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Chapter Text

Those marked by The Outsider were lucky it’s socially acceptable to wear gloves everywhere. Hands were a common place for soulmate marks to appear. And it was very rude to display a name unless you were married, and even then a bit uncouth. ‘Like ladies wearing low dresses or men running around without their shirts’ one of Emily’s governesses had explained. Even people who had names elsewhere sometimes wore gloves, just to avoid people wondering where their name might be.

Mother’s was on her ankle but she refused to show it to Emily. Corvo wouldn’t tell her where his was and her guessing turned into one of the games they played.

Marks came from your soulmate writing their name. Most people had one, some people had multiple, some people had nobody. Most soulmates got married, some didn’t. Most people’s marks appeared after they hit puberty and their soulmate wrote their name. Some people got them earlier, some later, but always when your soulmate wrote. Mother’s didn’t appear for a while because Father rarely wrote his name. She had to hand him a piece of paper and order him to sign it. Father said he had a pervasive itch on his shoulder for years before he met Mother. He thought it was a rash of some sort but the doctors told him it was just his soulmate writing their name a lot. He wasn’t entirely sure when it turned into mother’s name because he didn’t bother looking in the mirror for a couple years. “I thought it was going to be platonic for a long time.”

Soulmates were all very vague and annoying. As a child Emily thought Natural Philosophers should spend less time with whale oil and more time figuring out this name business.

When Emily was ten years old she woke with a fierce itching on the back of her right shoulder. She didn’t bother to open her eyes before scratching it again. This only made it worse. She finally sat up to glare at it. From what she could see there was something dark on skin red from hours of scratching in her sleep. Emily felt excited for the first time in months. Her name? She was ten, the right age or close to it to have a name. It itched like it was supposed to. Maybe something was finally going right for her.

Emily couldn’t find a good mirror to look at it. The reflective bits she could find were blurry and made her name look like a black circle. That’s also what it looked like when she craned her neck. All the good mirrors were always surrounded by escorts so she couldn’t use those. Eventually, she decided to ask one of the nicer women for help.

Betty’s mate was Nikki, one of the other courtesans. They talked of saving up money and starting a family one day. They were always nice to Emily but couldn’t do her many favors. The Madam didn’t like them for having ‘aspirations’. Betty was the one to explain sexuality to Emily, in kid friendly terms. If there was one person at the Golden Cat Emily trusted, it was Betty.

At first Betty was flattered when Emily asked for help reading her mark. The second Emily took off her shirt, Betty screamed.

“Betty?” The other prostitutes called from outside the door.

“I….I thought I saw a rat but it was just a shadow.”

The other girls left, mumbling about false alarms and rats.

“What’s wrong with it?” Emily tried to twist her head around again.

“No!” Betty pulled her shirt back up over her shoulder. “Don’t look at it. Don’t even think about it.”

“But…”

“Emily, listen please.” Betty grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at her.  She bit her lip and chose her words. “People will do bad things to you if they see that mark. It’s safer if you don’t know what it is. Don’t trust anyone with it. Maybe…I mean…maybe one day when you’re safe away from here or the plague is gone you can find out for yourself. But right now, it’s safer…”

“It’s that bad?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. You keep worrying about your family coming to get you, alright?” Betty tried to smile but was clearly shaken.

            Emily was nothing if not stubborn. Betty’s warning couldn’t dissuade her. Who could possibly be so bad? The Spymaster or assassin who killed her Mother? Did the name on her back mean she was going to be the one to push him off a cliff instead of Corvo? She wasn’t afraid.

            She waited until everyone was asleep to go to the bathroom for a mirror. She had to steal a lantern too. In the end that’s what gave her away. She should have waited to turn on the light until after she had her shirt unbuttoned. But it was difficult to find the tiny fastenings in the dark. She just got her shirt off when someone opened the door.

            Mean old lady Prudence stormed into the room. “You ungrateful brat! Trying to escape again?” She tried to grab Emily with bony hands. Emily ducked away and kicked at her. “Who the hell put that on your shoulder? One of my bitch girls? Or was your idiot mother a secret…”

“It’s my name!” Emily was too angry to think before shouting. Old Prudence froze as if shocked. Emily took the opportunity to run past her out of the bathroom. Emily didn’t get far before getting caught by security and dragged back.

            When the guard carried her, kicking and screaming, back to the living quarters, the old crone was shouting at the girls and the guards. “I said fetch Stevens! I’m not letting the Lord Regent pin this on me!” The girls were flustered but most didn’t want to get involved. Betty tried to say something but Prudence smacked her. Emily was locked in her tiny room alone until the crone, a guard, and on old guy came in.

            The old guy Emily didn’t recognize did something with a fireplace while Prudence and the guard tried to take Emily’s shirt off. Emily lost the struggle but she got in a few good kicks, almost scratched Prudence’s eye, and took a chunk out of the man’s hand with her teeth. They were both cursing up a storm by the time they got her shoved face down on the bed and pinned there.

“What the…” The guard muttered.

“I told you, you see nothing and I’ll make it worth your while.” Prudence snapped at him. The guard pointedly looked away. Now that she no longer needed her mouth to bite Emily cursed them back, promising all kinds of painful deaths.

“Damn, Prudence you weren’t kidding.” The old man said. Emily smelt metal heating up and doubled her struggles. “Here, kid, bite on this.” The old man shoved a piece of leather in her face. “Trust me, you don’t want to ruin your teeth.” Something about his tone made Emily bite down on the leather. It tasted like sweat. “Keep her still.” Emily didn’t like the sound of that. “I mean it, girl, this will be worse if you squirm.”

            That was her last warning before pain like she’d never felt seared her shoulder. She’d broken her wrist and twisted her ankle but this hurt so much worse, it went on and on. Emily had the vague idea that the adults were talking but she couldn’t hear anything over blood rushing in her ears and the screams she unconsciously produced.

“Shhh…” she suddenly could hear something. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut. Somehow she sensed a new presence in front of her where the wall and bed should be. “breathe.” Cold fingers wiped her sweaty brow. The pain receded somewhat and she felt relieved until a new hiss brought it back two fold. She bit the leather and whimpered more than wailed. “You will endure, and you will be stronger for it.” The kind voice from nowhere spoke again. “For now, sleep.”

            Emily woke from calm blackness to the sound of crying. “I told you…”

“Betty?”

“Emily, I’m sorry, I told you not to.”

“What?” Emily tried to move but her whole back and entire right side ached and her shoulder felt like it was being torn apart.

“Here, eat, you need your strength.” Nikki was apparently in the room too. Emily’s head felt too fuzzy to pay much attention. She ate the grapes Nikki handed her one by one.

“What did they do to me?” She asked when her voice came back. Betty cried more.

“They burned your mark off,” Nikki answered.

“No!” She hadn’t even got to read it. Nikki held her down so she didn’t sit up.

“Don’t move, you need to heal. There’s nothing to be done about it now.” Emily tried not to cry. “Your mate can write you again. It’s not over for you.”

Betty didn’t say anything about that. She just pressed something into Emily’s hand. “Keep this. Keep it on you but hidden. People will take it away.”

“What is it?” Emily looked at it. A little cylinder of bone with a metal cap. It hummed pleasantly in her hand.

“It’s a charm. We use them so… we don’t get sick.”

“It’ll help so your burn doesn’t get infected.” The women explained. The charm’s signing lulled Emily back to sleep.

            Emily was healed and back on her feet by the time Corvo found her. She had plenty to keep her busy while at the Hound’s Pit Pub. She didn’t stop waiting for her name to reappear, though. She didn’t let Callista see her bathing so nobody had to know.

            Emily talked about her time captive, Callista insisted on knowing if Emily had seen any of the clients at the Golden Cat. Emily asked if Betty and Nikki were alright, but she never talked about her mark. She might not have ever talked about it if not for Corvo. Corvo declared himself the Royal Father, to nobody’s surprise, but it still meant a lot to Emily.

“Can I call you Father now?” She sat on his lap in their private sitting room.

“You can call me anything you like.”

“Papa? Father Protector?” she joked with more absurd names until he tickled her. She laughed but then had a serious question. “Were you and mother soulmates?” A shadow fell over Father’s face and Emily wondered if he would deny her.

“Yes. I loved your mother very much.”

“Can I see it?” This made him freeze.

“Em, it’s…I don’t have it anymore.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said.”

“Please tell me.”

He sighed. “The conspiracy didn’t want any evidence that Jessamine and I were friends or more than that. They burned off her name.”

Now Emily had to see it. “Show it to me, please?”

            Corvo was reluctant but sensed her desperation and unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled it down over his right shoulder just low enough to reveal the horizontal burn. Emily reached out and touched it without asking. It was rougher than her own. “We match.”

“What?” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Em, did you get your name?” He sounded proud and happy, which was rare since Mother died. Emily couldn’t lie to him, she couldn’t even keep the tears in.

            Corvo rocked her as she sobbed out the whole story. Betty screaming, her being foolish, the crone calling for the doctor, how they held her down and burned her before she could even learn what it said.

            Corvo was concerned that a doctor hadn’t seen it. Emily refused.

“At least let me look at it.” She shook her head again. “Please, Emily. You could get sick if it’s infected.” He sounded like he was about to cry, and she didn’t want that so she nodded. He let her slowly unbutton her shirt by herself and turn around to show him. Corvo touched it gently and asked if it hurt.

“No, it doesn’t hurt. We match, though, right?” She asked over her scarred shoulder.

“Sure, Em. We match.” It sounded like his heart was breaking. He put her shirt back in place then hugged her to him. “You have your whole life ahead of you. It will be alright.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

            They slept in the same bed that night, protecting each other from nightmares.

Chapter Text

Emily turned 20 two months ago. Father felt confident enough in her training to test her skills. She was officially old enough to rule without any advisors at all if she wanted. Yet, she was still waiting for a new soulmark. Either her mate had died or he/she didn’t ever write their name. At least until her right hand started itching terribly during a council meeting. She kept a straight face until she could examine it in the privacy of her chambers.

The back of her right hand displayed a symbol she’d didn’t know but also looked vaguely familiar. She turned her hand over and over again as if that might change it into something sensible. Was it her name? It itched like names were supposed and Mother said Grandfather had a name on his right hand. This looked like one symbol though, was it a single letter?

            It took her all day to remember where she’d seen the symbol before. One of the books on heresy the High Overseer kept gifting her gave her the answers she needed. Suddenly, Betty’s screaming and the decision to burn her name made sense. Emily didn’t doubt for a second that this was her original mark. It also made sense with the timeframe of Father receiving his mark. Something he finally told her about when she was sixteen. The Outsider wrote his name/mark on Corvo and it appeared on Emily’s back. She had to speak to him.

She couldn’t have a shrine in the tower. The Overseers went anywhere they pleased and where they didn’t go a servant might find and bring to them. The only place safe from The Abby was her safe room, and that was her and Corvo’s place. A place to hide in safety and have her father rock her to sleep after a nightmare.

There was only one thing for it, out to Dunwall streets. She’d been sneaking out at night to climb the tower roofs, tonight she would go further. Find an abandoned building.

            Ironically it was the Abby of the Everyman’s extensive notes on how to recognize heretical objects that helped an Empress build a shrine to The Outsider. For an offering she hid her face and went searching through the worst Dunwall had to offer. A great learning experience both as an Empress and a heretic.

            A bit of coin and subtle asking around led her to robbing a Hatter’s hide out. The Bottle Street Gang she purposefully left alone because they had a code of conduct, the Hatters were just brutes.

            Soon enough she had a rune in addition to Betty’s old bone charm to place on her shrine. Emily wasn’t sure what she was expecting but certainly not for the shrine to shatter and suck her into The Void.

           After regaining her bearings, Emily took a minute to study the Void. She found a pebble and dropped it off the edge of the floating island only for it to circle somehow and fall on her head. A voice from behind had her whip around.

“Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin,” The Outsider stood with arms crossed, watching her. “Empress of the Four Isles and soulmate of the Outsider.”

“I am. What about you?”  She kept her grip on her sword. Not sure what good that would do against a god but better than nothing. “Am I just another one of your marked or…”

He held up his left hand to stop her. The E of her name rested on the back of his hand and continued down his arm. He pulled down his sleeve to reveal both angry scars around his wrist and her large handwriting.

“You’ve known all this time?” She approached him cautiously.

“Since you were ten. I felt it when they removed my mark from your skin.”

“You…you helped me sleep,” she recognized the voice now.

“It was all I could do at the time.” He paused to choose his words. “I died a young man and I’ve been unageing for the past four thousand years. I didn’t want to introduce myself when I might have…undue influence.”

“I see how that could be a concern,” Emily said slowly. She mentally marked a tally in favor of The Outsider’s character. If he had appeared to her while she was held captive at 10, she probably would have ended up worshiping him blindly.

“I want to see the woman you will become on your own.” Something in his tone offended her.

“I am a woman.”

He gave her a disbelieving look. “Then tell me Empress, are your people happy? Safe? Who in Morley is plotting against you? How bad are the bloodflies in Serkonos? How many whales are close to extinction?” He teleported further away.

“I…”

“How much money does the Duke of Serkonos plan to spend on a new palace? How many die in the Karnakan silver mines? Whom among your guard wants you dead?” Does Tyvia have enough food for the coming winter?” She had to spin a circle to find where he stood.

“Don’t judge me!”

“Spoken like a true child.” He transversed again. Emily didn’t know what else to say, he was right. “I’m fighting battles of my own right now. A witch is getting far too close for comfort.” His black eyes gazed out into The Void.

“I didn’t think anything could faze you.”

“I’m powerful but I’m not omniscient.” He turned to look at her, gesturing with his hands slightly. “I see glimpses of the future, visions of the past. Time folding in on itself, the world breaking against the Void. Until you know beyond a doubt who you are, I won’t speak to you again.” He changed to black rain and reappeared standing directly in front of her. “I’ve been told I drive people mad. Out of respect for the marks we share, I won’t risk that happening to you.” He started to dissolve into shards but Emily reached out and grabbed his cold arm.

“Wait! Please just tell me…” she had to know this one thing that had been haunting her. She held his sleeve with her right hand. “You said you died. Were you, are you, human?” Can you love me or are our marks a lie?

She didn’t voice the second question but he understood. The Outsider met her gaze with bottomless eyes. He placed one hand over her grip and gently removed her hand form his arm. “Human… I was once. Now…” he didn’t finish, just disappeared into the swirling blackness of The Void.

            Emily gasped as she was thrown back into the abandoned house. She flexed her name hand, still able to feel the ghost of his death-cold fingers holding hers.  Emily felt overwhelmed, she took her careful trip home across rooftops to ponder.

            She didn’t appreciate being called a child or the insinuation of being a poor Empress. She’d survived the Rat Plague, it wasn’t like she hadn’t worked for what she had. On the other hand, compared to someone who claimed to have died ‘four thousand years ago’, she must seem very young.

            If The Outsider himself bought her attention to certain things, she should look into them. She wrote down every question he asked before going to bed. Emily changed into her night clothes with a stubborn promise to prove The Outsider wrong. She’d be the best Empress the isles had ever seen.

It turned out that Duke Luca had burned his father’s house, artwork included, and was building an expensive palace for no reason at all. She wrote him a strongly worded letter and told Corvo and other advisors to keep an eye on him. The old duke was an excellent ruler, so far Luca appeared to be an absolute idiot.

She sent a few extra shipments of canned food to Tyvia then felt bad for relying on advice from a god rather than her own means. Father was trying to do the job of both Spymaster and Royal Protector. And his spy networks didn’t have as much information as she might have liked when she tried to tap them.

            Emily hated spymasters, who could blame her, but she grudgingly admitted to needing one if she wanted to know answers to the Outsider’s questions. Corvo was surprisingly calm about her suggestion. “I wouldn’t mind spending more time with you. I might need it if you keep sneaking off at night.” He promoted Jameson, who he’d apparently been training.

            She invited Wyman of Morley to join her court. Wyman was a surprisingly fun individual. Emily liked to think they became good friends. Wyman also gave her a much better portrait of Morley politics and was willing to travel back and forth from Dunwall as her embassy. Alexi said Wyman fancied her, Emily said she was too busy for a serious relationship.

Almost a year after her meeting with The Outsider, Emily figured out whom among her guard might want her dead. Ramsey was acting squirrely, one too many sneers at Corvo according to Alexi. Rather than tell anyone else about this, Emily had Alexi and a few other guards get him drunk and then followed him home herself. His drunken angry rambling about how his father fell from nobility convinced her to remove him. Emily gave him a ‘promotion’ by sending him to a relatively harmless port town on the North Coast. When she returned to her room that night, The Outsider appeared by her window.

