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It’s a lovely evening as Wei Wuxian sits down to dinner with his husband. A little dry, sure, but that means the sky is clear enough to see the stars and it's a surprisingly bright night, despite the half moon. He pulls back from the inn room’s window and comes to join Lan Zhan at the table. All the dishes have been arranged neatly, and there’s a cup of liquor waiting for him; Wei Wuxian’s just about to bring it to his lips when there’s a frantic but polite voice from the door.
“Please… Hanguang-jun, the northern forest -- ”
Lan Zhan is up and opening the door before Wei Wuxian can register that he's moved at all. There’s a woman in the hallway, bowing all the way down to the floor.
“What is it?”
“There’s a fire -- the forest is burning, please, Hanguang-jun, we do not have any cultivators in our town, will you -- ”
Wei Wuxian leaps to his feet and back to the window, leaning out and craning his head to the north. Well, that explains why it was so bright. The wind is blowing the wrong way, or they’d have smelled it by now. He grimaces.
“Lan Zhan --” He starts, joining him by the door as Lan Zhan sends the woman away with assurances of their help.
“The juniors.” Lan Zhan finishes for him. They’d stayed nearby in case of trouble on their night hunt, and here it was.
Wei Wuxian nods. Lan Zhan pulls out Bichen and prepares to fly, walking to the window. Wei Wuxian follows, picking up his cup of liquor from the table and downing it on the way. Then he leans into Lan Zhan’s side, allows himself to be manhandled about the waist, and they take off into the air.
#
They find the juniors caught in a massive spider web, stretched between two thick, ancient trees in a clearing deep in the heart of the forest. The fire hasn’t reached them yet, and because of the direction of the wind, it probably won’t. How convenient.
Lan Zhan puts him down when they get close to the ground.
“Hanguang-jun!” Jingyi exclaims, excited. He’s spread-eagle at the bottom of the web, on the side closest to the fire. “See, I told you it would work,” he says, twisting his head towards Jin Ling.
“No one said that it wouldn’t work.” Jin Ling snaps back. He’s caught in the web on his side, right in the middle, facing Jingyi. The fuzzy shape next to him with the wagging tail must be Fairy, stuck face-first into the strands of spider silk and apparently not at all upset about it. “Only that we’d die before they reached us.”
“Um.” Wei Wuxian says. “What worked? Why didn’t you send any signal flares?”
There’s silence. Sizhui, on the opposite side from Jingyi, with his arms pinned to his sides, sighs.
“Don’t do it, Sizhui.” Jin Ling says before he can start speaking. “Make him explain it.”
“What, I’ll do it!” Jingyi says, “I was just trying to figure out where to start. I’m not a coward.”
“Oh, yeah? Then who was it who screamed like a little girl when the spider -- ”
“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan says, urgently, quietly. Wei Wuxian nods at him.
“I’ve got this, they seem safe enough for the moment. Go put out the fire.” He puts his hand on Lan Zhan’s arm and lets it slide down so their fingers brush as he pulls away. Lan Zhan gives him a nod in return, then turns towards the blaze. Wei Wuxian admires the sight of him leaping into the sky, brandishing his guqin, white robes silhouetted against the raging inferno. He smiles, maybe a little dreamily, then straightens up and prepares to re-engage with the juniors.
“You got lucky.” Jingyi is saying.
“Luck?!” Jin Ling squawks in response. “You want to talk about luck? Like luck isn’t the only reason we haven’t burned alive yet!”
“Boys!” Wei Wuxian shouts. “I had to cancel my hot date with Hanguang-jun tonight and I would like someone to explain to me why.”
“You’re married to him.” Jin Ling says, dismissively. “Can’t you just do this every night?”
“Would you like me to leave?” Wei Wuxian asks, calmly.
“Oh, is Wei-qianbei here?” A voice comes from a bundle of web above Sizhui. “Hello, Wei-qianbei!”
