Spirit (element)

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Spirit (element)
Element Information
Powers	Heal plants and animals, dream-walk, see auras, and compel others with great intensity.
Uses	Create healing charms, make others experience powerful hallucinations through super-compulsion, and bring people back from the dead.
Side Effects	Dark depression, outbursts of rage, violence, and insanity.

Spirit is a fifth element that is rare among the Moroi, with the signature trait of restoring life and healing others nearly instantaneously. Spirit heightens compulsion, making it easier to work. Other powers that come with spirit include aura sensory, dream walking, creating illusions, telekinesis, and mind-reading. Spirit users can also bring the dead back to life. When they do, it forges a bond between them and the person who died. The phenomenon is called "shadow-kissed." Someone who is shadow-kissed can slip into the spirit user's mind and know their thoughts, and they can experience things as if they were the spirit user; they can also sense the dead, such as seeing ghosts and knowing when strigoi are nearby.

History

Those who have spirit don't declare a magic.

Vasilisa Dragomir believed she hadn't specialized for years, but after Victor Dashkov kidnapped her, she learned that she had the power of spirit.

Avery Lazar managed to pass herself off as an air user, but it's not known if it possible to mask as other element users.

Known Spirit Users

• Vasilisa Dragomir
• Adrian Ivashkov
• Avery Lazar
• Oksana
• Sonya Karp
• St. Vladimir †
• Robert Doru
• Nina Sinclair
• Unnamed user, who restored Lee Donahue

Known Spirit Bonds

• Vasilisa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hathaway (broken)
• Oksana and Mark
• Robert Doru and Alden † (broken)
• St. Vladimir † and Anna †
• Avery Lazar and Reed Lazar (may be broken)
• Avery Lazar and Simon (may be broken)
• Adrian Ivashkov and Jillian Mastrano Dragomir

Side Effects of Spirit

There are many negative side effects of spirit; it leads to depression and insanity so intense that the user will experience shaking and jitters while also causing them to self-harm repeatedly. These negative side effects are sometimes referred to as "the darkness." The spirit users' continued use of magic, both for restoring the dead and using compulsion, will distort their personalities and begin to weaken them until they die. This slow decay will manifest as hostility, paranoia, and a loss of inhibitions and rationality. If the spirit-user has brought someone back from the dead and made them "shadow-kissed," the shadow-kissed person will absorb the side effects, which in turn make them experience dark feelings.

Unlike the other elements that are gifted to the Moroi, such as fire, water, earth, or air, a spirit user unfortunately experiences a downside to using their magic to heal and sense auras. The user suffers from dark depression, outbursts of rage, violence, and, eventually, insanity.

The spirit user Sonya Karp turned Strigoi to avoid going completely insane, although after being turned back into her normal self, she seems to be able to control it more. Adrian Ivashkov, the current Moroi going through stages of insanity, is starting to hear voices of the dead and has a violent attack to the point of destroying his paintings because he believes they are completely embarrassing him. Spirit users Nina Sinclair and Avery Lazar, due to the use of excessive spirit, fried themselves and have gone insane forever. Both of them had lost their ability to feel emotions.

Another side effect of Spirit is that of the voices inside Adrian's head, as he could hear his aunt Tatiana Ivashkov perfectly, even to the point where he could see her. She would tell him to do things that he would never do in a normal state of mind.

Suppressing Spirit

Spirit can be suppressed in a variety of ways. One of them is antidepressant pills, which Lissa Dragomir used but disliked because, although they relieved her depression and mood swings, they cut off her connection to her magic. Another is that of using alcohol or smoking cigarettes to suppress spirit. This technique is used by Adrian Ivashkov, who has been drinking since he was a young teenager. Another would be having a bondmate who can share the darkness, enabling the spirit user to have a normal life, but in turn, it can cause the non-spirit user to act out very violently or go insane. For example, this happened with Lissa and Rose; she passed on the darkness to Rose. During the events of Shadow Kissed, Rose took away Lissa's anger through the bond, but the anger in her caused her to physically attack the Moroi who had been torturing Lissa.

Quote from Vampire Academy: The Ultimate Guide

"Spirit users need to pull their magic from their own essence rather than the world around them, which makes the power taxing both physically and mentally. Using spirit can often lead to insanity, and spirit users typically develop different ways to cope with the after-effects of their magic (for example, projecting dark moods onto an individual with whom one has bonded, self-medicating, turning Strigoi). Among other abilities, spirit users can heal plants and animals, dream-walk, see auras, and compel others with great intensity. In fact, their compulsion abilities are so strong that they can make others experience powerful hallucinations through super-compulsion. A spirit user can also create healing charms, including a silver stake that, when wielded by its creator, can restore Strigoi to their former life. Most of all, spirit users can bring someone who has recently died back to life, thereby making that person "shadow-kissed" and bound to the spirit user." -- Vampire Academy: The Ultimate Guide. Page 274.

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