“So, you finally caught on to Ramsey, I’m impressed.”

“You helped me find him.”

“I gave you information. Easily ignored by the fool, a weapon in the hands of the clever.” He teleported to sit at her breakfast table.

“You said you wouldn’t speak to me again until I knew who I was.”

“Don’t you?” He seemed to genuinely be asking.

“I don’t know…” she sat down across from him. “I’m the Empress.”

“You’ve been that since you were ten.” He wasn’t impressed.

“But other than that I’m…” her father’s daughter, her mother’s daughter, impulsive, judgmental, hating to sit still but forcing herself to do so, free when she blended into the Dunwall night, playing the occasional joke to cope with a harsh world, still dreaming of her mother’s death “…me.”

“Sounds like you know enough.” The Outsider said approvingly and rested his arms on her table as if he were a real person who didn’t have the mist of the Void clinging to him. “And even if not, I need…assistance.”

“My help?”

“You’re the only one I trust.”

            Why was on the tip of Emily’s tongue. Why? Because her name was on his skin. Why did she trust him? Maybe she didn’t need a reason. She swallowed her words. The Outsider disappeared from the table and reappeared floating in front of her. Feet hanging in the air, he held a hand out to her. “I want to show you something.” She hesitated only a moment before taking his hand.

            An endless expanse flowed around Emily. Like diving into a frozen ocean trapped forever in the disorienting few seconds after hitting the water when it was impossible to tell which way was up. She’d be lost forever if not for the hand in hers. How could he, how could anyone, live here?

            Their flight ended with her feet on an island of black crystal. The Outsider slipped from her grip as shards of glass. He didn’t reappear before her, leaving her to examine the island she found herself on. Hooded figures created a pathway up the slight hill to a slab. A hooded man stood over the table holding a knife in both hands. The Outsider appeared on the slab, lying down to reenact his own death. “Right up until the end I thought I’d find a way to escape. I fought but the ropes only cut my skin so went limp.” He sat up. “And then the knife touched my throat and I knew I’d waited too long. The blood ran out and I became a god.” He stood from the table and Emily reached out to grab him, pulling her to him in a hug. It was less the sad story and more about how he spoke about his past as if discussing the weather that made her act.

He froze for a moment then stepped away and teleported out of her hold. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t pity you. It’s just…I’m sorry you had to go through that. Do you pity me for my past?” She looked around for him and spotted him squatting on a spire above her head. He considered her for a moment then transversed back down to stand with her.

“This place is ancient, special. It’s where my life ended and it began anew. Delilah found this place. She drifted through the Void and should have been lost for ever. But her will and cunning are second to none.” He began to pace. “She arrived at this place that made me what I am and it changed her. She learned to draw power from the Void. Delilah has become part of me and I don’t like it.” He sat on the edge of the island, studying the nothingness as if he could see something in it. “I may have chased her from this part of The Void but I can’t stop her. She’ll find a way to return to life.”

Emily considered this and took a second to study the face of the statue holding the knife. Irrational considering he was four thousand years dead, but she wanted to know the face of the man who’d once hurt her soulmate. That done she sat beside him. She let her legs dangle over the abyss and tried not to be disturbed.

“Who is Delilah?”

That prompted almost a snort. “Your grandfather’s dirty little secret. That’s a whole story if you wish to hear it.”

“After that teaser, I have to.” She held out her right hand for him to take. He looked at her for a moment then took her hand.

Chapter Text

Emily had a secret lover, Corvo was sure of it. His over-protective father instincts occasionally, okay often, gave off false alarms. However, as the once secret lover of an Empress, he felt qualified to recognize the signs.

            Corvo had wandering feet himself so he could understand that Emily became antsy if trapped in the tower too long. Still, some nights she had a certain glint in her eye that made Corvo think she was meeting someone.

            Emily accepted meetings with suitors but only the ones who she couldn’t risk offending or could get something else out of. And those she might have once expressed interest in, she paid no mind. Wyman for example, nice enough individual, if that’s who Emily had her sights on Corvo wouldn’t have minded. But while Emily accepted Wyman as a friend she seemed oblivious to blatant attempts at flirting.

Emily’s interests had changed a little bit, not worryingly, just like someone else was pointing things out to her. Emily had always been a good Empress as far as Corvo was concerned but she’d stepped up her game in the past few years. Perhaps getting out of the tower at night put her in better touch with the citizenry. She must have visited a slaughter house on one trip because one morning she woke up crying from dreams she claimed were of crying whales.

The problem was Corvo trained Emily in stealth himself, she knew how to sneak around him. And the aforementioned overprotective-father false alarms meant she didn’t always tell him everything she should. He’d also made a mistake by mentioning that he’d seen her leave the tower. Now she knew he was on to her and even when he noticed her leave for the rooftops, she’d double back and loose him.

Emily also started writing secret notes. If she was sneaking letters out Corvo didn’t know how but she was definitely writing more. One of the few notes Corvo had managed to see was two pages of notes on whales. In Emily’s hand but nothing she would have been taught. Gestation period of different species, how pods typically migrated, social structure of pods, and the noises they made to communicate. Corvo sent a junior guard to search the royal library for a book containing all this information. He couldn’t find one which confirmed Corvo’s theory. Emily was sneaking out to see someone involved in the whaling business. A whaler, fisher (many of them followed pods to catch the fish in a symbiotic relationship with whales), slaughter house worker, natural philosopher/student, or the son or daughter or any of the above. Annoyingly this was Dunwall and several hundred people fit that description.

Corvo questioned Alexi about this. She said she didn’t know who it was then quickly caught herself and added that even if Emily had told her something in confidence she wouldn’t share.

            He and Emily hadn’t spoken of soulmates since they shared their ruined marks. By all that was good in this world Corvo hoped Emily had a new one. He suspected she did. Shortly after her twentieth birthday she started wearing gloves religiously, even in her private chambers. She also stopped looking so sad when she saw soulmate pairs. Corvo hadn’t asked. He didn’t want to smother her. Soulmarks were one of the things mothers talked to daughters about and fathers talked to sons about.

            Emily said everyone had been shocked by her first soulmark. He couldn’t assume that if she got a second one it would be of the same person. Emily wouldn’t even know as she’d never had a chance to read it, the bastards. He could only hope that person had died or the prostitutes had simply over reacted. Emily deserved all the happiness in the world.

POV change

Over a year of easy comradery with The Outsider. Emily would never have guessed. Especially after the disaster of her name appearing she considered herself blessed. Blessed by the Void or wherever names came from. Not that they didn’t have their disagreements. For example, he didn’t much appreciate her trying to find a placeholder name for him. “Owen, Oliver, Otis, Oscar, Otto. You don’t look like an Otis or Oscar. What do you think?”

“I think I’d prefer my real name.”

“Sorry, I just meant…”

“…Otto is fine.”

            She could stay only an hour or two, her time, in the Void and he could only manifest physically in the mortal world for about the same. She no longer needed her shrine to visit him. The shrine she left to rot with the house and hid her rune and charm in her safe room.

They’d sit and share stories when they could. Him of things he’d seen centuries ago or those he’d marked. Her of boring days in court or little things around the city.

They were friends, possibly more. She wanted to be more but he shied away if she did more than hold his hand. He was dead, he’d remind her. No breath in his body or blood in his veins. Emily tried to tell him that she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned what made him real and human remained. Still, he’d hold her hand and whisper that someday soon he’d become human for her. He’d leave the Void this moment if not for Delilah.

The only people who knew about Emily’s relationship were Alexi, whom she’d complained to about his hesitation, in vague terms. And Wyman whom had asked her point blank if she would like to court. She didn’t want to lie and mentioned having another relationship in the hope they could remain friends.

“Now I have three problems. Most prominently, I’m battling Delilah for control of The Void. A cult has discovered one of the few physical portals into The Void and are growing in number. Nothing new, but I can usually keep their influence under control.” Otto paced in front of Emily’s desk while she worked. “A man named Zhukov has found an artifact I had one of my marked hide away centuries ago. The very knife that cut my throat and made me into what I am. He’s turned himself into a powerful witch beyond my influence.”

“Is he coming after you?”

“His sights are set on more Earthly prizes. He wishes to change the past to take his vengeance. The details I’m unclear on, for his mind is closed to me as long as he wields that blade.”

“Change the past? Is that possible?”

“It’s not has hard as you may think. My marked have done it before.” Emily could have asked about that but he kept talking. “I do know he is obsessed with Daud. He wants to collect the old whalers to work for him.”

“And you want me to find, Daud?” Emily could now recognize the hints in his speech.

“Daud would be an invaluable ally. Not only against Zhukov. But he is also indirectly responsible for the power Delilah now wields.” This was said with some bitterness. He told her briefly of how Delilah had plotted against Emily as a child and he’d sent Daud to dispose of her. “Daud despises me these days, but he’ll listen to you.”

“I’ve known a long time if Daud still lived he’d one day be useful to me. Not that I’ve forgiven him.” She added.

“How pragmatic.”

“He’s one of the few people capable of fighting my father hand to hand. Old as he is, I’d guilt him onto my payroll in a heartbeat. For the good of the Empire.”

“And a bit of your own sadistic pleasure watching remorse eat him from the inside.”

“As if you don’t approve.” She smiled at him and he returned it.

“I consider your talent for poetically cruel yet non-fatal punishments one of your many attractive qualities.” He met her gaze then had to ruin the moment. “Corvo did something similar.”

“Otto, no.” Emily put her face in her hands. “Don’t mention my father while we’re flirting.”

He looked away, embarrassed. If he had any blood in in his body he’d be blushing. “I never bothered to watch courtships.”

“Didn’t have anyone back when you were alive? Never seduced any of your marked?” He frowned at her for the comment about his marked. “Good.” Emily took his hand with both of hers. “I like that I’m the first person you’ve tried to awkwardly flirt with. Now tell me more about this cult.”

The plans they started were disrupted the very next day as circumstances changed.

“Emily,” she heard a whisper in her mind. He wouldn’t bother her unless it was urgent.

“Excuse me.” Emily made her excuses and hurried to the water closet. “Otto, what is it?”

“Delilah has returned to life.” He started speaking before even materializing in front of her.

“What? How?”

“Her allies, Breanna Ashworth, Luca Abele, Kirin Jindosh, and one still can not identify,” he said the last part with almost a growl, “preformed a ritual of some kind in Aramis Stilton’s home. She has gone to great pains to hide the details from me.”

Chapter Text

Emily and The Outsider sat half in her room, half in The Void as they discussed their plan for the coming days and months. Zhukov remained on a ship headed for Dunwall, his threat was less immediate. Delilah needed to be dealt with, starting with the witch The Outsider sensed in Dunwall.

“You’ve taught me enough that I can assemble a ritual to trap her mind in The Void. Just temporarily but long enough for you to interrogate her.” He raised an eyebrow. “You think I don’t know what goes on in the Empire’s prisons? Get whatever you can from her.”

“Gladly. However, if you plan to fight a witch alone, perhaps it is time you took my mark.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to bring that up.” He took her left hand this time to pull her into The Void. “This will burn.”

“I’m not made of glass, Otto.”

“Just considering the last time…”

“Not your fault.” She assured him. Her skin burned from the inside out. She hissed and flexed her hand as the mark glowed. Emily looked at her now matching hands with mild amusement.

“I have another gift for you. Although, in reality, it’s your mother’s gift.” Before Emily could ask he waved a hand to indicate a nearby floating island. “Use your powers to find it.” He disappeared but she could feel him watching. Wanted to see how she did but didn’t want to talk. Okay, Emily could humor him.

Her Far Reach acted differently than she’d seen from Corvo’s blink. A bit of experimentation had her climbing and crossing gaps with ease. She arrived on a larger island made of jagged crystal. She couldn’t feel Otto’s eyes on her anymore. She found out why when she picked up The Heart of a Living Thing and spoke to her mother from its confines.

Emily followed The Heart’s directions to a rune. When she touched it Otto appeared but he didn’t say anything.

“Did…you do this?” she asked, meaning The Heart.

He didn’t meet her eyes. “She asked me to. Your mother refused to pass on while you and your father were in danger. She begged me for a way to help.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Her condition is…delicate. I can’t recommend taking her out into the world unless needed.”

“Thank you.” Emily took his hand and then gave him a kiss on the cheek, in slow motion so he could pull away if he wanted. “Thank you for helping her.” He squeezed her fingers but didn’t show anything on his face.

“I can pull any offering left at my shrines into The Void. I’ll collect more runes for you to enhance your powers.”

A week later saw Emily’s first assassination mission, like father like daughter. She’d mastered Far Reach, could see through walls, and could Shadow Walk. Turning into a living shadow was equal parts disconcerting and exhilarating.  Otto made a comment about her being beautiful. She wasn’t sure she wanted to look in a mirror as a shadow to confirm that though.

Emily found the witch where Otto said she would be. Dark vision confirmed she was on the floor above from where Emily worked a window open. She crept up the stairs and to the open doorway. The witch nursed a glass of wine while looking out the patio doors. Emily readied a sleep dart and prepared to leap in if the witch didn’t go down. She went down with barely a grunt of surprise.

This room contained charms, including some strange corrupted ones; letters; and the pigments Emily needed to draw a quick ritual circle. “Enjoy The Void.” She muttered as she felt the witch’s consciousness slip away. There was a painting of a boy that Emily got a strange magical sense from. She studied this until she heard heavy steps on the stairs. She Far reached to a bookshelf to hopefully get the drop on the newcomer.

The boots paused just outside in the hall. Damn, he could tell something was wrong. A large bald man cautiously leaned around the corner, looking for her. Emily latched onto his head with Far reach and pulled. The man slammed into the doorframe. Emily leapt from her perch only to find the man not as dazed as she had hoped. From the floor he fired a pistol at her that grazed her left side. With her sword she cut the pistol from his grip and kicked him in the face. No time to see if he was truly down or not, that gunshot alerted the whole building. Emily retreated out the balcony doors and leapt into the night. Her side stung so she Far reached more than ran from roof to roof.

Emily paused on a rooftop several blocks away. Otto appeared beside her to help look at her wound. “Nothing vital is damaged.” He reported.

“I’m going to need stitches, though.” Which meant the royal physician which meant Corvo learning about this. She bandaged herself. Stupid, cocky, should have waited. “What about the witch?”

“Her man pulled her out but she’ll be of little use.” Otto sounded almost smug. After a year of talking he’d either begun to emote more or she’d gotten better at recognizing his moods. “I’ve learned of Delilah’s final conspirator and her location.”

“Good. We can talk about all that later.” After she’d been lectured most likely.

POV change

As Emily predicted, Corvo loomed over her bedside the second the physician finished his stitches. The doctor wore an unreadable expression as he bowed and left.

“How angry are you?” Emily asked before Corvo could speak.

“Enough to ask an embarrassing question.” Corvo sat at her bedside. “Do you have a new soulmark?” Emily had been expecting him to ask for years and nodded. “Where?”  She gave him a look. “If you’re hurt again I’ll have to tell the doctors.” She acquiesced to that wisdom.

“Like Grandfather.” She tapped the back of her right hand.

“Are you seeing anyone when you sneak out at night?”

She picked at her blankets, for a moment, a little girl again under her father’s disapproval. Then she fortified herself and met his eyes, “I’ve made some friends in the city. I realized I didn’t know Dunwall as well as I would like.”

“You’re being safe?”

“You trained me yourself.”

Not quite what he meant but he moved along. “Emily if you ever find your soulmate or have any serious relationships, friendship or romance, I’d like to know. Not to interfere but because you’re my daughter.”

“Even if you disapprove?” Her eyes turned frosty. Shit, maybe there was something wrong with her soulmate worthy of making escorts scream. She shook her head before he could think on it further. “That doesn’t matter right now. I encountered a witch tonight.”

“A witch? Are you sure?”

“Pretty certain, she had the bone charms and paraphernalia. I hit her with a dart before she could do any magic. It was her friend that shot me.”

“I’ll look into it. While you rest.” He did his best to be stern. “Where did you find her?” Emily gave an address close to the docks, adding to his theory of her secret whaler friend. “Jameson and I will investigate. You stay in bed. As the doctor said, nothing strenuous for two weeks.”

Emily held up her hands in surrender. “I heard. Two weeks. I can’t promise to stay in bed but no adventuring across rooftops.”