Wei Wuxian realizes with a little pang of guilt that he hadn’t even noticed Ouyang Zizhen was missing. But he’s… alive, at least, so no harm, no foul. It seems like he’s been partially rolled up the way a spider would with an insect, covered in so many little strands of spider silk that he looks like a piece of dragon’s beard candy. They must have had a run in with the web’s owner after all, which might explain Zizhen’s disoriented greeting.
“Is Zizhen alright?” He asks Sizhui.
“He’s been upside-down for a while.” Sizhui explains.
“Oh, that’s not good. Let me just get you all down first and then you can tell me what happened.” Wei Wuxian suggests. Sizhui is closest, so he moves towards him to grab his sword.
A chorus of “no, waits” and “stops” and “don’t come any closers” (and what might be a “Is Hanguang-jun here, too?” from Zizhen) freezes him in his tracks. “You don’t want me to cut you out of the spider’s web?”
“If you get any closer, it’ll suck you in and you’ll get stuck, too.” Sizhui says. “That’s what happened to us.”
“Ah.” Wei Wuxian can very easily imagine a tumble of juniors piling into the web one by one trying to free each other. “Should I call Hanguang-jun back to send his sword to cut you down?”
“Doesn’t work.” Jingyi says, motioning with his head towards his sword wrapped up in the web above him. “It grabs them, too.”
“Hm.” Wei Wuxian looks behind him to see the distant blur of Lan Zhan making steady progress on controlling the blaze, and then scans the darker parts of the woods for any signs of movement. “Well, then you’d better tell me everything you know about what we’re dealing with so I can fix this before the spider comes back.”
“Well, Jingyi, you ready to tell Wei-qianbei about your genius plan?”
“I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“I don’t think it’s actually relevant, though, we should start at the beginning?”
“Oh, guys, I think I might be able to get upright again if I keep wiggling like this.”
Wei Wuxian pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sizhui, please. The rest of you stop talking.” He hesitates. “Unless you really start to get dizzy, Zizhen.”
“I’m ok, Wei-qianbei! I’m glad you’re here!”
He gives Sizhui a pleading look. Sizhui returns him a commiserating smile.
“We got to the forest about an hour ago, following the instructions from the -- ”
“No, no, no.” Wei Wuxian waves his hand at him. “Start at the beginning, I need to hear everything.”
“Oh. Um.” Sizhui cocks his head as much as he can in his position. “Alright.
“After we left you and Hanguang-jun in the city, we flew the rest of the way to the village to meet with the elders and get more information. They said that people have been disappearing in the forest to the north. Most of them come home, though they can’t explain what happened to them. They’ve had some cultivators come from smaller sects to help, but none of them have returned.”
“Right.” Wei Wuxian remembers some of that from the conversations before they left Gusu. “Then what?”
“We followed their directions to the forest. And then -- ah, right. There was a little farmhouse along the way we stopped at to make sure we weren’t going the wrong way. A young woman and her two siblings lived there. She told me that her younger brother had been one of the people who disappeared, and like the elders said, he didn’t remember anything about what happened in the woods.” Sizhui pauses for a moment to consider. “They were very brave, I think, to keep living there.”
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice.” Wei Wuxian says.
“Mm.” Sizhui nods. “From there, we went into the forest proper, following the path into the darkest parts of the forest. After a little while, we came upon a group of weak ghosts, and in the middle of the fighting, we got separated from each other. I shouted for the others, but no one responded to me.Then I heard Zizhen yelling and ran off in his direction.
“I found him here, in the web, with a spider beast rolling him like, well -- ” He motions with his head towards the Zizhen bundle.
Wei Wuxian nods. “A spider beast, you’re certain?”
“Yes, I recognized the markings on its back from a drawing in one of the books in the library. It’s likely a normal spider that grew larger by consuming resentful energy.”
“Sounds right.”
“I pulled out my guqin and managed to surprise it before it could bite into Zizhen and inject it with its venom.”
