Sen didn’t actually care about eating, he just wanted to give himself a little while to think things through. The formation had only ever been a fallback plan, but Sen was certain that the original plan of signaling Laughing River also wasn’t going to work either. There was a decent chance that the elder fox had waited for weeks and simply decided that they must all be dead. Sending up a signal also depended on people outside the barrier being able to see it. Sen wasn’t at all convinced that was even possible, or that anyone outside would understand what they were seeing, depending on just how distorted time was in the ruins. He also hadn’t thought to ask the old monk if the barrier included some kind of intentional visual distortion.

He gave serious thought to going back and asking, but Sen doubted the monk actually knew the answer. He had the distinct impression that Brother Khu had been left as a caretaker based on his combat skills, not his skills with barriers and formations. Going back risked wasting even more time with what seemed like a poor chance of learning anything. With the primary plan unlikely to work and the fallback plan ruined by the broken connection between the beast cores attached to the formation, Sen needed to come up with a plan that at least had a chance of getting them all out alive. A direct assault on the horde had low odds. At least, it did unless Sen wanted to try something incredibly risky that could just as easily kill them all as save them.

Sen’s mind threatened to keep circling the poor possibilities, but he noticed both Glimmer of Night and Misty Peak staring at him. Rather, Misty Peak was directing a very annoyed stare at him, and Glimmer of Night was directing a wholly alien expression at the core in Sen’s hand. Neither expression made Sen feel terribly comfortable. The spider lifted his gaze to Sen’s face.

“What is the beast core for?” asked Glimmer of Night. “Do you mean to eat it?”

It Sen a few seconds to unravel the seemingly bizarre question. It only made sense when he remembered two things. The spider hadn’t been around when he set up the linked beast cores. Spirit beasts primarily grew by consuming beast cores. If things didn’t feel quite so dire, it might have even been a little bit funny. As things stood, though, Sen just shook his head.

“I set up a second formation. I was going to use the beast core to trigger it.”

The spider perked right up at that. “Oh! An entanglement. Clever.”

Sen blinked. “Sure. I guess that’s one way to describe it.”

“May I see the core?” asked the spider.

Sen tossed it over without a second thought. “Keep it. It’s useless to me now.”

The spider caught the core and began studying it with an almost unwholesome level of focus. Shaking his head, Sen pulled a table out of a storage ring and piled food onto it. He also tossed a handful of beast cores on the table with different affinities. He wasn’t sure what the spider could or would eat, so there was basically one of every qi affinity he had on hand. With the food issue sorted out, Sen walked away from the others to try to get a look at what was happening outside. He'd been so shaken by the possession attempt on their way in that he hadn’t given the horde much thought right after they’d entered the ruins. By the time he’d thought of it, they were well and truly snared in the mandala. He hadn’t truly trusted anything he saw or heard once he understood that situation.

Unfortunately, he discovered that the mandala hadn’t distorted what he’d been able to see of the outside world. It had simply looked like a blurry mess of fast-moving shapes. With so many spirits and devilish beasts in the horde, it was simply a dark mass moving on the other side of the barrier. There could be anything waiting on the other side from a disorganized group to ranks of beasts marching back and forth in orderly lines. Granted, the second option seemed less likely, but Sen didn’t want to assume. Time might prove him wrong. They could walk out there and find nothing but a handful of beasts and spirits. The problem was that he had to assume that there would be a densely packed and organized group waiting for them. That would be the worst possible situation for them, so Sen almost felt like it had to happen that way.

Sen stood there facing the barrier but not really seeing anything for long enough that Misty Peak came looking for him eventually. She took a moment to consider the indistinct world beyond the barrier before she looked at him.

“You don’t look happy,” said Misty Peak. “I assume you didn’t plan for this situation, so you don’t know how to get out.”If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Sen glanced her way. “Oh no, I can get out. That’s not the problem.”

“You don’t know how to get us out.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Well, how would you get out?” she asked.

“There’s a couple of options. I think I could go right through them. Minimize the fighting and maximize the forward momentum. I’m probably fast enough and strong enough for that. I’d give myself good odds just going over them for that matter. You saw how fast I can be when I have something to launch myself off of. I could just make a qi platform and hurl myself toward the forest.”

