Magic in the Blackraven world is an emerging phenomena. Most urban fantasy novels treat magic as if it’s alway been around. I thought it would be interesting to track it as an emerging event. Scientists seek new knowledge from seemingly random data, something like magic would be a fascinating area. Like all unknowns it takes experimentation, trial and error to get results.

Stephanie is an engineer (applied science is engineering) that stumbled on a unique thing and she explored it. The scientist doesn’t like referring to things as magic because that implies it is un-explainable. They create theorems then hypothesis about the area which then leads then to areas of exploration which are experiments around the hypothesis. Stephanie calls the phenomena m-energy because she doesn’t want to say magic. The symbols she has discovered give form to some of the energy allowing it to do work in the physical world. Some of the symbols work, not all of them. Her will or visualization is the substance or structure of the energy formation. If she can’t visualize the correct effect the symbol doesn’t get powered, thus no physical effect. She has thousands of symbols captured from writings all over the world but can only get tens of them to work.  She isn’t the only one that is seeking its nature

She finds that college students around the country, really around the world, are experimenting with it. Some fatally, like with all energy sources it can be violent and unpredictable. Kids do the darndest things and they don’t even realize how potentially dangerous it is until something happens. There is another facet to this activity, extra-dimensional entities. But that’s another topic.