“Oh, you did? Thank you, Sizhui!”
“You’re welcome, Zizhen. The next thing I knew Jin Ling and Jingyi were running in from another direction -- Jin Ling shot the beast with an arrow and it ran off. And then when I tried to cut Zizhen down, the web pulled me in. And then when Jin Ling tried to cut me out -- ”
“You all got caught.”
“Right. And now we’re here.”
Jin Ling clears his throat, dramatically.
“Oh, yes, and then Jingyi set the forest on fire.”
Wei Wuxian blinks. “He did what?”
“None of us could reach our signal flares to call for you, so he thought…”
“I thought I’d make my own signal flare.” Jingyi says, triumphantly.
Wei Wuxian puts his face in his hands. “Jingyi.”
“No, wait, listen, Wei-qianbei, let me explain. You’ll be impressed.” Jingy clears his throat. “Alright, so -- no, hang on, I’m going to start at the beginning.”
“Sizhui already told him everything.” Jin Ling complains.
“Well, I think he missed some stuff. And anyway, Wei-qianbei always talks about the usefulness of different perspectives in understanding a problem.”
Wei Wuxian almost laughs. Instead, he clutches his heart as if struck by a powerful emotion. “Ah! So you do listen to me!”
“Only when Hanguang-jun isn’t around.” Jingyi grins. Wei Wuxian chuckles and shakes his head. “Alright, so we get to the village, right?
“Everything we did and what the elders said is just as Sizhui said, but I thought it was weird that the elders seemed really dismissive of us. I mean, I’m not Jin Ling, I don’t go around expecting everyone to kowtow on sight...“
“I do not!”
“...but you’d think if you’re petitioning the Gusu Lan Sect and getting a bonus Jin and Ouyang cultivator with them, after a bunch of other cultivators have disappeared, you’d be a little more grateful.”
“Hmm.” Sizhui frowns. “I just thought they were embarrassed.”
“No, it was definitely disdain.”
Wei Wuxian nods slowly. “Noted. Continue, Jingyi.”
“When we got to the farmhouse, Fairy took off after something and I figured I should chase after her with Jin Ling, in case she got into trouble.”
“That’s not -- she didn’t -- “ Jin Ling sucks in a breath. “Ok, I get to tell my story after Jingyi.”
“Sure, sure.” Wei Wuxian waves a hand at him. “Seems like that’s where we were going with this anyway, why not? Where did she go, Jingyi?”
"She ran into the barn and we found her sniffing at a young boy who was doing some work there. I asked him about what was going on in the forest and he said he didn't know, but then he started asking about our swords and if we were real cultivators and stuff. Seems like he'd never met one before and he was really impressed."
Jin Ling barks out a sudden laugh.
"What now?"
"You'll just have to wait for my version."
Jingyi glares at him for a second and then continues.
“After that, we get into the forest, run into the ghosts, and get separated, just like Sizhui said. I end up with Jin Ling and Fairy again.” Jingyi’s face goes a little white. “It’s… very dark at this point. And we can’t hear anything but us, like the entire forest has been empty for years.
“But then Fairy takes off again and we follow after her, which brings us here: Zizhen in the web, Sizhui fighting off the spider. Jin Ling gets off a lucky shot that scares off the spider -- ” A restrained, long-suffering sigh. Jingyi smiles. “-- and then we all get stuck in the web.”
“And then!” Jingyi continues after a theatrical pause. “After we all concluded that no one would be able to reach their signal flares, I used my resourcefulness and quick-thinking to analyze the surrounding area for an alternative form of communication. It’s been dry, I remembered, and there's a considerable amount of dry underbrush in the forest. Combining that with the direction of the wind and location of the surrounding towns and villages, I calculated that if I blasted some raw spiritual power in that direction,” He motions with his head towards the burnt landscape. “I could set a fire that would burn hot enough to be noticed and be very unlikely to blow back in our direction.”