Corvo should have been more suspicious of her easy acquiescence because when he returned from stopping a gang war, Emily was gone.

Break:

Beatrix and Nicole Masters owned, operated, and lived above a Gristol roadside pub on the main road in and out of Dunwall. They’d pass any gossip from their tavern down the Dunwall spy network but otherwise lived a quiet life with their three kids.

“We’re closing,” Nicole didn’t look up from wiping the bar.

“Hi, Nikki.”

“Lord Attano.” She blinked in surprise. “Come in.” He didn’t take the offered stool. “Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to Betty.”

“She’s putting the kids to bed. Can I pour you a drink?”

“I need to talk to her and head back tonight.”

“Is Lady Emily alright?” He didn’t answer. Nicole called up the stairs, “Honey, you have a visitor.”

Beatrix came downstairs. “Sir! Is Lady Emily in trouble?”

“That’s what I want to ask you about.” Corvo finally sat down and motioned for the woman to join him. Nicole set a plate in front of him.

“It’s going to go bad if not eaten. Do us the favor.” She sauntered away to finish tidying up.

“How could I help you, sir? I haven’t seen Lady Emily in a decade.”

“You’re the only person living who’s seen Emily’s soulmark.” Both women paused. Nicole mumbled that she’d be upstairs and fled.

“What…what does that have to do with anything? And Lady Emily showed that to me in confidence! I haven’t told anyone, not even Nicole.”

“Thank you for being there for her. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. Emily has been sneaking off recently, keeping secrets from me. She’s a young woman so I never asked but now she’s left Dunwall.” Betty fidgeted with her shirt hem.

“It might not be the same.”

“I know that. But this is the only lead I have right now. The sooner I can find out where she is or what she’s involved with…” Beatrix didn’t say anything but looked close to breaking. “Who was it back then? Daud? Burrow?” He listed off the few guesses he had.

“The Outsider.” Beatrix whispered. Corvo froze. “The mark of The Outsider was on Lady Emily’s back.” Corvo didn’t speak. “I swear I’m telling the truth.”

“I believe you.” Corvo stood. Only years of courtly manners had him mumble a quick, “excuse me.” Before leaving.

In the carriage back to Dunwall, Corvo reread the letter Emily had left with new dread.

Father,

I’ve learned of startling matters I must see to personally. I know its pointless telling you not to worry but try not to do so over much. I’m being careful and am not alone. I won’t tell you where I am both because I must operate in secrecy and because I can’t have you follow me. Nor can I tell you what I plan to do without giving myself away.

Please stay in Dunwall and cover for my absence. As far as the court is concerned I’m visiting Wyman’s private estate. Don’t bother contacting Wyman they don’t know where I’ve gone either.

I informed Jameson of the news from Tyvia but he’ll need your help. As your Empress I’m ordering you to stay in Dunwall and keep look out for Zhukov. You’re one of the few people I trust to fight a man reportedly wielding occult powers.

I know I shouldn’t tease you with it but you asked. And the thought has me too excited to contain my pen. Father, if all goes well I will bring my soulmate back with me to Dunwall. He needs my help, so I hope you can understand why I must leave. I’ll explain everything when I return, one way or another.

I’ll send you word when I can.

Love always, Emily

P.S. I’ll mind my stitches as promised.

“Damnit Outsider, what do you want with my daughter?”

Chapter Text

            Emily left Dunwall with Wyman but transferred to a nondescript fishing vessel at sea. She’d left Jameson with all the information they had on Zhukov, crediting an anonymous source.

            On the relatively peaceful sail to Karnaca she healed, caught up on her reading, and practiced her growing Void abilities. Otto continued to exhaust himself attempting to spy on Delilah and visiting whoever he could in dreams. Vasco in particular received inspiration on possible restraining devices. When Otto wasn’t working he kept Emily company.

“How are things back in Dunwall?” That didn’t mean she wouldn’t use him for information.

“Corvo has discovered your absence and is attempting to summon me for some reason. I haven’t paid attention beyond the fact that he’s cursing my name. Your court thinks you’re in Morley having a sex vacation. They’re taking bets on if and when Wyman will be declared consort. Zhukov is somewhere on Gristol but not yet Dunwall as far as I can tell.”

“If all goes well I’ll be bringing you back with me. My court will be disappointed.”

“And Lady Boyle will loose an absurd amount of money.”

Emily laughed. “Don’t worry about what the nobles think. I’m sure you can win them over.”

“That’s one of us. More urgently we’re meeting Anton Sokolov.”

“What do you have against him anyway?” Emily looked away from tying her hair.

“He’s boring. His motivations are banal, his goals lackluster, anyone with half a brain can predict what he will do next. You ever notice how he only paints portraits? It’s because he doesn’t have a truly creative thought in his head. And he’s obsessed with me, not The Void, me. He’s sacrificed people to try and win my attention. Not because he wants favors or to experience The Void, but because he wants to study me. It’s pathetic. Bad enough the world spins without his permission and the terrifying Void exists beyond his measurements but a human-looking boy potentially more powerful than him? Incomprehensible. He must measure me so he can feel superior.” Emily held in laughter by the end of this rant.

“He painted a portrait of you.”

“He painted multiple portraits of me with varying accuracy. Obnoxiously, one is a decent likeness.”

“How’d he manage that?”

“Interrogated people who saw me in dreams. Piero included.”

“Piero was more interesting?”

“Infinitely. Shame he died before I need a doctor.”

“I won’t introduce you to Sokolov, then.”

“Please don’t.”

“But if he figures it out on his own I can’t promise to lie to him.”

“So be it. If he figures it out I’m going to be exceptionally mean.” Emily found this cute so she reached over and ran a hand through his hair, which was always oddly damp.

Emily also used the long trip to talk to her mother.

“Mother, I don’t know if you can hear me. But, if it’s not too much for you, can we talk?”

“My dear, dear, child how you’ve grown.”

“It’s been 12 years, Mom. I’ve never forgotten you.” Emily held the leathery heart in both hands.

“So long... Time has little meaning in The Void. And now you go to face Delilah. What kind of monster has she become? Am I to blame for her bitterness?”

“No, Mother. Even if this is the real Delilah, you were just a child then. You’re not to blame for Grandfather’s decisions.”  Gears beat slowly within the stitched flesh.

“You seem nervous, Emily. Is there something you wanted to tell me?” Emily couldn’t help but smile sadly. Even when mostly dead, Mother could read her like a book.

“I think I love someone. It’s complicated.”

“Sharing your life and soul with someone is always complicated. Don’t let that give you pause.”

“I still don’t think you’d approve of him.” A moment of silence. “Mother?”

“I see everything and nothing in this state. I’d like to think I can recognize when my keeper starts acting cautious around me.” Another pause. “Is he yours Emily?”

Emily showed her her mark and Jessamine whispered to her.

“Whatever his past, he’s been good to our family. If he makes you happy, Emily…” her voice faded away when she couldn’t talk any more.

 ...

The plan was to meet Anton immediately, however, Otto informed her that Daud was on the Karnaca streets. Might as well grab him while he was out and about. Emily stepped off her fishing boat into the blistering Serkonos heat. She regretted the necessity of her heavy, armored coat and leather gloves. “It won’t do for Delilah to know I’m here.” She pulled up her scarf. If anyone asked, the dust from the silver mines aggravated her lungs.

She walked past a wharf of fishermen and sailors. Emily paused to eavesdrop as two men discussed a suspicious boat in the harbor. Faint singing drew her attention to a dead whale on the dock. Dead filmy eyes stared up at her. Nobody stopped her from taking a rune out of its mouth. It better not be left here to rot. A waste of whale life should be heavily taxed, if it wasn’t. A couple people commented on her style choices but nobody raised an alarm.

            She spotted the signature red coat coming out of a doorway. Emily jogged past a man butchering fish to catch him.

“Hello, Daud.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy.” He pretended to nonchalantly smoke his cigarette but she saw his hand move towards his sword.

“I don’t think so.”

He glanced at her only to look away. “Fuck. I knew coming here was a bad idea.” No surprise he recognized her despite the mask.

“Where have you been these past 12 years?”

“Hopefully the same place I’ll go back to when this is done.” He turned to face her. “Unless you’re here to finish what Corvo started.”

“Of course not. I need your help.”

“My help?” He repeated.

“Yes, in killing Delilah, properly this time.”

“Bullshit, that witch is dead.”

“No, you sent her to the Void. Now she’s back and stronger than ever.”

“And you know this how?” She made a fist and willed her mark to glow enough to be seen through her glove. “The Black Eyed Bastard got you too, huh?” He took a drag. “Don’t believe everything that false god spews.”

“So, you didn’t trap her in a painting 12 years ago?” Daud didn’t answer. “Delilah’s assembling a coven and the Duke is sheltering her. I need all the help I can get.”

“Where’s Corvo?”

“Dunwall hopefully.”

“Ditched him, did you?” He was an old man, he’d find amusement where he could.

“He’s needed there and I have you.”

“You’re assuming I’ll help you?”

She gave him an unimpressed look. “She wants me dead. I’m going after her with or without you.” He tried to see if she was bluffing.

“You really are Corvo’s daughter.” He flicked his cigar butt away. “So much for retirement.”

Emily took his arm, enjoyed his subtle flinch, and gave him a smile under her scarf. “Do you have any business to finish? We’re meeting the rest of my team.” Daud frowned but said nothing. Emily led him around Karnaca docks with locked arms like they were in a ballroom.

Anton had a skiff at a side pier. Daud paused slightly when he spotted Sokolov waiting for them, Emily pulled him along.

“There you are, you’re late.” Anton greeted with his typical cheer.

“Hello, Anton. Just picking up reinforcements.” Emily dragged Daud with her into the skiff.

The two men glared at each other.

“Anton.”

“Daud.”

“You know each other?”

“I painted his portrait back at the Academy. You sure you want him along, your Highness?”

“Yes. Anton pained a portrait of you? I assume this was before you were Dunwall’s most wanted.” She asked while Sokolov started the small engine.

“I didn’t give him permission.” If Daud wasn’t a badass former mercenary Emily would be tempted to call his expression ‘pouting’. “Does he know what we’re up against?”

“I’ll brief everyone on the boat. What was your friend’s name Anton? Megan?”

“Yes,” Sokolov gave a sideways glance at Daud. They both obviously wanted silence so Emily humored them for he rest of the trip. Anton piloted them to the suspicious boat Emily had heard fishermen talking about. The Dreadful Wale looked like a rusty clunker but was afloat. A woman tossed them a lead and helped hoist the dingy up.

She was in her thirties, missing half her right arm, and an eyepatch over her right eye. She paid attention to securing the boat before noticing the passengers.

“Hello, you must be Megan.” Emily stepped aboard and offered her a handshake.

“Empress.” She said with polite disinterest. “Daud!” The black woman almost stumbled back a step.

“Lurk.” Daud didn’t sound nearly as surprised.

“Um…” she glanced at Anton and Emily. “Give us a minute?” Emily looked to Sokolov who shrugged and waved her inside.

“Megan prepared a room for you, Emily.”

“Thanks. I’ll put away my things.” Emily closed herself in her borrowed bedroom. “Otto.”

“Yes?” The temperature dropped several degrees when he appeared.

“You knew about that?”

“About Billie Lurk, does it matter?”

“I would have greeted her less warmly.”

“I’ll be watching but try not to talk to me too much in Anton’s presence. I’d really rather prefer he not bother me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She shed her heavy layers for the southern heat then went into the main room of the ship. Anton stood at a work desk, tinkering with something while Billie and Daud sat awkwardly near to each other. “So, do I call you Megan or Billie?” Emily went ahead and put as much venom as she felt like into her words.

“People around here know me as Megan Foster. I didn’t know it was you who was coming. If you want me to leave…”

“Don’t be thick.” Emily walked up to the briefing board. “I brought Daud on board, didn’t I?” She touched one of the pictures of the Duke. “Do you have any evidence of the Duke’s corruption?”

“No…” Meagan answered. She looked at Daud as if he might know why Emily was being so forgiving. “Most of Karnaka isn’t even saying ‘corrupt’ just greedy idiot.”

“What do you say?”

“He just increased miners to 12 hours a day. Doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself, however you want to define it.”

“12 hours?” Emily repeated. She may not know about mining but that sounded excessive.

“Duke took over the mines since Stilton disappeared.”

“What did Stilton’s will say?”

“Empress, nobody has been in Stilton’s house since the incident.”

“When was this?” Emily knew the answer but asked anyway.

“Almost three months ago,” Megan said, with a subconscious twitch to touch her ruined arm.

“Shit has been steadily going down hill since then,” Daud added.

“Luca never learned respect, not like the old duke.” Sokolov stopped pretending he wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Let me tell you what I know.” Emily offered. “A witch named Delilah is here somewhere in Karnaca. She’s assembling a coven and has high powered friends. I found one of her witches in Dunwall. And she had enough money and supplies to fuel a small gang war. The duke is my number one suspect.”

“Delilah?” Megan gave Daud a look.

“The same,” he answered cryptically.

“Fuck. I need a drink for this.” Megan left for the kitchen.

“If the Duke is harboring Delilah, chances are Jindosh knows about it.” Sokolov said. He put a newspaper picture of Jindosh on the board.

“I managed to question the witch in Dunwall a little bit. She gave the name Breanna Ashworth.”

“Curator of the Royal Conservatory,” Anton said.

“One of Delilah’s favorites.” Megan returned with rum in hand.

“Then there’s Dr. Vasco.” Emily searched for a picture of the institute.

“Vasco? He’s a good guy,” Megan said.

“Which is why it’s concerning Dr. Powell received a letter from him. Vasco didn’t go into detail but he wanted Powell’s opinion on the properties of certain mind-altering substances. Could chemicals force a new personality to manifest and enhance physical abilities.” Emily found the paper she wanted and pinned it to the board. “Powell knew I was looking into the Duke’s spending habits and brought it to my attention. I didn’t think much of it until Delilah, now it might mean something.”

“Vasco works at the Addermire Institute, I can ask around,” Megan took a swig from her bottle.

“So, what’s the plan, your majesty? Take on the Duke or try to eliminate some of her helpers first?” Sokolov asked.

“What’s your opinion, Daud? You used to do this for a living.” Emily both wanted his opinion and couldn’t resist a jab.

“Ashworth is the only positive lead we have. She can fill us in on what other suspects may or may not be involved,” he answered.

“Let’s find anything we can on her work and home. Where is the coven meeting? and ambush her someplace else.” Emily thought of something. “The Whalers used to be a coven, tell me how those bonds work.”

Daud glared at Sokolov and waved Emily over to stand where the old man couldn’t hear. Sokolov grumbled and went back to his tinkering.

“It’s called the Arcane Bond.” He explained quickly. “I could feel it when a whaler died and the bond broke.”

“Would they be aware I tortured one of their number in Dunwall?”

“I wouldn’t have. But every marked has different powers.”

“Hopefully Ashworth won’t know we’re coming but we can’t expect Delilah to remain ignorant after we dispose of her coven.” Emily reiterated.

“Sounds about right,” Billie agreed. She set her rum aside. “I’ll take the skiff and start asking those questions while it’s still daylight. The Conservatory is open to the public so I can get a friend to scope it out.”

“I’d like to look around Karnaca, while I can.” Emily said.

“Sure that’s wise?”

“I won’t be spotted.”

She wasn’t spotted, of course. Emily spent the rest of the afternoon investigating Abby of the Everman presence. She’d never really cared for the Abby and now felt embittered on behalf of her soulmate. Otto didn’t care either way but it annoyed her there was a whole organization dedicated to hating him.

To Emily’s delight she heard word the Abby was investigating Ashworth. Back at the Dreadful Wale she and her allies discussed the possibility of using the Overseers as a distraction. If Delilah thought the Overseers responsible for killing her coven they could avoid alerting her to their presence.

At night she struggled to sleep in her hot bed until a Void cold body slipped in next to her.

The following evening they had everything prepared. Emily let herself into one of the Conservatory gardens and then climbed until spotting an open window. She had a map of the Conservatory thanks to Billie. The display areas open to the public looked normal but Ashworth had turned the staff areas into a witch hide-out. Emily dodged girls, knocked one out, and collected a few corrupted bone charms and ritual drawings. She finally arrived at the front room they planned to use. It had already been turned into a botany lab, Emily just added her collected items and unconscious witch.

Ready, she opened the window and sat in the dark, waiting for the Overseers Daud was luring in. A couple men rounded the corner. They had their swords drawn and were muttering about something. Emily waited for them to come a bit closer and turn their backs.

