Long Jia Wei just kept staring, and it made Sen decidedly uncomfortable. It might not have been so bad if the man had spoken but that didn’t happen. He just sat there, silent, and stared. To make matters worse, Shen Mingxia kept staring at him like he’d lost his mind. When it got to be too off-putting, Sen finally made a plate of food and shoved it at the, well, Sen supposed he was an ex-sect cultivator now. The man seemed startled by the food but took it. Once he was focused on the food, Sen took Shen Mingxia off to one side.

“What?” he demanded.

“What are you doing? You have to know he can’t be trusted.”

Sen didn’t automatically agree. Before the man had offered to sacrifice himself just to spare his juniors, he probably would have thought the same thing. However, there was no way that Long Jia Wei had guessed that such an act would mean his own survival. No, Sen was confident that the man had thought his life was going to end, and he’d offered it anyway. If nothing else, he had uncommon courage.

Sen sighed and said, “I wouldn’t trust him to watch over children or transport gold, but I don’t think he’s so stupid that he’d try anything now. Not after I killed those other two.”

Shen Mingxia hemmed and hawed for a few seconds before she said, “Well, maybe not, but still. Do you think this is a good idea?”

“I have no clue. But I can always change my mind if he turns out to be too much trouble or any trouble for that matter.”

“You better not get me killed with an act of mercy,” said Shen Mingxia, shaking her head. “And where in the thousand hells is Glimmer of Night? We could have used him here.”

“Oh. Right. I didn’t tell you. Sorry,” said Sen. “He went to deal with the other ones.”

“What other ones?”

***

Fifteen minutes earlier…

Glimmer of Night watched the cultivators stumble through the darkness like the blind things they were. It was sad. Like watching spider children on their first night away from the nest. The cultivators were loud, bumped into things, and none of them had noticed him even though several of them had passed within a foot or two of where he stood. At first, he thought that Sen was playing some kind of strange, human joke on him. It seemed like these cultivators would get themselves killed without any help from him. But then he’d heard them talking.

“So, we’re really going to kill Judgment’s Gale?” asked one of them.

Glimmer of Night was fairly certain that one was female, although he wasn’t positive. He didn’t pay much attention to that sort of thing with the humans. It wasn’t as though it mattered to him. They were vaguely interesting, but the very idea of mating with one of these pale, soft, fleshy creatures was more than enough to twist his stomach.

“We are,” answered one of the others.

That one was bigger, so Glimmer of Night tentatively decided he was male. Probably. Having heard that little exchange had settled matters for him. He would have to do something about them. He just wasn’t sure what, yet. He’d never had to fight with cultivators before, only other spirit beasts. He didn’t count the sparring he had done with Sen and some of those cultivator students at the academy. That wasn’t real fighting. Real fighting meant death hovered over everything like a cloud that obscured good sense. That academy sparring was just… He wasn’t sure exactly what it was. It wasn’t exactly pretending, because they were preparing for fighting. They were using real, or what he assumed were real, human fighting methods. It just rang hollow to him. Without that practical life-and-death experience to draw on, he was at a bit of a loss. He supposed he could just tear all of their heads off. That usually worked.

With the decision made, he closed in on one of the cultivators off a little way to one side. He almost felt bad for the cultivator because they didn’t seem to even notice him coming. Not that he felt any remorse about ambushing them. They were trying to ambush him, and Sen, and that other one. Glimmer of Night thought hard for a moment. Mingxia! That was her… his… the other one’s name. Smiling to himself for remembering, he seized the back of the cultivator’s neck, planted a hand on their shoulder, and jerked their head free. Oh, he thought as blood sprayed all over him, this wasn’t a good idea. This is messy. He slipped back into the darkness and took the head with him. The other cultivators had noticed one of their number dying. He forgot sometimes that cultivators had a clunky, inelegant sort of spiritual sense. Although, he had noticed that Sen seemed to make up for those shortcomings with sheer, unbridled power. A trait these cultivators did not seem able to replicate.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Glimmer of Night nimbly scaled a nearby tree. It wasn’t as fast or as gracefully as he might once have done in his true form, but there was no point being sad about that. The Great Matriarch had given him this form, and he trusted in her wisdom. And he did have to admit that those thumb things were just so damned useful. Once he was high enough, he judged the distance and then tossed the head through the air. He smiled as he saw that the arc was ideal. The head dropped straight down and landed in the middle of the huddled cultivators. One of them screamed and broke ranks, while another yelled at them to stop. But it was too late. The frightened one had already entered the darkness again, entered willingly into Glimmer of Night’s world, and he took full advantage. He sprang from tree to tree high above without using any qi, until he was able to drop down onto the wayward cultivator. He drove the cultivator into the ground. He heard the air rush out of them in a pained grunt. Lifting them off the ground with one arm, he punched through their back and out their chest. This is better, he thought. Still messy, but not as messy.