Jingyi’s arms jerk as he tries and fails to pull them in to cross them over his chest, but he manages to look smug anyway. Wei Wuxian tilts his head back and forth considering.
“Points for creativity and quick-thinking, but it sounds like you didn’t consult your teammates.”
“No time for a discussion, we had no idea when the spider would be back. Oh, right, and I remembered that spider beasts tend to avoid fire.”
“Yes, alright, Jingyi, I’m impressed, you definitely thought it through.”
“Yes!”
“You can’t just let him off that easy!” Jin Ling shouts. “What about the damage to the forest? The people of the nearby towns rely on game from the forest, it’ll take years to grow back.”
“I'm not letting him off at all.” Wei Wuxian says. “He did his best and I’m glad he found a way to signal us, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences. When Hanguang-jun gets back we can ask for his assessment of the damage and what to do about it.”
Jingyi’s smile fades. “Ah.”
Wei Wuxian swipes a finger across his nose a couple of times. They aren’t any closer to a solution to the web problem, and with the fire steadily growing weaker, the spider will start to make its way back to its prey. But Wei Wuxian thinks he could hold off an attack until he got Lan Zhan’s attention if he needed to. Better to just let the boys finish their stories than make a mistake and get stuck himself.
But first -- “Zizhen, you’ve been quiet, are you feeling alright?” He’s managed to twist himself upright sometime during Jingyi’s story, but hasn’t moved since.
“Yes, Wei-qianbei, I think I’m alright now.”
“Good. Alright, Jin Ling, let’s hear it.”
“So.” Jin Ling pauses. “Right, I have to start at the beginning.”
Jingyi rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to if there’s nothing -- ”
“I thought the elders in the town seemed nervous, actually. Maybe they thought that since all the other cultivators hadn’t returned, if something happened to us, no one would help them in the future.”
“Possible.” Wei Wuxian concedes. “What about the farmhouse?”
“Like Jingyi said, Fairy took off for the barn and I followed, because she’s a spirit dog and spirit dogs have a good sense of spiritual matters, so she’d probably caught the scent of something important.”
“Yeah, like how a few weeks ago she chased after a very important spiritual mouse in Koi Tower.”
“Oh, or that time that she barked at an empty jug of wine for an hour?” Zizhen adds.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Zizhen.” Jin Ling sighs.
“Thanks!”
Wei Wuxian looks at Fairy’s tail, wagging pleasantly. Unpredictability is not something he appreciates in dogs. “So what was it this time, Jin Ling? Did she find something?”
"Just the boy, as far as I can tell. But Jingyi, he wasn't impressed, he was lying to us. Trying to butter us up for some reason. Pretty sure he just assumed we were going to die and thought it was funny. I guess when 'lying is forbidden', you don't know how to tell when people are lying to you, huh?"
"I know how to lie! Just yesterday, I was telling you how your swordsmanship has improved."
"Jingyi -- You... !"
"Just keep telling the story, Jin Ling." Wei Wuxian groans.
“Fine, whatever. In the forest, we came upon a group of ghosts and the fighting spread us out. I took out three or four, and when I looked around for more, Jingyi and I were alone with Fairy. But since I trust her instincts, I wasn’t worried. It only took her a couple of minutes to pick up on the scent of others and we followed her to the clearing.
“The spider was mostly black, but with white markings. Probably about the size of a donkey.”
“Oh! Actually -- ” Zizhen interjects.
“You can have a turn next!” Jin Ling says. “Anyway, Sizhui had it momentarily distracted, but it seemed to be about to return to Zizhen to finish the job, and so I drew my bow and, despite Jingyi’s panicked screeching -- ”
“I did not. Wei-qianbei, let me tell that part again.”
“-- shot an arrow intentionally and accurately towards one of the big eyes on its back.”
“Eyes?” Sizhui asks. “Oh, do you mean the markings that looked like eyes?”
“No, it was definitely an eye. I saw it blinking.”
“Yeah, I agree with Jin Ling, actually,” Jingyi says.
