Entry #22, Year 2
With the advent of increasingly complex spell-work being distributed thanks to the ease by which Materia can be produced and duplicated, I would be remiss to not revisit the idea of Summons, magical spells which take on anthropomorphized forms to aid in their ability to act independently from their creator. While normally, spells with seemingly living forms are the work of extremely potent sorceries, and of extremely skilled casters, thanks to Materia, if a spell can be cast once, it can be cast repeatedly. This has led to an endless storm of increasingly complex spells with very unique settings and systems in place.
One spell that I am incredibly fond of myself is my Force Daemon. Created from Prestidigitonium, it is programmed to automatically give me a large suite of abilities, taking the form of an invisible, demon-like creature which stays extremely close to my person. Due to it being invisible, it does not see with eyes, but rather, it senses the very forces in the air, granting it a supreme ability to detect movement near me, and react to it phenomenally. It also uses it's control over force to do other useful things, like enhancing my physical attacks, weakening enemy attacks, and intercepting projectiles before they can strike me.
While it cannot do all three at once, it serves as a clear example of just how potent even a single Daemon can be, as I will henceforth refer to Summons with an incredibly potent intelligence.
Another very popular Daemon, one which I unfortunately cannot cast myself, is one known as the "Platformer" Daemon. I was not a participant in it's naming, despite what many might think. Rather, it seems the games I devised in the past have inspired some spellcasters and engineers to replicate feats once consigned to the dream world, using Earth Pony force-redirection magic in order to grant it's user the ability to leap high into the air, slide on walls with force and friction, and even leap a second time in mid-air by expelling raw kinetic energy from below their hooves.
I was stunned when I found out that, rather than being the work of a single pony, it had been the work of over ten Earth Ponies, all working in concert to develop and test this Materia, even going so far as to make multiple versions of it, each one tailored to emulate a specific game. It warms my heart so dearly to see my homeland's works put through the trial of fire known as popularity, and come out the other side forged into such potent magic. Indeed, when I had first seen it used, it had nearly drawn a tear to my eye, watching the acrobat use it in order to leap from wall to wall, from platform to platform, ascending the obstacle course as easily as any bird could.
I'm sorry, but I just had to gush. Dark Magic or no, it was truly a phenomenal display. Even more phenomenal, however, was when Glitter Miss Priss's Hit or Miss Punch had been turned into a proper Daemon-like spell.
The spell's inventor had commissioned a professional engineer to devise the enchantment, giving a broad list of demands which they had been able to fulfill with some amount of difficulty. The end results, however? Magnificent. The so-called "Rodeo Clown" Daemon is another invisible charm, similar to my own Force Daemon, but on a vastly superior scale. Anything it suspects would strike the user? It automatically reflects away from them. Anything it suspects would miss the user entirely? It instead accelerates to malicious levels, exploding it to bits more often than not.
When tested against Golem foes, the Rodeo Clown is supreme, a terrifying and almost invincible defensive spell against physical attackers. A shield that cuts, and a sword that deflects, a defense and an attack, blended together seamlessly. Even should the user kick up things themselves, the spell doesn't care. This means that with a simple scuff of the hoof, a user protected by the Rodeo Clown can fire off molten pellets of rock with every swing of their hooves, all while attackers are either bounced off, or ripped to shreds by it's force inverting and amplification properties.
Another Daemon I've been developing is a far more mundane use of intelligent spellcasting entities, namely, I've been devising a Fashion Daemon. An active, interactive instance of Royal Crystal Growth, which can search the area around me and automatically grow red carpets, marble pillars, and purple crystal flooring and purple cloth drapes wherever I go, should I need to intimidate a target. One thing I will insist time and time again, dear reader, is that in order to harness your magic to its fullest, you must tap into the emotions that you feel the strongest. For me, my theatrics fuel me, and give my spells newfound power.
As such, a Fashion Daemon, while a useless novelty in the hands of another, serves as a potent magical tool in my own arsenal. Finding spells and tactics that invoke strong emotions in yourselves is a a potentially useful way to harness a Daemon.
For all Daemons, however, the weakness remains the same. Find a flaw in their rules, and you defeat them. Confuse or overwhelm a Daemon's ability to act, and you defeat them. They operate with the mind of their caster, which makes them all fallible, from the tiniest Force Daemon to the most horrifying and gigantic Rodeo Clown. All it takes is to find a simple flaw. My own Force Daemon, for example, has an annoying habit of prioritizing diamonds, if it is attempting to deflect multiple sources of harm, while Glitter Miss Priss's Rodeo Clown once went berserk when it spotted a nearby centipede, going out of it's way to obliterate the bug in a panic.
I haven't had enough time to personally go down the list of all possible Daemons to pick them apart for flaws, but I assure you, dear reader, that those flaws exist.