-THIS MANGA IS READ LIKE A TRADITIONAL MANGA, FROM RIGHT TO LEFT-
When I was developing how magic worked, there was a little concept I was intrigued about: Souls. How does a soul affect magic? As I worked on it, I eventually designed it that souls, which can only exist in an naturally born entity, were what allowed a person to even use magic. However, at the same time I realized how this concept could screw my story up: Skye/Mav was not a naturally born entity. He was created in a lab. I had to think of a way around it.
A difference in souls and spirits became my answer.
Souls and spirits are very similar in concept, and in terms of natural language they are essentially the same. The way I treated them different is that a soul cannot exist without a body, while a spirit can. Spirits are not created when someone is born, like a soul, but instead are formed through different means. Usually they are specifically created by a greater being.
This eventually led me to how spirits and souls interact with magic. The idea I came up with is that since spirits can exist without a body, they must be more powerful than a soul. A spirit requires a great deal of power to keep its existence in the normal plane. This, in turn, led to new concepts of how magic worked.
To be more forward, souls draw more on the energy around them to produce the beginning of their spells. If you want to make a fire spell, you require a flame of some form nearby. Wind spells can be used pretty much anywhere, and earth spells so long as you're within a reasonable distance from natural ground. Water spells can also more or less be used anywhere, though there can be difficulties in a desert.
Spirits, however, don't require this. They carry so much power as is, they can create what they need to start the spell. This makes spirit-based magic a lot more viable, but of course very few people have it. Makes for an interesting design, don't you think?
Artwork © Cathy Lau
Characters, Story, and All Related Material © Andrew Byrne, aka Skye McCloud
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