----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
-
-
Little shad-ow,-- little shad-ow
Nothing to nobody we owe
He could have ripped you apart
He could have killed from the start
You would not’ve been spared
If we hadn’t shared
You were but half-darkness
With your phantom sprite amiss
Too full of yourself to survive
The darkness within needs to thrive
Little shad-ow,- little shad-ow
Now wasn’t that something you didn’t know?
-
The cavern echoed with the clash of silence, as Midnight and the shadebeast remained ensnared in a savage struggle. Both embodiments of darkness, they tore, ripped, and clashed against each other, each vying for dominance. Despite her efforts, he still overwhelmed her, delivering massive strikes with his powerful paws that ripped right through her. Each blow tore her form asunder, distorting her senses and wrenching fragments away from the darkness that was her. Once severed, these fragments eluded her grasp, slipping beyond her reach and ability to reclaim.
With each assault, she weakened, diminished by the loss of her own darkness, while she lacked the mass and speed to retaliate with equal force. Whenever her darkness lacerated him, he seamlessly merged back into his form, the clefts closing instantaneously before she could sever any part of him. He was too fierce, too fast, and undeniably powerful. Struggling to keep pace, Midnight broke free, propelled herself backward, and surged upwards alongside the cavern walls. Distance. Initially erratic, her movements swiftly gained purpose, as intuition amplified by necessity revealed that she required no footholds or ledges, no contact with the walls at all. For hundreds of meters, she ascended with unprecedented speed, liberated from the constraints of physical weight.
The relentless hunter pursued, a seamless cascade of ripples chasing her as Midnight spiralled upwards and dashed across the vast cavern. With each turn, they collided, tearing and ripping at each other. The sprites, momentarily silenced by the intensity of the fight, kept their distance.
Midnight had vanquished beasts larger and stronger than herself, and she approached the shadebeast with equal ferocity and determination. Despite the hunger within her to confront him head-on, she refrained from reckless attacks. Aware of his size advantage, she understood that each blow she landed must count for three of his. She bode her time, evading his relentless assault time and again, seeking openings and opportune moments to strike. Several times, she landed skilful hits, tearing at his face and throat — but what would be deadly assaults in a battle between natural beasts offered her no advantage in a battle of darkness. She never succeeded in fully severing a part of him; the wounds she inflicted closed instantly, even as she attacked, before she could penetrate him entirely. Conversely, when he seized her, his attacks were brutally effective, further diminishing her with each vicious blow. In this clash of darkness, it was a battle of sheer mass and force. Midnight found herself constantly evading his direct assaults, forced to seek distance to prevent him from surging through her entirely with his immense form. She was still his prey.
Distance. The intensity of their battle escalated as the shadebeast surged ahead, ascending to the ceiling before launching assaults from above. Now, he was not merely attacking; with each evasion, each time Midnight dodged, he drove her back down.
Midnight needed to think. This must not end like the encounter with the Rockshade Weavers, where instinctual combat had led to momentary victory but ultimate defeat. She could not allow the shadebeast to diminish her any further.
Assess your enemy
She needed to envision the future as her wizard did, understanding how she could alter the outcome of this battle. She needed to comprehend how the shadebeast restored himself. Midnight needed to match his size, to become more darkness — No, there was no need! She did not need to be more than him. She was not restricted to the darkness within her. All the darkness was her weapon.
As she dove downward to gain distance, Midnight tapped into the surrounding darkness currents. She had already done so when shaping them into extensions of her pathera claws. Hurtling towards the ground, she seized the swirling darkness with her front claws, compressing it into a concentrated mass. Just before impact, she swung around and slashed through the air with potent strikes. Though the shadebeast loomed directly above, in the fleeting moment of her attack, she remained just out of his reach.
With a fierce release, Midnight hurtled the compressed darkness towards him, piercing through the air before he could retaliate. The flying strikes collided with him, shattering his form, distorting his essence and severing several parts of him. In the blink of an eye, Midnight had already dashed beyond the icy ground, putting distance between them. Before he could close in, she unleashed another volley of flying strikes, aiming to weaken him further.
