Then the blackeners withdrew and waited in ambush. Now the whiteners appeared again and at once began their usual activ-
ity; and soon a white brightness spread everywhere. However, they were disturbed by the blackeners that rushed out of their dark corners.
Both groups now tried with their utmost skill to make everything black or white respectively.

The tournament of the bright and dark workers continued for a while without a clear superiority on either side.
Many trees, shrubs, grass-blades and flowers, and many animals and birds of the forest changed their colour many times, and fell asleep or woke up.
But the moon too went through her familiar phases of more or less radiance, and it seemed as if she wagged her silver-white horns. Thus on this arena many moons came and went.

Now the blackeners and the whiteners, with quite opposed motifs, opened the mountain with their black magic roots, and their white snow-drops respectively.
As quickly as possible they passed the deep-blue scintillating dragon and entered the cavern, where they made the cave and the men sitting there in deep sleep black and white, again and again.

However, as soon as they had touched the first heroes with their colour, the valkyries rushed back into the nightly black and white mountain.
Again and again one group fed the hardly whitened warriors with the white-silvery potion, and the other group gave the sleepers, as soon as they were blackened, their drink from deep-blue beakers; and in this manner the men sitting there were seized alternately by restful alertness and deep sleep.
And Mani too moved back and forth between deep, recreative alertness and deep sleep.

And again the wishing-girls were followed by their wind-birds - white and deep-blue eagles. In the cave they generated light and dark winds.
Then they turned into white and deep-blue cocks, settled on their old elevated places and watched over the pure and radiant consciousness and over the deep dark sleep of the warriors.
After some time all the cocks turned into crows. Some of them told the blind the means to regain their eyesight, and others proclaimed omnipotence to the omniscient.

Since neither the blackeners nor their rivals had a clear success, the opponents finally began to make each other black and white.
Soon the fight became wilder and wilder and more heated.