Overview
Balance magic is a rare advanced branch of divine magic that destroys or severs essence connections. Its names include unmaking magic, essence unmaking, unhealing, and the art of unmaking; Tal'Massar's unmaking magic is a divine technique designed to make gods killable. In theory, any divine mage can learn it. The technique is difficult, dangerous, and widely unknown.
Tal'Massar, the engineered god core bound to Isandriel, gives Isandriel this power. In destructive use, it can erase spells, collapse magical defenses, disintegrate matter, break living bodies apart, and destroy gods or guardian-level beings when the user can apply enough control and contact. Isandriel also uses it with precision: he stabilizes Thea by bringing her unstable essence under control.
Effects and Limits
- Balance magic attacks the essence connections that hold a target together.
- Its visible effects include reality distortion, color draining from the surroundings, black-and-white veins or radiance spreading from contact, and targets breaking apart into dust, ash, white particles, or nothingness.
- Isandriel usually delivers the power through touch; his greatest strength is closing distance and applying the power directly.
- Dense or overwhelming essence can resist instant unmaking. The source, Malverand hearts, shard-protected beings, essence bombs, and large elemental forces all create complications.
- Isandriel's unmaking does not destroy ordinary water. He can strip away the water's essence properties and leave the water itself intact.
- Failed or incomplete balance magic can still be destructive. Azarion carries slight traces of it, and those traces make his air blasts explosive essence-disconnection attacks.
- Skilled users can cut a god's God Realm link, preventing a god from escaping, descending, or maintaining that link through a wielder.
Users and Related Forms
Isandriel uses Tal'Massar's power against guardians, spells, and enemies during the Fall of Malverand, earning his reputation as the Unmaker.
Hrzai knows balance magic as unhealing, a divine technique that disconnects essence threads. She can perform it herself. Gods and god-core wielders can require an opening or another wielder to apply the severing decisively. Cassian inherits Hrzai's balance magic and can perceive and sever deeper essence threads; he destroys the weakened Xoh'Metztli and later kills the false Ozaith after Hrzai creates the opening for him. Lucilla inherits balance magic through Isandriel and uses it to unmake Nerissa and cut off Nerissa's escape to the God Realm.
Eira develops a hybrid technique by combining reversed stasis with Hrzai's unmaking magic. Before the defense of Hengvaris, Isaac taught Khoradyn balance magic, after which Khoradyn stopped aging. Azarion carries traces of balance magic, and those traces make his attacks far more destructive.