Emily pulled an unsuspecting Overseer with her Far reach, caught him before he brained himself against the stone work, pulled him inside, and dropped him face down on the rug. She shadow walked into the hall and listened to the very confused man stand up, notice the display she’d prepared for him, and shout out the window to his friend.

As far as the Abby was concerned a witch just attempted to kidnap one of their number. As far as the witches were concerned the Overseers were doing an impromptu raid. While the Overseers rallied at the front door, Emily found a quiet spot outside Ashworth’s office to listen in.

“I can’t send them away. What should we do?” Ashworth talked to someone.

“Feed them to the bloodflies. Luca will keep the Abby from asking questions.” Whose voice was that? Emily couldn’t tell from her hiding place.

“Gladly, Delilah.”

Delilah was here? Emily risked being spotted for a better look in the window. Ashworth stood in front of a statue of Delilah. Emily almost gave a sigh of relief. Not here, just watching and listening in.

Ashworth walked out of her office, Emily slipped behind her and silently cut her throat. Sorry Breanna, you were too powerful to keep in play.

Emily left the Conservatory and took up lookout on the roof in case any witches tried to escape that way.

Leaderless, novice witches fought Overseers inside. One tried to flee by the roof exit and Emily dropped down to smash her face into the concrete. Unsure what to do with her after that, Emily just left her there. If the Abby found her she’d have the choice to be dumb and stick to her guns or be smart and blame Delilah for corrupting her.

Emily met up with her allies at their rendezvous point. Daud and Billie were already there, chatting and smoking with Anton in the skiff.

“How’d it go?” Billie asked.

“Ashworth’s dead. Delilah is with the Duke. But we should check out Stilton’s manner first. Ashworth’s notes indicate something related to Delilah’s powers happened there.”

“Probably how she got out of the Void.” Daud sat in the skiff.

“If she blames your raid on the Overseers as planned, you’ll have time.” Anton said.

“I gotta admit, that was pretty slick.” Billie commented.

Back aboard the Dreadful Wale, Emily wasn’t surprised to find The Outsider in her cabin. “One conspirator down.”

“Shame the only option was to kill her.” Emily began taking off her clothes.

“Rituals to strip one of their connection to The Void take months to prepare.”

“We’ll investigate Stilton’s manor tomorrow. How goes it with Dr. Hypatia?” Emily kept her back to him to pull on her night shirt.

“I’m influencing her dreams. On some level she’s aware of her alter ego. If it comes to a fight between her personalities, the doctor will win. I also entertain the idea of gifting the good Dr. Vasco my mark temporarily.”

“That could work.” Emily sat beside him on the bed. “The saner we can keep Dr. Hypatia the better.”

Otto sat silently to consider. “I’ll attempt to see the possibilities. You’ll need my help at Stilton’s manor. I’ll find you there.”

“Good night.” Emily managed to say before he disappeared.

Anton dropped them off in the Batista Mining District. Stilton’s house was easy to find. The only way in was locked by a Jindosh door.

“Oh, it’s just a riddle.” Emily read the clue for the door. She riffled through her pockets for paper and pen. “Callista used to play games like this. Give me half an hour, I’ll get it open.”

“I guess that fancy education is good for something.” Megan lit a cigarette. “I’ll see what the locals know.”

Emily got the door open as promised, after some swearing. Megan stayed behind while Emily and Daud entered.

“Uh oh.” Emily flexed her left hand the second they were through the door.

“You feel it too, huh?” Daud said. “This place is seeped in Delilah’s magic. Don’t think The Outsider will be much use.”

“He said he’d meet us here.”

“Did he?” Daud muttered under his breath. There didn’t seem to be anyone around but they entered the building cautiously. A voice led them to the right side of the first floor. Behind an improvised cage door, a man paced and muttered.

“Is that…”

“Aramis Stilton, or what’s left of him.” Emily was used to Otto appearing without warning but Daud twitched. “Whatever Delilah did here drove him mad. A part of him and a part of this house never left that evening. The Duke’s inner circle is still here, putting their grand plan into motion. Delilah’s plan. And a part of Aramis Stilton is always here still breaking. The Void is not exactly a place and it is much older and stranger than you could ever know. It watches you from within. And at the heart of Stilton’s manor the Void is leaking through a pinprick left by Delilah’s little trick. Even magic is perverted here and things don’t work like they should.” He summoned a device to hover in front of Emily. “Take this. Think of it as a kind of time piece. Crafted specifically for this occasion.” He turned slightly to glance at Daud then kept talking to her.  “I’d recommend leaving Daud outside. This could be a bit much for an aging mind. But if you must bring him, make sure to touch his skin when transitioning in time. It wouldn’t do to loose him.” He disappeared back into The Void.

Emily handled the timepiece and unfolded the leaves. A much nicer version of the house appeared in the reflective surface.

“You can wait outside if you want.” She teased.

“I’ve seen crazier shit than you have.”

“Better take your gloves off if we have to hold hands.” Emily took off hers as well but kept a bit of cloth wrapped around her right hand. Daud noticed but didn’t comment.

The timepiece brought out Emily’s mischievous side. She could disappear in an instant and took great delight in watching the guards wander around with confusion in the glass of the timepiece. Daud ended up knocking out several guards rather than let Emily continue to prank them.

The door they needed was locked with a combination only Stilton knew. They overheard from the staff he was outside and went to the back terrace. Daud picked up a few things on the way, after all it would look weird if there was a break in and nothing missing. When Emily saw Stilton pacing in his gazebo, she stopped to think.

“Stilton was a decent man, he really cared about the miners.”

“Yes?” Daud wondered what she meant until she got out her tranqu darts. He gave her a look that said he was impressed with her guts. “Go ahead, try it.”

By knocking Stilton out they changed the past and the present transformed before their eyes.

“Alright, this is the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen.” Daud muttered as they walked through the no longer abandoned manor. Where there were bloodflies there were now servants.

They opened the locked door with Stilton’s combination.  Daud cursed under his breath, thoroughly fed up with this bullshit. Chairs and lamps flickered in and out of reality. Some things turned old and new again, others just faded in and out of the Void.

Emily watched resurrection three times loop. When there was nothing more to be gained from the repeated scene, they left.

            Emily pondered what she’d seen rather than pay attention to where she was going. She’d also become used to her Dark Vision and walked around a corner without noticing the man sitting quietly in a chair nearby.

“Who are you! What the hell are you doing in my house!” Stilton spotted the intruders and jumped to his feet.

“Wait!” Emily said this to both Stilton and Daud who was ready to knock Stilton out. She pulled down her mask.

“What? Emp…”

“Shh!” She waved him quiet. “No one can know I’m in Serkonos, yet. You’re friends with Megan Foster? She sent us.” Daud had been ready to drop that name but Emily beat him to it. The Empress could think on her feet.

Stilton showed them to the back door and they returned to the district. Megan waited by the skip. Emily tried not to stare when she noticed Megan had both arms.

Daud was tired but tried not to show it. Billie seemed conflicted between giving him the quiet he wanted and teasing him for being old. Anton had no such quelms and nettled Daud as much as he could. Emily largely ignored them as she was eager to get back to her cabin and discuss strategy. Not one to disappoint her, Otto was waiting when she arrived.

“Now you know Delilah’s secret. And done something even greater, changed time itself. Only fourteen individuals can boast that achievement.”

“Did you watch Delilah’s ritual?”

“I did. I’ll see to preparations. However, there is something you may find more pressing. Vasco is being, uncooperative.” Emily recognized that was a loaded statement and waited for him to continue. “He’s going to be eaten at this rate.”

“She’s a cannibal? Wait, never mind.” That wasn’t important. “A quick trip to Addermire shouldn’t be difficult. Stilton can get us to the station.”

“The Grand Guard watches the institute.”

“I’ll take Daud then. How tough is this alter ego?”

“Delilah guards her from my vision. I suspect she’s enhanced her as well.”

“Right.” Emily prepared her things. “I’m going to have to claim you as my source this time.”

“Just say I hinted about the institute. Leave Daud outside and capture Grim Alex yourself.”

“Grim Alex?”

“That’s what she calls herself.”

            As Emily predicted, Stilton got her to the carriage station no problem. He wasn’t allowed at the institute so she stole a carriage and went there alone. The plan was for Emily to disable the watchtower. She took out most of the guards, then disabled the watchtower. She didn’t wait for Megan and Daud to arrive.

            She found Hypatia in the recovery studio.

Okay, don’t take any chances. Go for the quick knock-out she can’t see coming. “Sorry, Doctor.” Emily thought before dropping from above and her slamming head into the tile floor with a bit more viciousness than required. That would be a nasty concussion when she woke up. Except she didn’t fall unconscious. She vanished from her grip in a cloud of smoke. “What the fuck?”  Oh shit! Shit! Major shit!

The woman who sat up a few feet away, wasn’t Hypatia anymore. Emily far reached to top floor before Grim Alex could get her bearings. Alex spied her almost immediately and sprinted for the stairs, spewing cannibalistic threats.

            Emily slapped a stun mine on the floor and grabbed her crossbow. She fired a dart into Alex’s side. This didn’t faze her in the slightest. The surge of electricity made her twitch but little else. Alex growled and leapt at her with hands that were more like claws. Emily parried with her sword and threw the crossbow into her face to try and get some distance.

Whatever Delilah had done to Grim Alex made her stronger than anyone Emily had fought before. She screamed as a claw managed to tear through her coat. The familiar chill in the air was never more welcome. Otto grabbed her arm.

“You want to die too?” Alex turned her attention to him. He vanished back into he Void but it was enough distraction for Emily to Far reach across the room.

Emily sprinted for cover but Grim Alex bounded after her. A crossbow bolt came from the ceiling. Thankfully, a bolt to the leg slowed her down enough for Emily to round the corner and finally earn some breathing room. She took half a second to form a new plan. Concussion proof or not, she’d still need blood and oxygen. She could be chocked out.

            Emily willed her body to melt into shadows. Alex came around the corner but didn’t notice the shadow form immediately. Emily knocked her down and wrapped clawed spectral hands around the woman’s neck. Alex struggled but only managed glancing blows. Daud blinked in front of her and helped hold down Grim Alex’s squirming limbs. With a final gasp, Grim Alex finally stopped fighting. Emily’s ethereal body twisted back into solid matter.

Emily let out a sigh of relief. Okay, lesson in over confidence learned. Next time wait for reinforcements.

“Who’s this?”

“It was Doctor Hypatia.”

“No shit?”

“Hopefully whatever Delilah did to her can be undone.” Emily got out the restraints she’d brought in her coat pocket. She secured Alexandra then patted her down for bone charms. None surprisingly.

“We should find Vasco before we leave.”

            Vasco insisted on gathering a suitcase of notes and medical supplies so it’s a good fifteen minutes later that they leave the Institute. Megan’s skiff is at the dock.

“What did I miss?” Megan eyes the unconscious woman slung over Daud’s shoulder.

“Long story.” Emily said.

“Take the skiff, Empress. I’ll find my own way back.” Daud dropped her in the boat and then teleported away. Vasco startled so badly he almost fell in the ocean.

Megan wasn’t thrilled about having a ‘psycho killer’ on her ship. Anton, however was fascinated and happily looked through all of Vasco’s research. Grim Alex hadn’t made a reappearance. A confused Hypatia woke up briefly to drink a bunch of health elixir for her head before dozing off again.

            “She should be fine now that she’s away from that poison. And I’m working on a cure, just to be sure.” Vasco explained.

“Let’s not take any chances. Keep her shackled and under lock and key at all times.” Emily said. “Whatever Delilah did to her made her stronger than normal.” She added when it looked like Vasco might complain.

“What do I tell her if she asks?”

“Daud? Megan?” Emily gave them a look to indicate they were the resident experts on reformed killers.

“Kinder to keep her in the dark, safer to have her come to terms with it.” Daud said.

“Safer?” Vasco repeated.

“Witchcraft and drugs aside, that murderous personality came from somewhere. Best way to keep it dormant is the doctor keeping it under wraps.”

“Almost everyone can find the will to kill, it’s a matter of choosing not to.”

Vasco frowned but finally didn’t protest. “Let’s get some rest.” Emily prompted. “Tomorrow we go after Delilah.” The others nodded and dispersed. Emily grabbed Megan before she left. “Make sure Vasco doesn’t get the keys.”

“Don’t worry, I’m locking him in too. That bleeding heart will get us all killed if we let him.”

            Emily wished Megan good night but Daud was lurking outside Emily’s cabin. “So, you and the Outsider.” Emily waited for him to continue. “The black-eyed bastard saves you personally.” Emily raised an eyebrow as if she were dealing with a particularly thick courtier. “What’s he want?”

“Why not ask him yourself?”

“Bastard doesn’t speak to me anymore. He only meddles in what he finds interesting.” Daud stepped away from the wall. “Watch yourself Empress, he’s not human and he’s not your friend.” Emily didn’t much like him speaking ill of her soulmate but she had heard far worse slanders before she turned eight. She could give Daud a piece of her mind later, for now she let him go.

            Emily waited until he walked away then opened the door of her cabin to the chill of The Void. Never one to miss out on dramatic irony, Otto sat on Emily’s bed.

“Daud doesn’t like you.”

“If he didn’t have my mark he wouldn’t have killed an empress.”  The Outsider bluntly explained Daud’s reasoning. “As she is Delilah is immortal. We must plan to return Delilah’s spirit to her body.”

“Can’t I just destroy her statue?” Emily sat across from him.

“If she were a normal lich, I’d say yes.”

“Normal lich?” The idea that there were enough liches to have a baseline.

“However, with her powers from The Void, her phylactery may be indestructible. I’d recommend transferring her spirit to another container and then forcing it upon her.”

“What kind of container?”

“Much like Jessamine’s heart. Unfortunately, they take some time and a lingering spirit to create.” He stood and started pacing. “I haven’t had the resources since learning we need one.”

“Then use my heart.” Jessamine appeared in her spectral form.

“Mother! I told you, Delilah isn’t your fault.”

“Oh my dear, it’s not that.” The outsider moved. “Stay.” She said this sharply despite her tired voice. “I will speak to you as well.” She looked at The Outsider. He uncomfortably returned to his seat. The order of an Empress meant nothing to him but that of a mother-in-law made him fidget.

“I’m so proud of you, Emily. Seeing you grown, I can rest now.”

“I won’t keep you here if that’s what you want, Mother.”

“Don’t despair, my Love.” Jessamine looked to The Outsider, next. “The two of you will take good care of each other.”

“You needn’t pretend. I can’t be what you hoped for as a son-in-law.”

“Young man, you’re giving up your whole world for my daughter. To have someone who loves her that much, is all I could want.”

He looked surprised but recovered quickly enough to return with a quip, “I’m quoting you when Corvo finds out about me.”

Both at the words, and relief from tense high emotions, Emily laughed. “With any luck Father won’t recognize you.”

“I would have wed you myself.” Jessamine managed this last bit then faded back into her heart.

After that conversation, Emily didn’t get as much sleep as she probably should have.

Stilton again proved useful by providing a map of the Duke’s palace. A large part of it was still under construction, because he’d chosen to build it in segments after Emily’s letter on wasting money.

 “I can transport her spirit but I need to be close to the statue and then to her.”

“A bit heavy to carry out of the vault, unfortunately,” Daud said.

“How are you getting into the vault? Do you expect to find the combination lying around or serendipitously hear staff talking about a back door?” Stilton asked.

“I know one of the maids. She says the Duke’s body double is a nice guy. He might be able to help,” Megan offered.

“Can’t know what kind of magic alarms she has set up around the place, that’s what worries me,” Daud said.

“And we have to do all this without waking the sleeping immortal bitch.”

Emily felt The Outsiders eyes but he didn’t appear until the three were alone. He materialized in the empty seat on the skiff. Emily and Daud were used to this but apparently Billie wasn't yet allowed to see him. She and the rest of the world went gray around them as he slipped into reality to speak with them.

“I consider Delilah’s rise to power a personal offense. She has two witches and a few hounds. It’s Jindosh’s inventions you should be concerned with. I’ll endeavor to keep Delilah distracted in the Void. Beyond that, don’t expect any favors.” He disappeared again.

“Him and Delilah, a romance gone bad?” Daud said with a pointed look to Emily. She didn’t react. Megan glanced around in confusion but go the gist of it and said nothing.

“He wants her dead. That’s all that matters.” Emily shrugged as if she could care less.

“Why look the gift horse in the mouth, you mean,” Megan shook off her first meeting with the deity.

