He walked amidst the fallen furniture and made his way across the small room, where there was a doorway leading to a corridor. The scent trail was much stronger now. He shone the orb’s light into it, allowing him to see a door at the end. He approached slowly, as he wasn’t sure if he was entirely alone down there.Once he reached the door, he tried to open it, but it was locked. They had at least some sense to keep it locked, he thought, but he didn’t expect it to be much. After examining it for a bit, he placed his right thumb over the keyhole and attempted to cast a simple unlocking spell he also carried in his spellbook. He heard a click, and the door was unlocked. Shaking his head in disapproval of this person’s security measures, he opened the door and walked in.
Seir was expecting to find some sort of large dog or something similar, as those animals had a history of being popular candidates for reckless vivifications, but what he found was beyond what he could have guessed. As he shone his light into the small room, he saw a large piece of what appeared to be black plastic covering a shape that seemed too tall and narrow to match the usual animals. Seir had a bad feeling about it. He hesitated for a moment, but then pulled aside some of the plastic, revealing the creature’s skull. It was a canine indeed, but it wasn’t feran. It was lucan. Suddenly, he felt like he really shouldn’t have gone there. He covered it back again and took a step back. For a second, he considered just getting out of there immediately, but thinking about it, a lucan vivification would be an even stronger weapon for the magi-police in the war against necromagic than anything else. He was already there, so he should finish the job.
Seir then uncovered the whole body. It reeked of that distinct vivification scent, but also of roadkill rotting under the sun. No wonder how the scent managed to get so far, he thought. As he looked closely, he noticed that the craft's quality was as precarious as its owner's attempts to hide it.
A proper vivification grows itself an outer layer of flesh which envelopes the entire body, sort of like a cocoon, and then attaches itself to its environment by strong, sticky strands of muscle-like organic matter. But on this lucan corpse, the flesh being rebuilt wasn't shaping up like it was supposed to be. Seir noticed parts of organs being regenerated but the flesh-cocoon wasn't even fully formed. It seemed to be growing in patches, without providing a full cover and allowing the innards to be exposed. It didn't create the conditions a vivification required to stay fresh, so parts of the rebuilt tissues were rotting away quickly like a dead carcass. The strands were numerous, but brittle and dry, which made them unable to stick to the floor as well as they should and couldn't offer support.
Seir crouched to examine the craft more closely. The more he looked at it, the more he noticed its flaws. He was horrified, not even at the fact that it was a lucan anymore, but at how poorly done it was. He had seen some hastily done vivifications before, but this one was exceptionally awful. It certainly wouldn't be successful in the end – if it could even be completed at all. Seir was so disgusted he decided to just get on with destroying it as quickly as possible.
He reached into a pocket in his jacket and took out a small black rod, as long as a pen but as thick as a broomstick. He held it in his hand and stretched his arm to the side. With a quick flash, it magically extended out of each end, forming a full staff. Its shaft was made of black wood with an indented line tracing a spiral along all of its length, which was about 50cm from each side of the handle from which it emerged. Close to its tip, it had a dark metal ring with four small spikes around it, and at the top, a pair of curved blades sat around a pointy red crystal.A staff is a tool which helps its wielder manipulate magic crafts. It directs any magis channeled through it onto the crystal on its tip, which amplifies and stabilizes it. It can also act as a filter, neutralizing any interference that could affect a craft, as well as absorbing harmful energies from a craft that could affect the wielder.
Seir cautiously approached his staff’s bladed tip to the vivification. He could pick up some intense but irregular energy coming off of it. It meant that the thing was still developing somewhat despite its state – at least for now – which he found surprising. But as he prepared to destroy the craft, he heard a noise coming from outside.
Hurried steps crossed the corridor, rushing to the door. She thought she was too paranoid for thinking something would go wrong, checking it out a few times in the middle of every party just to make sure, but she found herself unfortunately right as she saw light coming from under that door this time.
With her heart racing, she opened the door at once, exasperated, and yelled, “This is not what it seems!”Seir dispelled his light orb as soon as she stepped in, but he could catch a glimpse of the girl, a spaniel with pink hair, wearing the staff uniform. In the darkness, she reached for the light switch and for a moment, Seir considered using his blending shadow spell and getting out of there, but that girl’s reaction pretty much outed her as the culprit trying to defend herself rather than someone about to kick him out, so he felt a bit safe and just pulled down his hood to cover more of his face.
“Wait, who are you?” the girl asked, noticing it was not any of her coworkers as she initially assumed.
She wasn’t very discreet at all and surely somebody would overhear them if she wasn’t careful, so Seir stood up and pulled her into the room by her arm, closing the door behind her right after. He then turned off the light and brought up the light orb again. “You made this, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I… umm… It’s a prank I set up, yeah,” she told him, looking at the glowing sphere on his hand, somewhat mesmerized. “Looks like a real body right?” She laughed nervously.
“It IS a real body, obviously. Not only that but a dangerous necromagical vivification also,” he said, “This is not a joke at all.”
The girl went silent for a second. “You know this stuff?” she said, turning her gaze to his shaded face.
“Way more than you do, judging by how terrible a job you’ve done on it.” Seir just couldn’t hold his urge to criticize it. “Do you even know what you’re doing here?”
“Yes, I do!” she growled, clearly feeling offended.
“No. This is the worst vivification I’ve ever seen. No way that you followed all the steps properly.” He turned to the body. “This thing is rotting!”
“Well, it’s a dead body, what do you expect?”
“It shouldn’t look like this, and definitely shouldn’t smell like this. You would know it if you had any experience at all, but it seems like you never did a vivification before,” Seir said as the girl looked away in shame. “What’s going on here? Are you really a necromage or did you just find a necromagic book and thought it would be cute to kill someone and try your hand at it?”
