Richard Brave

Richard Brave (リチャード＝ブレイブ) is an antagonist in the Toaru Majutsu no Index series. He is a magician who belongs to Necessarius.

Appearance
He wears a black coat and looks about twenty. He has about the same height and skin color as Stiyl Magnus.

Background
When he was a member of the Anglican Church, his primary area of activity was North America, where he specialized in defensive ocean battles. His achievements laid in setting up a defensive line along the Atlantic Ocean in order to prevent American magic cabals from invading England. Some time ago, his signature spell, Lævateinn, was classified by Necessarius as illegal, as its nature was not considered completely magical. As it was his greatest weapon that he had created after researching countless things, repeating countless experiments, working for countless hours, and fine-tuning it countless times, it had become the symbol of his life. He also deemed it worthy to dedicate his life to, as the weapon that prevented many tragedies. To him, he had nothing else. In this incident everything about Richard Brave became twisted, his hatred for the Anglican Church had grown within him and sparked his desire to annihilate the Anglican church. At some point, while apart of Necessarius he headed head of a group to retrieve the vegetative Ceillier Flatley from the hospital so they could use him to ‘negotiate’ with Brunhild Eiktobel to make her tell them Gungnir, the Final Rune, the method of interfering with the core of the earth, and the nature of a Valkyrie.

Abilities
Lævateinn (破滅の枝(レーヴァテイン)) - A Western sword with the runes sowulo, gebo, kenaz, ansuz, laguz, and uruz carved onto the blade. Reading down only the first letters spells "sgkalu", which means something along the lines of “the torch that acquired the sun using magic”. The actual Lævateinn is the twig of the greatest flames that is said to set fire to the trunk of the World Tree and burn everything away. According to Theodosia Electra, the Lævateinn is on the same level as the Gungnir.

The flames created by Lævateinn can seemingly burn anything, even other flames. However, it is a deception, as according to Stiyl Magnus, normal Runes carved on a sword cannot achieve this effect. In fact, the sword itself is not the main part of the spell. What Richard really does is use a spray to spread Vitamin B2 as an invisible ink in the shape of Runes. According to Stiyl, it is probably a combination of the Runes eihwaz, berkana, and wunjo. The end result is that those Runes modify objects to become highly flammable. Then, Richard uses the meaning of sgkalu as "the torch that acquired the sun using magic" in order to create an effect similiar to UV rays. As Vitamin B2 reflects yellow light when exposed to strong UV rays, the Runes becomes visible and their meaning is activated.

Because it uses such a scientific method, the Anglican Church deemed the spell as against the treaty between magic and science.