As darkness herself, now in control of his advances, Midnight discerned the shadebeast more distinctly. His ripples took the form of a grand canine, a powerful and tempestuous male. He fought with brute force, akin to a wild beast, though sometimes it felt as if he were holding back —
Suddenly, Midnight realised a critical difference between them: he had never extended his darkness beyond his form. In direct confrontation, he relied solely on his teeth and claws, and his chase had been the same as a natural beast’s hunt. He had never sent darkness forth to ensnare her — He could not do it! Not like her. The revelation struck Midnight with overwhelming force. The shadebeast was limited to his bestial shape, while she controlled the darkness. He was just a beast, while Midnight had bonded with a wizard who had spent two decades mastering forces outside of his form. Yves wielded destructive discs and lethal beams of light. He must have imparted this knowledge to her long ago, and it had surfaced now. Did he not unleash light just like Midnight had bundled and sent the darkness flying? When discussing his eyes and light, had he not described exactly what she was doing now — grasping at something he could not see, something that was not there, controlling the nothing? Had the Gods sensed this potential when they acknowledged Midnight? Had the Gods granted her their darkness essence exactly because they foresaw her innate capacity? They must have known that she would become so much more than the shadebeast — the Gods chose her not to be a mere being of darkness, but a wielder of darkness.
As she realised this, Midnight became ruthless. Now, there was no need for words anymore, only intuition, only faith.
-
Rushing, surging, whirling through the cavern, Midnight sent the darkness flying, refining her control with each assault. First she unleashed raging claw strikes, followed by ever denser, longer projectiles that required no touch, steered only through her mind — barrages of spears that pierced the air like Yves’ beams of light. It was overwhelming, intoxicating even, to wield all this power.
In her moment of exhilaration and split focus, he caught her. The shadebeast’s claws tore through her neck, severing her form, disrupting her concentration and breaking her creations of darkness. They collided, entwined, darkness rupturing darkness until the shadebeast struck her down. They locked again in deadly struggle; Midnight biting into his skull while struggling against his grip on her throat.
With his superior size and strength, he flung her through the air with brutal force — an attack that was, in a fight between natural beasts, meant to snap her neck through erratic movement, to crush her under the pressure of his bite. In their silent struggle, it was his attempt to penetrate her neck completely and tear her in half —
A disc of darkness surged through him from bottom to top, almost rending him in two. As he flung himself to the side, Midnight twisted out of his grasp.
In the most daunting situations, always save one, always hold onto one – One crystal, one fraction of energy, one shard.
She had remembered.
The shadebeast reformed, his darkness swiftly closing the rift. Before he could retaliate, Midnight unleashed another barrage of discs. The shadebeast twisted, recoiled, and evaded her attacks with feral agility. Though she held him at bay, she could not land a direct blow anymore. Even though he was confined to his form, he remained swifter and more agile than Midnight, adapting to her tactics with each passing moment, now reacting to her creations as soon as they took shape.
So confine him. As Midnight darted around the cavern, she left a trail of darkness spears and discs in her wake, persistently assaulting the shadebeast. She drew upon the darkness with indominable tenacity, saturating the air with her lethal arsenal. Each projectile missed its mark, but the shadebeast’s constant evasion slowed his advance, allowing Midnight to maintain her lead. When he drew too close, she transformed the surges of darkness around her into dense tendrils that thrashed like the cliff behemoth and lashed out at him like stygian serpents, generating ripples that disrupted his form upon touch while Midnight produced ever more spears and discs.
And as they darted through the cavern, she was trapping him.
She was trapping him, and he did not seem to notice the grander scheme. He kept chasing her, his actions suddenly so simple that all tension within Midnight lightened. He was not senseless; he might even understand that she was learning and exploring strategies. Whatever his thoughts, Midnight understood that he simply kept chasing her because it felt natural. Because to him, it felt right. If he could envision a future where Midnight released her trap, or if he could consider that retreating now might save his life, he would understand that continuing the hunt was the wrong tactics for survival — but from moment to moment, within every moment of present until the imminent moment of his death, it felt right to him.
