[Tempest35]

Maivs is still pretty old and it's not like she has been 'walking the earth' since her passing. New magic has been developed since her time but I doubt if the shadow thing is one of those newer ones. If it does turn out to be Obra... ><;

Trying to come up with a way to explain how a Dragon Slayer can eat and assume the properties of elements other than their base element is going to be tricky... For Natsu, it was well and good for him to empty out his own magic to take in Zancrow's, but Zan-y also used fire so it wasn't much of a stretch to see the plausibility of it. For the lightning...Laxus gave Natsu a staggering amount of power, so much that apparently, Natsu's body has a permament copy of Laxus' lightning.

But now, Gajeel has displayed that a DS can injest another element and utilize it with their own to create a fusion type. I wonder if they are able to do that since they are the 1st Gen DS...however, Rogue and Sting were also trained by actual Dragons so they would/should be able to accomplish the same, if that theory was correct. Another one would be that they have to be of a sufficient level and 'eat' the element in a certain way to injest its properties to be able to use it.