Casting a Shadow in Literature.
- Older Than Feudalism: The Plague of Darkness from The Bible, made particularly notable by commentaries stating that not only was this particular darkness a distinct physical thing that would swallow up any light that the Egyptians tried to produce, but that, during the last three days of the plague, it became so "thick" that it froze the Egyptians in place until it dissipated.
- A Shadow Bright and Burning: Late in the book, Rook discovers he has these abilities, which he attributes to having been scarred by Korozoth.
- The Black Company: The Shadowmasters are aptly named. Ironically, one is afraid of what the dark hidesnote . Make of that what you will.
- Brennus: The Dark, an old and powerful supervillain, can create solid Living Shadows to serve him.
- Shadow Weaver: Emmeline can speak to and control shadows.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: Azriel is a shadowsinger, which means he's unusual among the Illyrians in being able to control and listen through shadows.
- Cradle Series: Shadow madra is a bit rare, but a useful choice for a Path. The Akura clan, which rules over a significant portion of the world, uses various shadow Paths almost exclusively. Akura Mercy mentions that shadow madra is "a bit weird," but ultimately pretty compatible with other techniques and abilities. Her aunt Charity has a Path that combines shadow madra with dream madra.
- Cursed World: Shadowmancy can be used to create constructs of corporeal darkness that can be used as tools and weapons... Or just engulf people and turn them to pulp.
- Dark Heart: Myrren Kahliana and other followers of the dark god Vraxor can conjure blasts of darkfire, an icy-cold black flame that consumes whatever it touches like acid. Myrren also demonstrates the ability to create a cloak of shadow that makes her invisible in darkness.
- Diogenes Club: Dr. Shade, a dark but not evil vigilante, has shadow-related powers including the ability to cloak an area in darkness, and reach out with tentacles of darkness to touch the minds of those around him. His son Jamie is, at first, only able to raise a light gloom, which he puts to good effect providing special effects for his punk band.
- Discworld: Sir Sam Vimes is infected with the Summoning Dark, a "quasidemonic force of pure vengeance" in Thud!, but manages to break its power over him before it can force him to overstep the boundaries of the law and lose his essential Vimesness. In the next book, Snuff, it's revealed that a part of the Summoning Dark merged with the Guarding Dark, Vimes' own Superpowered Evil Side, and he can call on its power when seeking "vengeance", i.e., trying to solve a murder outside the boundaries of existing law. He uses this connection to see in pitch blackness, communicate with subterranean races, and become a witness to distant events taking place in darkness.
- The Dresden Files has Nicodemus Archleone, leader of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius, a human collaborating with a Fallen Angel. There are 30 Fallen (one for each coin of the Judas Price), and each of the Fallen has their own tastes and powers, sometimes influenced by their hosts. In Nicodemus' case, his Fallen, Anduriel, manifests as his shadow, which moves independently of him. Aside from being intensely creepy, this also means that it can function as a pair of wings for him, conceal things, and attack directly. However, its most dangerous ability isn't revealed until Nicodemus' third appearance, in Skin Game, where it's revealed that Anduriel was Lucifer's spymaster. He can hear anything in range of someone's shadow, and sometimes even look out and see what's nearby. The only limits on this are that Anduriel has to know to focus on an individual shadow, and that sufficiently powerfully warded locations/locations which are explicitly being shielded by an exceptionally powerful being such as Mab are immune. Even with those limits, it's kind of terrifying.
- The Empirium Trilogy: Shadowcasters are elementals who can manipulate shadows.
- One of the blessings of Silamir’s domain in Heralds Of Rhimn. As her Herald, Navaeli first discovers this in Book One, when she allows Silamir to help her out of a tight spot; the goddess turns Knight Jeidhe’s own shadow against him.
- In Ice by Jacek Dukaj, one of the substances brought to earth by the alien meteorite can be used to create candles that cast shadows instead of light. This isn't normal darkness, but rather a sort of "anti-light", which can make people and objects in its radius cast "anti-shadows" made up of non-darkened areas. It also seems to have an odd effect on the minds of people who spend a lot of time exposed to it.
- In Iron Council, Judah Low creates a golem out of shadow, capable of choking people on its "flesh."
- The Kingkiller Chronicle has in the Faerie realm a power of shadows, one of whose uses is to weave into a Shaed, a super-cloak made of shadows that can be re-sized at will, among other powers.
- Crow man of Level Up Hero has shadow crows that he uses.
- Light And Dark The Awakening Of The Mageknight: This is Calador's awakening. Ironic since he works for an organization called "The Order of the Light" that fights shadow monsters.
- The villain of Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is a Force-user who has a different view of the Force than that of Jedi or Sith; he believes that the Force is the Dark, which is basically destruction and entropy; he induces visions of the Dark — of being alive in the eons after all the stars burn out — to cause despair that he can then use. On a metaphorical mind-battly level, his ultimate technique is to become a black hole, which makes sense in story.
- A Mage's Power: Eric the Classical Antihero finds in himself an affinity for darkness. He learns the Dark Veil faster than any other spell.