It was a bit of a trek from the nearest docking point to the palace. The construction proved to be a boon. The crew couldn’t be arsed to raise the alarm, not even when Megan strode right up and offered them some money to hand over their keys and go home early.

They snuck in the half, finished side of the house. While working together, Megan and Daud fell back on old Whaler hand signals that Emily had no choice but to pick up. She would have preferred to sneak in on her own but couldn’t risk running into Delilah.

Emily spotted a witch too close for comfort to where Daud just transversed. She quickly shot her with a sleep dart. The woman wobbled for a second then fell over the railing.  Whoops, well…it was only one story, she might be fine.

They let themselves into the cellar and poked around until they found the switch for the hidden door.

“No riddle this time.”

“Blast proof, we’re not getting in this way without the key,” Megan and Daud observed. Nobody needed to voice that the key was probably on Delilah.

“The roof of the tower looked like glass, we could try from above,” Emily suggested.

They avoided guards on their way to the finished patio and dome of the vault room. It was easy to Far Reach to the domed roof. Emily turned to look for her comrades then noticed Daud, from his hiding spot holding up a hand that meant, ‘wait’. With a clatter of metal on flagstones, something wobbled around the corner. Some sort of machine with polished wood plates. It rumbled along on wheels, had sword arms and a swiveling light on top. Emily squinted at it. One of Jindosh’s machines The Outsider mentioned? The nearby palace guards seemed unbothered by its presence.

The machine paused, turned its spotlight in a circle, and then continued on its way. It appeared to be doing circles around the dome. There was another black door into the vault on the patio. They transversed to the roof above the door. Daud grabbed Emily’s arm and yanked her back. “Ark pilon.”

“Through the roof?” she asked incredulously, of course she’d seen it she had just never tried to disarm one before. Daud nodded and Emily slunk further away. She let Daud blink down to remove the whale oil tank from the pilon control. Megan didn’t bother climbing to the roof and just checked the door for any weaknesses.

“This one’s locked too.” Delilah would be a complete moron if she isn’t sleeping with the only key.

“How immortal is Delilah?” Megan asked.

Emily had asked the same thing of the Outsider so she had an answer. “You could cut off her head and she’d keep fighting.”

“Shit,” Megan muttered. Emily Far Reached to the glass dome. It was heavily reinforced with metal but still glass.

“Do you think we could break one of these?” Emily tapped one of the larger panes of glass.

“Maybe, will that work for you?” Daud asked.

“I can become rat sized.” She offered Megan a hand up as she had to climb the old-fashioned way.

            Megan pulled a small, pointed hammer from her bag of thieves tools and used it to shatter the glass. The pane cracked but stayed in place. “Wire mesh, you’ll have to blow it.”

“Can use that tank from the ark pylon.”

“But a sound like that will alert the neighborhood.”

“Better remove that machine and any guards we can, before they all come down on our heads.”

“Quickly, we can’t risk Delilah finding us here,” Emily reminded them.

            With three of them it didn’t take too long to knock out all nearby guards and throw them into bushes. The machine took more work. It was armored and they didn’t know where it’s vital parts were. Megan attacked it first and received a cut on the arm for her efforts. Daud knocked it’s head off. Once headless, the machine just sat there and beeped. Emily prompted the others to help her dismantle it for parts. It ran on several tiny whale oil tanks that they could add to their pile of explosives.

They used sticky grenades to secure regular grenades, the mini-tanks, and help prop the whale oil tank in place. Emily retreated to a safe distance and looked for her allies. Daud flashed her the ‘go’ signal before blinking away. Megan finished attaching spring razors to the ground then nodded to Emily.

No need to be stealthy, Emily fired a bullet into the mass of explosives. She waited only for the debris to fall, then ran forward. Melting into shadows had become almost frighteningly easy. She kicked off the stone with a boot and landed a mass of writhing darkness. She slipped through the window as a shadow, thankfully her dark form couldn’t snag on the metal and glass shards. She transformed back mid-air, resulting in a graceless, but uninjured, landing on the polished wood floor.

            Emily hastily got to her feet. She spared the walls a glance only to confirm the absence of further security measures. Her prize was below.

            In the past years Emily became familiar with all manner of magical ‘sounds’. Charms hummed, runes sang, and the thing holding Delilah’s soul wailed like a banshee. She ran down the stairs to stand in front of the profane, screaming, statue.

“This is what Ashworth made to house Delilah’s soul.”

“This is it, you must release me from this dead vessel. Only then will you be able to trap Delilah’s spirit.” Jessamine appeared

“I don’t know how I can do this. You were all I ever wanted.”

“I stayed as long as I could, trying to guide you. The world is better for your influence.”

“Be at peace Mother. I will honor you always.”

“Oh, Emily. I love you, and this is the final thought I carry into nothingness.”  Emily watched her mother fade away. She knew it was coming and still had to hold in her tears.

“So, it’s done. Now Delilah’s soul.”

“What’s this? The heart of my half-sister, only her flesh remains.”

“Don’t worry, Delilah. It won’t be for long.” Emily said. The heart could still sense runes and bone charms in the house, as well as an orange light that must be Delilah. “Yes, take me back and die…”

“Oh, be quiet.” Emily pocketed the heart and Far reached to the second story. There was no lock on the inside of the door, thankfully. Otto arrived for the few seconds it took her to open the heavy door.

“Delilah’s dogs take two shots to destroy. Take off your mask, she may hesitate.”

Emily paused when she saw The Outsider. He couldn’t bleed or bruise but somehow looked rougher than usual. As if he’d died in battle rather than from exsanguination. “What happened to you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he all but scolded her before vanishing.

Emily could already hear shouts from outside. She took his advice and pulled her scarf down. Even if Delilah wouldn’t hesitate to kill her niece, the guards might have second thoughts about attacking an empress. 

Delilah appeared to be on the roof. Emily trusted Daud and Megan to handle the guards and focused on following the heart. She Far reached from lamppost to balconies. She may have startled a servant or two but didn’t pay much mind. As long as she kept moving she should be safe from gunfire.

When the heart showed Delilah in front of her, Emily took a second to chug an Addermire Solution. “Closer, closer!” said Delilah’s spirit. Emily crept along the angular roof until she spotted Delilah on a ledge over-looking the commotion below. She was completely unconcerned about anyone sneaking up behind her. Emily did just that.

A meter away from Delilah her spirit could finally make the jump back to her body. The flash of green light Emily expected from watching the past ritual, the explosive force caught her off guard.

Emily must have blacked out. She blinked to find Delilah standing over her.

“My little niece. Playing at being an empress and a soldier, are we?” She held her sword as if it were an uninteresting toy. Delilah tossed the sword and kicked her cross bow off the edge of the roof. Out of habit, Emily made an ineffectual grab for her weapons. Delilah kicked her in the stomach, with surprisingly little force, enough to knock the wind out of Emily but not crack a rib. Emily didn’t let on and stayed down. “Sooner than anticipated, perhaps. You will join me in making my new world,” Delilah taunted briefly, then decided she had more important things to do.

She turned her back! Underestimating her, Emily understood, she had been underestimated her whole life, but Delilah just turned her back on her. That went beyond arrogant into stupid. Not that Emily would waste the opportunity. Delilah took her visible weapons, so her sword and crossbow, but neglected the pistol in her coat and back-up knife in her boot. Emily drew both and stood. Delilah never turned around.

A bullet to the back of the skull followed by a blade in the neck. She was about to snap her neck just to be safe when Otto appeared. Or not so much that he appeared, more that the Void overlapped with the world as Delilah died.

The scenery looked a bit different than usual. The lighting more yellow, the twisting spires made of bark rather than stone. Emily didn’t pay this much mind. The Outsider grabbed the staggering witch’s throat. She fought him weakly as he pulled a light from her body. The Void changed back to its original state around them. The pleased Outsider let Delilah fall to the ground where she began to disinigrate, far less peacefully than Jessamine.

“Wander The Void forever, Delilah,” Emily said as goodbye. Delilah managed a final disbelieving stare before fading away. The Outsider looked smug, Emily probably did too.

They returned to the mortal plane and The Outsider transversed to a nearby balcony door. Right, the final step of this mission. Emily forced her head back in the game. She replaced her mask and Far reached her weapons back and then to the room he indicated. Emily kicked open the door to find a partially dressed Duke Able in what looked like Delilah’s room.

He gaped at her for two seconds before remembering he had a plan for this. “Don’t kill me! I’m not the duke! I’m his stand in!”

“Give me the key to the Duke’s chambers and you needn’t die. Get your clothes.” He grabbed them and she shot him with a sleep dart. Emily picked up the fat duke. Good thing she had Void enhanced strength because this bastard was heavy.

Rather than be seen by guards, she went back out the window and made her way over to the noble bedroom via Far reach. Dark vision revealed one guard and the body double in the bedchamber. She set the snoring duke down to unlock the balcony door. The guard noticed when she opened the door so she darted him. The body double looked up at the noise.

“Wait!” Emily stood and again removed her mask. “I know you’re the duke’s bodyguard and I need your help.”

“Empress Kaldwin?” He managed to stand and be more regal than the real duke. “What in The Void are you doing here? If the Duke finds you.”

“He’s asleep. I know he’s been plotting a coup with Delilah. Delilah’s dead but I’d rather not deprive Serkonos of it’s leadership.”

“You want me to replace him,” the man considered. “It could work, I’ve spent years perfecting his mannerisms. All I need is a medallion he keeps to prove he is the real duke.”

“That’s it?” Just one trinket to prove he was the real duke? While surrounded by staff who hated him? Luka really was a complete idiot. Emily dragged Able into the room by his ankles. The body double looked shocked for a second but calmed when Able snored.

“I’ll help you but,” the man said sternly, “I won’t be a puppet controlled from Gristol. I will act on behalf of Serkonos.”

“I wouldn’t want a duke who did otherwise,” Emily said honestly. “Get your proof and put him in your bed. Where’s the palace’s loud speaker?” She wanted to make an announcement as soon as possible to avoid more deaths.

“All guards stand down. This is Empress Emily Kaldwin. All guards stand down and report to the main hall by order of the Empress. Captain Almelda to the Duke’s chambers.”

Emily put her empress mask in place. The imposter duke proved to be intelligent and kept up with the story that he (the real duke) invited Delilah to stay, his body double fell in love with her, he realized she was up to no good, called Emily to investigate, and now Emily and her spies (who couldn’t show their faces to the guards and run off the second the fighting stopped) were here to remove Delilah. Delilah was dead and to be cremated while Duke Luka Abele carted off to an insane asylum. So tragic that he’d gone insane and though he was the duke.

Emily collected all of Delilah’s artifacts and runes before they could be destroyed and then could finally get some rest. Hard part over, Empire relatively safe once again. Now she just had to rescue an ancient spirit from the very clutches of The Void.

Chapter Text

Billie hated nobles, she never expected to be working for the empress. Sure, Emily went through some shit as a kid, Billie knew all too well, that would likely make her tougher than the average noble. However, one bad experience did not a warrior make. Pampered princess Emily had no right to be so badass. Outsider’s balls, even without the supernatural powers, Emily could probably take Billie. What the fuck was Corvo teaching her?

            So here Billie was, reunited with Daud and fighting the duke’s men as if she were an angry kid again. The empress carried the bulk of this mission squarely on her shoulders, theft, an assassination, and a switch. Billie and Daud were running interference, as if they were the junior fighters.

Not that this was an easy task, the Grand Guard were well trained. One of the bastards snuck up behind her. She’d placed spring razors there but of course the duke had a ridiculous number of guards. She was overwhelmed.

Damn it, should she have asked Daud for the arkane bond back? Watching her arm fall to the flagstones gave her a strange sense of deja-vu, she chalked that up to shock. Before she could rally herself to continue fighting, the world around her turned gray.

The Outsider, she’d never seen him before but he was unmistakable, appeared in front of her. He looked young, was her first thought. Her second was ‘oh shit, am I dead?’ She stopped having thoughts when he grabbed her stump of an arm. Adrenaline had thus far kept her from feeling pain. Her whole body burned as she grew a twisted replacement for her right arm. She tried to shove The Outsider away but that was like trying to push a mountain. Worse, he suddenly grabbed her face, forcing a sharp stab of pain through her skull.

“What did you do to me?!” He finally allowed her to stumble away.

“I’ve returned what you lost. Now get up and fight.” He vanished into smoke and black crystal. She flexed her hand experimentally and tried and failed to blink her oddly heavy right eye. The world around her slowly began to move. She had a feeling she’d soon be back in the fray. Billie stooped to retrieve her sword from the stone. Right as she straightened up the guards returned to full speed. Only one man seemed to notice her new arm and she stabbed him in the neck before he could offer an opinion.

The Empress finally got on the loud speaker and called off the dogs. Billie retreated to a safe distance and met up with Daud.

“What happened to you? The Outsider did this?” Daud touched her arm but quickly shrugged it off, as if her body modifications were not the strangest shit he’d seen. Once it was clear that Emily would be fine without them, the former Whalers left.

Thankfully, the Dreadful Wale was no longer crowded. The philosophers abandoned ship in favor of Addermire medical labs. Anton found Hypatia’s condition fascinating, The Strange Case of Dr Hypatia and Ms. Alex, he called it.

Empress Emily was busy palling around with the duke’s body double, quite the promotion he got, and smoking out Jindosh. While she did this, Daud asked Billie to help him break into the Abby infested Royal Conservatory. The Overseers had killed too many of Billie’s friends for her to worry about what the empress thought of her slaughtering a few.

Other than a bit of personal satisfaction, Daud also found the documents he wanted. They went back to the Dreadful Wale for him to explain.

POV change

Emily didn’t see Daud and Megan after invading Abele’s mansion. She asked Otto if they were alright.

“They are safe and gossiping about our relationship so I’m going to be petty.” Otto warned. Emily rolled her eyes and let him. “Billie’s soulmate died decades ago. Daud has the name of every child he saved and lost soul he took in, on his ribs. Some in larger print than others. It was part of what made him interesting.”

Jindosh, the last piece in wrapping up the coup. The new duke remained cooperative and already smarter than an asshole who couldn’t even invent a code word with his chief of security.

Jindosh was even smarter, though. He refused to come out of his mansion. The guards sent in to retrieve him either died or defected to his side and never returned. He had power from windmills but would run out of food sooner or later. A siege would win out eventually.

Emily preferred the proactive approach of sneaking in, before Jindosh could craft more deadly machines or find proof the duke was a fake. Otto found the idea amusing.
“It shouldn’t take you long. I’ll walk with you and guide you through the walls. A final adventure before we settle down.”

“I hope we can have adventures after this.”

“Are you going to allow me out of the palace when I’m mortal and fragile?”

“Hm…” She hadn’t thought of that. It was certainly a tempting idea.

Breaking into Jindosh’s mansion proved to be fun. He still left the front door unlocked, guarded only by a few clockwork soldiers. Shooting their heads off or stun mines worked a treat to disable the machines. From there it was easy enough, with Otto gleefully pointing the way, to get inside the walls where he had no security.

Jindosh proved to be a novice in personal combat. Once his house was no longer a threat knocking him unconscious became easy. Emily resisted boastfully throwing the man over a shoulder and personally delivering him to the guards. She just anonymously dropped him near their outpost instead.

She felt comfortable leaving Jindosh in fake Abele’s care. After all, he had every reason to keep Jindosh in solitary confinement. Emily gave the green light to torture the psychopathic inventor to get scientific knowledge or to kill him when he became dangerous.

Coup dead and done, Emily now had personal matters to attend to. If anyone asked she still roomed in Duke Abeles guest room, while in reality she made her way back to the Dreadful Wale.

Emily restocked at a black market on her way. The shopkeeper handed over her purchases and said, “You know, I have a few other heretical things, if you’re interested.”

“Like what?” Emily took the rune and bolts she bought.

“Couple charms, hang on a sec.” The woman closed the window between them and shuffled around in the back. “Alright,” she opened the divider. “I have three charms and someone just unloaded a genuine Sokolov. One of his paintings of the Outsider.”

“How much for the painting?”

“400.”

“I’ll give you 200.”

“300, and that’s generous. I could sell it to a heretic noble for twice that.”

“Tons of nobility in this part of town. 250.”

“285, and I’m not throwing in a frame. take it or leave it.”

Emily unrolled her new portrait on a rooftop.

“Is this the portrait you were talking about?” Emily tried to reign in her amusement.

“Terrible isn’t it?”

