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I watched the giant bats skyrocket to the moonlit sky, their squeaks a sort of strange orchestra. They were silhouettes of strange creatures, looking at them with the moon as the background.

My eyes returned to the cave. The moonlight had thrown faint illumination over it, casting shadows underneath. The entrance looked like the mouth of a grotesque, gigantic monster, the jutted edges serving as its saber teeth!

I ambled close to the cave, readying my weapons for action. Getting close to the entrance, I looked into the cave but the stark darkness that greeted my sight blurred my vision and made my hairs stand on end. I recoiled in trepidation. It was then that I realized my folly: I came with no torch to fight elusive beings in the dark! As if my torch could even do any magic. But, at least, to light my way. Darkness doesn’t fight darkness. If the two clash, the result will be the same: darkness. No change. The only thing that can stop or dispel darkness is light.

No! I can’t go in there without a torch!

I looked around me for a sign of anything that I could fashion a torch from. Goose pimples electrocuted my entire body as the silhouetted profiles of the mangrove trees and shrubs towered above me like monstrous ghosts! It was either I faced this challenge and die a hero or I returned home and be labelled a failure.

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