A few hundred meters above where she suspected the Snowtrail to lie, she arrived at an expanse where the stale night wind seemed to weave the heavy storms into a restless slumber. Here, she sensed the presence of life. Winged beasts, their forms cloaked in the colours of snow, nestled in the crevices of the mountain, sheltered by long, horizontal fractures in the rock. Sensing what she could only interpret as the warmth of their bodies, Midnight felt something stir within her — a flicker of hunger, perhaps, or the primal thrill of the hunt that had once defined her predator existence. Here, she decided to hunt.
As Midnight observed the winged beasts, her understanding deepened. What she perceived was not simply the warmth of a living body, not the heat that emanated from flesh and blood, but something more profound — their essence. This realisation brought forth echoes of her wizard’s words, surfacing from the depths of her altered consciousness. Essence was not bound to the physicality of the body, nor was it the ethereal Rothar. It was the thread that connected them, the force that tied body and energy together, and yet it was neither. Essence existed in a realm that was somewhere between, somewhere else entirely — somewhere she could access and act?
The teeming hunger and thrill of the hunt thrummed through Midnight. This was more than just a test of her newfound abilities; it was a reaffirmation of her existence, a reminder that she was still a predator at her core, even if she had become something more. The creatures she sought were not prey in the traditional sense; they were beings of essence, their lives holding the sustenance she needed to grow her own being.
As she closed in, Midnight expanded her darkness, letting it unfurl like the wings of a great beast, enveloping the unsuspecting creatures in her shadow. They remained oblivious to the nothing creeping closer, their breaths slow and steady in the deep rhythm of sleep. Still, Midnight knew she had to be fast before the bending light caught up to give her away. Sensible beasts would recognise the shift in phantom presences long before visible orbs formed.
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