Handy was dazed by the explosion of light, temporarily blinding him as he stumbled despite his trance-like state, temporarily stopping his song and the dance. The things screeched as one like a wounded animal and split into tiny independent tendrils of dark sludge that flew through the air and landed around the ballroom. They writhed and shriveled as they became separated from the mass that birthed them and they began to waste away, unable to survive on their own amidst even the weak light of the mosaic floor. The greater mass of the black tendril was what kept the light of the floor from damaging them due to its sheer size, but individually the many tiny creatures that made up the horrifying, physically contiguous mass could not survive on their own and died where they landed.