Zyneth Short Story

(Events take place immediately before Glass Kanin: Book 1)

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Zyneth peered around the crumbling corner of a building, looking down onto the City of the Dead. 

Shadowy creatures crawled through the streets, green wisps of necrotic energy trailing their movement like ghostly shawls. Sometimes he could make out bones beneath the mesh of shadows and decayed forest detritus that made up the skin of their bodies. There were no nightbanes that he could see, but plenty of lesser Dead. And plenty was always enough to get you killed. 

He tucked an unruly lock of hair back around one of his horns as he ducked behind the piece of ruin he was hiding behind: black like obsidian, though freezing cold to the touch. It must have been a trick of the magic that leaked from the Black Spire and infused the rest of the abandoned city, for no frost crept over the surface of the rocks. He wondered if the cold sensation was due to his magic or lifeforce being leached away, rather than heat, and this was the only way his body could think to interpret it. 

A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. Zyneth drew his knife and slashed it to the side on instinct, severing a bonefang mid-strike. The necrotic snake fell to the ground in two pieces, the magic keeping it animated already fading from its remains. Pesky creatures. But he couldn’t stand here and wonder about the nature of the Ruins all day. He had a mission to complete. 

Zyneth kept low as he ducked between broken pieces of buildings, skirting around the main depths of the city. He’d have to make the plunge eventually, as his target was likely in the Spire itself, but as a cambion he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. The Dead that filled the streets of the Black Spire wouldn’t notice his horns or red skin, but the faint yellow glow of his eyes might draw their attention if he didn’t remain covert. Luckily, he was rather good at being covert. 

It was midday, but the air stung his skin with a bitter cold, at least in part due to the alpine location of the Ruin. Still, he suspected the necrotic energy suffusing the area also had something to do with it, and he judged it best to spend as little time in the vicinity as possible. Not that he could afford to take long on this job. Rezym’s future depended on it. 

Careful and methodical, he told himself, stopping at a junction between two streets, resisting the urge to make a hurried dash through. Impulsiveness would just get him in trouble here. Actually, it tended to get him in trouble in most instances. Actively overcoming that impulse had taken years of training—if only it was a trait he could train out of his siblings, too. 

Finding the way clear, he began to step out from his hiding spot, then froze. A giant shadow detached itself from the other side of the square and prowled across the street. Ice prickled down his spine as Zyneth held carefully still, slowing his breath and squinting his eyes to reduce their light. The beast raised its snout to the sky, swinging its head back and forth as it snuffed at the air. 

The shadow cat had once been an alpine lion, twice his own size, though its fur had long turned to moss, its skin to shadows, its eyes and organs to glowing, green, necrotic magic that was only a parody of organic tissue. But the four-inch long claws at the end of its bony paws were still the original. As were its glistening white teeth. 

The shadow cat turned down another street, and just as casually as it had emerged, it melted back into the shadows of the dead city. Tension unknotted from Zyneth’s shoulders. Unlike nightbanes, at least shadow cats were solitary creatures. He likely only had the one to keep track of and avoid. He mentally noted the direction and location of the cat’s last sighting, then moved on. 

The Dead became more frequent the closer he grew to the Spire. Zyneth wondered if that was because the necrotic energy dug deeper here, reviving more ancient animal carcasses, or if the Dead that eventually awoke miles away were drawn back to this place like a compass pulling north. Whatever the cause, it made his progress tricky, and he was forced to slay more of the creatures as he neared his target. 

The Black Spire towered over the rest of the city like a petrified tree. The top of it split into many twisting limbs, though for what purpose–or due to what cause—Zyneth could only guess. It was who was inside that he cared about. He slowed as he approached the tower. There were many openings in its base and up its sides; perhaps they used to be doors and balconies, long since degraded by time and magic into a stranger, more organic, form. A nest of bonefangs were writhing around on the ground outside what Zyenth judged to be the main entrance. Worse still, there were necrotic mobs—creatures that didn’t have enough remaining parts to operate on their own, so ended up attaching to one another in clusters of mismatched bones, often spouting multiple skulls and far too many legs. Again, easy to dispose of individually, but became quite an issue in number. 

