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It’s been a year since Emily was hidden away at the Golden Cat.
The fugue feast has been traded for three days of incessant prayer and free vials of Sokolov’s Elixir. It suits Emily just fine - she is in no mood to celebrate, and the atmosphere of self pity allows her to fall into a comfortable melancholy. The ladies of the Golden Cat even leave her alone, for once.
Emily takes a deep breath and casts a furtive glance at the door. Her vision clouds for a moment before turning dark at the edges and a golden haze takes over. She sweeps her Vision for as far as she can - there aren’t many courtesans about in the middle of the day, and even fewer patrons. Satisfied, Emily kneels down and wiggles under her small cot, leaving clouds of dust in her wake. After a few moments of searching the rough floor with her hands, her fingers find purchase on a loose floorboard, and with a gentle tug, she pulls it up and looks in on her secret.
The shrine is simple, with a purple scarf draped behind a silver jewelry box that stands on delicate feet. Both items were lifted from Betty (it’s not that she dislikes her, but she never remembers to lock her door! A girl in Emily’s position can hardly abstain from lifting a thing or two...or a dozen). ‘Requisitions for the Empress’ Emily thinks, giggling to herself. It takes another series of carefully executed wiggles for Emily to add her most recent prize to the shrine - a human finger bone. It doesn’t sing like the whalebone charms do, but it’s smooth and warm, and strangely difficult to put down. She places it carefully inside the jewelry box next to her charms, and takes a moment to appreciate the way smooth white bone contrasts the dark velvet interior. The whale bones hum appreciatively. The taste of the sea fills Emily’s throat and the mark on her chest burns.
That evening, a pair of courtesans find Emily sound asleep with her legs sticking out from under the bed. They drape a blanket over her before returning to their duties.
The sisters (they insist Emily call them her sisters, too) have been very careful to not learn who Emily is or why she’s at the Golden Cat. The Pendleton twins are trouble, and their secret isn’t worth one’s neck. But the girl has become a part of life at the brothel, and the courtesans are just glad she wasn’t bought for business. Too many young girls came in to the Golden Cat only to become women before their time.
The strange islands of the Void sprawl before Emily like so many corpses. They remind her of the dead floating in the rivers of Dunwall, pale and frozen.
At the end of the chain of small islands is the Tower, taller and darker than she remembers it. It twists into the Void, breaking into pieces at the top. She imagines for a moment she can see the gazebo -
Emily begins to pick her way through the islands, carefully avoiding the edges and the oblivion that waits beyond them. She spent her first few visits to the void experimentally dropping rocks off the different islands, to mixed effect. Some levitated exactly where she let go, and others floated down until they were invisible. Still others plummeted up a few hundred feet before shattering, and one that was thrown down a bit too vigorously ended up flying up and smacking Emily in the face. Coincidentally, that was when Emily lost interest in the physical laws of the Void.
When Emily reaches the gate, she discovers that it is not a gate at all but thousands of rats, tied together by their tails and devouring each other. The stench of blood and viscera is thick in the air. She watches passively as as a door handle appears from under the writhing mass. When Emily pulls on the handle, she is almost carried away as the rats drop to the ground and swarm past her. But Emily does not flinch, and she does not look back.
The Void’s version of the tower courtyard is a study in surrealism. An illogically winding path hosts paintings at the turns; Sokolov stands at each one. If Emily would bother to look, she would see the art of the void - but the images are not for her, and she ignores them. Instead, she focuses on the entrance to the tower, and walks straight through the grass. The palace doors open directly into the ballroom, the familiar vaulted ceilings obscured by rolling storm clouds. Porcelain statues of lords and ladies covered in a thick layer of dust are scattered throughout the ballroom, positioned as if ready for another opportunity to dance.
At the far end of the ballroom is the royal throne, and on it sits a veiled statue. It’s impossibly beautiful, but Emily can't seem to get a proper look at it. Her eyes slide past any time she tries to look at the doll straight on. She moves through the crowd (such as it is) to get a better look at the figure seated on the throne. When she reaches the center of the ballroom, the void folds in on itself, and Emily tastes copper in the back of her throat.
The Outsider appears in the usual way, with velveteen smoke curling around them as they solidify. But this time they are standing on the floor, and Emily notices that they are much shorter than she previously assumed. The Outsider gives an an exaggerated bow and offers their hand. “May I have this dance, your highness?”
Emily attempts to remain dignified as she takes their hand. But the statues surrounding them begin to creakily move, bowing and curtsying in preparation for the dance, and Emily’s suppressed giggle escapes. Whalesong reverberates through the ballroom and as the waltz begins, Emily wonders how the Outsider knows the steps.
“You’re quite the dancer, your… Eminence? Omnipresence? My etiquette studies haven’t covered how to address devils yet.”
“A devil, am I?” The Outsider quirks their lips. “Then what does that make you?”
Emily doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing.
“You’ve taken interest in my runes earlier than expected. I have a gift for you. It is the heart of a living thing, molded by my hands.”
The Outsider twirls away from them and Emily is in front of the throne, the veiled statue smiling at her. In the statue’s hands is a heart that beats with the aid of clockwork. As Emily reaches out to the heart, the veil falls and the statue is no longer smiling - blood is pouring down the throne, completely soaking the veil and Emily’s shoes. The statue’s smooth face is beautiful but grotesque; it makes horrible memories swirl at the back of the girl’s mind, just out of reach. She struggles to breathe, she knows this face, so why can’t she remember it? The heart beats once, twice, and whispers: good morning, princess -
Emily smacks her head on the bottom of the bed as she awakes and yelps. After closing the jewelry box with the still beating heart inside, she scrambles to put the floorboard back in place while blinking away stars. Only dimly does she hear her door lock and Madame Prudence mentioning something about the Golden Cat’s grand reopening and a certain nasty girl’s penchant for mischief.
After pulling herself out from under the bed and immediately tripping over her blankets, Emily flops onto her cot and stares at the blood on her hands (pointedly ignoring the bloody handprints on the floor, walls, and blankets). The full moon passes by her small window, illuminating the room and casting strange shadows onto the ceiling. Letting out a long breath, Emily gets up and moves her small chest of clothes to reveal a small hole in the wall. She focuses on the image of a rat in her mind until she is shrinking, down and down, the floor rushing up to meet her. Her bones shift and snap, some disappearing completely, and her skin prickles as fur sprouts unevenly to cover her. Her sense of smell sharpens while her sight dims, and her mind focuses on decidedly different input, drawing her thoughts to the dead bugs under her bed instead of strange dreams and the problems of small captured princesses. She gives herself some time to readjust to her new form, letting it wash over her. After a few moments, she slips through a hole in the wall and into the night.