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She was the darkness.
Midnight felt it, as she seeped through the crevices of the rock face. She felt it, and she heard it. She heard a voice that spoke from within her, and this voice spoke the truth about her new existence. Midnight had never experienced such a voice. It was unlike any she had known before. It did not impart knowledge she did not possess, like Yves so often did, nor did it explain facets of the world beyond her comprehension, as the academy masters or other humanoid people had done time and again. Instead, it revealed knowledge that existed within Midnight. And as it did, it conveyed the truth not to her, but for her — a subtle yet profound difference.
The voice had first spoken during her fight with the shadebeast. It had been but a whisper, yet in the heat of battle, it had startled her greatly. Now, as she wove her path through the dense mountain rock, Midnight remembered. After she had sacrificed her original essence to the darkness, the voice had said:
----I am darkness. Darkness is me.
Midnight understood this truth. She had truly transformed. She had severed the bond that once connected her tangible body and her Rothar. Both existed no more. Yet, she existed. She existed in the absence of energies and light. She existed where nothing else could. She existed in the nothing and in the silence.
Proof of Midnight’s new existence was this voice. She believed it was the voice of her Gods, a whisper born from the fragment of essence the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ had bestowed upon her. And because their essence had first become hers and then it had become her, the voice now spoke not to her or about her, but for her.
After the first whisper, the voice had fallen silent until Midnight had consumed the shadebeast. As she had claimed his essence, the voice had whispered again, though it had sounded slightly different. It had said:
----I am change. Change is me.
Midnight had not yet understood this truth, for she believed in the permanence of the darkness she had become. She felt that nothing never changed. This belief was why she had severed ties with her Rothar and sacrificed her essence; to stop switching between her original body and her darkness form.
Freed from her body, Midnight moved within the nothing. Even in the densest structures of rock, nothing found space, and within such nothing, Midnight flowed, seeping through the mountain’s stone arteries. The voice within her remained silent, yet she believed that her Gods were with her. Midnight felt a satisfying sense of unity with the darkness and the stone, a oneness that transcended any previous bond. The darkness was no longer just a form she assumed; it was her very being. As she moved, she was both a part of the mountain and beyond it, both a part of the world and apart from it. As a being that thrived in the absence of light and energy; she was everything within the nothing.
Not only darkness, void of Rothar, could pass unimpeded. Midnight had collected Yves’ two messenger strings and also carried the third string and the beast-wizard sigil ring, which she had found behind the rock fragments marked by clawed gouges. These enchanted objects were unique in their composition, allowing her to take them past the witch runes etched into the ice chamber floor and to continue bearing them even now, within the nothing.
These objects belonged to a rare category of items that, when properly crafted and enchanted, were impervious to both physical attacks and ethereal forces. Midnight did not fully understand how that came to be, but she knew that high-quality messenger strings and beast-wizard sigil rings were immaterial and warded against damage through magic and curses. Yet, they could be seen and grasped by entities with Rothar. Remarkably, they could also be carried by Midnight, as she had come to realise. This peculiar nature allowed her to transport them through the solid rock without impediment.
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As far as Midnight knew, inanimate nature like rock did not possess Rothar, which is why immaterial beings like sprites could pass through such matter freely. The same accounted for everything that was solemnly anchored in the Alladharian Dimension, such as light fragments and Adhar, as well as the rare objects she now carried. While Midnight had often been able to recognise ethereal existences and objects, they were invisible to many peoples. Wizards could only see them through their second sight. The enchanted objects felt like a strange part of her, seamlessly merging with her essence. As Midnight flowed through the dense rock, they were the only reminder of the ties she still maintained to the material world, a thread linking her to her wizard.
Beast-sigil rings served as the only identifiers for those Worldbender transformers who chose to live as beasts. Midnight knew that some never reverted to their humanoid forms, as they eventually became permanently unable to do so. The sigil ring was designed to endure, serving as a lasting mark of identity through decades or even centuries. These rings were crafted to withstand the rigours of life as a beast — wandering, climbing, flying, fighting, hunting.
When Midnight had first learned about these wizards who intended to live in the body of a beast, she had wondered why they needed to be recognised by others of their kind. While individual reasons varied, such as the sentimentalities of their kin, the core purpose was to identify a dead beast as a wizard. A wizard's body, regardless of its final shape or state, could not be left unattended. Yves had explained that a deceased wizard's body, no matter how severely altered, must always be treated with the Ritual of the Dead, one of the practices that governed their lives and deaths.
Only a handful of wizards possessed the skill to create these sigil rings, each one tailored to the respective transformer wizard and his chosen animal form. Crafted with the utmost precision, these rings required advanced conjuration and powerful enchantments. In contrast, messenger strings varied widely in their kinds and qualities, depending on their intended use and the expertise of their makers.