Zyneth glanced up the wall of the Spire. Luckily there were no flying Dead about; perhaps even necromancy couldn’t make those sorry remains airborne. That gave him an opportunity, however. As long as all the Dead were keeping to the ground…

Quietly as he could manage in an already eerily silent city, Zyneth scaled the nearest structure. Briefly, as he found purchase between cracks in the stone and swung himself up onto a half-degraded platform at what would have been the second story, he wondered what this building had been. Was that the window he’d come through? Had it always been black stone, or had that happened over the ages since the city became a Ruin? Where had the people gone? The only skeletons that wandered these streets were composed of local fauna. 

Not that any of that mattered now. They were dead—or worse—and he was here to break into what remained of their civilization. At least they wouldn’t mind. 

From the platform, Zyneth paused to take some rope out of his satchel. Affixed to the end was a round stone with runes for bonding and attachment etched into its surface. He activated the spell with a yellow flicker of his own magic, and Zyneth carefully held the rope just behind the stone. Now that it was activated, he had one shot to get it to land where he needed it to; and since it was certain to draw attention, he’d need to move quickly after that. 

Zyneth edged around half a broken wall until the Black Spire and the street beneath were in view. There was a hole in the Spire’s wall slightly lower than his level, which should work perfectly for his intentions. He watched the streets, waiting until the last necrotic mob rolled away, then made his move. 

He held the free end of the rope with his left hand; in his right, he swung it twice, then threw. It struck the Spire right above the entrance with a loud crack—but the spell activated, and the stone stuck firmly in place. Not waiting for any creatures to come investigate the noise, he tightened his grip on the free end of the rope and jumped. The rope swung him across the gap and in through the side of the Spire. Zyneth didn’t let go once he made it inside, however. His stomach flipped as he had the briefest moment to take in the fact that there was no floor beneath his feet. Zyneth grabbed the wall as he began to swing back out, finding a rocky outcrop on its surface, and reluctantly let go of the rope. He clung to the wall, finding cracks to wedge his boots in as well. The rope swung back out, then hung loose beside him. He hoped he’d have the leverage and time to deactivate the spell and retrieve it later: it was an expensive tool. For now, though, he had more pressing matters. Like not falling into the necrotic mobs that writhed on the floor of the room below. 

Even with all the holes in the tower walls, it was dark inside the Spire; if it weren’t for all the telltale green magic that lit the Dead from within, he wouldn’t have been able to make them out at all. They were eerily quiet. Hopefully that was because they hadn’t noticed him, and not because they were all now waiting for his inevitable fall and demise. 

Right, well, this was not the most ideal situation to be in. He couldn’t even make out his target from here, either. Then again, the Spire was massive, and just this room was as big as the welcome hall back in Shale Palace. Well. He supposed he better get started. 

As his eyes adjusted to the dim, he could make out the remnants of floors: rocky outcrops which speckled the walls at regular intervals. He scraped and strained his way up to one of these, whereupon tiptoeing his way around the wall became much easier.

As he circled the Spire, he could almost make out sections of what the floor once was. Side rooms and passages that were now only indicated by small ridges of rock along the floor, all of it teeming with the Dead. He desperately hoped he would not find his target to be part of the reanimated mob. That would complicate things significantly. 

He’d circled nearly halfway around the Spire when he caught sight of something promising. White lines of a spell circle drawn on the main floor, half scuffed away by the movement of the Dead. So he was in the right place: someone had been here recently—relatively speaking. 

It wasn’t much further beyond that that he found what he was looking for. 

The necromancer was dead, and not Dead, which was a relief. Her body still looked remarkably well preserved—likely because the animals here had no interest in consuming anything that didn’t still have a lifeforce in it. She was raised off the ground on a stone terrace, surrounded by knocked over candles, broken spell circles, and scattered salts—likely where she’d made her last stand. In time, the Black Spire would claim her bones, too. 

It wasn’t a mystery why she’d been here. Most mages visited a Ruin to harness its raw magical power that leaked into the world. Usually only the very powerful or very arrogant made such an attempt. Many of them ended up the way this one had. For people like Zyneth—or rather, Rezym’s employer—this provided quite an opportunity to loot the remains for powerful artifacts. The trick was in not becoming another lootable body.

“It’ll be easy,” Rezym had assured him. “All you have to do is grab the Skull Locket and bring it back.”

“And what does this ‘Skull Locket’ look like?” Zyneth had asked. “What does it do? Is it safe to handle?”

His little sister had shrugged. “I don’t know. Crovits didn’t say. But how hard can pickpocketing a dead body be, anyway?” 

