Chapter Text
It was the Month of Darkness when Corvo Attano escaped from Coldridge Prison, six months after the death of the Empress and the kidnapping of her daughter. His route to freedom was a hole blown through the prison’s front entrance and like a phantom he disappeared in the sewers. Rumors that he had been aided by the Outsider in his escape followed, sweeping through Dunwall like the plague that burned through the city’s populace. In truth, Corvo had only been aided by the tools left behind by his allies along with his own will to live; his escape and survival was nothing short of a miracle. When he arrived at the Hound Pits Pub, the place where his rescuers resided, he was a thin, trembling, starving mess of a man, a ghost with gaunt cheeks and eyes that never focused on one thing for too long.
The recovery after escaping from Coldridge was a long one, but not long enough. Corvo needed to rest his exhausted, broken body, needed to regain his energy and the weight he’d lost during those six months spent in prison, but he and the rest of the conspiracy were on borrowed time. As soon as he had the strength, Admiral Havelock—the leader of the Loyalists, the ones who’d freed him—immediately put him to work in rebuilding his strength and endurance to at least a fraction of where they were before Corvo was imprisoned. The wounds he had sustained from months of torture slowly faded away into scars, and although he still suffered from aches that never went away, they no longer hindered him. He gained weight, pound by pound, and soon the only reminders that remained of the gaunt man who arrived during the Month of High Cold were the dark bags that never seemed to leave Corvo’s eyes.
Corvo’s body may have started to recover, but his mind had not. While his physical wounds faded, the memories of Coldridge and the day of his loss and downfall plagued him. His nights were restless, and each time he closed his eyes he was greeted with nightmares filled with blood and fire and seared, cut flesh and the horrors of prison, the sound of Jessamine and Emily screaming his name. Part of him expected the City Watch to kick down the door at any second, slaughtering his colleagues and dragging him back to Coldridge Prison where he’d finally be executed.
Corvo didn’t interact at length with anyone at the Hound Pits, only speaking when spoken to unless there was something he couldn’t go without. He kept conversations short, always looking for a subtle escape whenever he was approached. Overseer Martin and Lord Pendleton saw this as a problem; Admiral Havelock, on the other hand, didn’t care. As long as Corvo was doing well enough physically and mentally so as to not put himself or others in danger, and as long as he followed orders, it was enough for the Admiral. Once he had grown accustomed to the rush of working with someone so close to the late Empress and her missing daughter, Admiral Havelock was comfortable with the cold, professional distance Corvo put between himself and the residents of the Hound Pits Pub.
Without the support of his colleagues—the servants working at the Hound Pits didn’t know what to do to help him, and his superiors did little to begin with—Corvo took measures into his own hands when it came to his mental health. Keeping a journal gave him a place to vent, to pour out all his thoughts and feelings and observations when he feared no one would listen. when he couldn’t bear to approach anyone. His focus on physical recovery gave him a way to channel the violent energy that months of torture instilled in him; Corvo was never a particularly violent man, but imagining each bottle shattered by a bullet and each dummy slashed open with his sword to be the men who’d betrayed him and the Kaldwins gave him a sort of cold rush he couldn’t begin to describe. Piero, the engineer who designed Corvo’s weapons and most of his gear, sometimes allowed Corvo to sit quietly in his workshop and lose himself in watching him fuss over blueprints and schematics and fiddle with strange contraptions that Corvo couldn’t even begin to identify.
And then, there was the Mark.
Corvo remembered the night that he was pulled into the Void, a place with a periwinkle sky filled with the mournful calls of whales, where he was greeted by the Outsider, a black-eyed being with a smooth voice and pale skin carved from glacial ice. The Outsider gifted his Mark to Corvo, the image searing on the back of Corvo’s left hand from deep inside his flesh. At first, it wasn’t much to look at; Corvo’s new Mark was simply a pale outline, like a scar, barely visible on his dark skin.
