepared to see a common rodent scampering away in terror, cheeks stuffed with ill-gotten drygoods. What he actually saw looking back at him, to his shock, were over a dozen beady, glittering eyes. Two bloated spiders the size of tomcats, quivering abdomens covered in a sort of brownish hair, hissed and chattered at him in the darkness. Constans had heard that some animals like spiders could be really strangely affected by magic, but he’d never seen it before, and damned if he didn’t think it was really cool. He gestured, preparing to cast a freezing spell if the creatures tried to run, and began inching closer to the pair of angry arachnids with a stupid grin on his face.
"Bethen!" he yelled with boyish, disgusted delight, his voice reverberating all through the cavern, "You'll never believe the size of these spiders!"