THE DISAPPEARANCES
Konstantin's story
The group interrogate the intruder, who's come back to his senses. By his appearance Aethelfrieda can tell that he's a drunkard, addicted to rotgut (a cheap swill that lives up to its name). In exchange for the promise of being let free he agrees to talk and introduces himself as Konstantin. This is his story:
"I was drinking at the Fallen Soldier earlier, you know, that tavern when you walk towards Tankards, near Canal Street and the burnt down tenement... So I was chatting to this old girl, Belinda, she's a nice one, doesn't charge much, so anyway, she says - You remember the old priest, Gregory, the one always bangin' on about givin' up drink for the good of body and soul? Well, I s**t you not, he was taken! Like the others was taken! Saw him walkin' up the alley behind the tavern, last night, when this cloaked figure with a top hat jumps down from the roof of a house and carries him away, fast as lightning!" .
.. So, well, you know, I figured, if the old priest's gone he won't be needin' anything from his house anymore, might as well have a look at what's in there..."
Not entirely satisfied with his explanations, the group ask him how the metal-melting substance came into his possession. They have found two little vials of fluids of different colour on his person.
Brass, who works in Smokestacks, has recognised it as Flash, a rather expensive (but non-magical) substance which causes a bright blue flash when the two inert parts of it touch, and a residue which can melt any metal. He knows that it's quite expensive, so it's odd that a destitute rotgut addict would have any.
"Oh, it was maybe a week ago, I was walkin' home one night when I see this posh nob runnin' down the street like he had a devil on his tail, a plague mask fallen half off his face and a right look of terror. So, as they say, luck helps those who help themselves... I step in front and bump into him, and ever so sorry and here sir let me straigthen your cloak and I hope you was not hurt, my abject apologies good sir... And just as I thought he pays no mind and just steps around me and keeps runnin' like the wind towards the bridge... So I find he's had also these vials in his purse, they stink, don't they? So've asked around and found what it was, this "flash" thing they make in Smokestacks, and as I'm no good with locks I figured it might come handy someday to melt metal... Look, why don't you just keep it and let me go? I've told you everythin' I know! I promise I won't be back!"
The Fallen Soldier
Konstantin is allowed to leave, much to his relief, and is soon a running shadow in the distance, disappearing in an alley. The group head instead towards the Fallen Soldier, which is in the worst part of Grievings. Empty windows of abandoned houses gape blindly from derelict buildings; Aethelfrieda, who lives nearby but has been away for some time, notices that there are few signs of the miserable humanity that normally gather in great numbers for shelter in doorways and side alleys - it's as if everyone left. No streetlights illuminate this part of town, but soon they see ahead of them a faint light visible behind the warped glass squares of the tavern's window. As they pass by the burnt down tenement next to it they see a young refugee who's soothing her crying baby with a lullaby.
They walk into the tavern which is almost empty at this time of night, but have a chance to talk to both Belinda (an elderly prostitute who confirms Konstantin's story) and Len, a drunk who almost seems part of the furniture and can't believe his luck when they buy him ale. Not rotgut, ale! He tells his new best friends that about a week ago or so he saw some of those Mercy Hill gangsters, the guys with black bandanas and tears tattoed under their eyes, talking to a couple of well dressed men wearing plague masks. He heard that they were discussing the Moore house, a nearby place which is said to be haunted and that has been abandoned since a demonologist lived there a long time ago. He didn't hear any details because they shooed him away.
As they leave the tavern they hear a high-pitched shriek from the tenement, abruptly cut off, and the wails of a baby. Brass climbs the wall up to the roof and sees the cloaked figure they heard so much about jumping from roof to roof with inhuman agility, carrying a person over its shoulder. The general direction, before it disappears in the shadows, is indeed that of Moore House, which isn't very far.
They take the baby to the Blessed Twins orphanage nearby, with the idea that checking out Moore House in the morning might be safer. At the orphanage Honest Jack, the old goblin who unofficially runs the place (since Leo and Theo Plum, the halfling owners, are too old and senile), seems surprised and worried to see Sumaya - she had been brought here by Father Gregory and then taken away again by him a couple of days later.
"What are you doing here, child? I told the priest that there's bad people lookin' for you! You shouldn't go around like that in the open where they can see you!"
Sumaya cuts her hair short and gets some male clothes from the goblin to replace her frock, so she looks like one of the many urchins running around the district.
MOORE HOUSE
The Mercy Hill gang
At the break of dawn Brass, Sumaya and Aethelfrieda approach Moore House, but notice a couple of gangsters, a human and an orc, sitting on the ledge of a roof overlooking the gate. They try to sneak around but the human spots them and tells them to leave at once, making sure they see the long knife he carries on him. They ignore his threats and sneak around some more to see if they can find a way in from the back.
Once at the back of the house they climb the wall and see a couple of boarded up windows and an overgrown garden. They loosen a board to get into the house but make noise and alert the gangsters, who run down on the side of the house to stop them. As they are approaching the group hear the orc say to his friend:
"I don't give a sh**, I'm not gettin' into the house! They ain't payin' us enough to get into the house!"
Sumaya and Brass manage to climb onto the windowsill, but that leaves Aethelfrieda in the garden alone. She readies her club and backs towards the corner. The human gangster rushes at her with a snarl, and Aethelfrieda finds out quickly and painfully that she's no match for an experienced fighter armed with a long knife; within an inch of her life she turns the corner and runs towards the front of the house.
