As Neil ascended the stairs, he smelled something he couldn't quite pinpoint. A mixture of oils, but also something inherently unpleasant. There was still baleful light from the cellar burgeoning along the walls and stamped on his back, and with another cry for Emmaline, he opened the door to his left and pointed his pistol instinctively. Inside the candle-lit room adorned with skulls and thigh bones, he saw two men having raucous sex on a table, and normally he wouldn't judge but one of them had the head of a goat with fangs in its maw. The man and beastman both turned to regard him, and though Neil could have shot them, all he had otherwise was a long knife and he needed the ammo and time. 

"Sorry for disturbing you gents, go back to business." He said listlessly, closing the door again and propping a chair up at the doorknob to keep them from coming at him. It took less than a few moments for them to begin pounding on the door, and he continued. 

He was scared, which wasn't usual for the rakish ne'er-do-well. Neil had never been the most devout man, but he likely should have paid more attention to the sermons. The afterlife seemed distant, but the present was very reminiscent of hell. There was a strange buzzing in the air that somehow seemed to put pressure on his psyche and make him think in strange ways. Thankfully he was Neil Edwards, who already did so, so it didn't really effect him as much as it would have a run-of-the-mill empire serf or citizen. 

Another door opened, and out stepped a naked, muscled man with tattoes and scars, and his left pectoral had a missing nipple in which puss continued to boil out. Somehow he didn't seem surprised to see Neil, and the engineer could just barely duck under a blow that embedded into brick. Neil grabbed for his knife and plunged it into the man's midsection even as his let his gun barrel discharge right below his chin. It was a move he had learned from Solozzo Delatori the assassin back in Marienburg, though Neil executed it here rather boorishly. 

The mutant dropped, though surprisingly it wasn't dead. Just as the door behind him burst open and the two lovers he had rudely interrupted groped out, Neil heard a window crashing from across the hall and a familiar scream. His heart leaped in hope, and he realized it was time to go. He rushed into the room the mutant had walked out of and made a running leap at the window, glass shattering and cutting him on the neck painfully, but he landed in a rough roll and wasn't too deeply wounded. He clambered toward the low wall and bushes around the edge of the grounds, wiped the glass off and gave the two lovers who watched him from the broken window the finger, before climbing over and spotting Emmaline on the alleyway.