With her transformation came an unsettling awareness for her altered self. As Midnight saturated her Rothar with the venomous essence that had so profoundly brought her senses and thoughts into disarray, she felt herself fracture, an eternity unfurling in the chasm that opened with the venom and brought forward the darkness. She merged and emerged as more than the sum of these fractured parts; she was more. And yet, a lingering schism remained etched within her, a split marking the first time she felt herself as two entities. The body, the past and primal; and the words, the awareness that came from within but existed outside of her physical form. Midnight knew that these two parts would now forever differ, but they would also, both, be darkness. And as soon as she felt this duality, she believed that she had always been these two things but just never acknowledged it, because once you were, you could not imagine that you had never been.

Acknowledging the split meant shedding the pure essence of a beast to become more. It was the conscious decision to not merely follow the path of her wizard, but to embody it. To live it with everything she was and would be. Midnight took in the darkness and the knowledge, and elevated them over her nature and her instincts. She offered the whole that had been her, and acquired in exchange the arcane path that defined her magic. The darkness resonated within her; it was hers. As Midnight merged with the enveloping shadows, she no longer diminished her presence and hid her body; she fed her energy to the essence of darkness within. And as all light within her faded and her senses ever expanded, she became the darkness. And as the darkness, she had no limits.

 

Shifting through the shadowy veils toward the intersection, she encountered the ominous presence that had drawn close. It was a stygian serpent, almost as wide as the tunnel itself. He had awaited her in the left passage and then, enticed by the tremors of her struggle with the weavers, hunted her. As they met, his initial hostility dissipated. A superior being of darkness, he still sensed her presence, but no longer considered Midnight prey. When she asked for a fragment of his essence, he gave his venom willingly.

Midnight continued through the middle tunnel, paying deference to the territory of the serpent. In the hours that followed, she traversed past other beasts of the mountain heart, creatures deeply intertwined with the darkness. Some sensed her, but none pursued. No longer an intruder from the surface, Midnight treaded the darkness to where the breath of the mountain led her.

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