Misty Peak frowned. “Yeah, those could work. For you. I’m not sure what the spider can do in his current form. Hells, he probably doesn’t know either, but odds are he can’t do either of those things. I know I can’t. I’m not as fast or as strong as you. My qinggong technique isn’t anywhere near as good as that ridiculous thing you do. I might be able to sneak past them if not for the spirits.”

“So, that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Sen. “How are you?”

She shot him a dirty look. “I was a lot happier two minutes ago.”

“Reasonable,” observed Sen.

“I notice that none of your plans seems to involve a lot of fighting. Don’t tell me that monk got to you with some nonsense about compassion.”

“He tried, not that it did him any good. I don’t want to fight that horde because it’s a losing proposition.”

“You seemed to do pretty well against them last time,” said Misty Peak.

“I almost got possessed. And I got lucky. If any one of a dozen things hadn’t gone just right or cut our way, we never would have lived long enough to have this conversation. Plus, I can’t count any of the things I did last time working again. I have to assume they’ll have figured out counters to all of it.”

“Even that thing you did with your sword?” she asked with more than a little skepticism.

“Okay, maybe not that, but everything else.”

“What did you do with your sword last time?” she asked, an eager glint in her eye.

“It’s something I don’t talk about,” said Sen.

“You’re awfully young to have so many secrets.”

“I’m a cultivator. Isn’t being mysterious and having secrets like half of the job?” asked Sen.

Misty Peak let out a weak laugh. “Well, you aren’t wrong about that. Still, I’ve heard the stories about you. People talk about you doing insane things like setting the sky on fire. Where’s that guy?”

“I really wish people would stop telling that story. First, I did not set the sky on fire. Second, people stood around for the better part of three minutes and just watched me set that up without even trying to intervene. Finally, that whole thing was a bluff that depended on the people involved already wanting to do what I told them to do.”

“Well, that does take a lot of the mystique out of the story. Even so, are you telling me you don’t have something tucked up your sleeve? Something you’ve been saving up for a situation just like this.”

“Being trapped inside an ancient ruin with a time-altering barrier around it and a horde of devilish beasts around that? I did not, in point of fact, ever imagine I’d find myself in this situation, let alone plan for it.”

That earned Sen a flat look that made him want to shift uncomfortably, but he held strong and met the fox’s eyes.

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” she said.

Sen relented. “Yes, I have some ideas for things like this. Half-formed techniques that might get the job done. They might also explode in my face and kill us all. I’d like something with a bit more certainty and a lower chance of grievous injury or death.”

“You’re lucky I’m such a kind-hearted person. Most wives wouldn’t put with all this whining, even if you are absurdly pretty.”

Sen was floundering for an appropriate response to that when there was a cracking noise that made everything inside of Sen shudder. It was immediately followed by a wave of intense heat and a tower of flame reaching toward the sky not too far away. Sen followed the tower of flame down and realized that it was just about where he’d set up the table with the food on it. He traded a look with Misty Peak before they both took off running. They covered the distance in practically no time and found the spider hopping from foot to foot in what looked like a mad dance of maniacal glee as one of the buildings was entirely encased in a fire. Glimmer of Night didn’t even seem to care that his carapace and the clothes Sen had insisted he wear were scorched and smoking.

“What happened?” demanded Sen.

The spider turned toward Sen, but he couldn’t make any sense of the expression on Glimmer of Night’s face. The spider rushed back over to the table and picked up another beast core. Sen could feel that it was an ice affinity core. Glimmer of Night hurried back over to them and held up the core. Sen lifted an eyebrow, not sure what he was supposed to make of all of this.

“Watch,” said the spider in a tone that Sen could thankfully recognize as excited.

The spider stared at the core for a second. There was another of those cracking sounds that sent another shudder through Sen. Then, Glimmer of Night threw the core at the burning building. The immediate environment felt wrong to Sen as two types of qi effectively declared war on each other less than fifty feet away. It set his teeth on edge, but he watched as the ice slowly overtook the fire. Before long the entire building was covered in a layer of ice at least a foot thick.

“Remember that secret thing up my sleeve you were asking about,” said Sen to Misty Peak. “I think we just found it.”

“I think so,” she agreed. “Assuming he can teach us how to do that.”