Unintended Cultivator

Sen stepped into the building he’d named the Spider’s Lair in a moment of poor decision-making. The name had stuck, mostly due to Glimmer of Night’s immediate approval. The building itself was set in a mostly unused corner of the compound. It was also one of a handful of buildings that were off-limits to virtually everyone because Sen didn’t want Glimmer of Night to reflexively kill some foolish qi-gathering cultivator with more curiosity than sense. The existence of the building came about as a matter of pure necessity.

When he and the spider had first come up with the idea for the communication cores, it became almost instantly obvious that it couldn’t be located at Fu Ruolan’s home. Any information that came through the cores would likely need to be handed off almost immediately. While her home was close enough for Sen to go back and forth without too much trouble, the same was not true of pretty much anyone else in the sect. Beyond that, even if she were willing to let what Sen suspected would become a strategic resource be there, she wouldn’t tolerate the presence of all the messengers it would require. Hence, the Spider’s Lair was born.

Not that the inside of the lair would seem particularly special to anyone who saw it. It was basically a stone box with no windows. The cores themselves didn’t require any kind of special surroundings to function, although Sen had worked a few basic formations into the walls. Most of them were simply there to strengthen the building and increase the qi density inside a bit. The cores were housed in a cabinet-like structure that was full of small cubby spaces. That made it easy for Glimmer of Night to monitor them and alert Sen if people were trying to contact them. Sen also knew that eventually, they would need to let other people inside. In fact, they would probably need a much bigger building with individual spaces where people could monitor a few cores exclusively, but they weren’t there yet. It also wasn’t the reason Sen had come that day.

“Were you able to do it?” Sen asked.

Glimmer of Night was actively manipulating a web in one corner with threads so fine they were almost invisible. Sen watched as the threads moved through a series of tiny adjustments. He didn’t know if the spider could always do that or if it was a sign of improved control, although he suspected the latter. Apparently not finding what he was looking for, Glimmer of Night made a tiny gesture and the threads dissipated. He turned to look at Sen with his liquid black eyes and nodded. He walked to another corner, picked up a bag, and held it out. Sen walked over and took it. He glanced inside before simply putting a hand into the bag and moving all of the cracked cores into a storage ring.

“Is that enough?” asked the spider.

Sen guessed that he had about fifty of those cores in his ring now.

“I certainly hope so. If it isn’t, that probably means that my plan failed utterly and not having enough cracked cores will be the smallest of my problems.”

“Fair.”

Sen hesitated to bring up the other thing he wanted to talk to the spider about. He’d been putting it off for most of a year with the excuse that there was more time, but time was swiftly running out. Of course, it was mostly his own discomfort he’d been avoiding. The spider wouldn’t be offended by the conversation.

“So, I have to ask this,” said Sen, certain that he sounded as awkward as he felt. “Will the other spiders choose to fight with the spirit beasts? Will you?”

“I will not,” said a wholly unruffled Glimmer of Night. “The Great Matriarch set my path with you. I won’t abandon that because of some petty war.”

Sen felt something unclench inside of him. Glimmer of Night knew a lot of Sen’s secrets. It wouldn’t have been a full-blown catastrophe if the spider had chosen to fight with the spirit beasts, but it would have been a huge setback. Plus, Sen had no desire to fight Glimmer of Night. The spider had been unfailingly helpful to Sen’s goals and patient with Sen’s constant questions. While that patience had only enabled Sen to make incremental progress in understanding the web patterns that all spiders seemed to understand intuitively, it had been progress. He was loathe to give that up. He even liked the spider. He was hesitant to use the word friend. The spider’s motives were too opaque for that, but he would certainly consider their relationship friendly.

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Sen was less certain how to interpret the use of the word petty to describe the coming war. Part of him wanted to think that the spider had simply misspoken, but an arrow of doubt shot straight through that notion. Petty wasn’t the sort of word that Glimmer of Night used incorrectly. That begged a lot of questions that Sen supposed he’d need to get answered at some point, but he didn’t want to get distracted.

“And the rest of the spiders?” asked Sen.

