He stared at the ground, his heart pounding, every muscle tensed, ready to fight a hopeless battle. But somehow, Rex realized, something in his reaction was missing. The gnawing fear in his stomach hadn’t come yet; the spider didn’t terrify him as it should have.

In fact, he couldn’t remember having a single dream since the darklings had changed him that had included his father’s tarantulas. He and Melissa had killed them after the accident had left the old man helpless, but Rex had always known their ghosts were lurking beneath his house, waiting to wreak revenge.

He looked up at the giant spider again and realized that the cold sweat of those childhood traumas had disappeared. His arachnophobia (his brain twinged at the word’s thirteen letters) was gone.

Another moment passed, and still the creature didn’t strike.

Rex bared his teeth at the beast, and a sound gurgled up from his throat—the same hiss that had turned Timmy Hudson into a puddle of melted bully.

Of course, the darkling before him wasn’t so easily scared. It stood firm on its six hind legs, the dance of its spurs still mesmerizing, its bulk glistening in the dark moon’s light. But as the long seconds stretched out, it didn’t strike.

Slowly the reason dawned on him. The beast hadn’t taken a hunting stance at all—Rex wasn’t prey. This wasn’t the kill at the end of a chase; it was a ritual between two predators, like a standoff over some carcass. The spider’s dance was posturing and bluster, a challenge made, hoping that another hunter would back down. But Rex had gotten here first to claim the kill.

He stood his ground.

Wolves didn’t eat other wolves, after all.

For a long minute he faced the creature, letting the motions of the contest move through him. His fingers clenched into rigid claws, slowly cutting the air like a familiar ceremony unfolding. Neither he nor the darkling advanced, held apart by mutual respect and fear.

Then Rex felt a flavor in his mind, not Melissa’s familiar taste—but something ancient and arid, like dust on his tongue, hardly words at all.

Join us.

He swallowed, his throat parched, staring back at the darkling.

We will hunt again soon.

Rex tried to hiss again, to ward off the murmurings inside his head.

Then he felt a rush of fear from the beast, its cold heart suddenly pounding, driving its bloated body like a lash. The darkling turned away and twisted quickly into a new shape, growing thin and long and sprouting wings. Then with one last hiss of its own, it leapt into the air, a host of slithers whirling around it. A great dark cloud of them gathered as the darkling disappeared into the sky, the local burrows emptying, running for fear of the flame-bringer.

As the creature left his sight, a last thought trailed from it…

Winter is coming, halfling. Join.

Rex fell onto one knee, exhausted and shaking. His head was throbbing, one half of his mind warring against the other. The world around him seemed to flex and bend, his seer’s Focus overwhelmed by the warped vision of a darkling.