Elemental Magic , Volume 2

Chapter 5

Blowing It Up

When we think of explosions, the first thing that generally comes to mind is a big, violent, cataclysmic, and usually fiery event like a bomb exploding. But explosions truly come in all shapes and sizes, and it often surprised people what constituted an explosion in my first book. And it may surprise them in this book too, for that matter. So first, let’s look at what I consider to be a real explosion, and then we’ll take it from there.

A description of an explosion is simply a rapid and abrupt outward expansion of energy. Another definition from a dictionary is as follows: “A violent expansion in which energy is transmitted outward as a shock wave.” In both cases, at the heart of the description is a rapid and violent ...