Glimmer of Night went still for a few seconds, which Sen had eventually realized was a sign that the spider was giving something special consideration. What answer he would prefer to get to the question was murky in Sen’s mind. Having the spiders as enemies would be awful. They were terrifying, particularly when moving as a mass. Human beings were instinctively afraid of them. It didn’t take any imagination at all to see a time when mortals and cultivators simply abandoned their positions at the sight of a mass of spiders rushing toward them. Of course, the prospect of them as allies wasn’t much better. While they would almost certainly make ideal scouts, he could easily see jumpy cultivators getting startled and cutting them down when they appeared to report their findings. Sen struggled to think of a faster way to turn allies into enemies, and they would be very good assassins.

“It isn’t clear,” said Glimmer of Night. “My people don’t move as a singular group. Clusters will often war with each other over territory, natural treasures, and other resources. We have no royalty as you think of it. I believe some clusters will choose to side with the spirit beasts. Especially any with a grudge to settle with humans. Some clusters will likely sit out the conflict. A few might seek to ally themselves with you.”

It wasn’t ideal news but none of it shocked him. If they chose to side with the spirit beasts or remain neutral, that did simplify things. Sen’s thoughts ground to a halt as Glimmer of Night’s last comment rolled through his mind again. A few might seek to ally themselves with you. Sen desperately hoped that didn’t mean what he feared it meant.

“When you say ally with me, do you mean with humanity or with—”

“With you, specifically.”

Sen took two deep breaths before he asked, “Why me, specifically? There are many other cultivators in the world. Many more famous than me.”

“You kept your word,” said Glimmer of Night.

The tone suggested that this should have been obvious to Sen, although he couldn’t imagine why it should be so. Plenty of people kept their word. He wasn’t unique in that way. He had to assume that this was some aspect of spider society that he didn’t fully grasp. ℟Â

“Why should that matter?”

“The Beast King does not.”

“I see,” said Sen.

On the surface, it seemed like a trivial reason to base a decision about which side of the war you were going to be on. The more Sen thought about it, though, the less trivial it seemed. He wouldn’t want to take the side of someone he knew was going to lie to him and possibly betray him. The problem as Sen saw it was that he wasn’t going to be in charge of the human side of the war. Which is why they’d want to ally themselves with me directly, he thought. They wouldn’t be trusting humanity to keep its word. They’d be trusting him. Like the war itself wasn’t going to be enough pressure and responsibility, he now had to deal with the potential problem of allies he’d need to personally keep safe. It was a responsibility he wasn’t sure he could fulfill. Beyond the bounds of his own sect and the town, he had very little influence over how cultivators behaved. I’ll have to deal with that when or if it happens, he decided. It’s not a problem for today.

“Are your preparations nearly complete?” asked Glimmer of Night, who had apparently decided the previous topic was settled.

“Yes, I think so.”

“When do we leave?”

Sen found himself once more flummoxed by the spider’s words.

“We?” he asked.

“I was instructed to learn from you. You go to practice war now. How can I learn how you conduct war if I’m not there?”

“I—” Sen couldn’t find another word to follow that.

He’d never once considered that spider would go with him. This wasn’t Glimmer of Night’s problem. As far as he knew, the spider hadn’t even encountered them. Of course, the spider wasn’t thinking about it in those terms. He saw the whole thing as a learning opportunity.

“You could end up in substantial danger,” said Sen. “I never intended to put you in that position.”

The spider went still again before he shrugged.

“The danger isn’t relevant. When do we leave?”

Sen thought that the danger was very relevant, but he got the distinct impression that Glimmer of Night simply didn’t care about that. Nor was Sen confident that he could convince the spider, regardless of how long he talked. Shaking his head, Sen considered the benefits. The spider was all but without fear. He was good in a fight. He also had some unique skills that most sects wouldn’t see coming if it came down to it. Perhaps the most important thing was that Glimmer of Night wanted to come. It would be one thing if he were trying to talk the spider around, but there was no reason to deny the spider.

“Two days,” said Sen.