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Corvo spends the pre-dawn hours on changing bandages and inspecting her injuries. She sets her fingers, wraps her burns, and counts the cuts. A vial of Sokolov’s elixir rests in the small folding desk by her bed, and she downs it in three long gulps. Between it, the Outsider’s gifts, and a hearty breakfast, she could be ready to go on a mission by nightfall.
She dresses in the clothes prepared for her. Somehow, the Loyalists have managed to recover her Royal Protector coat. Its weight is familiar on her shoulders, even if it hangs on her frame where it used to fit perfectly. Still, admiral Havelock is visibly impressed when she walks into the bar shortly after dawn.
“You must excuse my doubts last night,” he says, sliding into the booth she picks to eat breakfast in. “You truly looked horrific, Corvo. I am glad you feel better today.”
She fixes him with an unimpressed stare. He takes the cue and leans back, trying to not look intimidated.
“I will let you eat in peace. We didn’t arrange to break you out just to keep you from regaining your strength.”
Cecelia smiles behind the bar.
The rest of the meal passes in tense silence. Corvo swallows her oatmeal and soft-boiled eggs fast. Once sated, she brings the plates to the counter.
“You should talk… err, see Piero out in the workshop,” says Cecelia. “he has some new equipment for you, and I told him about your burns. He’s been working on some salve, I believe.”
Corvo nods in thanks and walks out of the building. The morning is brisk and the air feels fresh, despite the hint of smoke from refineries down the river and the usual smell of decay that seems to have settled over Dunwall with the plague. Closer to the workshop, Corvo smells metal being welded.
Piero notices her in the entrance and takes off his welding mask.
“Ah - Lady Corvo,” he greets her, adjusting his glasses. “It’s good to see you. I am Piero Joplin, and I will be supplying you with the equipment of a master assassin.”
There is a smugness about him that Corvo recognizes as inherent in the men of science, affirmed in their genius. It is a little disturbing to see it applied so readily to aiding a soon-to-be serial killer. Still, she elects to not look the gift horse in the mouth just yet.
“Let us start with - this,” the inventor reaches for the item he’s been crafting. “You are a wanted woman now, and everyone in the city knows your face - less scarred, perhaps,” he continues, sounding almost apologetic, “but this mask will only mean terror to them.”
He shows her his creation. The mask is… not grotesque, no; there is a kind of beauty in its rigid lines, something elegant in the cold metal that defies the crudeness of the wiring. A fitting visage for death. Corvo isn’t sure if that is what she wants to wear instead of her face, but then again, her own features were never important to anyone. Her thoughts wander briefly into the Void. This mask feels like something the Outsider would enjoy seeing become a symbol tied to the downfall of the mighty by a hand Marked by her.
She stops Piero when he offers to adjust the mask on her face and gestures to the burn marring the corner of her mouth. The natural philosopher apologizes profusely and leads her upstairs, where he fusses about near the cluttered table, looking for the correct bowl with foul-smelling concoction. The salve he hands her oozes a rather suspicious stench, but Corvo applies it valiantly. It seeps cold into her fingers, and soon her cheek is swatched in divine chill. She smiles thankfully, for the first time without agony.
“It is mostly antiseptic and anaesthetic in effect, but I did my best to include ingredients that promote healing,” Piero explains. “I fear it may be too late to stimulate your flesh to heal enough to avoid terrible scarring, but if you apply a fresh layer twice a day and consume my Remedy regularly, you should be healed within two weeks, optimistically.”
He goes on to drone about potential improvements to the salve, which Corvo deigns to ignore and motions for him to come back downstairs. She lets him adjust the mask to her face; it’s a tight fit, the fabric and the metal gripping her skull tightly, and she suspects it’ll take her a moment before she gets used to the slightly narrowed field of vision. She bids the scientist goodbye before he has the chance to launch into another monologue about his inventions.
She wanders down to the secluded beach below the ruined tower, keen to escape any prying eyes. There, she unwraps her hand, bearing the mark of the Outsider, and inspects it with a furrowed brow. She recalls the sensation of swooping across space in the Void. A bit of concentration is all it takes to repeat the action and Corvo has to swallow down motion sickness as she reorients herself, ankle-deep in murky water. She spends the better part of the morning practicing until she no longer stumbles when landing and can judge the length of each blink.
