As she darted and weaved through the tunnel, Midnight attempted to shift into the darkness several times. Yet, with every attempt, the sprites hurled her back into her pathera form.

 
      So full of yourself

             Just beggin’ for a beatin’

   Touch him again

              And you’ll be eaten!

 
The tunnel widened. Midnight’s darkness sense revealed an expansive cavern filled with towering stalactites that reached down to the ground, where they solidified into dense pillars. The faint layer of salt-crystalline ground crunched beneath her paws as she darted and slithered around the columns. The shadebeast spurred Midnight onward. In her frantic flight, she wove erratic patterns around the pillars, her darkness already exploring potential exits.

Even in this harrowing chase, the sprites remained a persistent menace, their ethereal forms constantly flitting in and out of Midnight’s line of sight. They danced through the air with unnerving agility, obscuring her vision, unsettling her senses and disrupting her concentration with their taunts and jeers.

 
Little shad-ow, little shad-ow

Through the darkness you flee

Through the darkness you flow

Any yet you do not see

And yet you do not know

Only true affinity

A double-forged synergy

A form of full opacity

Yet absolute transparency

Will grant you life and victory

 
They were sabotaging and simultaneously helping her? What did any of this mean? How was it possible that they prevented Midnight from shifting into darkness? How could she get rid —

The shadebeast jumped her from behind. Midnight evaded to the right, whirled around in mid-air and threw herself at his side, with her obsidian claws extended into the darkness currents surrounding her. She had to fight darkness with darkness. If she could not shift, she would turn the darkness into her weapon. She had before made it an extension of her senses, using it to touch upon the arrays of bones like elongated whiskers. Now manifesting the darkness around her claws, Midnight unleashed a barrage of savage strikes upon the shadebeast, evading a direct clash by ripping his neck and shoulder before he could turn towards her. The shadebeast’s movement faltered, his momentum disrupted and form disturbed, but his rippling darkness closed the clefts right after — barely enough time for Midnight to vault upwards.

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