‘Did Aki just take over?’ I heard Caei whisper to Lilyth, as we headed downstairs.

‘Apparently so,’ Lilyth shrugged. ‘I was always a better follower than a leader, so I really don't mind. You have to try hard to do a worse job than I did.’

‘Then why didn't you step down?’ I stopped and asked.

‘It never occurred to me,’ Lilyth answered ashamedly. ‘And then you started to trust me… and I guess I just felt responsible.’

I sighed and said:

‘Don’t worry. I still trust you. I think Caei does too.’

The Sanguine nodded and added:

‘Don’t beat yourself over it. You did your best.’

Lil looked relieved.

‘Thank you,’ she said and bowed. ‘I’ll do my best to ensure you keep trusting me.’

And like that, it was done. I officially became our leader.

‘Can I still ask either of you for advice?’ I asked, a bit unsure.

‘Yes,’ Lilyth answered instantly. ‘I’ll happily help you, however I can.’

‘Same,’ Caei added.

‘First question then: what can we expect in this morgue? I mean room-wise.’

‘I’ve never been in one,’ Lilyth answered. ‘But I have seen them in movies, think of a theatre play that is hmm… captured in a series of pictures and then played?’ It's hard to describe it. And I’ve read some commentary on these. Usually, you would expect doors for these to be locked. Depending on whether they were doing autopsies here, so cutting open corpses to see what killed them, there would be tables for these. Some locked drawer things you could store corpses in. Probably a mortician’s office with some chemicals and embalming fluids.’

‘Would those lockers be openable from the inside?’ I followed-up.

‘I don’t think so. There would be no reason for them to. But that's pure speculation on my end.’

‘So any undead would potentially be locked with no way to get out?’ Caeileera asked.

‘Potentially,’ Lilyth reluctantly agreed. ‘We don't know what happened there towards the end.’

Caei frowned and crossed her arms.

‘You seemed to make a big deal out of the place. The few morgues I have seen were “open”, kind of like Löwe’s lab. What you describe is a far cry from that.’

I crossed my arms with annoyance. What else did Lilyth gloss over?

‘Uhh…’ she stammered out. ‘I guess I just assumed it would be bad and preferred to err on the side of caution?’

Caei put her hand on her face. I could sympathise. I really did. A plan started shaping up in my head.

Now for the hard part, I thought, as we stood in front of the door to the morgue. It was behind a metal door, as Lilyth suggested. It was opening our way it seemed, so I had to adjust what I originally intended. Caei stood on the side of the door with the door handle, while Lilyth and I were a few steps away from the entrance our guns pointed inside. My initial idea was to stand on the opposite side of the door, but it was not to be.

I nodded to Caei and she pressed the door handle. The door moved so she swung it open the best she could. Lilyth slowly walked in and looked around. I still wanted to rely on her durability, as shitty as it made me feel to deliberately put her in harm's way, so she would serve as our scout for the time being.

The room was quite similar to what I imagined based on Lilyth's description: a floor covered in black and white tiles, white walls, one with two rows of four small metal doors, a single normal wooden one in the opposite wall, two metal tables in the middle with a large lamp over each of them. There were also cloudy glass tubes I’ve kept seeing around here on the ceiling.

As the room was empty, Lilyth opened the wooden door and immediately collapsed to her knees. The shotgun fell out of her hands and clattered to the ground.

‘No!’ She shouted and hit the ground with her fists. ‘No! No! No! No!’

Each “No” was punctuated with another hit.

What could have upset her so… Oh. Oh no…

Dread filling my heart, I rushed over to her side and confirmed my suspicions. The room was a small sleeping area with a couch, a small bookcase, a metal cabinet and a table. By the couch, there was a dusty skeleton with a rusty gun between its teeth and a hole at the back of its skull. And there on the table… were healing potions.

None of what she did was necessary.

I put my hand on her shoulder.

‘You couldn't have known…’ I said, trying to comfort her.

‘If… if… I hadn't dismissed this place… god-fucking-dammit!’

Caei hurried over to us, extended her hand towards Lilyth and raised her eyebrow. I shook my head.

The Sanguine nodded and knelt by Lilyth. She hugged her.

‘Don’t worry, honey,’ she said. ‘You saved me. That's all that matters. As Aki said, you couldn't have known. Hey if it was me I would have skipped this room too. Like I said, I too assumed there would be undead here.’

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Lilyth nodded sadly. I joined them and took her hand in mine.

‘Don’t worry,’ I comforted her. ‘It’s just two months and you’ll be back to being able to cast magic. In the meantime, I’ll help you train to fight with those knives of yours.’

‘Thank you,’ she sighed. ‘I appreciate it. And in the meantime… I’ll try not to be a further burden.’

‘You’re not a one,’ Caei rebuked her. ‘Never think of yourself this way. You made some errors, but hey… we’re still here. We’ll figure it out.’

‘Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.’

‘No problem,’ I gripped her hand harder. ‘Thank you for getting us this far. I’ll take it from here.’

She looked at me with a mirthless smile. I handed Lilyth her shotgun back.

‘Let’s get out of this place,’ I said.

She nodded, grim determination returning to her face.

