Seir touched the box in his pocket, making sure it was well hidden in his thick jacket, and smirked. It was the heart of a phoenix, kept alive and beating by a magically prepared box, lined in a black, rocky material called obsidian-henyx. An extremely rare item originated from a rare creature, which he had coveted for a while, was now in his possession.

   The phoenix was one of the few magi-creatures which was not created by lucans, having a mysterious yet natural origin. It was a large bird with brightly colored plumage ranging from red to yellow and a long tail of intricate feathers, which theoretically had an infinite lifespan due to its unique ability to completely regenerate its body’s tissues no matter how much damage was done to them. Under normal circumstances, any parts removed from a phoenix would instantly burn to ashes, while the phoenix then engulfed itself in flames to regenerate the lost part. But through a special procedure, the bird’s ability could be temporarily nullified and its heart extracted from its body intact. The heart was the source of the regeneration ability, and if kept alive by the specific enchantment in Seir’s newly obtained box, its power was retained but modified to regenerate only the heart and not the whole bird. And a regenerating heart was an invaluable ingredient for crafts in his area of interest: necromagic.

   The peculiar art of necromagic was as sinister as it was controversial. It was the field of magic practice which utilizes the bodies and tissues of dead animals as a source of magic-energy – or magis – in its crafts, and by extension, that also meant magi-creatures and lucans. Practice of necromagic with lucan materials was, obviously, banned and illegal, but that had never kept the curious and the dishonorable from attempting it anyway. Groups of people dedicated to experimenting with the possibilities have always existed to perform their crafts in the shadows, some of them simply seeking knowledge, while others had nefarious plans for such a power. After all, lucans were the most complex and magically evolved of all animals, making their tissues the most rich sources of magis in existence, and therefore, the sources which allowed for the most powerful crafts. As such, the underground communities and black markets were established, allowing folks to have access to materials of questionable origins, for questionable purposes, if only they knew where to look. And that’s where Seir fit in.

   While his crafts didn’t often include lucan materials, Seir was one of those who sought knowledge through experimenting, and he had little concern for what was considered dangerous or wrong. Even at such a young age, he had already mastered the arts of black market shopping, and shared ideas with all sorts of strange folks, who spoke of powers and possibilities beyond his imagination. He now sought to create incredibly powerful things as well, and he had multiple theories and plans that he could put into practice with the help of the phoenix heart.

   Having finished his business, Seir couldn’t wait to get out of that crowded nightclub. He made his way slowly through the crowds, eagerly thinking of his plans. But as went down the stairs, he caught a scent which made him stop in his tracks. It was very faint, but he could smell decaying meat. While most people could be mildly bothered by it, they would assume maybe a rat got caught in a trap, or perhaps a bit more worrisome, that the quality of the meat in the kitchen was dubious. But Seir’s experience as a necromage allowed him to recognize that there was something more to that scent. He looked around until he noticed a door down at the small area by the stairs which had been left open, revealing stairs going down into the dark. Something about it just caught his attention. He decided to approach it, feeling like the scent was coming from there, though it was hard to pick up a trail due to how faint it was. The area was empty as it was pretty much a staff-only space, so without catching anyone’s attention, he quickly walked around the large pink decorative plant. Once he stood in front of that door and looked down into it, he could smell it again; the scent of rotting flesh, but with it also a scent that Seir was well acquainted with: the distinct scent of flesh that is being rebuilt through necromagic. A difference too slight for anyone unfamiliar with it to be able to tell, but to him, an obvious hint that somebody around there was trying to revive something dead.

   A necromagical vivification, as it was called, was the process of bringing the body of a dead animal back to life, usually to be used as a soulless thrall. To successfully craft it, one would require a certain skill as a necromage, but it was a very standard practice craft, despite being potentially illegal. While a vivification of a pigeon or a mouse would grant you a warning at most, being caught vivifying bigger animals of higher magical quality could result in fines or even jail, as they could be really difficult to tame once they are fully restored and are prone to causing serious damages. Vivified animals don’t behave like their natural selves. They are mindless, soulless organic machines powered by magis alone, so they can be unpredictable. But that also made them good for practicing multiple things, from learning to control them to testing injurious spells on a beast that cannot feel pain, so there would always be those who’d feel they’re up to the challenge.

   Seir knew he shouldn’t care about it as it was none of his business, but something about that scent gave him a feeling that it was more than just a pigeon or rat. If someone was doing anything bigger in a place like this, in conditions that allowed him to catch its scent in the middle of a party full of people, they were running a serious risk of being caught. Seir sighed. It was due to careless people like this that necromagic practice was becoming more and more restricted, as the magi-police kept uncovering these sloppy crafts and using them to boost their ideas that necromages are nothing but unruly blood-thirsty criminals. Of course, Seir had used materials in some crafts that would make him a criminal, but even he and most others like him had some level of ethics. They didn’t usually go for the general people for their dark crafts and hardly posed a threat to anyone, as long as nobody got in the way of their crafts.

   Seir turned around and was ready to leave, but then a thought occurred to him. If the police caught that vivification, they could likely catch the culprit, and that culprit could perhaps be one of Fletcher’s other clients that he had mentioned. If they got interrogated, they could end up revealing information about their contacts, and if Fletcher got caught or even just became a wanted criminal, that would deeply impact Seir’s own plans, as well as certainly many others’ who counted on him. However, Seir thought, if he caught the vivification himself, he could eliminate the risks by destroying it.

   He looked back at the open door. Discreetly, he opened his wallet and browsed for a card, sliding his fingers over the options in the wallet until he stopped on one of them and pulled it out slightly. It had a picture of a gray wolf’s face, with half of it painted black.

   Spells were crafted in many shapes, but one of the most common ones was the card form, due to its ease of being stored and handled. Most magicians who actively practiced magic had what they called a “pocket spellbook” to take those cards with them. Spells need only to be somewhere close to a user’s body in order to be cast, so a wallet-like spellbook made for an excellent way of keeping cards safe and organized within one's pockets.

Seir looked at the bottom of the card, where there was a black bar with a small amount of red on one side. This indicated how much charge was left on the spell, and it wasn’t much. This spell was called blending shadow; an illusion spell which made the user’s image appear darkened and somewhat translucent, allowing them to be nearly undetectable in the dark and hard to identify even under light. Seir thought of casting that spell on himself to be safer, but with the little charge remaining, he preferred to keep it for now, and use it only in the event that he got caught snooping around.