#a passive form of death; he's not smiting. he's not ripping anyone apart. it's entirely bloodless. all he does is apply (remove/steal) time

[dnangelic]

i've been considering dark's passive morbidity for a while and i do think that in regards to verses wherein he has more utility freedoms thanks to various handicap aids that help daisuke's body attune to dark's magic (a la reverse1999 or fate) he's not going to rely on brute force (hey he's thin. he might have hidden talons/claws for his hands but he's got bird bones. he would Not win a pure physical fight) nor is his maximum capacity necessarily his free-range elemental prowess, (as a god-like [lucifer-esque] guy who can fuck around with fire, electricity, light, etc) nor is it even his debuff-type magic (putting everyone around him instantly asleep, adjusting/erasing others' memories) but. his absolute thematic peak. is quite literally messing with others' time. the 'chains binding him to the arts' has always one of his utilities already, (and also what he canonically uses against krad) but the way that dark ever destroys anything - soundlessly disintegrating it, turning it into nothing but a black smoulder, isn't any sort of 'physical force' as it is an applied, immediate, infinite aging. when dark breaks an artwork, or even something with a life with his magic, he's putting it through years, hundreds, thousands, centuries, a millennia of wear and aging, until absolutely nothing, not even dust exists. it's not flashy or dramatic, it's not bloody or visceral. anything just crumbles.