“Your face is too thin. It’s like he was trying to make you look menacing.”

“Do me a favor, burn it.”

“What?”

“Or throw it in the ocean. Destruction in a fashion of your choosing.”

“No!” Emily put a protective hand on the painting. “In fact, I’m going to keep it.” With a grin she started to roll it up.

“Why?”

“In case this goes wrong, I’ll have something to remember you by.”

“…I can get you a better one.”

“Oh?” She listened while continuing on her way towards the docks.

“Margret is a far superior painter to Sokolov.” Emily knew the name from his stories. One of his living marked, a troubled woman whose greatest wish was to be a goat farmer. He’d marked her to see if she could be tempted otherwise. For a while she was, but now lived retired in a Morley village with her goats.

“I’m sure you consider me a far superior painter to Sokolov, as well,” Emily joked.

“Not paint but you have some skill with pigments.”

Partially to not bother them, mostly to amuse herself, Emily snuck aboard the Dreadful Wale without alerting former assassins. Nobody watched the upper deck. Emily slipped inside to find Billie and Daud talking in the main hold.

She approached in time to hear the tail end of Billie saying, “do you really think he’s to blame for all that, for what we all did?”

“The Outsider gave me his mark, knowing what I could do with that kind of power. For years I carved up Dunwal from the inside until it fell apart. The world doesn’t need more men like me. Now we have a chance to end it all.”

 “You found a way to do it. To kill The Outsider? How?” Billie sounded excited. Daud calm and convinced.

“He was mortal once, we can kill him.”

For a second Emily saw red. Vision narrowed o the face of the man who she had watched kill her mother. The worst moment of her life playing again. Never mind that Daud was older or where they were. The very thought of a blade though Otto’s heart spurred her into motion. She wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. For twelve years she’d revisited the nightmare of being pulled away, too weak to defend those she cared about. Not this time. She drew her sword and lunged.

Billie reached for her sword too slowly and Daud noticed too late to do anything except turn. Emily cared only that her blade arched straight to the target in his chest. Inhumanly fast, a cold blackness pulled her sword off course just enough to graze Daud’s coat.

Emily’s sword embedded in the wooden board behind Daud with a thunk that echoed through the ship. Nobody moved a muscle. Too shocked, or in Emily’s case too angry. The Outsider stood with a hand holding Emily’s blade. The god and empress held a silent conversation with their eyes while Daud and Billie watched in disbelief.

Emily released a breath and her irrational fury. She stepped back and pulled her sword form the wall. The Outsider disappeared.

“And now the Outsider saves you personally, Daud. Interesting you hate him so much,” she said bitterly. Billie and Daud glanced at each other to confirm what the other was seeing.

“So, you and the Black-Eyed Bastard?” Daud asked again.

“What about us?”

“For one thing you just said ‘us’,” Billie muttered.

“Don’t be flattered by his attention, Empress. The Outsider’s gifts come at a price. You won’t know until it’s already been paid.”

“A price like being a selfish bastard who kills people for money?” Emily tried to keep her calm.

“He’s the one responsible for it all, the black magic, the cults. I’ve been to the Void, Empress, all that bitterness, hatred and fear- and the Outsider gets to choose who wields his black magic and who cowers in the dark. That’s something nobody should decide.”

Emily still had her sword out, she’d forgotten about it. She didn’t plan to harm Daud but stepped forward and growled in his face. “Listen Knife of Dunwall, The Outsider didn’t kill my mother, you did. It was your hand that stabbed her and left her dying in my father’s arms. You chose to drag me away. It’s not his face I see in my nightmares. The Outsider didn’t ask you, didn’t force you to do a damn thing. He’s not to blame for your actions anymore than the man who forged your sword.”

Billie watched silently. That was the kind of speech you just didn’t interrupt. Now she decided to speak up. Emily was still spitting mad and Daud cowed, if he spoke it would probably only make things worse. “No offense meant your highness, but what exactly is The Outsider’s angle in this?” she said.

Emily finally gave her a good look and noticed her lack of arm and messed up face. “Are you alright? the Outsider told me you were fine,” she frowned.

“She’s better than ‘fine’, I made those artifacts myself.” The Outsider welcomed himself to their conversation. He sat on the work table as if his presence were completely ordinary. “You’re welcome.” He said smugly at Billie and answered, “I want the same as anyone, to be free and to live. I didn’t choose this cold prison. And yes, Daud, The Void is my cage, gilded or not. I’m trapped here, its emissary and its slave.”

”You don’t owe him an explanation, ” Emily finally stepped away from Daud.

“Perhaps not but it grows very old very quickly, being hated by the few I speak to.” 

Daud glared at the god “You sound different.”

Billie tried to keep this on track. “You say you want to be free? Of what, The Void? Is that possible?”

“Theoretically,” he said but Emily cut him off.

“Are you sure you want them involved?”

“I gave Billie that arm and eye so she could enter the rift.” He teleported to stand close to Emily. “I’d rather you not fight Envisioned alone.”

Billie and Daud glanced at each other again. Were they getting the same vibes from these two? “How about you, Empress? What’s your part in this?” Daud felt enough time had passed to speak up.

Emily frowned, considering, for a moment, then ordered, “take off your shirt.” Daud blinked at her. “I want to see if my name is with the others.” Ah, Billie got it now. Spying on Daud changing to read his names was a game the younger Whalers used to play.

Daud sighed but disrobed as asked. “Really? Gossiping like old maids?” He said this to The Outsider who, per usual, didn’t respond.

Daud removed his undershirt to reveal over a hundred names, irregularly placed around his torso. Different handwritings, pen thickness, shades of ‘ink’, size, and spacing. Of course, he had scars as well, healed slashes and bullet wounds obscured some names but none had been purposefully removed. Emily spotted a particularly large ‘Billie’ near his sternum. Daud pointed to a small mark between two larger names on his left side. Emily had to squint to make out ‘Emily’. “There, happy now?”

“Let me make this clear, Daud, Billie.” Emily pulled off her left and then right glove. “Whether you have my name or not. Whether or not you’d hesitate to fight me.” She unwrapped the cloth she kept around her right palm. “Hurt someone I care about again and I’ll kill you both.” She held her hands to show them the back of both and the matching marks there.

“Damn, that must have been hard to explain.” This shit just kept getting stranger as far as Billie was concerned.

“And you trust him when he says he has yours? How do you know that’s a real mark?” Daud was equal parts unconvinced and unnerved.

“More than that, do you want him?” Billie asked with some amusement. The Empress gets the Outsider’s crooked cock. The universe was playing jokes on them all now.

“Yes. I suppose I’m a deviant. It comes from not having a mother.” Emily crossed her arms as if she hadn’t just verbally slapped Daud and Billie. Daud felt torn between glaring and staring at the wall, at least until he noticed The Outsider held a fist over his lips to hide a smirk, then he settled on glaring. If there was a smug way to disappear into The Void, the Outsider managed it.

“I guess we’re working for you again, Empress,” Billie said.

“I’ve brought you into my confidence. You are two of the three people living to have seen this,” she indicated her hand. She spoke diplomatically, layering on the guilt. While her expression said more of, ‘damn right you work for me.’ “Now that that’s cleared up.” She pulled up a chair. “Please, continue your briefing.”

Daud and Billie shared a final, ‘is this bitch for real’ look. “I was saying, I’ve tracked down a dozen crazy cults, but there is more to the Eyeless. They know things they shouldn’t.”

“They’re nothing special.” The Outsider reappeared as if he hadn’t left. “Thugs and cutthroats brought in to be muscle for the real cult.”

“Yet you didn’t stop them.” Daud pointed out. Emily knew this was because he had been busy with Delilah. The Outsider however, transversed to hover over Daud.

“Oh, so you recommend I use my power to force my will on the world? Perhaps I should visit every human in their dreams, plague them with nightmares for what I perceive to be crimes. Those crazed fanatics disgust me as much you. But I refuse to stoop so low as the ones who killed me. The choices you made are your own, Daud Knife of Dunwall. Blaming me for your failures is nothing but your latest attempt to ease your guilt.”

He teleported back over to sit by Emily. “Besides, even if I wanted to, it would do little good to destroy The Envisioned. When one cult dies, another swiftly grows. What they are worshiping is real, after all. Not that I want to be rid of them. They have their uses. Better to have guardians of the Ritual Hold and Eye that respect their power.”

“The Ritual Hold,” Emily had listened to him talk about this before. “We could go there now.” She could recognize that he felt eager, thousands of years of torment soon to be over. “But if the Eyeless are as dangerous as you say…” She didn’t want to deny him but she had duties.

The Outsider agreed, if reluctantly. “Two of Delilah’s witches escaped to their hide out. It would be best to be rid of them before the Envisioned fall and they scatter.”

“We’ll follow Daud’s lead then.” She paused to make sure he didn’t correct her and say that lead was useless. “If you can, see how much sway you have with this cult.” He nodded briefly then disintegrated into mist.

“Well, fuck me sideways. Emily Kaldwin just gave orders to The Outsider.”  Former assassins watched this exchange with rapt interest.

Emily gave them a look that said she didn’t find them at all amusing. “Are we doing this now, or should I go back to the duke’s palace?” Billie wasn’t even going to try to explain how weird that sentence was.

The Outsider wasn’t wrong about The Eyeless. They had some real knowledge on how The Void worked but were mostly low-level muscle. It took a few days to root them out. In another life, Emily would have made a damn fine Whaler. Billie could recognize when she skillfully knocked someone out, she did so gleefully. They mostly went non-lethal, because Empress Emily reappeared after every mission Emily Attano completed to call in the guard to arrest anyone the left behind. On second thought, probably a good thing Emily was never a Whaler, Billie would have hated having her as competition.

A dozen Sanguine Infusion junkies and cultist bankers were arrested and confident they would soon be released. They were in for a nasty surprise.

Emily slept at the palace one day and on the Dreadful Wale the next. She imposed on Billie’s hospitality because she was too tired to make the return trip, and ‘so I know you aren’t plotting against my soulmate’.

“What exactly is your plan, Empress? Rescue an ancient damoiseau in distress and present him to the nobility as your Royal Husband?”

“Yes.” She answered in such a deadpan tone of voice that Billie had to hold in a smile.

With the Eyeless gone they could travel to the Ritual Hold. Reaching Shindaerey Peak lasted a day by train. Emily took the time to hide and talk to The Outsider without the others listening in.

“Shindaerey Peak, it’s called now. One of the few physical entrances to The Void. The final resting place of my predecessor. Where I died and was born anew.”

“And will be born again if I have anything to say about it.” She took his hand. “We’re leaving here together.”

“Not without a fight. I’ve been looking into their minds. They are divided on the extend of my authority. They worship The Void, not me. Some are willing to let me go. If I’m the Void’s voice than my will must be its.

“However, most will see me killed for my disrespect, I was granted the most glorious honor by their ancestor cult. I ought to be thankful.” He said this bitterly and Emily squeezed his fingers.  “Maintaining the peace and will of The Void is their mission, they hardly care human life.”

“Get your shit together, we’re here.” Billie banged on her cabin door.

“Those who will obey me are about to receive a vision, with orders to assist you. They’ll be flattered.” Otto said then left.

Emily exited the train at a nearly abandoned station. Daud payed the engineer for taking them this far. From the tacks they hiked along an abandoned section of rail that traveled towards the settlement. It was a day’s walk to make it to the abandoned town. They didn’t speak during the hike. They only exchanged words to set up camp in a dilapidated building. Billie got a small fire going while Emily unpacked their beds and Daud prepared food.

“This is where The Outsider is,” Daud looked up at the mountain. “This is not what I was planning to do when I found him.”

Again with perfect timing, The Outsider arrived. “Tomorrow we’ll meet face to face.” Serkonos heat abated slightly with the black mist of the Void. “The cultists who will obey me are awaiting your arrival. They’ll let you into the compound.”

“And the others?”

“Any you leave alive will immediately start searching for a new sacrifice. Kill them, they’re resigned to death anyway.” He vanished.

“Will there be an Outsider after him?” Billie asked to make conversation.

“He believes so.” Emily answered. “He’s only the latest in a long line of emissaries.”

“How did the ones before him escape?”

“Not all of them did. Some fell victim to angry men like you, Daud.”

“You mean not all of them had soulmates coming for them.”

“He doesn’t know where the names come from either,” Emily answered the unspoken implication that their marks were forged.

Billie and Daud didn’t say anything in response. But their thoughts were along the lines of, how would you know, you would trust him no matter what he said. They didn’t risk voicing any thoughts of protecting the stupid Empress out loud, not even when Emily slept.

The next morning dawned cool in the mountain air. They packed their bags but left all the camping gear in the house.

The three of them approached the compound and almost immediately came across half a dozen men and women wearing white outfits, waiting for them beside the path. One spotted them and quickly prompted the others into bowing.

“Oh boy, too weird for me.” Billie grumbled and held back. Emily, in her element, strode forward to greet them.

“Watchers of the Void, you know why we are here.”

“The Outsider has the name of one living. The Void demands he go free and a new one be chosen.”

“Not by you. You will not be the ones to choose his replacement.” Emily said.

“Of course. We are unworthy of such an honor. We are the guardians of the Eye of The Dead God and The Ritual Hold. The Void will call when a new god must be found.”

One man handed Emily a map, another offered a key ring.

“And the rest of your order?” Daud asked.

“They are blind to the will of The Void. They are unworthy of becoming Envisioned.” The man bowed to Emily again. “We await your return here. The others suspect nothing to our knowledge.”

“Good work. We will be back soon.” Emily gave them formal thanks before continuing on.

Daud and Billie watched the cultists only to make sure they wouldn’t attack. “Who knew the Overseers and the Void worshipers would have so much in common?” Billie mused once they were out of earshot.

“I guess the life of a zealot will do that to you, no matter the religion.”

Emily tried not to vibrate with excitement. She was going to The Void, about to see things few ever did. Change the world and most importantly, rescue her man. She also tried not to get her mental wires crossed over the adrenaline of fighting. She was actually killing people this time, didn’t want to feel happy about that. Compartmentalize, stab a few cultists now be excited to meet Otto properly, later.

As always, Billie and Daud were calm and professional. They only stole a few glances at the strange books and materials scattered around the underground hide out. Emily didn’t bother. Whatever cult set up here next was going to be under her thumb. She would have access to this knowledge whenever she pleased. She did spare a look at the items shifting in and out of reality. More and more of The Void overlapped with the living world.

The other two noticed Billie closing her left eye to squint at things with her Void eye. They didn’t comment.

“That’s it. The Eye of The Dead God.” Billie ran ahead of them, suddenly showing more enthusiasm than Emily. The other two hurried to join her before the Eye of The Dead God. “It’s been a part of me since this all started. Its cold, dead, but it still sees.” She reached out to touch it.

“Billie!” Daud grabbed her arm to try to stop her. Too late, Billie touched the Eye with her Void arm and energy crashed over them. Emily allowed herself to be washed away with the current. She regained her barring, a little dizzy but no worse for wear. Billie and Daud had a rougher ride, judging by how they gasped for breath. Daud in particular leaned over to rest on his knees.

“I see everything,” Billie was in wonder for a second before noticing her mentor’s distress. “Daud?”

“I’ll live. This old body isn’t what it used to be.”

“We can go on without you, if you want to turn back,” Emily offered.

“I’ve come this far, I’ll see it through.” He gathered himself.

“It feels like looking under the waves and into the sea,” Billie muttered. “How long has The Outsider been drowning here?”

“Time doesn’t flow the same.” Emily answered while sliding down the stone hill towards the portal to the ritual hold. “So longer than we can possibly fathom.” Daud eyed them both, uneasy with how they were pitying the God.

“Wait. What’s that thing?” Billie stopped on a roof to look down at a lumbering creature.

“An envisioned,” The Outsider appeared to them again. “A human merged with The Void and the living stone of this place.” It started to walk towards them. The Outsider transversed to stand in front of the creature. He waved it away with a flick of his hand and it obediently changed course. “They observe me now. No promises on the return trip.” He teleported away to divert another Envisioned.

Emily pressed onward, hardly caring if the others followed. She hid behind a wall as the Envisioned guarding the stone stairs to the Ritual Hold left his post, per orders.

“What is that wailing? Do you hear it? This whole time, it’s getting louder.” Billie asked just to confirm she wasn’t going insane.

“I think it’s how our small human minds perceive the energy around us. What do you think, Empress?” Daud tried to engage her in conversation to slow her down. She paid his attempts no mind. And bounded up the stairs without them. “Wait!”

