I was having trouble setting up what happened in my head. I think I can go forward with this, now.
I told myself that at least our surroundings were pleasant, with a gloom that offered only tantalizing hints of the titanic works of the First Republic all around us. And they were! — until the first whiffs of corruption assaulted my nose. Both my inner and outer senses recoiled from its sudden visitation, and I knew why I had been summoned.
I had expected that death was involved. I am a necromancer, after all. I had worried that there would be murder, too. But from what I smelled, this was an outrage that truly justified my presence.
It is bad, when the dead kill the living.