“Alright, I admit it. I don’t have much experience, but I had to do this, okay? It was a promise.”
“A promise? What kind of promise?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Seir thought for a moment and glanced at the vivification. “Well, you’re right, it really isn’t,” he said, placing the light orb on the floor close to it and then gripping his staff with both hands. He kneeled next to the body and touched the blades onto the flesh fibers that barely covered the vivification’s chest, leaving gaps that exposed a small, underdeveloped heart beating weakly. “Thankfully, this whole thing is about to be nobody’s business.”
But before he could sink the blade in, the girl pulled his arm. “Stop! What are you doing?" she yelled.
“Putting this thing out of its misery," Seir replied, reaching the craft with his staff again, but the girl pulled his arm once more.
“What? No! You can't just show up here and destroy my stuff!" she tried arguing.
“Try telling that to the police when they catch it," he replied harshly, trying to get back to it.
“No, stop! I won’t let you do that!” She kneeled next to him and tried to pull him away from the craft.
“You shouldn’t even have attempted something like this with the experience you have. You shouldn’t mess with this level of magic unless you’re absolutely sure you’re doing it right and taking the necessary steps to make sure you won’t get caught,” he said, pushing her off him. “Not to mention how this is a lucan. I don’t even want to know how you got this body, because I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t know how to properly source this stuff.”
“Wait!" The girl grabbed Seir’s arm again and held on as firmly as she could. “Okay, maybe I messed up, but you seem to know this stuff, right? Can you help me with it? Please?” She tried to appeal to him with puppy eyes but he was unaffected.
“Why would I help you? I don’t even know you.”
“But why are you so eager to destroy it?”
“This thing is only going to cause problems. Unlike you, I actually work with necromagic and incidents like this only contribute to the bad reputation we have. I’m not going to just sit and watch it become a big issue if I can just get rid of it before the problem even starts,” he said, trying to find every last bit of patience he still had, “Besides, your craft is way too broken for it to even be successful. I’ll be saving you the time you’d wait hoping for it to work, just to be disappointed in the end because it never will.”
“I can pay you, how’s that? You fix things for me and-”
“I don’t think this is fixable!” Seir interrupted, “I’ve never heard of someone fixing a faulty vivification.”
“But I need this to work! There must be a way!”
“Whatever, I’ve had enough of this!” Seir growled. He then used a kinetic spell to push the girl away from him, making her fall backwards and hit the wall of the room.
Seir proceeded to slide his staff’s blades into the vivification’s chest cavity, but as soon as he twisted one of the rotting fibers surrounding the heart, there was a bright red flash as a plume of pungent smoke came out of it. He felt his staff had absorbed a great deal of energy. This was unusual, but since he was dealing with a lucan vivification, he should have expected it to contain a lot more magis than the feran animals he had experience with. Cautiously, Seir tried again. He pierced one of the strands of flesh and then an even brighter flash occurred, but this time, the energy was intense enough to bypass the staff and catch Seir’s hands like an electric shock. He immediately dropped the staff and lost control of the light orb, making the room plunge into darkness again. “What did you do!?” the spaniel girl shouted as she finally got up. She walked up to the switch and turned the lights back on. “Did anything happen to it?”
Seir took a while to reply, trying to process what just happened. “I think this is so messed up that its magis energy has gone extremely unstable,” he said, “I… actually don’t think it’s safe to disrupt it right now.” He still felt a wave of discomfort throughout his body stemming from his hands. The energy released by the craft interfered with Seir’s own flow of magis. He felt weak.
“Does that mean you won't destroy it?” she asked, somewhat relieved.
Seir sighed. “Unfortunately, yeah,” he said, reluctantly, “At least not right now. I’d need better gear for that.”
“Oh… so you’re still going to try and come back later?” she said with a hint of disappointment.
Seir kept silent for a moment. He still wanted to destroy that vivification but having to come back for it would perhaps be a risk he shouldn’t take. After all, he only went for it because he thought it would be easy. Maybe he should leave a report with the black market community in hopes someone more skilled could handle it. “I’m not sure,” he said as his thoughts drifted away.
But Seir hated to admit he wasn’t skilled enough to destroy such a poorly done vivification. Its terrible state of development appeared to be from insufficient power to regenerate tissues properly, but what he experienced was quite the opposite: a power surge. He felt like there was something more to this vivification than what he could possibly know from just looking. But he should just forget about it. He had wasted enough time and thought on the matter. Without a word, he turned around and opened the door to leave.
“Hey, wait!” the girl said, “Are you sure it can’t be fixed instead of destroyed? My offer still stands, you know.”
Seir was just so done with her. He glanced back at her with a furious stare, but before he said anything, he thought for a moment. Accepting her offer would allow him to easily access the craft without resistance from her. She would take him back to it willingly and he could take advantage of that by pretending he’s there to fix it, and then destroying it instead – that is, if he still really intended to come back. “Alright. I’ll think about it,” he said.
She smiled. “Oh, thanks!" she said with her tail wagging as she took out her phone, “Here’s my chat contact. Name’s Hayley, by the way. What’s yours?”
“Devon.” Seir gave her his fake name and alt-account, although a bit reluctantly.
Hayley noted it on her phone. “Devon. That’s a pretty cool name,” she said, finally taking a good look at him with the lights on.
He turned around and left without saying anything.
“Wait!” Hayley called, but Seir ignored and walked away.
Soon, he was out again with the bright purple lights, loud music and loud crowd. He should never have lingered longer searching for that vivification. The uncomfortable surroundings reminded him of his urge to go home. Without a second thought, Seir made his way quickly through the people, headed straight to the exit of the club.
