I just received an update from the local necromantic office. Here’s some info so that you both have a better idea of the bigger picture, Viktoria pulsed.

“Sort of busy here, Vicky,” Sadea grumbled, leaning against the stairwell railing and watching Raksha hack apart a pack of ghouls.

She had little knowledge of swordsmanship, but it was obvious to her that the martial scientist had changed his approach to battle. Before, he’d swung his blade in large, sweeping blows, trusting his aegis to protect him. Now, his sword flickered, twirled, and cut intricate, bewildering patterns in his foes, before withdrawing into tight, deft parries against the tide of fangs and claws that sought his flesh.

Yesterday, the local necromantic chief conducted his routine inspection of the plant. He ordered all the staff out from the initial intake chamber and sealed the doors behind him, Viktoria continued, ignoring Sadea’s comments. His assistant, who returned to the office, mentioned that the chief had been muttering some drivel about the “bliss of death.” Soon after, all this began.

“Sounds like he snapped, Vicky. And no wonder. Crappy job, horrible hours, ugly uniforms.” Sadea chuckled.

Its clawed limbs finding purchase easily on the permacrete, a ghoul crawled up the wall and onto the ceiling, out of Raksha’s reach. Sadea hit it with a lightning bolt. Its charred remains tumbled down the stairwell shaft. She followed its descent until it disappeared amidst a mass of moving carrion.

Raksha said the same thing she was thinking. “This will take forever.”

It was true. They’d been descending for more than an hour and had only made it two floors down, corpses and ghouls dogging their every step.

“Where are the intake chambers again, Vicky?” she asked.

Basement seven. Bottom floor.

Raksha peeked down the stairwell shaft. “That’s another five floors down.”

Sadea skipped over to him, casually disintegrating the cluster of corpses that had climbed within eyeshot. “I have an idea.”

Moments later, they were falling, Sadea perched on Raksha’s back. Like before, she had looped her scarf around his neck while still holding its ends in her hands, and of course, she’d ignored his objections.

They passed an endless stream of corpses and ghouls climbing the stairs. Many of them hurdled the railing and leaped after the pair, their jaws agape and their eyes ablaze with hunger. Whooping at the sensation of the rushing air against her face, Sadea struck them down with bolts of lightning.

“Why are there so many floors, anyway?” Raksha mused.

Sanctioned reanimation has many steps, which are performed on different floors. Corpses have to be sorted and embalmed. Then they must be implanted with restraint and control circuitry. Lastly, they—

“If that’s how you flirt, Vicky, you’re never going to ride this pony.”

Shut up, Sadea!

“We’re reaching the bottom,” Raksha said.

Sadea whistled at the sea of grinning dead faces looking up at them. Another ten feet went by, and she pulled Raksha into her lightning aspect. They touched down as a crackling storm of electrical energy that atomized the horde of corpses waiting for them at the foot of the stairwell.

“I’ve been zapping things all my life, and you never get used to the smell. Ugh.” Sadea fanned the air around her nose as she materialized into corporeality.

“Don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that lightning thing you did to me, too,” Raksha grumbled. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at her face. “You’ve got a nosebleed.”

“Eh. Happens all the time. Hate it when it ruins my lipstick, though.” Sadea pulled a handkerchief from a kilt pocket and dabbed at her nose.

The martial scientist shrugged and turned away, more superstitious mutters about sorcery falling from his lips. Sadea wanted to kick him in the rear.

There was only a single doorway leading from the stairwell’s bottom chamber, and though Sadea had annihilated every corpse within in, the corridors beyond were still packed with the dead. She looked up, expecting more corpses or ghouls to fall on them from above.

Instead, the dead were silent and motionless, their glassy eyes fixed on her and Raksha.

“What the…”

There’s a massive surge in unsanctioned necromantic energies! Viktoria pulsed. What’s going on down there?

As one, the dead turned their gazes upward and resumed climbing the stairs.

“Vicky, that chief you mentioned? I think he’s still around and running the show. If not him, then someone, or something, else is.”

His name is Stannes Erban, Hegemonic Necromancer Second-Grade, which means his psychic capacity is nothing to be trifled with. His records say that it’s at least Class Three, but who knows what it really is right now?

“Class Three? That’s really high for a small town bureaucrat.”

“He’ll die the same when I cut off his head,” Raksa said. “Where can we find him?”

Just keep heading to the initial intake chamber. That’s where the source of unsanctioned energies is. If he’s there, kill him.

“This isn’t the only stairwell connecting all the basement levels, is it, Vicky?”

No, which means that the dead will mass in enough force and numbers to break out soon. I have secured the services of a mercenary troupe that just happened to be passing by, but even with their help…

“You lot don’t stand a chance. Got it.”

“I just thought of something. I spotted chimneys on this building before we entered,” Raksha broke in.

The chimneys are for the furnace chamber, where they dispose of corpses too decrepit to even render into protein gels. They also sort and dispose of personal effects there.

“Don’t those usually have maintenance ladders?”

“Get to the point, Raksha!”

“Some of these creatures can climb. So surely some of them must have climbed out from there by now?”

No unsanctioned dead have emerged from the mortuary’s chimneys.

“This means that they can’t reach the furnaces,” Raksha reasoned. “Because the doors are locked or sealed or something?”

The furnace chamber should be just as accessible as any other on this floor.

Sadea caught onto Raksha’s train of thought. “Someone is preventing the dead from reaching the furnaces. There’s at least one survivor.”

There’s too much ambient interference for me to proxy scan for human psychic activity. Can you do it, Sadea?

“Eh. If I could pick up anything, I would have by now. You know I’m not good at this.” Sadea kicked open the chamber door and strolled into the corridors of the bottom floor. “Besides, who cares about survivors? We’re on a tight enough timeline, as it is.”

“If we can save anyone, we will,” Raksha insisted.

“All the dead will collapse or disintegrate once we cut off the necromantic energy source.”

“Might be too late for them.”

“Again, who cares? So a few more necromancers and maybe some of their cronies get eaten.”

We need to make sure the dead don’t have more than one way to leave the mortuary. We only have twenty troopers, ten mercenary specialists, and me guarding the main entrance. The doors will break down in minutes, and we really don’t need to deal with ghouls climbing out elsewhere. Go secure the furnaces, Sadea. This is a direct order from your Contract-holder.

“…do I get more money for this?”

No.