They get through the next chamber okay, and into the next-

-but the gate leading further is barred from the other side.

"A trap. Spread out."

She's just gonna set this torch down by the gate, how about, angled so hopefully the dancing light will catch the edges of anyone's invisibility spells, while moving strangely enough it'll still be a boon to the Shadow's Blessing if she has to peel off.

"...A defensive huddle might work better," she says, eyes scanning for catches in the stone - unusual cracks, especially any unusually straight bits - anything that could oh, say, be a secret door. "Even if they have bomb spells."

"Not the time, prisoner," Baurus says. "It looks like there's a side passage there, I'll check it out."

Hrmph.

To the local reasonable one, voice low: "They've been here ahead of us - they know the terrain; they probably locked that gate; they either have teleportation magic, invisibility, or secret passages; and we shouldn't split up."

"We know what we're doing."

Maybe not the local reasonable one.

She glances at the emperor, but... He'd sounded resigned, earlier.

"Just - stay alert."

"We always are."

Baurus returns.

"Dead end. No way out."

...Ugh, this is way above her level. She knows what mindset to slide into -

But it turns out live security with a team she's not used to is way harder than testing said security, and also she doesn't actually usually do live target stuff since that is super not her background. She doesn't even know the motives or anything concrete about the abilities of the enemy past what they've demonstrated, which is 'appear suddenly and stab' - makes her lean maybe not powerful mages, but they were calling on a daedric prince, and that's... Yeah. Above her normal pay grade.

- She hates not having time to think things through.

"...I'm going to try the lock," she says, sidling up to it. She's been examining it while trying to talk the guards into being sensible. It looks old from what she can see - plus, the main mechanism is on the other side of the bars, which probably means it'll be awkward and take more time than she likes, and while there's no visible shimmer or trip lines that's not always indicative, and - oh yeah. She should warn them about that. "Doesn't look rigged to explode if picked, but, maybe don't hover over my shoulder."

There is probably no point in saying this, but. "And please don't go hide in any extremely obvious places - your enemy knows what's obvious too."

"Do what you can."

The Blades huddle up to discuss.

This is indeed Very Awkward, but she's technically gotten through worse before - still, she's basically helpless with her arms through the gate, her attention's on doing her task quickly without breaking something she shouldn't...

She's an incredibly fast lockpick. This feels painfully slow to her, especially with improvised tools - each minute moves like an eternity - 

Probably... It'll take her less than five minutes, but only if she isn't interrupted -

Does she consider a shout of "Down!" immediately preceding a fireball an interruption?

Yup!

She lets go off her tools first, then drops and rolls, then looks for whichever asshole is shooting off fireballs at her. 

It is... an actual fire atronach! Probably. There are a bunch of cultists, too.

Does the atronach seem like it's intelligently aiming at people, is it still trying to hit her - are the guards handling the cultists - 

The guards are trying, but there are a lot of cultists. At the moment, their plan seems to be to get the emperor into the side room so they can take down the atronach with risking him being caught in its death explosion.

...Hmmm.

She knows maybe two facts about atronachs, she's the only one who knows how to pick locks, this is dumb -

She's also the only one who can heal herself, and one of the facts she knows about flame atronachs is 'idiotically aggressive.'

She jumps, catches a bit of stonework, pulls herself onto the tiny thin bit of decorative ledge around a column - then tosses her own fireball at the atronach before immediately jumping to the upper platform of the sanctum, tauntingly just outside of its direct line of fire. Hopefully it'll have to abandon the area near the emperor to attack her properly. (Hopefully it can't just fly and has to take the stairs.)

"Hey, fuckface!" she yells at it, glancing around frantically for some dead body or another to steal a ranged weapon off of that's better than her sling. If not: stones to reload said sling with. "Your fire sucks!"

And, of course, it attacks her - gets out of death explosion range of the emperor, and also it's fully willing to hit the assassins to get a shot at her - which means free meat shields for Lilou, especially if anyone tries to stop her from running around and distracting their atronach.

She takes pot shots at it - don't seem to do much, but that does keep it angry with her, so - and at the assassins, dropping one and hopefully throwing the others off - but she mostly tries not to get barbecued.

This involves a lot of flinging herself behind columns or to the floor. Her entire body hates her. 

She gets enough pressure off the Blades it seems, though, that the quieter guard actually comes to help her - she hears a hoarse shout from one of the others but she can't look - the atronach catches up, she slashes at it with her dagger, which keeps it from preventing the quiet guard from stabbing it - 

- This wasn't, it seems, a very durable atronach. 

Lilou flings herself back off the platform, landing hard and painfully, as it explodes. She drops her dagger in the fall, starts scrambling to her feet, but it hurts - 

But... The field is silent, except for the low moans of dying men. 

Lilou takes a deep, shaking breath, and looks around to see if anyone else is still standing, as she tries to steady her hands enough to heal herself. 

No one standing.

The ?reasonable? one is kneeling next to the emperor, who has fallen. She's lost her helmet, revealing coppery, fluffy wolf ears. She holds something shiny in her hands.

Fuck.

She - probably can't help -

She darts up the stairs, checks on the quiet guard - he's dead, and all the assassins appear dead, too, and she can't hear anyone else coming -

Lilou hasn't healed herself yet, but she can't really feel the bruises and burns anymore. Her shaking's worse as she comes to stand by the fallen emperor and the last Blade.

"Is he - ?"

"Dead."

"He thought I was you." She looks up.

...Wait what.

That's her face.

...She has so many questions.

"Are you - " she's not going to be okay. Lilou changes to, "Injured?" without much of a hitch.

"No."

"Okay."

Deep breath. "We - need to get out of here, still. Get his body somewhere safe - "

"...I'd been in that cell a while with no news. What's going on out there?"

Do they still have an empire, for instance.

"...Everything was normal until tonight."

Nod.

"Are his heirs alive?"