The Crimson Curved Saber sliced through the Drider's neck, and the uproar in the cavern fell silent once more.
Tang looked at the corpse of his enormous "friend" on the rock platform. Seeing the look of relief in death, he dragged over the bodies of the Drow sentries and Marsh Bearfolk and tossed them beside it.
"We couldn't have stayed friends forever anyway."
"I don't know what you're mourning."
As the Drider's corpse shriveled in the flames, Night Wind couldn't help muttering,
"Whatever they were before—good or bad, male or female—nobody wants to turn into a monster like that. Even the Drow shun them. Death was a mercy."
"You don't understand."
Tang shook his head.
"The moment I entered the cavern and started looking around, our eyes met. He gazed at me with such longing. It was like he was saying, 'Hey, unlucky bastard. Want to put on an unscripted farce in this cavern?' I knew what he wanted..."
Seeing Tang launch into another speech, Nightingale, who was used to quiet, couldn't help asking, "Do you always talk this much?"
"You get used to it," Night Wind and Shalti said in unison.
But while they gathered the spoils and stuffed food into their bags, Nightingale suddenly realized something: "Wait. Are you saying everything that happened was part of your plan?"
"Which part?" Tang asked.
"The part where they turned on each other..."
"How could it be?"
Tang waved a hand.
"How could I have known they had a whole family drama going on? At most, I knew they weren't united—or, rather, that each had an agenda.
"When they couldn't agree among themselves and lacked the strength to crush us outright, it wasn't hard to stir up trouble with the means we had.
"And I figured they'd pin their hopes on