Sumaya has jumped into the room - which by the rotten remains of furniture and ruined hearth must have been a kitchen - and notices that the temperature appears to be dropping very quickly. Brass tries to fight off the orc without much success, as his hits are just glancing blows. Being a clockwork he doesn't notice the change in temperature.
Sumaya backs off into the dining room adjoining the kitchen, and sees that the rain that seeped through the caved-in roof and the second floor's loose boards has formed a large pool in the middle, which is now quickly forming ice crystals on its edges. Brass sees the orc's eyes become perfectly round as he stares at something within the house, then with a scream he turns and starts running away, followed by his confused friend who won't take chances staying around if something's scary enough for a large mean orc.
The ghost
Brass and Sumaya in the meantime see what scared the gangster. An apparition of a female figure, semi-transparent, is climbing up a long gone set of stairs through the floor of dining room and then walking towards the kitchen. Its face alternates and superimposes the flickering images of a calm, beautiful, sad woman's face and a grotesque, horrific mask of a specter distorted in a silent howl. Shaken by what they're seeing they are frozen in place as the apparition reaches the middle of the kitchen and with a ghostly knife cuts her own throat, crumbling to the floor and disappearing. The temperature comes back to normal.
Much the worse for wear the group decide to press on regardless and look around the house. In the northeast corner there's a room which must have been a study, with a bookshelf containing only rotten, ruined books and scrolls. From behind there's a scraching sound and a terrible smell. The scraching stops when they approach. Sumaya looks closely at the shelf and sees that a section of it is a small secret door.
The demonologist's vault
They push the door open and see the corpse of a man sat with its back against the wall in a narrow corridor with stairs leading down.
It's missing a leg which appears to have been surgically removed, but what's even worse is that it's missing the whole face. A skull's grin, rotting muscles and staring eyeballs are all that remains of the man's features. Parts of the body also appear gnawed, probably by rats. There are stains of dried blood on the stairs and handprints on the wall that seem to indicate that the man crawled from downstairs to eventually die here. They see a feeble light from the bottom of the stairs behind the corner and hear very faint moans and groans.
As they recover from the initial shock, they quietly examine the body and find a tattoo on the inside its upper arm which matches the sketch of the horned skull they found in Father Gregory's desk.
They sneak downstairs and see a rotting pile of mutilated bodies. Sumaya's father's body is not there. On top of the pile, a still alive but frothing and clearly crazy Father Gregory is missing an eye, a leg and an arm, and the stumps have been crudely stitched. There is a vault in the centre of the room, with a sarcophagus where they find black robes covered in dark magic symbols and a sword made of green metal. The insides of the lid are scratched. There is a stand that must have held an object until recently, such as a book or a box, because there's no dust in the middle. As they take this in, they hear slow, regular steps on the first floor upstairs.
The creature
They hide where they can and stay as still and quiet as possible. The steps stop somewhere over their heads and they hear a beautiful female voice they'd heard before. It's the voice of the young woman, and it's again singing the lullaby that she was singing to her baby. There's a moment of silence then they hear a chuckle, followed by a deep male voice, "No! No! Please no! I don't want to die!", then the voice of a child chocking with sobs "Mommy! Mommy!", followed by another amused chuckle.
They hear the creak of the bookshelf being moved, then a shadow appears at the top of the stairs, and finally they see the cloaked figure they heard so much about and so far saw only from a distance. It's a horrid patchwork of bodyparts, its face that of a middle aged man - probably the unfortunate one upstairs, its eyes different in shape and colour, an arm slender and feminine and the other clearly male, and covered in gray hairs. As they gasp in horror but succeed in staying silent the creature looks down at Father Gregory, turning its head left and right like a bird.
"I thought I'd heard a noise, but it was you, wasn't it? Still alive, that's a welcome surprise"
With every word its voice keeps changing from that of a man, to that of a child, of a woman...
"Now be quiet, I'll be back soon and we can continue where we left off"
With a last chuckle the creature disappears from sight and the group hear it heading upstairs. They wait for a long time which seems like an eternity, then quietly drag Father Gregory outside and use all the spare machine oil that Brass is carrying to set fire to the place. Once the flames engulf the second floor they hear the death shrieks of the horrible creature as it dies, again in the alternating voices of its victims. With Aethelfrieda almost dead and everyone not as sane as before, they run away taking the poor broken priest with them.
EPILOGUE
Ezekia agrees with Aethelfrieda to take care of Father Gregory rather than leave him to the horrors of the Mercy Hill asylum. She is impressed with what the group did and finally accepts Aethelfrieda as an apprentice.
Brass is rather upset by this turn of events, because he was privately planning to sell the good priest to some necromancer on the black market for spare parts.
Any dastardly plans he mights have had for Sumaya are also thwarted when she refuses to live in the clockwork's rundown workshop, put off by the smell of iron and the ghastly shrine to some horrid spider goddess at the back, covered in dried blood stains.
On the upside Brass manages to steal texts from the Academy of Engineers where he works as a janitor that finally put him on the right path to power, as he learns the secrets of technomancy and forbidden magic.
Sumaya is running wild in the streets of Grievings as an urchin, learning very quickly how to pick pockets, fight dirty and use her wits. She doesn't remember anything of the time when she found out that she was a changeling, ran away from home in horror, then woke up in her bed feeling much calmer - but memories are starting to surface. They are very odd, such as walking in circles around a standing stone on a shore; a stag made of starlight; a small talking mouse with a golden skullcap; a statue covered in moss by a calm pond... but now even when she is awake she sometimes hears a voice when she walks close to one of the Spires: "Remember... remember... you are the key..."
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