The darkness thinned and shrank, and triumphantly she repeated the process, eating away at the still-spreading purple gloom again and again until it was reduced to a tiny mote.

The darkness thinned and brightened and I saw that a cavern hole had opened at the base of the Giant's Stone.

I stirred and around me the darkness thinned and grew paler; I could see, dimly, shapes and forms.

The fog vanished in the space of a stride, and darkness thinned to normal.

But Max blazed brighter, and the darkness thinned and was gone, while the laughter suddenly transformed to a shriek.

The darkness around them wasn't thinning and she couldn't feel him near her.

The darkness shifted, then shimmered and thinned as the bound and gagged body of Talis Dejana appeared.

Ten minutes later, the darkness thinned, dissolved, and the lightweight craft glided out between dirty gray ice crags into the open air.

The music of the wind-sculptures grew louder, and the darkness thinned.

The wind-music skirled angrily, and the darkness around Tammis thinned still more.