Animus Magic and Theories

Here is a community page for everyone's individual theories, thoughts, etc. on animus magic.
== One: Animus Magic Doesn't Take Away Your Soul ==
As Turtle said in ToP, "Maybe losing your soul isn't the best way to describe it…the more you use your power for anything, the more you feel like you're entitled to use your power for anything." Maybe Albatross was already crazy. He was being ordered around by his queen like he wasn't even a dragon. He must have been driven crazy by that, as well as the queen telling him that Fathom was so much better. After a while, he must have just snapped and killed the queen and her family. Also, like Indigo mentioned, it depends on what you use your magic for. If you only use it for good things, you won't lose your soul.
== Two: exactly how animus magic works(?) by Yochu ==
Well, to first confirm what it is, we need to know the limits. One, you can't bring a dragon back from the dead. Two, you can't enchant too many spells, or you lose your soul. We don't have any animus dragons in real life, but we do have the events that happened involving animus magic in the book. So let's look at the first major animus, Albatross. Albatross was famous for building the summer palace with his magic and then promptly killing most of his family. Let's ignore the massacre and summer palace for now and focus on some of the more obscure objects he enchanted: Albatross enchanted a Conch shell to signal when a dragon holding it was lying. This means that an animus can enchant any inanimate object to detect the emotions of and read the minds of dragons, as well as manipulate the object and or dragons appearance, e.g., the shell glows when someone is lying, while under normal circumstances it doesn't. Another thing he enchanted was the clamshell that bit Sapphires claws off. This means that animus dragon can give an object abnormal powers when required. For example, the shell had to bite Sapphires claws off, but a normal shell wouldn't be strong enough to destroy the material that makes up talons, claws, teeth, etc, as it has been proven that they can cut through metal. So the shell is also given the ability of super strength and extreme durability in order to bite her claws off. Another animus we have to work with is the famous and or infamous Darkstalker. Darkstalker contributes majorly to this theory with his soul reader. In Legends: Darkstalker, he created the soul reader out of hopes that it would convince Fathom to use his magic. Note that not only did he check the two animus dragons, Fathom and himself, but also Arctic and CLEARSIGHT, who is in fact not an animus. Despite this, she still had some bad inside her. Which begs the question: does animus magic really affect your soul...or your mind? Remember that Darkstalker never got the chance to check Albatross's soul, and Albatross was about as cruel as Arctic. Also remember that Arctic's personality didn't change much throughout the book, despite the fact that he did in fact cast more spells. His plans for dealing with his anger DID change, however, from killing his dragonets to bringing Whiteout to the Ice Kingdom. So, in fact, the theory that animus dragons lose their souls as they use their magic can actually be directed AWAY from their souls and that it affects their MINDS instead. In a different term, the magic manipulates you to do bad things when you use a spell. So rather than saying, "enchant this to protect my soul from the effects of animus magic", you should say, "enchant this to protect my mind from being manipulated by the effects of animus magic". This could mean that every dragon has a certain type of soul at the beginning of their life, and the balance between good and evil simply changes with certain life experiences, like getting a new pet would boost the good, and watching your parents die would increase the bad. One more piece of proof: when Darkstalker put his animus magic into the scroll, notice that he did worse and worse things anyway, despite the fact that his soul was protected. Same with Anemone; if Darkstalker was telling the truth about the spell he put on the necklace, then that would mean that her mind was still being affected because her soul wasn't being affected in the first place. However, all being said, you should probably protect yourself fully from animus magic, just in case somebody decides to enchant your soul to blow you up.
Category:Miscellaneous
Category:Animus
Category:Public