“Emily!” They hurried after her but The Outsider appeared a final time. He held Daud back at the foot of the obsidian stairs.

“No further, Daud, or you’ll end up like them.” He nodded to the statues of cultists at their feet. Billie glanced back at them but decided Daud was safe enough and ran after Emily.

“And your Empress?”

“She’s far stronger than you are,” he smirked before disappearing. Daud frowned but waited.

Emily paused upon entering the Ritual Hold. It looked like the rest of The Void except, was that actual water? Did she dare try to swim it or stay on the platforms. Billie arrived behind her.

“He’s here, I can feel it.”

“You won’t hurt him.” She turned her attention from The Void for the first time in several minutes.

“I won’t.” Billie said what Emily needed to hear.

Emily Far reached to the next slab and Billie followed. Emily paused to examine one of the lights flickering at eye height. She listened to it whisper, almost flinching when Billie appeared next to her.

“His marked,” Emily answered Billie’s unspoken question. “What’s left of the souls he trusted enough to let this close.” Emily shook her head to dislodge the distractions of magic, ghosts, and echoing whale songs. She was here for a reason and she wouldn’t lose sight of that.

They climbed to the island at the center of the shallow lake. A path, or perhaps a river bed led them higher. Emily listened to the disjointed voices of the dead but kept her eyes on the human form buried in black. Billie scanned the area for threats because Emily clearly wasn’t going to. The Empress of the Isles didn’t run now. She walked slowly towards the boy trapped by a crooked alter. His eyes were black but frozen and unseeing. She touched his face smeared with black sediment and wondered if he could feel it.

“This is what The Abbey tried to hide? This is what the Eyeless wanted to know about? We’re at the center of The Void itself, and there’s not even any horrors to fight.” Billie gestured around them with an arm. Emily ignored her. Billie watched Emily caress the left side of his face where his skin showed through what bound him.

“So cold,” she murmured.

 “He almost looks like he’s in pain.”

“Almost?” Emily sounded close to tears or disbelieving laughter.

“You were right all along. He doesn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this.” Billie let go the last of her plans to knock Emily out and drag her from The Void.

Emily spared her the briefest of glances, she didn’t need her approval. She held The Outsider best she could and made him a promise. “You had everything taken from you. I’ll do my best to see what you lost returned. Starting with this,” Emily leaned in. She whispered the name her mother had read from the back of her hand.

Nothing happened. Emily stepped back, waiting and hoping. A second of stillness then the Void went dark around them. The Outsider took his first gasping breath in almost four thousand years. The black crust flacked off him as he breathed again. Emily caught him when he fell forward.

He moved and breathed awkwardly. Testing out his body as if disoriented from a nightmarish sleep.

“I can taste blood in my mouth. I can hear your voice in my ear. Emily,” He blinked heavily and looked up at her. Coal covered the back of his eyelids. To Emily’s surprise the irises that met hers were light green, almost grey.

“I’m here. I’m right here with you.” Emily cupped his cheek and this time felt a weak warmth.

He held her hand there, closed his eyes again and leaned into her. “These eyes were closed for centuries and I saw everything. I walked through the minds of generations.” He looked past her into the blackness. “And now, the first thing I see…”

“You’re free.” Emily pulled him to her. She didn’t care for him looking out into the nothingness. “My love, you’re free. We’re leaving together.”

His legs were giving out but Emily was unwilling to set him down. Instead, she hoisted him into her arms. Billie raised an eyebrow at the princess carry but he didn’t mind. “Rest now, I have you.” Emily guessed what he needed. He wrapped his arms around her neck and buried his face in her shoulder, seeking refuge in comforting darkness rather than staring at the Void.

Billie walked ahead of Emily without being asked. Nothing existed around them, yet somehow their feet found solid stone. After a shorter distance than they traveled to enter, they left the Ritual Hold.

The world outside looked the same. Black stairs and swirling lights. Only slightly different song filled their ears. Daud watched them approach.

“So, this is what the God of The Void is reduced to?”

“Hm?” he looked away from Emily. “Hello to you to, Old Friend.”

“Let’s go, before the Envisioned return.” Billie reminded them.

“You need to climb. Set me down, I can walk,” he said to Emily. She did as he asked, only offering an arm when he looked unsteady. No envisioned accosted them on the way out. They didn’t bother asking why or how.

With the eyes of a street kid, The Outsider spied, snatched, and ate an apple on their way out of the cave. “Are you hungry?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know what I am.”

Daud looked like he wanted to comment but ultimately decided against it.

When they reached the cave mouth, he suddenly started walking faster. He all but jogged outside into the light. He looked directly up at the sun and had to shield his eyes. For ten seconds he just stood there, soaking in the brilliant warmth he had been so long without. He only turned back to find Emily and smile. Unconsciously smile. His first one in millennia.

Emily grinned and joined him in the light.

“Young love.”

“Or whatever he is.” The pseudo father and daughter hung back to exchange snarky comments.

“If they kiss it’s a fairy tail.”

“They gossip more than palace maids,” Emily was on the verge of laughing with good humor.

“Yes, I hear them. They seem to forget I know all their secrets.”

Emily smiled down at him. Without the mist and power of the Void enhancing his presence, he looked young and small. With pretty, piercing eyes.

“May I kiss you?”

He glanced at their audience, decided that yes, he really was that petty and stood on toes to reach her. Neither of them had done this before so it wasn’t the best kiss ever. Billie and Daud still rolled their eyes and looked away. He jerked away to cough.

“You alright?”

“Forgot I needed to breathe.”

Emily held in a laugh and hugged him. She had noticed earlier how light he was and now subtly tried to feel how much of his bulk came from his clothes. He allowed her to measure his ribs.

“Outsider,” Daud became bored with waiting and stepped towards them.

“Don’t!” he interrupted and jerked away from Emily to glare at Daud. “My name is Ishkur Dumuzid.” He said with deadly seriousness.

“Dumuzid, then.” Billie continued. “If you two are done, we have your fanclub to meet.”

She was right so they began walking again. “She’s jealous,” Ishkur whispered to Emily. As they walked out of the complex holding hands. He released her hand when the cultists came into view.

Billie and Daud hung back in defensive positions while Emily and Ishkur jostled each other, each attempting to stand protectively in front of the other. Emily won that silent scuffle as the Eyeless noticed them.

They bowed to the former Outsider but couldn’t hold their reverence long, soon firing off questions about The Void and Ritual Hold like over-eager school children. Billie and Daud were willing to let him suffer these questions, Emily was not.

“Back to your post!” She commanded in her Empress voice, hand on sword as encouragement. Most reluctantly stepped back, one man did not.

“Sire…”

“Ishkur Dumuzid,” Ishkur said. The man began to mutter to himself and write in his notebook. Emily led Ishkur away from the cultists. The Eyeless watched the four of them leave but didn’t follow.

“Obsessed with the language of the dead. His price for cooperation.” Ishkur explained to his companions once they were out of earshot.

“If he can decipher it, all the better.”

“It’s not a real language as we understand. The Void is incomprehensible.” He rubbed at his temple. “Already my memories of it fade. I suspect trying to recall them would drive me mad.”

“Then don’t.” Emily said simply.

They collected their camping gear from the abandoned house then began the hike downhill.

“What’s going to happen with the Eyeless?” Daud wasn’t exactly comfortable leaving them there.

“They’ll continue to contact and pull in other heretics. The mad, the discontent, the obsessed. Select few will hear the call of either the Eyeless or The Void itself. Abandon their worldly possessions and come here to die.” He shrugged as this were of no consequence. At his companions’ silence he nodded “an ongoing cycle from the beginning of life.”

“Are there other places like this? Where The Void enters our world?” Against her better judgement, Billie found this fascinating.

“Ones of this magnitude, six. Two on Pandyssia, one under Pandyssia, and three in the ocean.”

“There are people on Pandyssia then?” Daud asked this question.

“Oh yes, of much greater genetic diversity than here. The human species evolved on Pandyssia.” He took his eyes off his carefully walking feet to look at Daud. “But don’t worry, they are at least a generation from creating ships capable of reliably navigating the ocean. More before making any sort of progress through the jungle on our closest boarder.”

“I assume you have marked there.” Billie said, mostly to amuse herself during the walk.

“Two living last I checked.”

This made Daud curious. He blinked several yards ahead as a test.

“I chose whom The Void touched, but I was never a source of power.” Ishkur explained without being asked.

“The runes?”

“The Void will change in ways I can’t predict.” He glanced to Billie. “Your talents, however should remain unaffected. I designed them that way.” While looking at Billie he stumbled over his feet. They’d been walking for an hour and now he dropped the pretense of not being tired, taking a break to lean against a tree.

“Too much floating?” Daud couldn’t resist the jab.

“Months in a cage,” Ishkur bit back. Emily glared daggers at Daud and tossed him her pack.

“Here.” She crouched in front of the boy for him to climb on her back. No care for his dignity, Ishkur accepted. Emily carried him for almost another hour before he asked to be put down.

Someone innocently started humming a tune as they walked. Daud, who still wasn’t ready to accept The Outsider, changed it to ‘The Month of Darkness’. Emily didn’t notice for a couple stanzas and then pointedly ignored Daud.

“How accurate is that song?” Billie didn’t mind asking.

“I allowed it to persist for three millennia. Accurate enough. I particularly like hearing people call my father a monster. The original version was harsher but singers kept censoring it.”

“That means you’re fifteen?” Daud raised an eyebrow.

“I was captured at fifteen. I spent time some time a slave, months, years. You know it’s impossible to judge time in such a situation.” This successfully quieted Daud.

“You look closer to sixteen or seventeen, to me.” Billie said, not unkindly.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“We’ll ask Vasco.” Emily had already thought of this.

They came across a mountain stream. Without asking the others, Ishkur sat on the bank and dipped his hands in.

“Don’t drink that water,” Billie warned.

“I’m not stupid.” He splashed water on his face and tried to scrub the coal off his eyes. Emily sat to assist. “We’re camping here.” she ordered.

The assassins made camp while Ishkur washed best he could. Emily produced a rag to wipe his eyes. He undid his jacket buckles. He wore nothing underneath except painted occult drawings and words in a forgotten language. Some of the pigments refused to leave his skin but scrubbing himself red managed to smear the designs to something unrecognizable.

Emily proved to be surprisingly pragmatic, she’d packed an extra set of clothes for Ishkur. He exchanged the new clothes for his boots then bade her leave him alone to finish bathing.

Ishkur returned from the stream carrying his old clothes. He swam in the outfit Emily brought. He let the clothes hang off him, showing his mortal scars and remains of occult drawings. Only the left sleeve was tied carefully around his wrist, which didn’t go unnoticed by Daud and BIllie. He ate dinner ravenously but refused seconds on fear his stomach was too small. After that, Ishkur focused all his attention on carefully burning his coat. He poked it with a long stick in the camp fire.

“Is that what you have been wearing for thousands of years?” Billie asked.

“Same garment but I was able to modify it slightly over time. I never looked too strange as fashions changed.”

“I didn’t notice the scar on your neck before.” Daud eyed the pale line made visible by the too large collar.

“I didn’t let it show.” Ishkur turned the coat over so it didn’t smother the flames.

“When’d you get your soul marks?” Ishkur glared at Daud for asking. “You’ve seen mine.”

“I’ve seen a lot. Shall I list?”

“Here. I don’t mind.” Emily said with an easiness that sent off warning bells. She pulled down her coat and shirt to display the burn on her shoulder and mock-cheerfully told them an abridged version of the tale. This successfully made Daud shut up. Billie also took the hint and spent the rest of the night in silence. Not even any comment when Emily and Ishkur shared a bed roll.

They hiked back to the train tracks the next day.

“Didn’t think you were coming back,” the engineer greeted them. Daud paid him to shut up.

Shortly into the train ride, Ishkur became ill. At first they thought it might be motion sickness. When he started shivering and sweating it became obvious that the movement may not be helping but it wasn’t the cause.

Emily packed for this as well and her bag contained enough health elixir and other remedies to last the trip.

“You knew this might happen?”

“How much do you know about diseases, Daud?” Emily proved to be only a slightly more awkward nursemaid than assassin. “Pathogens mutate over time.” She unthinkingly showed off her education, again.

“I attempted to expose myself over the past few years. Of course, I was mostly dead at the time…”

“Escape the Void only to die of the flu,” Billie observed.

“Hopefully not.” Emily said testily. “I alerted Vasco to prepare for a new patient before we left.”

“Even if he somehow recognizes me, he won’t say anything. Not in his nature.”

“About that. What’s Corvo think of all this?”

“He doesn’t know and won’t until well after we’re married. If I have my way,” Emily said.

“That’s probably wise.”

Chapter Text

Emily made sure the guard knew where she was but also not to spread that information. Ishkur remained very ill. She wasn’t leaving his side until he could keep a full meal down.

The top floor of Addermire had individual apartments, originally designed for visiting nobles or out-patients. Daud and Billie spent nights in these as well. Billie was reconsidering what to do with her life. She was free to go whenever she wanted, though. Unlike Daud, whom Emily made clear was Royal Protector in Corvo’s absence.

“Do you need anything?” Emily sat with Ishkur.

“Distract me. Four thousand years of sensory overload. Feeling everything yet nothing. And now I can only feel my body and I’m trying not to dwell.”

“With Zhukov dead, what shall we do with the dagger?” She ran a hand over his hair, both to show affection and check the fever wasn’t back.

“I don’t trust vaults. And I would rather not have it close. Sink it in the ocean or give it to Billie.”

“You trust Billie.”

“Revenge, greed, lust, patricide, name a sin and she committed it. She has sunk as low as humanity possibly can and chosen to rise from it. After deeming me worth saving, she won‘t fall again.”

“The knife that killed you. And your predecessor left that eye. Was the eye the boulder he was crushed to death with?”

“Possibly. Or perhaps the stone he died lying upon.”

“Do you know what the person before him left behind?”

“I have spent millennia pondering that question, and I still have no definitive answer. My theories include the very ground that the mountain is made of. Perhaps my predecessor found a way to destroy it. Or one of the items of power at the bottom of the sea belonged to them. That is where several of the former gods relics reside. Before humans evolved The Void had a whale for a guardian. Perhaps the next one will be as well.”

“A whale Outsider? What would the abbey going to think of that?” She turned serious again.  “There will be a new god, though?”

“The Void wanted me. It will hunger again. When and whom is beyond my sight.” He made a face she’d come to recognize over the last few days. Emily held the bucket for him while Ishkur vomited the porridge he’d eaten. “I’m dying.”

Emily rolled her eyes and poured him another glass of water. “Don’t be so dramatic. You’re going to be fine.”

“Vasco is a coward who would never give his empress bad news.” He said jokingly but then his expression shifted. He took Emily’s hand and tapped out a code with one finger.

“If you let Sokolov look at you…” She continued bantering while paying attention to the silent communication.

POV change

Corvo let himself into the hospital. He had been in Serkonos since dawn and only now learned where Emily was. First, he tried the Duke’s palace. Duke Able seemed a far more agreeable and intelligent than Corvo had been led to believe. He didn’t have time to wonder at that. Emily left the Dukes company over a week ago.

            Corvo checked with Sokolov next. The old man proved to be thoroughly distracted by his study of mind-altering substances. Corvo had to resort to threats to get his attention. Sokolov hadn’t seen her in a while. She was probably still with Megan and Daud. Oh yes, she guilt tripped Daud into helping, quite masterfully too. Anyway, they might still be on Megan’s ship.

            That lead took most of the morning, only for the Duke to send Corvo a message. He made a few inquiries with the guard and it turned out Emily was at the Addermire Institute.

            Thinking strong words about Sokolov's carelessness, Corvo returned to the institute. Eavesdropping on the guards quickly confirmed that nobody was allowed near the roof apartments except by order of the Empress or her private security.

            Getting to the roof wasn’t difficult for Corvo. No trouble either to follow the sound of retching to an occupied room.

“If you would let Sokolov look at you.” Emily’s voice confirmed he’s in the right place. He used Dark Vision to look through the wall. Two people sitting on a bed.

A third person appeared behind him in the hall. He turned to defend himself but was faced with a perfect replica of Emily. It wasn’t Emily. Corvo could recognize his daughter anywhere and this thing wasn’t her. It had Emily’s face though and he hesitated long enough for it to attack, forcing him into the open doorway.

