The Light, as it is called, is probably the most puzzling and the most fundamental magical principle that exists on Rainbow's End - indeed, the term itself has several meanings and even the most stalwart Academy student is often reduced to tears when he or she encounters that dreaded final question on their post Bonding exam: "Explain 'the Light'."

Broadly, the Light refers to that singular quality that defers "good" magical creatures such as unicorns from "bad" magical creatures such as demons. The Light can be called constructive magic in its purest form and is even held in a sort of inhuman God-like esteem; it is the benevolent magical power that protects order, harmony, justice, and life and is the closest thing to a religion the markedly secular Uenites will admit to believing.

More specifically, "the Light" refers to that blessed pool of magical power that is under the constant protection of the Elders and that is responsible for each individual corn's magical talent.

In the days of yore, when unicorns and man maintained separate existences, all unicorns, like many mages, could practice all sorts of magic, limited only by magical strength and ability, rather than by a singular restrictive "talent". When the Dark Time occured, however, and many of the unicorns made the decision to Bond to their human allies, the Elders were forced to fragment 'the Light' into a myriad of tiny pieces in order to protect it from the demons, entrusting each aspect to a separate unicorn, therefore embuing him or her with a separate "talent". Once fractured, the Light proved impossible to repair, instead its power remained divided among the individual unicorns, becoming more and more diluted as new generations sprang up, but still retaining all of its collective power.

That collective power is referred to as "the Light", and its fluctuations are closely monitored by the Academy Elders, though many wild unicorns also keep tabs on its condition. Basically, there is always an "unused" portion of the Light, a collection of all talents currently not designated to a singular corn and homogenized into one, shining pool of power which all of the Elders and (rarely) approved corns may access for additional power if they wish. The power, however, is always fluctuating as new unicorns are born and die (either taking from or releasing talents into the pool) and can be dangerous to handle for it is never truly under the control of one unicorn. The Elders also make sure that the Light's influence goes untainted and that particular talents are not "stolen" by non-unicorns, therefore keeping their race's power pure and complete.

Talents themselves are very tricky to explain, but the process of talent origination can best be compared to the sort of genetic roulette that determines personality and physical characteristics in RL (Real Life) creatures. However, unlike genetics, only one particular talent can exist at one given time in the unicorn population, though similar talents can and often do manifest themselves. A unicorn's talent is determined by one of three ways: familial fragmentation, transferral, or compound fusion, the former being most common and the latter being quite rare.

The first, familiar fragmentation, occurs when the small pieces of the talents of one or more of an unborn unicorn foal's parents fission off and their current hosts and are transferred to the child at birth. For example, a foal with sire who can create fireballs and a dam who can start snowstorms could cause fire to rain from the sky or shoot balls of ice from his or her horn. Or perhaps he or she would simple have a temperature or weather related talent; often the pieces that fission off of the parents whole are not all too specific. Regardless, because these talent fragments start out so small, it is necessary for the Light to supply the remaining power in order to "fill out" the talent in a young corn. Often this process takes years (at least two years in most corns), so the talent of a young corn whose talent resulted in familial fragmentation will take a while to develop.

Transferral, the second way of gaining a talent, occurs when one unicorn dies and its talent is tranferred to another unicorn in utero. Scholars have found that particular types of talents migrate towards similar personality/basic-self types in corns (this also accounts for the method of familial fragmentation). Therefore, sometimes when a unicorn dies, instead of his or her talent simply rejoining the Light, it hitches itself to the nearest and most similar unicorn fetus. Transferral must happen before birth in order to prevent familial fragmentation from taking place and often happens when unicorn mates have *very* dissimilar powers, though most definitely not always. Transferral talents are quite quick to develop in young corns.

Compound fusion, is the rarest, but probably oddest method of talent formation, and was recently discovered by a scholar at the Royal Institute who noticed that a small amount of unicorn foals with powers similar to one or more of their parents also had talent attributes that could not be accounted for by applying the familial fragmentation theory alone. Compoud fusion occurs *only* when a unicorn dies just as another is born, allowing for familial fragmentation and transferral to occur *at the same time*. In this way, a young unicorn can gain talent attributes from one or more parents, as well as a complete transferred talent from an outside corn, joined to the parent(s)' fragments in that one moment when all of them are without a host. Therefore, if our aforementioned baby unicorn is born just as an old unicorn with a talent for say, short distance levitation, dies, he or she might have the talent of floating on a cloud that shoots balls of ice or the ability to levitate long distances in the extreme heat or cold. Talents of this nature in young corns may be quick or slow to develop, depending on the exact mixture of powers.

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Rainbow's End is the creation of Amber McNett
Page Designed and Maintained by player Rebecca Engelmann
[Text written by Amber]