- The Malazan Book of the Fallen has a whole mythology built around the relationship between Dark and Light, with Shadow being their unwanted child and a separate element. It comes complete with it's own Realm (Kurald Emulahn), people (the Tiste Edur, or Children of Shadow), deity (Father Shadow), and Warrens (Paths of Magic) accessible to humans: Meanas, the Path of Shadow and Illusion, and Rashan, the Path of Darkness. While Meanas is descended from Kurald Emurlahn, the Elder Warren of Shadow, and Rashan from Kurald Galain, the Elder Warren of Darkness, the human Cult of Rashan is also known as the Cult of Shadow and teaches something called the "Shadow Dance", an all but forgotten magical assassination technique.
- In The Man with the Terrible Eyes, the shadow monsters run on something called the Void that gives them powers over darkness. The Man has the same powers.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
- This is one of Nico's powers due to being a son of Hades. He's capable of shadow traveling (opening portals in the shadows) and covering himself in them to stay hidden. His father is even capable of creating barriers and energy blasts of shadows.
- Bianca Di Angelo, Hazel Levesque and Mrs. O'Leary can utilize shadow travel as well.
- Many gods, including Persephone, Nyx, Erebos, and Hecate can use umbrakinesis. The children of Hecate can perform umbrakinesis as an extension of magic.
- In The Shadow Speaker, Ejii is a Shadow Speaker and has the ability to listen to the shadows.
- All Necromancers in Skulduggery Pleasant. The basic use of it is to manipulate shadows into tendrils, tentacles, or simple bludgeons. However, more advanced uses include making them sharp as razors, teleporting through shadows albeit through a relatively limited range (the most powerful necromancers only generally demonstrate a range of a few miles), concealment in shadows, and reaching out and touching everyone in a certain range with shadows - which is handy, when you need to teleport a whole bunch of people at once. The most powerful necromancers can fly, and at least one, Lord Vile, can enhance his physical strength (though he chose a suit of armour to contain his powers, it's functionally Powered Armour).
- The Shadowlord in Smoke and Shadows, a Sorcerous Overlord from an Alternate Universe has used shadow magic to conquer much of his world, and tries to do so with the protagonist's Earth as well.
- Melisandre of Asshai in A Song of Ice and Fire is a "shadowbinder", and can create shadow copies of people to perform assassinations, enabling her to kill King Stannis' treacherous brother Renly before he can kill Stannis and Ser Cortnay Penrose. Her shadow powers are a subset of her fire-based magic, because "there can be no shadows without light" and vice-versa.
- Ethereal of Three of Heart, One of Blood is able to manipulate shadows to the point where she can create sentient beings with them, albeit fueled by her own personality in a sense. She also averts the Stripperific clothing rule by wearing large, conservative dresses.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- In The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl generate terror in their enemies and are the most powerful in darkness. They are Weakened by the Light.
- In The Silmarillion, the Unlight of Ungoliant falls somewhere between Casting a Shadow and the Power of the Void.
- Frighteningly, while her heir Shelob is Weakened by the Light, Ungoliant actively consumes it and spits out blackness.
- Thanatos DuBaer in Twitches is a practitioner of dark magic.
- In Villainess Level 99, Yumiella possesses a rare talent for dark magic. She can cast very destructive darkness flames, black holes or control shadows.
- A non-evil example would be Arithon from Wars of Light and Shadow. He's called the Master of Shadow for a reason, having power of the darkness and anything related to it, while his half-brother is the Lord of Light.
- The Wheel of Time:
- The Dark One manifests an avatar with the power to create black fire, a "sphere of black light", and generalized darkness in rooms. This may be analogous to its other unique ability, to block access to the One Power: it can destroy physical light as it can magical Light.
- Myrddraal are terrifying beings that possess the ability to teleport through shadows.
- Whateley Universe: There seem to be a number of these at Superhero School Whateley Academy right now, and they don't all have the same weaknesses. Canon has it that some of them got the powers from a magical source, so the rules of physics need not apply.
- Nacht, having been dipped into the Erebos by her mother, has innate Erebeal magic: she can manipulate shadows as a semi-solid substance, can trap others in shadows, and teleport through shadows. She is a Deadpan Snarker with a Supervillain mother, but she seems (so far) to be neutral.
- Darkchylde is a superhero with the Cadet Crusaders, also with Erebeal magic powers, though she is a lot less powerful than Nacht.
- Blacklight may be a villain in training with some "darkness powers", though no real details about his powers are given. Unlike Nacht and Darkchylde, he has a weakness to light-based powers.
- The Dark court in Wicked Lovely. They are emotional parasites and, at the height of their power, can manipulate shadows and form strange 'shadow creatures', which follow their leader of the time, although they serve little purpose. One subspecies, the gancanagh, are addictive to mortals and the embodiment of death by sex. They also like tattoos, although this half-applies to all the fey in Melissa Marr's work. It's Author Appeal, as Marr herself has several tattoos.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: Morgan Wolf, a leader at an evil Wizarding School, demonstrates the ability to do this. In the beginning of the book she first summons a wave of darkness which blots out the sky and completely isolates the protagonist Emily, then wields her darkness as a weapon against the pyromancer Imogene.
- The aptly-named Shadow Man of The Witchlands can manipulate shadows to engulf people in total darkness, as well as use it to kill, either by freezing people to death or piercing them with tendrils of shadow.
- Grue from Worm generates and manipulates darkness that blocks hearing, touch, microwaves, radio frequencies and radiation in addition to dampening certain superpowers. After his second trigger event, it can even copy other people's powers.
