McMourning watched as his stout lab assistant struggled with the manhole cover in the middle of the dark cobblestone street. He was sitting astride his new velocipede with head held high, going round and round the grunting Sebastian in tight circles like a leaf going down a drain. The narrow rubber tires squeaking on the polished stones.
"These people just don’t give me the respect I deserve,” he said. “Or appreciate all the hard work I put in."
"Too true, Master," his assistant grunted as he heaved his considerable body weight on a large iron bar in an attempt to dislodge the cover.
"Who does he think he is to kick me out of my own morgue? And Justice? That blind skrewk couldn't be more pompous if she traveled everywhere on a throne. Hah! What a thought! I must mention that to old Nicodem next time I beat him at chess."
"Skrewk, sir?" Sebastian asked, as with a final bellyflop on the bar, the manhole cover sprang free. It rolled down the street and spun a few times before coming to a ringing halt.
"It's a term of resentment that I've invented. I'm testing it out," McMourning stated matter-of-factly as he brought his two-wheeled contraption to a halt by riding straight at Sebastian. The doughty assistant took the handlebars in his ample midriff with the barest of grunts. McMourning dismounted, then spent a few frustrating minutes fighting the machine as it stubbornly refused to fit down the manhole. He sighed, and gave up. “These things are never going to catch on, you know. I suppose I am expected just to leave it here now, and get another one tomorrow? The modern world has gone mad, mark my words.”
"Very good, sir," his assistant responded, with a measured tone butlers would have killed for. The two of them descended the short ladder before splashing into the shallow sludge that oozed slowly through the wide sewer channel beneath.
McMourning wound a dynamo-powered torch and held it aloft. The electric glow sent shadows looming on the curved walls as the two men started down the tunnel. If McMourning noticed the suffocating stench he gave no sign.
Malifaux's sewer system existed as a vast catacomb beneath the City. In truth, McMourning had discovered, what was sewer today had been City, once upon a time. New construction buried the old. It was a dangerous place to be. Not only was it widely utilized by those irritating Arcanists in their smuggling operations, but it was also haven to nocturnal creatures who had first made the sewer their home in those years when the City lay uninhabited. These monsters were just as happy to dine on man as rat, and as they progressed, the two men kept a close watch.
With his experimentations in necromancy, McMourning himself had contributed to the monsters that claimed the sewer as home. He found it a convenient place to dispose of his failed creations, although of course, to a scientist there was no such thing as a failed creation. Merely the discovery of a means of creating something he did not currently want. The disposal was a practice he shared with others of his craft, each finding it an easy method of doing away with the less-desirable results of their scientific advances. Consequently, these sewers now brimmed with a vast population of the Undead, some of which bore McMourning some minor and unjustified ill-will.
Despite these dangers, the sewer was one of the few ways to cross into the Quarantine Zone. In the first few weeks of Malifaux's resettlement, the Guild quickly realized it could secure only a small fraction of the sprawling City. They established a series of checkpoints and cordoned off an area fit for habitation. The abandoned areas became known as the Quarantine Zone and represented the greatest portion of the City by several orders of magnitude.
Treasure-hunters and looters were attracted to the potential riches that might be discovered in the Quarantine Zone, but this portion of the City belonged to the predatory Neverborn. The few who journeyed beyond Guild checkpoints rarely returned.
Those who survived the ordeal discovered the legacy of a vanished people. Mysterious artifacts, ingenious devices, and expansive libraries of arcane knowledge represented the riches of a culture at its height.
Chief amongst the discoveries found in the Quarantine Zone were those volumes which described the craft of necromancy. It was a previously unknown art, and was outlawed almost as soon as it was discovered, but it was particularly valuable to those venturing beyond the Guild enclave. Necromancy allowed those looters to populate districts of the Quarantine Zone with their own private militias of Undead, fortifying strongholds and fighting off the Neverborn threat in that lawless area.
The Guild soon discovered that several budding necromancers had achieved this feat and that several such strongholds existed beyond the reach of their officers. Consequently, the Guild declared looting an offense punishable by death. Anyone attempting to cross into the Quarantine Zone would be shot on sight. This left the unpatrolled and ubiquitous sewer as one of the few clandestine passages between civilization and the Quarantine Zone.
Arriving beneath another access hatch, McMourning held up his dynamo-lamp. "I think this is it."
Sebastian reached up with his iron bar and rapped three times on the bottom of the manhole cover.
After a moment, the cover was lifted away and the desiccated face of a morbidly obese woman appeared, her eyes devoid of life and emotion.
“Sybelle!” McMourning exclaimed. “Any face that can make a man miss the sewers is one to treasure. Seamus always could pick them.”
Climbing out of the sewer, McMourning and Sebastian found themselves in a wide, unlit street. Unlike the Guild enclave, which had seen significant restoration, this street was broken, its cobbles overgrown and curbs leaning drunkenly. Tall buildings stood amongst those that were ruined and collapsed, each a potential dwelling for a coven of Neverborn monsters or a hive of rogue zombies.
Seamus stood nearby, attended by his reanimated harem, who held shuttered lanterns. Beside them was a large wagon, the kind a street vendor might use to peddle his wares. On the wagon was a hefty generator with leads running to a smaller device. The filigree parts and delicate components marked it as an artifact of Old Malifaux. Lying next to the smaller device was a dismembered head. It took only a glance for McMourning to put the head's state of decomposition at a month or so.
Seamus smiled and bowed deeply. "McMourning, sure it's lovely to see you and your monkey again. Thank you for meeting with me and my ladies at such short notice. I have need of your assistance, you see."
