Shadowblaze

A Shadowblaze is a magical creature that can bond with humans and bestow Rithmatic powers upon them. They appear to people who become Rithmatists during their inception. Rithmatists refuse to discuss Shadowblazes and their role in the inception ceremony with non-Rithmatists.
==Appearance==
Their appearance is similar to a primitive cave drawing of a man holding a bow, with spindly limbs and a curved line for a head. They are human-sized, and the lines that make up their body shine a brilliant white. They resemble large chalklings, although Shadowblazes do not need to be affixed to a two-dimensional surface. However, they are so thin that they nearly disappear when viewed from the side.
==History==
During an early European expedition to the islands of what later became the southwest United Isles of America, Spanish explorer Manuel Estevez and his team discovered cave drawings in an unusual narrow canyon on the island of Zona Arida. The canyon walls contained small chalk drawings, and Estevez reported them moving and dancing around after sunset. He described and sketched the chalk drawings in his notebook in great detail, and modern historians believe his account to be credible. At least one of Estevez's sketches was of a Shadowblaze.
King Gregory III later discovered Rithmatics and presumably bonded a Shadowblaze, but how he did so is not known. His personal scientist, Adam Makings, referred to a Freudland pocket watch that may have played a role. Gregory III was also a religious leader in the Church of the Monarch and likely had influence over the Church's secrecy regarding the inception ceremony.
==Rithmatics==
Little is known about how a Shadowblaze grants Rithmatic powers, other than the fact that they are integral to the process. When children are eight years old, they are subjected to an "inception ceremony" held yearly on the fourth of July. They are blessed by a vicar and sent into a special inception chamber. If a Shadowblaze appears to them, they somehow bond to it, and immediately know that they have become Rithmatists. Otherwise, they see nothing. Fewer than one in one thousand children are granted Rithmatic powers. Followers of the Church of the Monarch believe that an entity known as the "Master" somehow chooses Rithmatists. Joel Saxon discovered a book called Origins of Power that analyzes the process using a more secular approach. It describes the process as the "chaining" and mentions something called a "bindagent" that presumably facilitates or initiates the bond. Bonding a Shadowblaze is the only known way for humans to gain Rithmatic powers.
Joel is the only person who is known to have seen a Shadowblaze and then subsequently fail to become a Rithmatist. It is not clear why this is the case, although Joel's inception ceremony was held under unusual circumstances. He was older than the customary age and he also had a mechanical gold dollar coin with him that was known to affect chalklings. When Joel touched the Shadowblaze in the inception chamber, it shook and its form warped as it fell to the floor and became two-dimensional. It disappeared into a slit under an altar in the chamber that Joel described as leading to nothing but darkness.
==Trivia==
* The Rithmatist was originally conceived as taking place within the cosmere, and Shadowblazes were Spiritual Realm entities that got pulled into the Physical Realm. The bonding of Shadowblazes to humans parallels cosmere concepts such as the Nahel bond. Additionally, Nalizar mentions that creatures like him have confusion regarding the passage of time, which has origins in the Spiritual Realm and its lack of linear time. Shadowblazes are less frightened by the concept of time than the Forgotten and other chalklings.
==Notes==