And that’s precisely why he was here in her place. As if one of his siblings romanticizing his profession and trying to follow in his footsteps wasn’t bad enough, she would have gotten herself killed on her very first job. But this mission was intended to put a stop to that: get her out of the underworld before she got too far in. Assuming, of course, Zyneth didn’t get himself killed on this mission as well. 

Zyneth glanced around the room, trying to chart the best way down from—and back up to—his perch. It required crossing a space of floor no matter what. Rummaging around in his satchel, Zyneth produced a small vial of inert liquid and an artificed clockwork toy dog. He activated the toy first, winding up the key on its back and sparking a bit of his magic into the runes carved carefully over its body. Pinching the key to keep it from moving, he secured the vial of liquid to it with a bit of twine next. 

“Out the front door,” he mumbled to the toy as quietly as he could manage. The magic needed simple, vocal direction to operate, and he hoped that would be enough. Next, he pushed more of his magic into the vial, and the liquid bloomed with light, activating the inert Life Arcana that was stored within. 

The Dead within the room stopped moving, then, as one, their heads all swiveled  in his direction. Zyneth’s heart skipped a beat. He leapt down from his perch and cast the clockwork toy onto the ground. “Front door. Front door!”

The Dead were already moving in his direction when the clockwork dog came to life. It gave an excited, mechanical “Yip!” and began prancing away. The prance turned into a scramble as the nearest mob lurched in its direction, and the toy zipped out of the way. The white light vanished into the flood of green as it rushed toward the front of the Spire, every Dead within range in tow. 

Zyneth slumped in relief as the creatures began to move away from him. That lure worked a little too effectively. Note for future use: don’t activate the life arcana until you’re ready to be running in the opposite direction. 

There was little time to waste, so Zyneth rushed over to the necromancer’s body before the area was even fully clear, using his knives to dispose of any remaining Dead that wandered too close. Vaulting onto the platform, he grabbed her cloak and threw back the hem. There were various bottles and bags attached to her belt, all either empty or partially full of useless ingredients to spells he didn’t know. There wasn’t any jewelry on her, however. Nothing easily identifiable as a locket, or even anything with a skull insignia (which was frankly surprising for a necromancer). Zyneth moved to try to flip the body over, but as soon as he took hold of the necromancer’s shoulder, he knew something was wrong. 

The body was stiff. Not in the sort of “recently deceased” way, but in the “this body is way more solid than it should be” way. Zyneth frowned, looking at her face. Then his eyebrows shot up, and he looked closer. 

Her skin was an ashen gray, similar to the tone of most dhampyrs, but unlike dhampyrs, the texture was coarse like stone. Because it was stone. She was completely petrified. 

Zyneth irrationally drew a hand back, although if whatever affliction had infected her was contagious on touch, it would have already been too late. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. Drawing a pair of leather gloves from his satchel, he put them on before continuing his search. He still needed to be fast—who knew how much longer the Dead would be distracted by his lure—but something else was going on here. Necrotic magic didn’t turn people to stone. 

Zyneth almost missed it: the clue was tucked at her side, where a portion of her cloak had turned to stone as well. Due to the fragile nature of petrified fabric, he was able to break the piece away, the stone cloak crumbling to dust as he found what remained within. 

At first glance, it was a stone key designed like a twig. A leaf-like emerald made up the pommel, while branches of the stone twisted off into four prongs at the opposite end of the key. Despite it being made of stone, the detail in the twig’s knots and the leaf’s veins were disturbingly vivid. It felt heavy and poisonous resting in his palm. 

Zyneth knew what this was. This was not merely a stone key styled like a wood, but a wooden key that had been turned to stone. A branch from the Petrified Groves, very likely still leaking the Stone arcana that gave the Ruins its name. It turned organic matter to rock more quickly than inorganic matter, which was why all but the pocket of the necromancer’s clothes had remained fabric while her body had succumbed to the effects of the stone magic. As would Zyneth’s body, if he held it for too long, and too close. 

Uneasily, Zyneth added it to his satchel, keeping it in the most remote pouch he had. He didn’t like what this key suggested—especially because the relic he’d been sent to retrieve wasn’t here. 

An unearthly growl snapped his attention away from the necromancer. Swirls of green magic made it easy to pick out the many Dead that were in the room—it also made the large, looming shadow at the doorway all the more distinct. The shadow cat stood at the entrance of the Black Spire, and from the pinprick of white in its teeth, it had found Zyneth’s lure. 

