As secret basements went, the one under the cult’s community hall started as a bit of a disappointment at first. The entrance had been hidden behind a false wall panel, but the stairwell and walls matched the rest of the decor, clearly part of the original construction for the building. It felt wrong to switch on fluorescent lights over beige carpeting when looking for a death mage’s lair. Where were all the skulls and blood and mood lighting to make it clear how evil it was here?

The sense of death magic changed as they went down the steps. The start of that self-destruct effect had been here, but then the main effect had been spent in reaching outwards before it began spreading further from touching all the other charms in the building like an infection. Down here felt more… muddy. The air was heavy with remnants of death magic, too chaotic to tell active effects from magical fallout easily.

At the base of the stairs was an open area with several doors and another hallway leading off of it. A small living room area, centered around a TV but with some bookcases, took up most of the space. It looked like it had been a comfortable area to destress.

Now the electronics, from the TV to a gaming console to a fan plugged in on one end table, were all dead. Torn books littered the area like fallen leaves. Everything was liberally smeared in decaying flesh and smelled of death.

“As methods of physical destruction go,” Quinn hissed, “zombies are highly inefficient.”

“What method would you recommend?” Maudy asked, clearly curious, though she kept her voice low.

“For a death mage? Decay. Just speed up the rot of the materials. In general, fire is highly effective. There’s plenty of reasons people burn their own businesses when committing fraud. And it doesn’t even need magic necessarily.”

“Why would they use zombies then?”

“Gloria, in all likelihood,” Ahlgren put in. He frowned, showing clear dislike. “She has a sadistic streak. The other two were more well-intentioned fanatics.”

“Surely there are other uses for corpses than just zombies?” Riordan asked, looking at the messy room. His nose was growing numb to the smell of corpse fluids.

“There are,” Quinn agreed. “And given that body parts were used as spell anchors on the outer defenses, they clearly did some of those too. You keep forgetting that these mages didn’t develop in a normal progression. Having access to a random scattering of advanced techniques encouraged them to choose those methods over other options.”

Ahlgren seemed poised to say something further to that, but stopped, settling on a neutral, “Hmm.”

For a moment, Riordan was envious. He had been struggling with his magic for the last bit, trying to make it behave properly and stop feeling like he was messed up inside. The idea that a book would just give answers, give power, was a tempting relief. He completely understood why three new mages would be excited to master everything in there if it was their only guidebook.

Even if the techniques tended towards terrible.

Did the writer of the grimoire start with the simple spells? Something that just takes a bit of the caster’s own blood or a pinch of power from a single sacrificed life? Even if the death mage read ahead, they’d probably just think that they would never be the sort to use the bad stuff. Who wants to think that they are someone who would make zombies just because they could?

The conversation died again. The continual evidence of death corruption and casual cruelty wore on them in different ways. Ahlgren retreated further into that blank professionalism. Maudy grew increasingly disgusted and ill, unable to hide how shaken and angry this all made her. Quinn hid his anger better, but that was because it was a practiced anger, cold and inevitable. He had seen things as bad as this and worse in the course of his work.

Riordan himself felt shaken, but in a different way. One part was the anger, which he kept a rein on. But it was also the thought that he could become like this. Becoming capable of this was what he’d risked when he’d grabbed the ritual. He’d felt the corruption eating at him then, before the tree spirit vented it from him. There were truly fates worse than death.

At the same time, if he followed in Quinn’s footsteps, he’d be signing up for seeing scenes like this regularly. Maybe not this specifically. After all, Quinn said that the zombies and proxy ghosts were advanced techniques, requiring instruction or experimentation. But the killing tree ritual itself wasn’t too complicated, aside from needing to find a spirit to use as an anchor. When a death mage lacked finesse, they likely compensated with quantity.

Riordan had the temperament to be able to handle it, but it took a toll on the soul to see the worst of humanity over and over. Police and soldiers saw the worst of humanity regularly, being called to go deliberately to the places where bad things were happening. If that wasn’t balanced with some reminder of the good, it became easy to lose empathy and faith in humanity.

In some ways, seeing the death here and knowing that he’d see this and worse if he fulfilled the role natural to his new affinities, fixing the issues of other death mages, it just made Riordan all the more determined to have some peaceful specialty for his day job. Something that let him do good instead of just stop bad.