As Caei turned to gather the potions, I didn’t think Lilyth handling these would be good in her current state, my attention turned towards the small metal doors. I wanted to see what was inside. I couldn’t hear anything inside so I reached out towards one of them, but suddenly Lilyth appeared by my side and grabbed my hand.

‘I wouldn’t,’ she simply said.

‘Why?’ I wondered. ‘I can’t hear anything inside.’

‘That doesn’t mean nothing is inside of there. Those doors could be fairly thick, so it is possible we just can’t hear if something is being really quiet. Hmm…’

She got lost in thought for a moment and then knocked on the door of the drawer we were standing by with the butt of her rifle. The clunk of it did confirm Lilyth’s suspicions about the thickness of the door.

Hmm…

Nothing happened, so Lilyth hit the next door over. I jumped when something started hitting on the door below it from the inside.

‘And there it is…’ Lilyth muttered.

‘Should we kill it?’ I asked.

‘I think we should,’ Caei suddenly said. ‘It knows we are here.’

‘I open the door, you shoot it?’ I said to Lilyth.

‘Makes sense,’ she responded. ‘Though… hmm… give me a sec. Stand back just in case.’

‘Wait!’ Caei shouted. ‘No more as you put it “Cowboy bullshit”. What do you want to do?’

‘I want to open the door above to see what we are dealing with space-wise,’ Lilyth explained with a sigh. ‘And I almost did it again. Fucking hell…’

‘Go ahead, though,’ I agreed. ‘That’s a good idea.’

Lilyth smiled weakly and pointed at the far corner of the room.

‘Stand over there. If there is a rotting corpse it’s enough that one of us gets hit with the air inside.’

That never occurred to me.

When we were at a safe enough distance, Lilyth took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, swung the door open. No cloud of rot hit her, which I took as a good sign.

‘Empty,’ she confirmed, so we approached her and looked inside.

I was disappointed when the compartment turned out to be what it sounded like from Lilyth’s description. It really was just a cabinet thing with an extendable metal cot. And there was no visible way to open them from the inside.

Lilyth suddenly laughed.

‘Now that I think of it… It really does make sense for there not to be those here.’

She kicked the door of the cabinet with the monster inside. That caused it to try to get out with even more fervour.

‘Let’s still kill it,’ I said.

Lilyth nodded and positioned herself by the door. I tried to open it and understood the difficulty my girlfriend had with it.

By the Gods!

Finally, the door opened a bit and an arm shot out of the compartment and started clawing towards Lilyth, who was standing just barely out of range. She just stuck the barrel of the shotgun through the crack and pulled the trigger. And then again when it turned out the creature survived the first attack. The hand went limp and I let go of the heavy door. The way the metal compartment amplified the already loud sounds of the shotgun made them all wince slightly.

‘And that’s that,’ Lilyth said with indifference in her voice. ‘On the plus side, I hit level eleven.’

That reminds me I have perk points to spend. Later though.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked Lil, as we walked towards the entrance to the West Wing.’

‘Pretty crap,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll get better. Eventually. Right now, I am reminded of a quote: “The truth, Walker, is that you're here because you wanted to feel like something you're not: a hero”.’

‘Who’s this Walker?’ I was genuinely curious.

‘A character from a story. He and his squ… party are sent to a city affected by a disaster just to scout out a situation. Walker decides to play the hero, instead and ends up pretty much dooming every survivor. This is what the “bad” guy tells him during the final confrontation. Though the only thing Walker ends up confronting is the heinousness of his actions. While I don’t think I am as bad as he was, I was pretty much on the same trajectory, and already ended up paying for it dearly.’

‘It was a valuable lesson though.’

‘That it was. So what’s the plan after we get out of here?’

That question took me aback. I didn’t consider that yet.

‘We’ll figure it out, once we get out.’

Lilyth nodded.

‘One problem at a time, I guess.’

We need to recover. Lilyth especially. Tyr-Mel maybe? It will take us far away from the Inquisitor and we can find work there. A decent option. Still… as Lil put it. One problem at a time.

We reached the door to the West Wing. I dismissed the Abyssal Spark and the corridor became dark.

‘Can you guys see anything on the other side?’ I asked, hoping their Darksight would show them more than my eyes would.

Lilyth suddenly tensed and listened intently.

‘More of the distant noises?’ Caei asked.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘Coming from… above I guess?’

This mental ward, maybe?

I looked at the padlock. We never found a key for it.

‘Hellfire,’ Lilyth suggested, as if reading my mind. ‘I think it’s hot enough to burn through it.’

Yes. That would work. Damn… she makes for a really good advisor. It’s probably one of the things she considered before.

I aimed my hand at the padlock and fired off an Abyssal bolt. It exploded on impact and vaporised the lock. It also shattered the glass in the door and blew a decent chunk of wood away. Unfortunately, the explosion also set parts of the entrance on fire.

I grabbed the canteen and used the water from it to put it out. Caei assisted with some of the water bottles, as she had them easily accessible.

‘Oh, for fucks sake, Lilyth,’ she shouted.

‘I thought Aki would use the gun.’ Lil retorted.

‘Then you should have said so!’ Caei spat.

Note to self: Always ask Lilyth to elaborate on her ideas.

We swung the smouldering door open. It was time to enter the West Wing.