“Hm.” Sizhui looks thoughtful. “That doesn’t make sense. A spider beast is just a giant version of a spider, it shouldn’t have extra eyes.”
“Well, this one does.” Jin Ling says. Sizhui doesn’t fight him, but his eyebrows stay furrowed.
“We’ll keep this in mind. Anything else, Jin Ling?” Wei Wuxian asks.
Jin Ling considers. “I think that Jingyi should have to replant the forest himself and do manual labor for the nearby towns to pay off any debts incurred.”
“Oh come on! If it wasn’t for me, we’d -- ”
“Later! We still have a spider beast to deal with, a web that seems impossible to escape and some town elders with unclear emotions. Zizhen, what have you got for us?”
“I don’t have anything to add about the town elders. All of those descriptions seemed right to me. Scared, embarrassed and dismissive.”
“So conflicted?”
“Well, no. There were three people we met with. The heads of the three biggest families in town.”
Wei Wuxian stares at him for a moment, then his eyes move accusingly across the other juniors.
“Sorry, Wei-qianbei! It didn’t seem important.” Sizhui says with a grimace.
“It might not be, but -- ” Maybe he should have just performed Empathy on one of them. He waves his hand. “Never mind, never mind. What next, Zizhen?”
“At the farmhouse, while Sizhui talks to the eldest, I saw the youngest playing with a doll near some chicken coops and went to talk to her. She had her hair in two pigtails and wore a brown dress, much like her sister.”
“There’s no way that’s important.” Jin Ling says.
“You never know!” Zizhen says. “I asked her about her parents -- or, well, I asked why they didn’t live with any adults and she said her mother went away because a monster got her in the woods and no one was there to help her.”
“Ah.” Never enough cultivators to save everyone, is there? “Was it... the spider?”
“I said -- well, I didn’t know about the spider then, but I told her we were going to get the monster but she said the monster died a long time ago. So I asked if she knew about what was taking people in the woods now and she said that her brother goes to the woods to talk to their mother and that the woods protect them from the bad people who took their mother away.”
No one speaks for a moment. Then, gently, Sizhui says, “I thought a monster got her, what did she mean by ‘bad people’? Zizhen, are you… could you be misremembering? I know your head is -- ”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense but that’s definitely what she said!”
“Children make up all kinds of stories when they don’t understand things.” Jin Ling suggests.
“Hmm.” Wei Wuxian considers. “Did she say anything else?”
“No, then I heard Sizhui calling for me and I joined the others. In the forest, after the ghosts found us, I heard the sound of a woman crying and ran towards it.”
“You didn’t tell the others where you were going?”
“I thought they must have heard it too, it was very loud.” Zizhen explains.
“I didn’t hear anything.” Jingyi says. Jin Ling and Sizhui shake their heads as well.
“Hm. Well, I followed the sound out here, to these trees. I didn’t see the web until it was too late and it pulled me in and I was already caught. The next thing I knew something was crawling on the web towards me. Up close, I think the spider beast is probably more like horse-sized.
“Things are a little hazy after that because of all the blood rushing to my head but now we’re here and Wei-qianbei is going to save us!” Zizhen says, excitedly. His web cocoon wiggles a little.
“Ah.” Wei Wuxian says. “Right.” He sorts through the stories in his head and tries to find the unanswered questions. “You said the web reached out and grabbed you?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what happened to us too, and Jingyi’s sword.” Sizhui says. “Though it’s very odd behavior for a spider beast’s web. I think.”
“Huh.” Wei Wuxan looks down at his feet and finds a small rock. “I want to see it.”
He throws the rock at the web. It passes through a strand of silk, breaking through it with no resistance, and falls to the ground on the other side.
“What, that’s not right!” Jingyi says.
“What happened? I didn’t see it.” Jin Ling whines.
“Maybe…” Wei Wuxian inches closer to the web. The strands all start to quiver, anticipating his approach and he scoots back. They go still.