To Midnight, it felt wrong. It was a disturbing realisation. Deep within her lay rooted an understanding founded in nature: that he, who surpassed her in size, strength and speed, should also surpass her in life. She had felt this as their jaws had interlocked and she had been so clearly inferior. And she had felt it during their direct confrontation, when his grand paws had so easily ruptured her. But now, she dominated because she fought like a wizard and acted like a trapper.
It was so disturbing because Midnight saw herself in him. Just days ago, she had felt nothing but rage when the weavers trapped her in the tunnel. And now, in a strikingly similar way, she found it unsettling that the shadebeast was falling into her trap. A grand male like him should not meet his end like this. For many years, Midnight had been just like him. And even now, there was a part of her that wanted to discard all these thoughts and strategies, to simply engage him head-on, trading strikes and bites until one of them faltered. It was the same part of her that would have been truly content with being devoured by him.
But even if she gave in to this remnant of her origin, it would not feel right to Midnight like it did to him. Because the beast part was not her all. She was not the same as him or other hunters. She had a wizard who had taught her to recognise the many traps around her, as well as the futures ahead of her.
Midnight had never recognised Yves’ impact on her as much as she did now, in his absence. Surrounded by beasts who were either hunters or trappers, she realised she was both and more. Her wizard had changed her, gradually but profoundly. And because he did, she had been able to change herself. From his experiences with dimensions and magic, she had learned to embody and wield darkness. Now, she fought with his foresight and skills.
-
-
image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Glass-Wizard_Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webnovel-by-The-Duckman_Depressed-Wizard-Online-Webseries_ArtGlassWizard_Albweiss-Mountains_Midnight_Cavern.png]
-
-
However, just as Midnight adapted, so did the shadebeast. Chasing her down to the ice-covered bottom of the cavern, he transformed into a swirling vortex of darkness, openly seeking close combat. His manoeuvres were both skilfully evasive and aggressively daring. As he attacked and thrashed Midnight's defenses with sheer brute force, her serpentine tendrils fought back, disrupting his advances and thwarting any direct assault on her.
He battered her tendrils with his paws and seized them with his teeth, tearing them asunder. But for every one he ruptured, three others pierced through him. If he mauled them before Midnight could fully form them, they tore right upon contact, but those with superior density slashed into him and distorted his form. As long as they were under Midnight’s control, these tendrils emitted lingering ripples that hindered his ability to reform, until he clawed them off.
He adapted immediately, shifting his focus from her tendrils to Midnight herself, using his size and reach to slash at her, even if it meant simultaneously cutting through several tendrils that obstructed his path of attack. He forced Midnight to dodge and defend, to retreat before him, but did not allow her to gain distance. Blocking her every attempt to soar upwards again, he confined her to the cavern floor. Where Midnight was cautious, he became reckless. While she planned ahead, she underestimated just how much he was fighting in the now. As their claws, teeth and tendrils clashed, he suddenly burst right into and through her defences, with a reckless leap and no apparent regard for his own safety. All her serpentine tendrils pierced him, but he reached her. He struck her down before Midnight could dodge or reinforce her position with additional tendrils. Three heavy blows landed right after, severing half, and half, and again half of her form, reducing her to the fickle size of a mere patherren.
