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“I’m writing a book on magic,” I explain, and I’m asked, “Real magic?” By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. “No,” I answer: “Conjuring tricks, not real magic.”
Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
— Net of Magic, Lee Siegel
- Contents
- 1 How does it work?
- 2 What can they do?
- 3 Health aspects
The term “magic” is actually a bit of a misnomer, as cenyi magic is not an inexplicable supernatural phenomenon, but rather something completely explicable and natural in their world. I’ve chosen to call it “magic” because that word succinctly describes what they appear to be capable of. As Arthur C. Clarke put it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
In a highly summarised description: the cenya are capable of converting their bodies’ own energy (real, quantifiable physical energy, especially bioelecriticity, not some spiritual nonsense) into other forms of (real, quantifiable) energy, including thermal energy (heat) and kinetic energy (motion), as well as into electromagnetic fields.
How does it work?
On Éo, through means that are entirely unknown, there has evolved a highly complicated form of self-replicating crystals. Requiring only tiny amounts of electricity, they convert this energy into tiny amounts of kinetic energy and electromagnetic fields – not enough to change an atom’s internal structure, but enough to reconfigure atoms and molecules near the crystal over long periods of time. This is how they make more of themselves.
These crystals are alive. They are not conscious in any sense of the word, but they are alive for some definitions of “alive”. Uncountably many times in Éo’s history, living creatures have come into contact with these crystals, and sometimes even accidentally ingested trace amounts of them. On very few of these occasions, the crystals have somehow become stuck inside the “hosts”, for lack of a better term.
Fuelled by the animal’s bioelectricity, which is a thousand times more plentiful than the electricity the crystals normally live off of, they are capable of reproducing much faster. They live primarily in bone tissue (the piezoelectric properties of bones is a great source of “food”), teeth, and claws.
When charged with electricity above their capacity, the crystals have to discharge it in some way – by default by releasing it as heat over time. This discharge action can be altered by sending electric pulses at very specific frequencies, which is how crystals communicate with parts of themselves, so that self-replication actually produces more crystals.
Over millions and millions of years, brain systems evolved in these animals that could take advantage of the crystals’s internal language. In exchange for a continuous, bountiful supply of “food”, which significantly boosts the crystals’ growth rate, they provide the host with abilities which humans would probably classify as supernatural.
One of the top predator species in cenyi forests, the oširaxi, is such an animal. They have practically eradicated all competition: they have the ability to send paralysing shocks of electricity through their teeth, into any prey animal they may have bitten onto. The cenya are also such an animal.
What can they do?
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Health aspects
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