Intuitions honed by years of violent struggle in the deep wilds warned him about the incoming attack long before he actually felt the fire qi of the technique. He lifted a hand, sorted through the myriad patterns he knew, and threw up a web that would negate the fire qi. The fireball hit the web, was caught, and the qi was siphoned away along the threads of the web. Glimmer of Night saw the stunned face of the human cultivator for a moment before the spider disappeared back into the comforting darkness.

“What in the hells was that?” screamed the fire cultivator.

“What? What are you talking about?” yelled another.

“I saw… Something over there. Some kind of monster!”

Glimmer of Night considered that word, monster, as he circled around and caught the one who lagged behind. Am I a monster? Glimmer of Night didn’t feel much like a monster. Although, he supposed he might not be in the best position to judge such things. He frowned when he realized that he’d slightly misjudged his blow. He only managed to shatter some ribs instead of the cultivator’s spine, which gave the doomed creature time to scream. He defaulted back to the head removal strategy and its messy, frustrating blood spray, but the damage was done. A fireball and some kind of ice attack were sent his way. He considered using webs to stop the attacks but decided it was just easier to use a web thread to drag himself out of the way. Plus, it conserved qi. He felt the cultivators sweeping the area with their poorly developed spiritual senses, trying to locate him, and failing miserably. Instead of attacking directly again, he started building a special web. One like he’d used on those strange insects with the stingers that had charged into their camp one night.

He’d felt a little bad about killing them. They weren’t family, exactly, not like other spiders, but they had felt familiar. Like maybe they had been family once upon a time but had taken a different path. He’d almost let them into the camp. Sen had seemed wholly unconcerned about them, but Glimmer of Night had concluded a while ago that Sen was a poor gauge for danger. The fright exhibited by the Mingxia boy… girl… whatever, had seemed like a better guide. So, he’d acted and drained them of their vitality. He’d never tried something like that on a cultivator, but he reasoned that it ought to work the same way. Assuming they couldn’t disrupt the web too quickly. That was why he built it from the outside in. By the time they noticed the web, it was too late. He activated the pattern he’d built into the web. It worked. Vital power flooded into him.

He hadn’t counted on the screaming, though. That was very disruptive. It was a good thing he didn’t have to concentrate much after the webs were made. Especially with all of that new power reinforcing his body and his core, the screaming probably would have made him lose focus. He’d have to figure out some way to muffle that noise the next time. Glimmer of Night was about fifty percent sure that the other humans wouldn’t like it.

***

“What is that?” shrieked Shen Mingxia.

Long Jia Wei shot to his feet, looking around wildly as barely human, tortured screaming filled the night. Sen let his spiritual sense extend briefly before he nodded.

“Oh, good. It seems that Glimmer of Night has found his quarry,” said Sen.

“What could possibly be good about that?” demanded Shen Mingxia, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of all the screaming.

“Well, I guess it’s not good for those people, but it’s good for us. Or me, anyway. It means I don’t have to kill them.”

Shen Mingxia looked a little shaken by that comment. Long Jia Wei skipped right past looking horrified and went straight to shuddering.

“Judgment’s Gale, indeed,” whispered the ex-sect cultivator.