 “Father!” Emily stood with her left hand extended to control the puppet. The Outsider sat on the hospital bed. The most surreal fact (not Emily’s power’s he expected that), The Outsider held a dagger in one hand. The god of The Void wielding a perfectly normal weapon and looking ready to defend himself with it. “Corvo! What are you doing here?” Emily banished her doppelganger with a wave.

Billie came to check on the noise, realized it was family time and hastily left.

“What is he doing here?” Corvo stood and glared at The Outsider. Whom visibly decided Corvo wasn’t a threat by sliding the knife back under his pillow. Emily frowned and bodily positioned herself between him and the bedridden god.

“He’s sick in a hospital. You’re supposed to be minding Dunwall.” She tried to get his attention but Corvo glared past her to The Outsider.

“Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental,” he said unhelpfully.

“Betty told me,” Corvo said to end the crap.

Emily swore under her breath. Corvo didn’t pay her much mind, continuing to glare at the bed-ridden young man. He remained unfazed by Corvos eye daggers. “You had time to vanquish Zhukov and gossip?”

“Ishkur, don’t.” Emily cut off his remarks. “And Father, I’m twenty-three years old. I can make my own decisions.”

“Can we talk about this elsewhere?” Corvo glared at The Outsider.

“No.” She sat back down on the bed. “I don’t have secrets from either of you.

“This is who you’ve been sneaking out to see.”

“Only at first. Most of my excursions were, as I said, getting to know Dunwall. Ishkur could visit me in the Tower.”

This did nothing to calm himCorvo

“Nothing untoward happened.” Ishkur disobeyed Emily to say.

“Again, I’m twenty-three,” Emily rolled her eyes in a way that said she thought they were both being ridiculous.

"And how old is he?"

“Sixteen according to Dr. Vasco.”

Corvo gave her an unamused look. “When was he born?”

“By the modern calendar, winter some time between 3052 and 3054 bb (before burning). That is a little over 4900 years ago.” Ishkur answered easily.

“And you were six years older than Mother. Any other objections?” said Emily.

“His magic?”

“No more than anyone else.”

“Does he have your name?”

“Yes, and its real.”

“How do you know he hasn’t planned this from the beginning?”

“Why would he fake being my soulmate? If he wanted out of The Void he could have just asked. And Royal Consort is hardly an enviable position.” Ishkur made some noise that sounded like amused agreement. Corvo tried not to get hung up on the reference to marriage.

“Escape The Void? What is he now?”

“Human.”

Crovo tried a little longer but Emily was in no mood to talk rationally. There was nothing he could say she hadn’t already thought of. Corvo retreated, temporarily, outside. He leaned against the door frame close enough to hear Emily scream but also feel a much-needed breeze clear his head. In his habitual scan for danger, he spotted Daud sitting on the ledge overlooking street level. He clocked Corvo’s arrival then went back to smoking.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Corvo said. He was both desperate for something else to think about and mildly surprised he’d missed such a fact when going through the man’s hideout years ago.

“I didn’t back then, not when you knew me. I had to set a good example,” he said this with a tone of voice that indicated he had learned the hard way if he smoked the younger Whalers would too. “After retirement I figured if I die of black lung, I’ve won and fate lost. Id offer you one but I assume you quit on the way to Gristol.” He didn’t have to ask if Crovo ever smoked. Pipe weed grew as a literal weed in Serkonos soil and the plantation owners pulled every trick in the book to get people hooked.

“When I fought the circuit,” he corrected. A petty victory to correct Daud but Corvo was in that mood. Couldn’t be the best sword fighter in a generation by indulging in unhealthy habits.

“Speaking of which,” that sagway only made sense if Daud read his mind. “Your kid is fucking terrifying.”

“I raised her to be.”

“You raised her to run full tilt into a portal that turns people into stone, and come out princess carrying The Outsider, did you?” At Corvos look he added, “I don’t exaggerate.”

“Why are you even here?”

“In Serkonos, checking in with a few old friends. Here, the Empress made it very clear I work for her, now.”

Emily slept in the same room as The Outsider. Not the same bed, but close enough Corvo couldn’t confront him. For the next two days, Corvo couldn’t catch The Outsider alone. Emily wouldn’t let him. If Emily had somewhere to be, Billie guarded the god and while she fidgeted guiltily under Corvo’s glare she didn’t budge.

While recovering, Ishkur had practiced his remaining language skills. He could read, write, and speak in every language known and unknown. The first thing he wrote was his name in modern letters. The name on Emily’s hand changed from the language of the dead when he did so. This was either because Iskhur never learned to read or write in his native tongue when alive or because The World considered his escape to be a second birth. Regardless, it proved helpful.

Ishkur could eventually eat and drink normally. Vasco declared him out of the woods, and once vaccinated for everything under the sun, ready to travel. Emily wrapped up things with the Duke. Which only left two assassins to take care of. Billie snuck away to avoid awkward goodbyes, although Ishkur could sense that she didn’t go far. Daud wasn’t allowed such a luxury.

Emily cornered him. “I won’t stop you from leaving, Daud.”

“But…”

“Come with us to Dunwall. Pledge me your service and train my guards for the rest of your natural life and then I might forgive you.” Corvo nodded his approval from the corner.

“You’ve forgiven Billie.”

“Billie has spent the past decade becoming a better person and making up for her mistakes. You have been hiding and blaming others for your failings.”

“So, this is about me not liking your boytoy.”

“No, this is about you bowing to a portrait of my mother on the next anniversary of her death. Billie has already promised to attend.”

Daud shifted uncomfortably, muttered that he would think about it, and then fled with as much dignity as he could muster.

The duke provided a vessel for the royal party. With sailors, staff, and a few other important persons on board, Ishkur and Emily couldn’t boldly share a sleeping arrangements as they had been.

Emily ordered Corvo give the double bladed dagger to Billie for safe keeping. Considering the woman’s collection of Void, artifacts Corvo saw the logic behind such a choice. However, he had hoped to keep it for his confrontation with The Outsider. He would just have to hope he was mortal enough to die on a regular blade.

Once the night crew ran the ship, Corvo snuck into The Outsider’s borrowed cabin. With blood rather than dark power flowing through his veins, he looked the picture of innocence. Corvo reminded himself that this was a god, not a boy. He woke him by pulling him from the bed to the floor.

After a brief, instinctual struggle the god looked up at him and sighed. “I suppose this was inevitable.”

“Show me her name.” Ishkur held up his hands passively then slowly pulled down his left sleeve.

“It’s real. Denying names is the most The Outsider could do, never grant them.”

“Then how did a ten year old become scarred?”

He remained impassive. “The Outsider’s mark was my name. I effectively signed my name on you hand in Coldridge. I didn’t know Emily and I were fated until afterward. This only appeared on my skin when she was fifteen. The world has matched us, I don’t know why.”

Whether true or not he was clearly sticking to that story. Corvo moved on to his next objection. “Fated or not, why contact her again?”

“The next time I chose to share power with someone, the Void would give her a new soul mark. Considering Delilah’s imminent rise, I would have to take a new marked eventually. Better to speak to Emily on our own terms. When she could have a choice.” Corvo continued to glare so he elaborated, “I asked for her help, nothing more.”

“Help escaping The Void.”

“Help destroying Delilah, which benefited the Empire as well. It’s only for Emily’s sake I chose to leave.” Crovo tightened his grip on him, wordlessly prompting him to explain. “I’ve known there was a chance, however small, for me to escape The Void for two thousand years. The risk was more frightening than staying in my prison.”

“As a god.”

“You’ve lived in Dunwall. You know a cage with power and privilege is still a cage.” He raised a brow and continued. “Immortality is torture for a living creature born to die. I spent millennia trying to forget that I was ever human. And then I met Emily and I realized I didn’t want to forget, I wanted to remember.”

“My name is Ishkur Dumuzid. I was born in the Gristol winter. My mother could bear no more children so my father killed her and threw me to the streets. In order to survive, I learned to access the Void. I mastered skills to keep me alive and in favor with other urchins.”

Corvo realized he was trying for sympathy and determined not to feel anything.

“I was taken from the streets by cultists, not that they called themselves such.  I and several dozen others from all over the isles were tried and tested to find the best emissary for The Void. All of us under 20, born after the death of the last god.

“I was not their first choice. Twice before me they tried and failed. Until the very end I tried to escape. It took three of them to tie me to the alter. They cut my throat with a bronze dagger. Prayed for favors as I bled to death.”

“Favors you granted to people like Daud and Delilah.”

“Also to a dying boy whose only friends were rats. A woman sold into slavery who wished only to save her son.” He shrugged this off. “I’ve done bad things. Emily knows it all.”

“You expect my blessing?”

“Jessamine gave hers.” The Outsider realized this was the wrong thing to say almost instantly. He disintegrated into black crystal shards and mist before Corvo could hurt him. Corvo’d never seen The Outsider teleport, although he should have expected some sort of trick. Careless. Corvo looked around expecting to see the boy rematerialize a few feet away. Instead, shards of black crystal slipped under the door.

            Corvo chased him into the hall. Surely with Blink he could catch the fleeing Outsider. Ishkur came to the same conclusion because he transversed again. This time disappearing into one of the ship’s air vents. It took Corvo two spells, one to summon a rat, a second to possess it, to follow. As a rat he had to scamper up a steep incline to follow the lingering scent of magic.

            He regained human shape in front of a thoroughly unimpressed Emily. She stood with her hair braided, in her nightdress, obviously just roused from bed. She frowned at Corvo, both rat and human, with her arms crossed. The Outsider strategically hid(cowered) behind her.

“Do you need something, Royal Protector?” Crovo didn’t answer. “Good night then.” She glared at him until he left.

The next morning Corvo kept an ear open to the staff. Only two servants where whispering about seeing Ishkur returning to the crew deck in his night clothes. Corvo quickly intimidated them into silence.

“Royal Protector.” Emily greeted him after breakfast. “It seems I thought too highly of you, now we must discuss this.” She raised an eyebrow. Corvo, still annoyed, didn’t humor her. Emily sighed.

“He mentioned your mother.”

“Of course he did, she met him.” Emily gave him a look. “You know her fate, surely.”

“Jessamine was in that heart?” Corvo had suspected but never received confirmation.

“That was her heart,” Emily said, not unkindly. Corvo looked out at the sea. He’d let himself believe his love was at peace, not trapped in some mockery of dead flesh and metal. “She stayed to guide you, and then me. Ishkur helped her do so.”

“You were able to speak with her?” The way Emily spoke in past tense meant Jessamine was gone now.

Emily nodded. “She gave us her blessing, he wasn’t lying.” They stood in silence for a moment. “I love him, Father. If that’s not enough…”

“Than I accept him,” Corvo said to convey both his sincerity and reluctance. Emily smiled and stood closer to him, having kept an unnatural distance between them the past days.

One of the first laws young Empress Emily successfully passed was royalty and higher nobility could now marry their soulmates, no matter their social position. Her infallible logic being, Corvo was her father, everyone knew he was her father, Mother was never going to marry anyone else, the only reason they weren’t married was because the laws were dumb. She had initially pushed for getting married to anybody but the council insisted on restricting it to soulmates only. At the time Emily wasn’t happy with this considering all she knew about her soulmate was his or her name shocked people. At least things were working out for her now.

Was it naïve for Emily to think they earned this happiness? Not even her so much as Ishkur. Life had dealt him suffering from the beginning. He deserved happiness after the cosmic levels of shit he’d been through. And the cold clutches of The Void itself wouldn’t stop Emily from giving it to him.

Like both her mother and her father, Emily’s love was all consuming. Scary and possessive if one wanted to think of it that way. Because she demanded everything from her lover, their secrets, days, nights, thoughts, and very soul. Ishkur had seen dead lovers like that, fading into nothing yet still cleaning to each other.

Emily didn’t find it odd to spy on her closest friends, like Alexi. She considered it her right to sleep beside her father whenever she pleased. To hold her mother’s heart in her hands. From the beginning Ishkur knew that if he chose to walk into her arms, he could never escape. And after spending thousands of years in the clutches of unfeeling black stone, he didn’t want her to let go. The Void had been a cage, Emily the warm shield of home.

Of course, Emily gave all of herself in return. Truthfully, that scared him more than being owned by an Empress. He had been slave to the great unfathomable nothingness. Belonging to one woman of his choice was nothing to fear. But he knew she would depend on him and he had little to give her.

A street boy, remarkable only in his ability to call upon the Void. Captured for want of bread and unable to save himself. Willingly played cruel puppeteer for millennia. He’d done little to deserve Emily’s friendship never mind her devotion. She would die for him. He’d never had anyone who would die for him. All he could do was give her everything he could and all that he was, and hope it was enough.

There were few proper clothes aboard for Ishkur but he joined Emily and Corvo for meals. He left Emily’s side only to sleep in his own cabin. By the time they reached Dunwall, only the densest aboard the Duke’s ship doubted Ishkur’s status.

Emily called court to convene barely two hours after docking. The Royal Protector stood at her left as always. A frail teenager in fine clothes that didn’t quite fit him sat in a provided chair to her right. Nobody dared call attention to the stranger despite many curious looks.

Emily gave a brief and embellished account of how the Duke of Serkonos discovered dissidents in this household and called for her aid. She supervised her personal guard (not her of course everyone pretended the Empress was a proper non-violent lady) to remove the threat and deal with some corrupt nobility.

That complete before her advisors, she moved onto the next order of business. After catching up on everything missed in her absence, and still no reference to the person at her right hand, she decided to wrap up the meeting. “As a final order of business; I formally introduce my soulmate and fiancé, Ishkur Dumuzid.” Nod to the boy. “We will speak with the High Overseer to set a date and begin wedding preparations. Until then you are dismissed.”

A couple nobles voiced disbelief or questions but a repetition of their dismissal and glare convinced them to wait. Whispers began immediately. A controversial ruler, just cemented her control of Serkonos, now undermining herself by dragging an unknown boy before court.

High Overseer Yul Khulan had the time until the room emptied to gather himself.

“May I first offer my congratulations, Empress.”

“Thank you, High Overseer.”

“Is your betrothal recent?”

“We met upon my arrival in Serkonos. Of course, our betrothal was only official with my father’s consent, so these past two weeks of our voyage.”

“I see, and his family traveled with you?”

“Sadly, Ishkur has no living family. Nor any land or fortune to his name. We met on the docks where he was searching for work as a sailor.”

Khulan gave him a questioning look. Pail and rail thin he didn’t look much like a Karnakan sailor. He took this as his que to speak. “I assure you High Overseer, I’m an excellent navigator, engineer, and rat catcher. A short-handed crew would be pleased to have me aboard.”

“You made your living this way?”

“I could earn enough to eat and sail from island to island as I pleased, yes.”

The High Overseer nodded but had another question. “If I may ask, good sir, how old are you?”

“Seventeen this coming winter.”

Khulan frowned for the first time. “If I may say so, Empress, a long engagement may be best.”

“Why is that?” Her pleasant tone became icy.

“Although legal, sixteen is widely considered too young to be married.”

Ishkur started laughing. He quickly tried to cover his hilarity, unsuccessfully, with a cough. Emily motioned to Alexi. The young captain led Ishkur out of the throne room.

“Forgive him, his health is still poor.”

“I understand, Empress, but without parents to consent to his marriage…there may be concerns of legitimacy.”

“Oh for goodness sake. High Overseer Khulan, you’ve been my trusted advisor for a decade. I hope I haven’t given you reason to doubt me.”

“I know you to be prudent, but there will be talk if you choose a poor boy many years your junior.”

“That is why I need your assistance, High Overseer. I need the Abby to bless our union as not some fickle choice.”

He understood what she was saying and bowed. “I would be honored.”

“Thank you. Give me a moment, please.” Emily rose from her throne and left. In the side room, Ishkur was still chuckling. “The…The High Overseer, thinks I’m too young,” Ishkur repeated, finally getting himself under control.

“Do you need a glass of water?”

“I’m fine. He wants to see our marks I suppose.”

“You’re alright with that?”

“I have nothing against Yul Khulan. He’s committed as many crimes as any Overseer. But he’s no hypocrite. He believes in what he preaches and wouldn’t hesitate to die for his faith. I’ve said before, I hold no particular ill will towards the Abby. It’s only natural to fear what one can’t understand.”

Alexi was confused by their conversation. Emily gave her a look that said ‘I’ll explain later’. Corvo gave her a look that said ‘don’t ask’.

Let the nobility gossip, the jealous stew, and the unhappy plot. Ishkur had enough plans in his head for an industrial revolution to match the social reform Emily had long been dreaming. How The Void would change, they couldn’t know, but they had plans to change The World.