McMourning frowned. It was unlike Seamus to get to the point so quickly. He had expected the usual torrent of lewd and unsavory blather. "So your note said."
A body had arrived at his morgue, and McMourning, in the course of the autopsy, had discovered the man had choked to death on a scrap of his own boot leather. A scrap that had a message on it from Seamus. The lunatic had even signed it, as if the author of such a note could ever be in any doubt
"My cousin died,” Seamus said, casting his eyes down in poorly feigned sorrow, "and I would stand it a personal favor if you'd let me have her body. A distant cousin, sure, but a kind and lovely girl. Her family will worry so unless she's properly buried, you know, in the old country."
"Your cousin, is it? Not even the most feeble-minded tinker in the Thieves Bazaar would buy that one, Seamus. I said that I had received your message. I have something you want, and I am pretty sure I know exactly who you mean. What have you got for me?".
Seamus waved a hand, and one of his Undead ladies of the night shambled over to the generator and tugged on a large lever. There was a suitable meaty clunk, to which McMourning nodded in approval. Approaching the wagon, Seamus took up a small wand-like device which crackled and sparked violently at the tip. McMourning liked it already, and if it actually did something he would like it even more.
Holding the device over the decapitated head, Seamus squeezed the lever, sending a brilliant arc of electricity from the tip to the decaying flesh of the head. The light was so bright that everything beyond the flare of the electric arc was plunged into darkness. Only Seamus' face and the corpse's head were visible, seared in silver, one leering mask above another. The arc burned the flesh away, revealing the surface of the skull beneath the scalp. With careful movements, Seamus drew an arcane rune directly onto the bone. The symbol had sweeping arcs and sharp, straight lines that looked to McMourning like a raven with its wings spread wide.
Just as suddenly as it had come the light was gone, and McMourning winced as a stabbing pain shot through his head. It took him a few moments to recover his sight, and even then, that mark hung in front of his eyes like a ghost.
"Damn you, Seamus, warn me before you do that!" At his side, Sebastian had fallen to his knees and clutched at his face, tears of blood trickling from between his fingers. McMourning opened his mouth to protest, but Seamus interrupted him.
"Good morning, Phillip, old boy, how do you feel?"
The dismembered head, now with his scalp mostly burned away and a symbol scorched into the bone of his skull, opened its eyes and looked up at Seamus with a surprised expression. Its voice was faint and hollow, like wind through a crypt. "I'm... I'm alive? But that woman, with the sword... I thought she'd killed me. Saints be praised..."
"Ah, hold on there, now, Phillip," Seamus explained calmly to the corpse-head. "You're a one for jumping to conclusions. You are quite dead, sure, but I've delayed you from reaching your afterlife, for now. But listen to me, being quite rude here. My name is Seamus, Phillip.” He tipped his enormous hat. “You might even have heard of me. This is Sybelle and her girls. Girls, Phillip. This is Doctor McMourning, although no shame if you haven't heard of him for he is not quite as well-known as I am, and that is his monkey."
Phillip's eyes darted back and forth and grew wider and wider as Seamus went on. Then he opened his mouth and screamed. It was the sound of a man losing his last fragile grip on reality.
"Oh, do. Shut. Up." Seamus grabbed what was left of Phillip's hair and thumped the head off the wagon with each word, then stuffed it into the bag at his feet, grinning at McMourning the whole time like a maniacal salesman with unruly merchandise. “You work hard, but sometimes you just don't get the respect, do you?”
From within the zippered bag, the muffled scream carried on until Seamus delivered a particularly vicious kick. He took up the Old Malifaux device and, giving it a rough tug, he broke the leads from the generator and pulled the device free. He summoned one of his decomposing belles and she lurched forward, carrying a small bundle wrapped in canvas cloth.
"McMourning” Seamus said, delivering a smile so charming and devilish McMourning felt an overpowering urge to check his wallet was still there. “You old rogue. This here will waken Molly. She's not my cousin, and I apologize for lying to you, in my grief. She's my aunt.” He waved a hand dismissively. “My aunt's cousin. She will know how to reach me. But the Guild will be watching, so I will provide a distraction, and you will provide means for her to escape from your morgue, which is a horrible place for a lady to be in any event, I am sure you will agree. In exchange, I will give you this device and the manual to explain its operation.”
McMourning snorted. “It came with a manual?”
Seamus shrugged. “Of sorts. More a warning than an actual manual. I had it bound, sure.”
McMourning pointed at the bundle in the zombie's arms "What's the package?"
Seamus' face clouded, and all the wild mirth vanished in an instant. "It is the Gorgon's Tear." The zombie pulled back the canvas wrappings and revealed the large green jewel in her hands. It was secured in a thick silver setting. A sickly green glow spread out, so thick and heavy McMourning almost thought he could see it move.
He kicked Sebastian, who was still on his knees. "Get that stone from the zombie."
Sebastian, still wiping the blood from his eyes, stumbled to his feet.
Seamus frowned. "If your monkey breaks my stone, I will be very sore with you, McMourning."
"I am about as like to touch it myself as you are, Seamus. We both know what that thing can do."
Sebastian had been about to put his hands on it, but McMourning's comment froze him mid-reach. He got another kick for his trouble.
"Just get it." McMourning was looking down at the bag at Seamus' feet, which rocked as the head inside started to scream again. "It's a deal."
Seamus grinned, like a shark who had just scented a meal.
“And don't fret. Your morgue will be quite safe.”
“How do you mean?”
“It won't be damaged at all. Probably.”
“Damaged? By what?”
“The signal, of course." Seamus shook his head in exasperation. "I knew you'd get like this. It's only a small explosion.