- "I'm an Elemental. Tanith is an Adept. I'd like to see her throw a fireball."
- — Skulduggery reminding Valkyrie that he is not an Adept, Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire
Elemental | |
Skulduggery using fire. | |
Elemental | |
Magic Type | Elemental |
Power | Manipulation of the elements |
Notable User(s) | Valkyrie Cain Skulduggery Pleasant Ghastly Bespoke |
Elemental magic is one of the two base types of magic, the other being Adept magic. It involves the manipulation of fire, earth, water and air for both offensive and defensive purposes. While Elemental magic is one of the two major magical disciplines, it is less practiced than Adept, most probably due to the difficulty of mastering all four elements. While Adept sorcerers concentrate on developing only one certain type of magic (and maybe combat skills), Elemental practitioners have to divide their attention between air, water, earth, and fire. The most powerful Elemental witnessed within the series is Mevolent, whose mastery of the elements allowed him to match Darquesse.
Fire
The flashiest and most used of the four elements, this power is mostly used to hurl fireballs at foes. Skulduggery Pleasant has a more powerful grasp of the fire element, mainly due to the time he had to practice when trapped with the Faceless Ones. Elemental sorcerers create fire by generating friction, usually the snapping of fingers, and use it for various purposes. This allows for speculation that fire is the second most powerful of the elements, as its level of destructive power solely depends on the magical abilities of the sorcerer. However, fire still requires oxygen to be present, and as such, it is not very useful in closed areas.
Uses
- Users can create streams of fire from their hands.
- Fire can be utilised to manipulate flames into whatever the user pleases, for example, a wall of fire.
- Users can envelop their body with fire, and then "throw" streams of it, like a flamethrower.
- Users can throw fire balls. More powerful mages, such as Skulduggery and Ravel, can send bursts of flame, as seen in Mortal Coil when fighting Tesseract for the first time.
- Sorcerers can focus fireballs into smaller, more intense flames for cutting and carving.
Air
Air magic is the most versatile and, at times, the most powerful of the four elements. Flight is a usefull yet hard skill to master using air but has been done by Skullduggery. Air magic is the easiest to learn with most sorcerers learning this first.
Uses
- Used to push objects/people.
- Destroy or create walls.
- Flight.
- Pull an object/person.
- Deprive a person of air.
- Levitation, of the user or of another object/person (used on Valkyrie when pushed against a wall by the Administrator).
- Air bubble in dust, possibly in water.
- Read disturbances in the air.
- Create whirlwirds (used when Skulduggery creates a whirlwind to stop the Torment's spiders from attacking him and Tanith).
- Crush objects.
- Squeeze, press, cut, or hold objects floating in midair.
- Containing explosions (like grenades, etc.) by making a sphere of air around them.
Earth
Earth magic was at first, and for a very long time, thought to be last resort defensive magic. However, in Mortal Coil, Skulduggery managed to find a new use for earth, proving that this element is not just for defence. Ghastly used it before he was decapitated by the White Cleaver. It took around two years for Ghastly to return to normal.
Uses
- It turns the user into an unbreakable stone statue for an unpredictable amount of time, from anywhere between a few days and a few hundred years.
- Manipulate the earth to give away the ground, as seen when Skulduggery found the tunnel in Baron Vengeous' home in Mevolent's dimension.
- Imperfect copy of the Tunneling adept ability - travel through walls like Sanguine as seen when Skulduggery breaks into The Vault.
Water
Water is the most rarely used out of the four elements (the obvious exception being earth). When the user is submerged in water, water manipulation can be used in a similar way to air manipulation.
Uses
- Walk on water.
- Used to aid the user when swimming.
- Manipulate the water vapour in the air.
- Used in combat to block or throw water.
- Used to propel the user out of water.
- To remove all moisture from the outside of your body.
- Used to manipulate snow or ice.
Users of Elemental Magic
- For a full list see: Category:Elementals
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