“Is it only attuned to people?” Sizhui suggests.
“Fairy’s in the web, too.” Jin Ling corrects.
“And it took my sword.” Jingyi says.
“And it doesn’t get everyone, since the elders said that most of the locals came back unharmed.” Zizhen says.
“Aha!” Wei Wuxian shouts.
“Oh!” Sizhui says.
“I don’t get it, is it -- Oooohhhh.” Jingyi says. “Wait, but -- ”
“Did you figure it out? What is it?” Zizhen asks.
“It must be growing and getting stronger in response to spiritual power.” Sizhui says. “The locals who aren’t trained cultivators might get stuck in it, but maybe they’re able to break out of the web easier.”
“I’m going to seal my spiritual power.” Wei Wuxian draws two fingers up to his chest. “Then I should be able to break it.”
“Are you sure, Wei-qianbei? Isn’t that dangerous?” Sizhui asks.
“I can take care of myself without it.” He says, giving Chenqing an obvious pat. Better than you know, he adds internally. A few -- well, sixteen -- years ago, he would have been able to walk right up to the web unaffected. But it turns out dual cultivation is the fast track to a new golden core, not that they don’t still have years of “work” left to get there.
Wei Wuxian makes the gesture, and a cold, empty feeling spreads over him as his spiritual power locks down. He takes a moment to breathe and steady himself. No time for reminiscing about this now.
He takes a step towards the web again. It doesn't move.
“Cut us down!” Jin Ling says.
"I know, I know." Wei Wuxian pulls a small knife out of his belt and makes a long cut through the middle of the web as a test. It sags and doesn't reform. Satisfied, he moves over to the trees to cut the major anchor points to bring it all down at once.
"How is that working?" Jin Ling asks. "What kind of knife is that?"
"It's just a knife." Wei Wuxian laughs. "Not every tool you use has to be spiritual, you know."
"I know tha -- " His retort is cut off as the web's structural integrity reaches a breaking point and the weight of four teenage boys and a dog is suddenly too much to carry. Wei Wuxian jumps back to avoid getting caught under the pile of groaning bodies.
“Everyone alright?” He asks, after the dust has settled. Now broken, the qi-attracted properties of the web seem to be gone. It’s just normal spider silk and the boys are free. Jingyi has crawled across the ground to retrieve his sword and to help Zizhen out of his cocoon. Jin Ling is checking Fairy for injuries, and Sizhui is getting to his feet, brushing off his robes.
“Looks like it.” Sizhui says, smiling gratefully. “Now we -- ”
A terrible shrieking noise sounds off in the depths of the forest. It is inhuman in a way that is deeply familiar. Wei Wuxian remembers this crawling, intoxicating sensation; of feeling raw, no core to shield him from the onslaught of hatred and pain.
An image begins to put itself together in his mind. A web destroyed only by a mediocre person with a mediocre weapon. A village overlooked by the cultivation world. Three orphaned children. A spider beast with extra eyes.
"Ah." He says softly to himself. Resentful energy always has a name and a face, deep down.
"Ok, now what do we do?" Zizhen asks.
Wei Wuxian shrugs, taking a deliberate step back. "It's your night hunt, you tell me."
"That sound must have been the spider beast." Sizhui says. "We should get ready for a fight."
"Hmm." Wei Wuxian says, with a bit of exaggerated thoughtfulness. "Are you prepared for it? This one doesn't seem like it matches the textbooks. Could it be something else?"
"What else could it be?" Jin Ling says.
"He's right, there's something off about it." Sizhui says. "I wonder if..."
Wei Wuxian is distracted from the discussion by the sight of Lan Zhan floating into view. He lands softly next to Wei Wuxian, observing the juniors briefly before turning to Wei Wuxian.
“What happened?”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth. Does he begin in the forest? The farmhouse? Everyone’s very observant but potentially useless opinions of the elders? No, there’s too much. “I'll tell you all about it later. For now, I'm letting the juniors decide how they're going to deal with the spider.”