When he wasn’t training, writing in his journal, or sitting with Piero, Corvo routinely vanished from the Hound Pits, leaving at any time during the day without a word and returning once night fell. No one knew where he went, and no one dared to ask; the Mark on his hand grew darker and darker every time he vanished and returned, and within a month of receiving it the Mark had become a solid black tattoo, always hot on his flesh, itching like an old burn that never went away. Corvo often asked the Outsider if it was supposed to burn; the Outsider always just smiled, giving a random, cryptic answer each time, or none at all.
Corvo was thankful for the Outsider entering his life, thankful for the Mark. The Mark helped him become stronger, helped him find the kind of power he needed to strike back at those who had taken everything from him, those who had killed the Empress and taken Emily away. If it weren’t for the Outsider’s gift, Corvo feared he wouldn’t have had the strength to fight and move the way he did a mere month after his escape from Coldridge. The Loyalists were surprised and somewhat suspicious. Corvo was just quietly grateful.
The Void also offered a place of refuge from the nightmares that Corvo faced almost every night. Every time he closed his eyes, it was a gamble; would he open his eyes to a periwinkle sky, or would he see the same blood and death over and over and over again, the images haunting him well into the next day? Being pulled into the Void did have its drawbacks; Corvo would always wake up tired and feeling a deep, burning ache in his hand unlike what he felt during the rest of the day. But, he reasoned, at least it wasn’t the nightmares.
Sometimes, when Corvo closed his eyes at night, he wasn’t greeted with nightmares or the Void. Sometimes, he dreamed of other things. Two other things, to be precise. Two people.
At first, they were distant, barely visible through a shroud of white mist. Corvo could barely make out what they were; people, perhaps, or maybe something else. The dreams became more frequent, and night after night, week after week, the forms would come closer. Corvo could start to make out some more details; they were both people, men, wildly different from one another and yet somehow similar. Nothing about them was familiar; not their faces, not what they wore. Each time Corvo dreamed of them, they came closer, closer, closer, until, a month after his escape from Coldridge, they were each almost close enough to touch, more details becoming clearer to Corvo—who only became more curious.
The first of the two men was tall, around the Admiral’s height; he had warm brown skin and bright blue eyes and short hair that was shaved all around save a thick strip down the middle, which was longer than the rest. He held himself like a soldier, and was dressed in clothes that Corvo had never seen before made from materials he didn’t recognize. This man always looked at Corvo with a reserved sort of curiosity in his eyes, as if silently asking who he was.
The second man was shorter, with short, wild black hair and sharp odd-eyes that stared Corvo down with a piercing gaze, his lithe form completely clad in black clothing that, again, looked like nothing Corvo had seen before. This man, despite his own curiosity, was suspicious as well, always looking as if he were ready to leap into action should Corvo give the slightest hint of a threat.
Corvo and the two men never addressed each other verbally, nor did they ever get close enough to touch; the dreams always ended before that happened, and Corvo always woke with questions as to the identity of the men. When the dreams first started, Corvo would ask the Outsider about them. The black-eyed deity only ever smiled and shook his head, so in the end Corvo gave up, simply writing about the men in his journal and speculating to himself about who the men might be. They were important, that was for sure. Just what their significance was, Corvo couldn’t guess.
The time allowed for Corvo’s physical recovery was ending. It was time for Corvo to begin his service to the Loyalists as their blade, sent to dispatch targets who couldn’t be removed through underhanded political machinations alone. A few minor targets were taken care of first to get them out of the way and gauge Corvo’s ability; a pesky Lord here, an Overseer there. Soon, however, Admiral Havelock and Overseer Martin judged Corvo to be ready for his first high-profile target; the High Overseer himself, the head of the Abbey of the Everyman and one of the men in close allegiance with the Lord Regent Hiram Burrows, the man that the Loyalists were seeking to overthrow and replace with the young Empress-to-be Emily Kaldwin—if the child could be found, that was. The date of the mission was set to be the ninth day of the Month of Ice. Corvo counted down the days, waiting anxiously for a chance to strike back at one of the men who had taken everything from him.
In the nights leading up to the mission, the dreams of the two strangers had an air of urgency, the feeling growing with each night that passed. Corvo sensed that, soon, the significance of the strangers in his dreams would be made clear. Soon, he decided, he would finally have an answer.