Black Mystia, the Rule of Opposites
Power corrupts, absolutely.
The direct opposite force of White Mystia, Black Mystia is a dark and corrupt force in the universe. While White Mystia is the power of life magic, Black Mystia is the power of death magic. It feed off of the very souls of the dead, and it will corrupt the user beyond recognition, both in mind and body.
It is so evil and dark that it was forbidden by Council law back in the late First Age. This law was met with fierce opposition from though who practise this black magic and it led to the Second Dark War in the early Second Age, with the opposition led by an enigmatic and charismatic individual known as Etharon. He essentially wrote the book on the Black Mystia Arts, and many of his practices are still used by practitioners today.
Manifestation
Darkness and shadows bend and twist all around you. Greyish-white wisps twist and conform to your will. A wide sneer spreads across your face. You can feel the power coursing through your veins. It feels intoxicating, invigorating even. You like this feeling, like getting high off a drug. It practically is a drug. But what you do not realise is what this drug is doing to you at the same time. . .
The Cost
Practitioners of the Black Mystia Arts use the souls of the dead and damned to power their spells and rituals. But there is another cost, one more insidious. This dark force will become like a cancer that eats away at the very mind, body, and soul of the user. Eventually, nothing of who the user once was will remain. They become bound to the Black Mystia, as though it were some conscious thing giving them orders. Some even eventually become Skulms themselves, mindless skeletal undead.
One should never use Black Mystia Arts lightly. They must always keep the true costs in mind before they dare give themselves over to it. All power has a cost.
Soul Crevices
Like White Mystia users may carry with them crystals to augment their own Mystia, Black Mystia users have been doing something similar since the Second Age. During Dark War II, Etharon's forces began building these insidious devices which they buried, and then would lure opposing forces to these areas. These devices were known as Soul Crevices, and would contain within them the souls of those they had murdered. This would give their black magic a supercharge when they were in these specific locations.
But therein lay the problem with this method, and why it is beginning to fall out of use today. This method is very location dependent and circumstantial. Instead, today, practitioners of the Black Mystia Arts are beginning to turn to a new, more advanced method.
Why not use crystals?
There are many who have asked this question since even the First Age. If crystals work for White Mystia users, why can't they work for Black Mystia? The problem is that souls are a large and heavy thing, and there isn't a crystal in the world large enough to contain more than one. And one soul is hardly enough for a Black Mystia user. The Black Mystia Arts, as it would turn out, is incredibly inefficient compared to White Mystia. So for generations, practitioners have been hard at work finding a solution to this problem.
The Solution
Early in the Third Age, a practitioner of the arts who worked hard on the problem came upon an ingenious solution: pocket dimensions. He created a pocket dimension and hid it within a mirror that once was owned by his mother. And it worked. He could hold a theoretically infinite number of souls within the pocket dimension and access them via the mirror. There was only one problem. . . When the mirror was accidentally broken, the pocket dimension began to overtake his entire home, and might have absorbed the entire world had he not been able to stop it. Pocket dimensions solve the problem. But without a way to keep it under control, it was not yet a working solution.
He tried using a control as a medium to hold the pocket dimension. This did not work as well as the mirror did, so he discounted that idea. Time and again throughout his research, he kept coming back to the mirror, which was just such a powerful medium for holding a pocket dimension as it was. It was also during this time that he discovered mirror worlds, which were a bizarre construct on the other side of the mirror and a reflection of our entire world.
The solution to the problem was not found until long after his death, when his daughter found a way to make it so that the pocket dimension would itself be destroyed should the mirror be broken in any way. Today, practitioners of the Arts carry with them pocket mirrors enchanted with their own pocket dimensions. Each person's pocket dimension is unique to that person.
Enforcement of the Law
Black Mystia Arts practice has largely fallen out of favour in recent times, only practiced by a few people today, compared to back in Etharon's time. That is largely because of the Maji Guard's enforcement of the law, the crackdowns on witch covens and cults over the years that have rooted out any remaining practitioners and sent them to death. Today, anyone still practicing the arts does so in secret, in the shadows. But there are rumblings that the practice may be seeing a come back. . .
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