Lan Zhan nods, and Wei Wuxian can't help but smile at the simple pleasure of standing next to him. Why does he need a functioning core to warm him when the sight of his husband works just as well?
He's just managed to tear himself away to tune back into the junior’s conversation when another cry echoes through the forest, much closer this time.
“Here it comes!” Jin Ling shouts.
Either Zizhen and Jin Ling are both wrong, or the spider has grown since they last saw it. If it’s a horse, it’s the biggest draft horse Wei Wuxian has ever seen. Maybe it’s the size of an elephant, though he’s only seen those in drawings. Its legs are long and spindly, and they thunder across the forest floor with the weight of the body they carry. Fangs gnash, dripping venom, and resentful energy rolls off it in waves.
The juniors fan out automatically in formation in front of Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan; Jin Ling notches his bow and calls Fairy to heel, while the other three draw their swords. With a glance to Lan Zhan, Wei Wuxian steps back.
“My arrow’s gone!” Jin Ling says.
“So?” Jingyi replies.
“So something pulled it out. It’s not alone!”
“There’s no time for that now!” Sizhui shouts. “Jingyi, you and Zizhen stay at its front and try to keep its attention. Jin Ling, we’ll need you and Fairy to try to bring it down if it starts climbing anything. I’m going to try to get on its back to -- ”
There’s a long, mournful cry from the spider.
“Wait!” Zizhen starts to lower his sword. “That’s it… that’s the sound I heard. Doesn’t it sound like a person? A woman?”
They exchange looks.
“Could it be… ?” Sizhui starts.
“It’s not a beast, it’s a ghost.” Zizhen says. “It’s the mother!”
“We’ll try to calm her, then.” Sizhui sheaths his sword and looks back to the spider, determined. “If we can rebalance the energy, she should go back to human form.”
They switch tactics seamlessly; Jin Ling and Zizhen start with binding spells to keep the spider away from Sizhui, who has pulled out his guqin and begun to play. Fairy snaps at its legs to keep it off balance and unstable. The spider’s form shifts and warps as the calming effect of the guqin takes effect, but it’s not enough; it’s breaking through the binding spells.
Wei Wuxian pulls Chenqing from his belt to join the effort, but Lan Zhan puts a hand on his arm. He follows his gaze to Jingyi, who is backing off, hesitant.
“Jingyi, I can’t do it alone, I need your help.” Sizhui says.
“I haven’t practiced enough, I could mess it up.”
“You practice all the damn time!” Jin Ling shouts. “Don’t get all modest now!”
“You can do it, Jingyi!” Zizhen says.
Jingyi takes a breath, steels himself, then pulls out a xiao and joins the song. Wei Wuxian smiles and puts his own flute away.
The power of both instruments turns the tide, and once the music takes hold the transformation goes quickly, as if it’s only been waiting for this push. The spider body falls away in pieces; legs dissolving as the heavy, bulbous abdomen melts away. It goes formless, a black cloud of energy shifting and settling onto the forest floor. And then it reforms into a human shape, a woman in ghostly robes, glowing in the pale moonlight, one eye just a bloody wound. The song goes quiet and Jin Ling and Zizhen release their binding spells.
“No!” A voice cuts through the silence, and a boy comes out from behind a tree and falls to the ground in front of the ghost. “Mother!”
She bends over him, only love in her face. She puts both hands on his cheeks, brushing tears away. Then she rises again and turns towards the juniors.
“Take care of my children.” She says. And then she’s gone.
No one moves for a few, precious seconds. Then the boy shoves himself up and tries to get away, but stumbles into a tree. He’s just a boy, Wei Wuxian thinks with heartbreaking clarity, losing his mother for the second time, crying in the woods and surrounded by strangers. But Sizhui is already approaching, cautiously, crouching at his level.
“We’re not going to hurt you.” He says, softly. “Will you tell us your story?”