But Midnight clung to the future she had envisioned. And then did what she had seen her wizard do many times to his enemies, when he had woven hidden threads of shards and light just as delicate and potent as the spears and discs of darkness she had prepared. All of them were still there. Throughout her insistent barrage, Midnight had tested and understood that these projectiles persisted as long as she consciously controlled them, akin to Yves’ magic conjurations — though Midnight felt that she did not continuously hold the darkness, but rather that the darkness acted almost autonomously once commanded. Recalling that darkness passed through stone unhindered, she had directed all the spears and discs that missed the shadebeast to maintain their trajectory, pass through the cavern walls and then halt beyond. There, they had lain in wait until Midnight, now no longer involved in an unpredictable chase but intertwined with the shadebeast in a battle on the cavern floor, summoned them back all at once.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Almost one-hundred spears and discs, dense distortions of darkness, hurtled towards her and the shadebeast, simultaneously slicing through him like a volley of arrows and blades, cutting into him from all angles. With him looming above, surrounding her, their size difference greatly exacerbated by her diminished form, all of them impaled him. They emerged on the other side, between him and Midnight. Before cutting through her or the ground, all the weapons of darkness were blocked by a shield of Midnight’s tendrils. These tendrils, along with those already embedded within the shadebeast, immediately merged with the darkness projectiles — Midnight did not dissipate them but maintained control over the entire structure; a multi-layered lattice, more grid than web, almost geometrical due to the clear cuts and sharp angles at which the spears and discs had collided. This structure divided the shadebeast hundredfold, encapsulating all his fragments within the confines of her densely compressed, interlinked projectiles. Midnight’s darkness enveloped and assimilated all these isolated fragments. Everything she had severed from him became darkness under her command.
Amongst all these fragments, there remained one she could not control. It was the one fragment that was still him. Just like the shadebeast had repeatedly separated darkness from Midnight’s form until she was reduced to the size of a patherren, a small part of him remained, though much smaller than even her. It was his essence, captured amidst all the external darkness Midnight controlled.
With a single step, she closed the distance, and then she devoured him whole.
-
As she consumed his essence, Midnight hoped that he could find satisfaction in his defeat, even though it was not a fight against a true beast. She hoped he wanted to be taken by her as much as she had wanted to surrender to him. These fleeting thoughts flickered within Midnight for but a breath, quickly overshadowed by far more potent sensations. Devouring him felt so much better than taking in venom. The venom that she had demanded from other beasts had held but meagre fractions of essence; the shadebeast she took whole.
And as she felt his essence dissipate, fracture, and become her sustenance, she felt the intense hunger within her flare anew. This was it. This was what Midnight had been craving. The shadebeast satisfied the insatiable hunger that had obsessed her since the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ had changed her. Though her size did not increase, devouring him made her essence grow and imbued her with strength. Midnight had been craving essence.
It was ecstasy. It was exhilaration. It felt exactly right. Midnight revelled in the sensation. She stood, fully tense, fully engrossed in the incomparable feeling. There was no pain, unlike with the venom. It was raw, concentrated satisfaction; an overwhelming fulfilment that drowned out all her concerns, as she had only experienced a handful of times in her whole life.
-
Ah yes, oh yes, I see it on your face
I see it, too, you are no stranger to the taste
An exciting revelation
A curious temptation
An addictive exploration
An irresistible sensation
It is quite unique, and incredibly intense
----Does it not remind you of wizard essence?
-
The sprites’ voices had lost all laughter and shrieks. They were enticing whispers, washing over Midnight as she revelled in the intense sensations.
Amidst the intoxicating euphoria, Midnight experienced rising tension. Until now, her focus had been solely on the shadebeast, but now her senses shifted to the presence of witches. Midnight extended her darkness sense across the ice-covered cavern floor, sweeping, feeling, delving through the masses of ice and rock — witch runes lay etched below her, buried beneath layers of ice. They were carvings so vast that it required great distance to visually recognise them as witch carvings rather than random, natural crevasses.
Midnight could distinguish between the scripts of wizards and witches. While wizards relied on various languages, witches exclusively used Faramyr, which had reportedly remained unchanged since its inception. Wizards believed that the words themselves held inherent magic, something imbued through time. A single, immutable language facilitated many things, including the efforts of wizards to decipher witch runes. Yves had learned how to distinguish common words, and so did Midnight. She had developed not a literal but an intuitive understanding of Faramyr, likely through their bond. With most words, she felt their general intention, although some she could read on sight. Among them were runes representing various elements, as well as common spellcores. The cores Midnight identified below were for transgression barrier and gester, which had multiple translations in the languages of common peoples and wizards, including energy, spirit, life, presence, and gestalt. These cores were surrounded by several runes, including those for ice and snow.
