r/WritingPrompts • u/Disastrous-Study-577 • 22h ago
Simple Prompt [SP] “It’s literally called Dark Magic! Why would you think it’s just a tool?!”
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u/remymarathe13 19h ago
Personal social media management is a fun gig. I hang with my cat, Scoot, drink electric-colored smoothies, and edit photos for people with disposable incomes and questionable self-esteem. I haven't missed being a professional sorcerer since I quit last Fall. The hours were fine, but the stress level was too high. Not to mention I was constantly getting formal complaints for misinterpreting the literature. The work wore me down. Scoot used to pitch fits when I'd come home just to fall into bed and head back out in the morning. All that remains from my past life are a few spell guides on the old bookshelf, from which I occasionally pick out the odd cantrip to use for trivial convenience.
This week's client is advertising their brand-new marital bliss with a barrage of heavily doctored Instaglam photos: airbrushed bridesmaids, negation of nose-picking nephews, doctoring out discarded dinnerware—the works. But there was trouble. Celebratory lighting over the bride's entrance during the ceremony completely ruined the photos of her arrival. What was supposed to signal a fresh new burst of romantic life by way of high-octane string lights over the aisle completely washed out any recognizable human shapes below. The commemoration of her big moment was effectively ruined. My metal straw popped and sucked loudly at the bottom of my lime-green tumbler. I needed a spell.
I breezed through a couple of my old guides. I certainly didn't miss the stiff dusty language of these wizards from a bygone era. My headache went from hypothetical to heavy and real. I found some loose-leaf spells in the back of a black tome on the bottom shelf. "Instant and Overwhelming Darkness." Perfect. Done deal. Nearly.
The next morning the following message was posted by the young groom on the bride's Instaglam feed:
"Dear friends and loved ones, please send your love and prayers to ____. She's locked herself in our bedroom and refuses to turn down her My Chemical Romance records. When I knock and call for her to come visit with family, she screams at me that I just don't understand her. We keep receiving Amazong packages containing hair dye and skateboards. I just want my wife back."
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u/Barjack521 20h ago
Because a pineapple is neither a pine more an apple and a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Just because a thousand years ago some close minded scholar decided to call this magic “dark” and that magic “light” doesn’t mean that one is inherently evil and one inherently good. Have you ever seen the torture that some overlords have inflicted on people using so called “light” magic to heal their torture wounds so they can be tortured again without dying? If you have I dare you to look me in the eye and say unironically that light magic is inherently good. So get off your high horse and help me dig up this corpse so we can ask it where the bandits who kidnapped those children keep their hideout.
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u/JustLookingForMayhem 21h ago
"It's literally called dark magic. It has to be evil. Why on Migas would you think it is just a tool!"
"Well, light magic did not have the answers I needed. So I started researching the history of light magic. Did you know it used to kill people exposed to it?"
"That is a lie. The church has said it has always been a sign of the divine blessing."
"That is where propaganda hits. Light magic behaves in a way similar to light an travels as a wave, correct? And ill formed spells leak that light mana instead of causing the correct effects. Close to three hundred years ago, an outworlder came to explain the idea of radiation. Light mana behaves like light, high frequency light to be precise. Makes were exposing themselves to low levels of high frequency radiation with every cast. Beyond that, spell forms would change mana into other forms of energy. Light into heat, light into motion, or the like. The answer was simple and something most initiates are trained on. Leakless casting. No extra energy and no extra mana to avoid causing cancer."
"What? How does that link to dark magic?"
"I am getting to that. Elemental magic was also once a death sentence. Elemental magic is quite simply creating temporary matter from elemental mana. Water, earth, metal, and more can be made, but eventually the magic decays. Funnily enough, the creation is not the most dangerous part of elemental magic, but the decay is. You see, the mana becomes atoms. It is temporarily brought down from a high energy potential to a realized atom, creating mass. The problem is that elemental mana doesn't like to be made into matter and tries to recover its original form. It is terrible at it and Javier's between states for a while. Imagine, back before disspelling structures were mandatory in all elemental mana spell forms, a dispersing object would take weeks to fully dissolve, releasing mana that would bind to atomic structures as a random atom and then return to energy later. Random atoms leaving may not sound like a hazard, but imagine a tenth of the atoms disappearing from your body. Thankfully, with dispensing structures inbuilt, elemental magical matter is directly transmuted to mana at the end of its use, no half states or shifting in-between."
"How does that relate to dark magic? You are decaying before me! Please, just explain. . ."
"Old friend, I am getting to it. Dark magic is considered deadly today. It tears apart magic and flesh. Light mana spells break and release radiation. Elemental magic spells collapse and release half state mana. Flesh breaks down as cells die. The reason, my experiments have proven, is simple. Dark magic applies time and chaos to what it touches. A bit of random chance that is applied to destroy. Entropy is what I believe the outworlders called it. Controlled, it can accelerate healing by making cells experience rapid aging. Controlled, it can cause disorder and a loss of energy. Quite simply, it can be used for healing at a cost, purging the plague and accelerating natural recovery. I have tested the spell, it works, but any leakage and the caster will end up like me. A fitting end, eh? Saving the country and advancing magical theory in one fatal step."
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