The nearest doors held private offices that were clearly used by the death mages. Helena’s office was neat and formal, schedules and training routines posted on the wall and everything arranged for easy access around a desk. Or, it had been, before zombies came to redecorate. Still, Riordan could see her discipline in the bones of the room under the destruction.

Phenalope and Gloria’s offices were unrecognizable. The destruct spell triggered all the charms in those rooms. Phenalope’s office fared better, largely because it appeared to have fallen into general disuse even before the end of the cult. Riordan assumed that was a consequence of her form of death magic insanity. She’d tended towards obsession and narcissism by the end, which didn’t incline her to do basic administrative work. None of that stopped the room from having been blasted with charm copies of her basic attack spell. There had likely been some of her suggestion spells too, but the released energy had already dissipated by the time they had arrived.

Gloria clearly preferred nastier physical spell charms. Her office was filled with bone spikes, shrapnel, and a thick red mist that made Quinn slam the door shut as soon as he saw it.

“Gods,” Quinn muttered, staring at the door. “This mess is going to take ages to clean up properly, even with Xavier’s help. And none of the charms will be salvageable either, which is a hell of a waste.”

Given the eclectic nature of Quinn’s charm collection and his tendency to recycle, Riordan imagined the man would have restocked using these charms under normal circumstances. Such use seemed more respectful than letting the cost of their creation go to waste, given that Quinn used them to stop further death at the hands of greedy death mages.

“I wish I could help,” Riordan growled. He meant it too. This was the sort of work he needed to learn, but he still could barely do anything with his magic.

Quinn shot him a look. “At least you’ll get to watch it. Maybe you can try it too. I don’t know how fucked up your magic is.”

“Maybe. It’s still there, after all. Just not easily accessible and I’m still getting the hang on doing anything with it, especially since I keep wanting the physical realm to work like the spirit realm for casting.”

Ahlgren raised a brow, dryly stating, “Most mages don’t start casting in the spirit realm. I believe your perception is skewed.”

“Not the only thing about him that’s skewed,” Quinn teased.

“Not the time or place,” Riordan growled back, annoyed and amused at once. Still better than focusing on being grossed out.

And then they went down the hallway and found the cells.

The rooms clearly started their lives as more offices, but they had ended it as holding pens for kidnapped sacrifices. Riordan wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad that they were empty. Happy, he decided, even though that meant there was no one to save. With how long it took to get down to this hidden basement, surviving prisoners might have died of thirst by now.

Riordan assumed that the mundane authorities had tried to sweep the compound for threats and information. The magical defenses would have kept them from looking too closely or thinking too hard about anything here. In truth, it was for the best that they hadn’t done a proper investigation. He could just imagine what horrible fate would have befallen some well meaning deputies if they tripped the fail-safe spell and then been attacked by zombies.

Most people didn’t have super-human shifter strength to shove zombies in magically ward closets, after all.

Quinn stared at the cells sadly and then sighed. “I should be more upset, but honestly, I knew they had to have something like this. There had to be more victims. I know what the power hunger is like. They couldn’t have funneled everything into a single ritual.”

“How are we going to find out their names?” Riordan asked quietly. “The ones in the ritual, I mostly could talk to them. But who can identify these?”

The majority of the ghosts in the ritual had joined Riordan’s temporary pack and had given him their stories to pass along. He knew names and jobs and hopes and the stories of how dozens of men had died suddenly and terribly. A handful had rejected him and Riordan hadn’t gotten their names. That already bothered Riordan, but he’d passed along what he could remember of their appearances and how many there were.

And now there was some unknown number of further victims.

“Some of them are locked in closets upstairs,” Ahlgren answered, surprising Riordan. “Or their corpses at least. For the others, unless the leaders kept trophies from their victims, most might never be fully identified.”

That sat poorly with Riordan. “We’ll have to get more details out of Gloria and Helena. Or anyone else they used to grab people.”

Later. They were still in unsafe territory and he needed to focus, no matter how much the site of those pitiful cells, with dirty pallets and a bucket in the corner, made Riordan’s anger boil. He’d deal with it later.

The utility rooms in the basement were largely unaltered, but a corner had been converted into corpse storage. The mix of spells and air fresheners to deal with the stink of rotting corpses created a sickening miasma. Whatever other spells were in that grimoire, they didn’t have one to preserve bodies directly. Just some effects that held the bodies together despite the rot.

When you are getting a high off killing people, Riordan guessed you stopped caring about little things like keeping corpses in your boiler room.

Or about making zombies from them. Fucking corruption.