In an instant, Midnight dashed off, surging across the icy cavern floor toward the southern wall. This cavern offered an exit. A way out of the mountain. The witch runes sealed the passage.
The sprites followed overhead, their whispers swelling into a deep murmur that reverberated from the grand cavern walls, echoing and swelling in deep tones as if sung not by two voices from above, but by two-hundred invisible spectators all around her.
-
Stay, little shadow
There are many things you still don’t know
There are witches you may fight
Wizards and beasts you may free
Come with us, dark beast
There are many more upon to feast
They walked these parts just yesternight
We’ll show you where they might be
Make the mountain your home, shadowbound
And we will reveal all that we found
Power to behold, unfathomable might
Secrets to unfold in the realms that none can see
You will return, darkness true
Don’t you hear the mountain calling for you?
-
Midnight felt the mountain. She felt it so much stronger than her bond with her wizard. She also sensed that the witch runes were keeping the sprites at bay. Throughout the fight, they had not once descended to the ground. Even now, they hovered noticeably above Midnight's level, reluctant to come closer — Because they could not. The witches had erected a barrier to confine all living beings within the mountain. They contained even ethereal beings like the sprites, preventing them to approach both the runes and the mountain’s outer walls that framed this cavern, but they could not confine the essence of darkness that was Midnight.
Midnight glanced up at the sprites, conveying through her gaze and posture there was nothing to gain from her.
There was, however, one thing she still needed to retrieve from the mountain: the two messenger strings. During the fight, the shadebeast had torn them off her and flung them aside. She found them just a few leaps away, lying flat on the ice at the edge of the wall, with both rings still attached. As Midnight lowered her head to pick them up, something caught her senses. In front of her face, right where her strings had landed, the rock wall bore claw marks. Midnight discerned them below the fractured ice. They seemed to trace individual rock fragments, defining their outlines.
Discarding the Rings of Light but holding onto the strings, the darkness that was Midnight seeped into the small cracks, past the ice and through the rock. She remained unaffected by the witch magic.
-
We will wait your return, silent one
Your dark existence has just begun-
-
The words were distant whispers, reduced to two singular voices that faded along with the presence of the sprites. Shortly after, the last echoes within the grand ice cavern vanished, carried away by the eternal breath of the mountain. Most beings, once born or brought into darkness, received their last breath within the confines of the Albweiss, but the silence that was Midnight seeped through the cracks. With her, she carried three messenger strings and a grand beast-wizard sigil ring.
-
-
The-Glass-Wizard-The-Duckman-Websnovel-Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webseries-Celestial-Bodies-and-Sky-Pl [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Glass-Wizard_The-Duckman_Websnovel_Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webseries_Celestial-Bodies-and-Sky_Planets.png]
The night Midnight achieved true affinity, a new song resonated from the mountain’s heart.
-
We asked one hundred bones
Of one hundred lives
Then we would return
The one he desires
-
Find one hundred beasts
For us on to feast
And we will hold true
The word we give you
-
Though we won’t satisfy
With any lesser than yours
So have all of them be
Selected by us
-
But mind you, be wary
For in the mountain they sing
To dwellers in darkness
The darkness will cling
-
He will capture your essence
But if you take him all in
Your trust be rewarded
With the power he’ll bring
-
In your quest you became
A formidable beast
You fought eighty-nine
And brought eighty-eight feasts
-
We admire your progress
And your resolve to compete
But sadly, oh sadly
You faced your defeat
-
We honour your skill
You were but so close
But this bet is now over
And your familiar still ours
-
Young wizard, now lay
Your spirit to rest
But rest reassured
You were one of the best
-
You brought us great fun
And we will sing of your game
When tonight we will feast
your familiar in your name
-
-
-
-
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------