You get in the spine, and are almost immediately ejected out.
“Guess that’s not too surprising,” Vasco mutters. “A little while ago, that thing spat out big piles of ether. I suppose whatever made it do that is still happening. It didn’t do anything big, but it zapped those beetles something fierce.”
He points to some dead beetles on the floor.
“I was hoping you could figure out what caused it. And I guess you’ll need to stop it if we’re going to have a real two-way conversation.”
That’s more than a little worrying. It suggests somebody could use the spines as an ethereal weapon… and in fact, may have already done so, with the one in Vasco’s hands being activated as a side effect.
It strikes you as very important to determine what’s going on. Passing your own ether through the spine is too disorienting to give you any real conclusions, so you think your best bet is to cast a spell, let the spine absorb the ether, and see what happens to it on the way out.
As you do, you see something very strange.
The ants come back and do a little dance