Yves carried exceptional messenger strings. He had no regular correspondence with anyone and did not use them for those casual exchanges that were common amongst adventurers or artefact hunters who left strings for each other in a guild when they embarked on individual errands. Such strings, safeguarded by the guild, required no extensive protection. Messages could also be sent directly via guilds using particularly high-quality strings. These strings did not need to be bought but remained the property of the guild and were delivered by individual guild couriers.
Midnight and Yves had worked as couriers in the Barnstream villages during their year-long stay there. They had never earned clearance for long-distance or sensitive messages, which were reserved for experienced and well-known couriers, renowned adventurers, and older individuals who had proven themselves reliable and trustworthy over many years and decades. However, even though they had been outsiders, Midnight and Yves had been reluctantly accepted as couriers for the everyday exchange of regular post and messenger strings, primarily because they had been the only ones available for the job. At that time, Yves had surmised that the guild had been unable to win over any other adventurer or local from the sparsely populated villages to undertake the strenuous footwork through the rugged terrain and harsh climate. Their skills and reliability eventually earned them a grudging respect, but it was clear that their presence was tolerated more out of practical need than communal embrace.
The strings they had carried connected the Barnstream settlements situated around the north-eastern coastline — where Yves had stated to reunite with Midnight — down the river to the villages in the Northern Midlands, where the Barnstream Harbour Guild was located.
At the time Midnight and Yves became couriers, regular boat traffic along the Barnstream, which usually carried the post, had been impossible. The watercourse that originated from the Albweiss and flowed down the mountain to form several lakes, main branches, and a couple of side streams before reaching the sea, had become impassable. As couriers following the river route, Midnight and Yves had predominantly carried regular strings. They delivered routine communications between isolated families, traders arranging the transport of their wares overland, and other exchanges essential to the villages' connectivity.
Yves, in the rare instances that he conveyed messages, insisted on something more reliable, something that could withstand the harshest of conditions. They had learned their lesson four years ago, when crucial messages they had left in the moors had been destroyed, never reaching their intended recipient — a mistake they had discovered much too late.
Since then, Yves carried quality strings that could endure physical, magical, and ethereal attacks. Depending on their maker and quality, the various types of messenger strings had equally diverse names. The ones he carried were known as lifelines.
Midnight could not discern whether it was an enchantment or the fact that the strings were in themselves inanimate objects that allowed her to carry them past the witch runes. From what she had read and felt, the grand runes were designed to ward off intruders and contain powerful forces like sprites, yet they had neither affected the messenger strings nor the sigil ring. While Midnight had left behind the Rings of Light that Yves had given her, since were not entirely ethereal and could thus not pass through matter, these objects seemed impervious to the physical realm. Occasionally, Midnight encountered a faint resistance when passing through areas with sparse traces of vegetation or minute creatures nestled within small fissures in the stone, but even then, the strings and sigil ring slipped through unaffected.
Even in her darkness form, Midnight found herself able to interact with these items. She had been told that these particular objects were designed to bind themselves to the essence of the bearer, but this knowledge was just words, not understanding. Yves would be able to provide her with more explanations.
The thought took Midnight by surprise. She had never contemplated the nature and powers of the world, as well as magic, in such depth before her venom transformation. She had not reflected with such conscious depth, but felt and acted. And in the way she had acted, Midnight had divided the world into possibilities and impossibilities. Knowing what she could do had been sufficient, and it had never been necessary to understand all the reasons behind these possibilities. Now, however, with her thinking seeming so much more complex, these considerations seemed to come naturally.
Still, while all these questions and thoughts and memories were with Midnight, they occupied only a small, rather quiet part of her mind. Ultimately, she was content that she could carry the ring and the strings with her through the stone, and everything else might or might not find an explanation in the future. In the present, Midnight was much more focused on her surroundings, on what she felt from within.
As she moved through the dense rock, the world outside of her was a feeling of solidified darkness. Nothing except herself shifted. Nothing moved — only the nothing and the silence that was her. The silence of the mountain was absolute; there was no breath to be felt in its arteries. In this profound darkness, Midnight found solace. It was the thought that she could simply remain. That she could just be.
Her transformation had stripped away the trappings of her former life, leaving only the essence of what she had become. But somewhere, still, the bond with her wizard had remained. Even if the bond had remained just in her mind, it was a fragment of her past that she still carried with her, the fragment that kept her moving. It was the voice of Yves that she remembered so well that she could almost hear him in that small and quiet part of her mind that brought up all the questions, explanations and memories. It was broken only by the faint, almost imperceptible whispers that came from the new voice within her, the voice of her Gods that would tell her all the truths about who she was now.
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