Well. Crap. 

Zyneth leapt from the platform and sprinted for his perch back on the wall. It would only take a handful of seconds for him to scale it and get back up to the second-floor ledge, but it would also take the shadow cat about the same amount of time to cross the room. 

He abandoned his escape attempt halfway up the wall. The shadow cat would be on top of him in moments, and his back would be exposed and defenseless. Instead, Zyneth dropped back to the floor and slammed his hands down at the same time, releasing a burst of electricity. The sparking yellow magic rolled through the room in a thunderous wave, leaving all of the smaller creatures stunned.

Not the shadow cat, though. It tripped as the paralyzing wave rolled through it, went down, but stumbled to its feet the next moment, shaking off the magic’s effects. Zyneth straightened, trying to keep his breath measured as he drew both of his knives and channeled electricity through their blades. That show of magic had eaten away at least half of his stores and left him feeling like he’d just gotten through a two mile race. He couldn’t let that slow him down now, though. The fight was just beginning. 

The shadow cat closed the gap in two final bounds, its claws extended. Zyneth dove to the side, slashing at one of the paws as he focused his magic into his blades, turning the cutting edges white-hot. It severed the skeletal paw, which went tumbling away. A normal alpine lion would have been crippled by that blow. Unfortunately, the Dead are not so hindered. The cat landed unbothered on the remaining stub of its leg, spun, and came at him again. 

It was too close to dodge. He blocked the intact paw with one knife, then drove the other into the shadow cat’s open mouth. It lodged in its skull, producing an enraged yowl, but the severed arm still punched Zyneth in his shoulder. The weight of the cat collapsed down on top of him. 

It smelled of forest decay. Zyneth squirmed to dislodge himself, keeping one knife stuck between its teeth as he used the other to hack and slash at the underbelly of the creature. Chunks of bone and moss fell on top of him, but the creature didn’t appear to notice. It shook its head, and he let go of the blade, abandoning it so he could pull himself down below the belly of the cat and roll out from under its side. 

As he leapt to his feet he switched the element in his blades to fire—the far less practiced of his magic specialities—and then funneled everything he had left into the blades. He lacked precision with fire, but its force was undeniable. Zyneth stabbed the blade he still held into the shadow cat’s back as he released the magic. Flames exploded from both his blades, erupting in a jet from the blade in the cat’s side, and setting all the detritus in its skin aflame. 

At the same time, its skull exploded. 

Necrotic magic spilled from the holes in its body like a slashed water skin, evaporating into the surrounding air. Zyneth stepped back as the cat crashed onto its side, and he kept that distance until the beast ceased to move any longer. Retrieving and sheathing both his blades, Zyneth judged the stab to the side was probably unnecessary, given the creature now completely lacked a head. He’d have to keep that one in mind in the future. 

Heaving a heavy sigh, he turned back to the room. The stunned creatures were still twitching on the floor, but they wouldn’t remain that way forever. Zyneth was lucky the shadow cat was alone. If he’d had to fight multiple large undead creatures at once, things could have gotten hairy. And they still could, if he didn’t imminently take his leave. 

Zyneth searched the necromancer’s body one last time, not holding onto much hope. As he suspected, there was nothing of value on her. Perhaps she’d intentionally hidden some of her relics before venturing into the Spire; maybe they would have attracted the Dead, like his lure, or she judged them too valuable to risk. Whatever the case, they weren’t here. And assuming someone hadn’t already looted her body before he’d arrived—which was always a possibility—that left him with only one other lead to follow. 

Leaving behind his grappling rope as an unfortunate casualty, Zyneth snuck out of the city before any larger predators could show up, drawn by the obvious and lingering remnants of his magic. He had no mana left with which to fight, and the very core of him ached as a result, like a towel wrung dry. 

It would be a few days to the nearest town, though it was so small and remote he was unsure it even qualified for the label. Peakshadow, he thought it was called. From there he should be able to make it to a larger city, one with telepads, and from there he would make for the Petrified Groves. The idea of diving straight from one dangerous Ruin into another did not appeal to him. But he had family counting on him. He couldn’t let Rezym down, not when her future depended on him completing this mission and untangling her from the underworld’s web. 

And with the corruptive bit of Petrified stone on his person, he couldn’t afford to take long. 

For this mission, he could allow for no distractions.