When a servant girl calls to her that dinner is ready, if she’d like to eat, Corvo sits on one of the boulders and looks out at the river, feeling oddly drained. She raises a hand and nods in the girl’s direction, and blinks up to the street when the figure in black disappears from view. The magic in her body flows sluggishly, evidently depleted with teleportations. Corvo wraps up her hand, wondering what else the Void will let her do.
After the meal, Havelock takes her aside and explains her first mission over a glass of whisky that she doesn’t touch. The Loyalists are short one; there’s the nobility and the military, and the clergy must be rescued from shackles in Holger Square. How fitting, she thinks; a freshly turned heretic’s first act will be infiltration of the Abbey and murder of her High Overseer. Havelock watches her face as he outlines their opposition and their plan. Corvo looks him calmly in the eye as he says, “sometimes good men must do bad things to make the world right.” She wonders if he believes his lie already.
She spends the afternoon wandering the Hound Pits and surroundings. She finds a rune submerged near the sewer outflow beneath the pub and fights the dread for a moment, but eventually reaches for the artifact and accepts its power. She blinks and the colours of the world shift. She thinks that it would be nice if the Void’s gifts weren’t so disorienting and goes to fetch her weapons. The sun is low above the city and the shadows stir to life.
A servant girl - the same that called Corvo to dinner before - stops her as she walks towards Samuel’s boat.
“My name is Callista,” she curtsies. She tells Corvo about her uncle and her suspicions about the High Overseer’s plot against him. It comes as a pleasant surprise that the City Watch captain is still alive and Corvo squeezes the younger woman’s hand in reassurance that he will remain so. Burrows’ hunger has cut down enough people.
Once she boards the Amaranth and they sail out on the river, Samuel tells Corvo how the city changed. It lies over Wrenhaven like a beached whale, consumed with decay, but somehow still breathing. The boatman’s eyes take in the jagged skyline and a happier, vivacious Dunwall reflects in them. Corvo swallows the longing it evokes in her. That city died with Jessamine. Somewhere within the cadaver, a smaller heart still pumps her blood, and Corvo’s own runs faster with the thought. She brushes her fingers over the pocket where the Outsider’s gift thuds against her ribs.
Once ashore near Clavering Boulevard, Corvo takes out the Heart where Samuel couldn’t see it and memorizes where the runes and charms lay hidden. She dashes through shadows behind the backs of guards and follows the Heart’s direction into a side street. A group of gang members are shouting at a derelict apartment’s door. A rune sings from the depths of the building.
She makes quick work of sneaking up around the thugs and blinks up onto a half-collapsed balcony just above the front door. The metal moans quietly under her weight, but before the noise can attract any attention, she is inside. Inexplicably, half of the room is obstructed by a boat. Corvo tilts her head in mild confusion. Something is unnerving inside this building, and she steps deeper with more caution.
“Here, little birdies…”
Corvo freezes, one foot on the top stair, the other on the one below. A woman’s voice trails from the floor below.
“Come down, dearie, I would like to see you.”
Corvo closes her eyes and peers through the wood under her feet at a silhouette of an elderly woman painted in yellow beneath. An odd disruption, a trick of darkness, glimmers on her left hand. The Heart speaks, unbidden.
Careful. She treads with purpose, and is not as frail as she seems.
“Won’t you come down to introduce yourself to Granny Rags?”
Corvo sighs and steps the rest of the way down. The old woman looks at her, angling her head not unlike a bird. A grey rat is perched on her shoulder and observes Corvo with beady black eyes that stand in a contrast to Granny Rags’ own, fogged over with blindness, that makes her think that the rat is the old woman’s means of seeing.
“Look at you, such an interesting figure. I see he has taken you to his realm already, hasn’t he? You must be very special, miss Corvo.”
A wicked smile stretches the wrinkled cheeks and the crow’s feet around white eyes deepen. Corvo is frozen in place, an intense discomfort wrenching her gut.
“Do not fear an old woman, dearie. I have a birthday gift for you, but you must do something for me first. You see, I still get gentlemen calling after me, but they are ruffians, no good at all. Would you be so kind and take care of them for me? You will not regret it, I promise.”
The thought to drive her sword through Granny’s heart crosses Corvo’s mind and disappears just as quickly. She nods, if only to move away from the ancient witch. She is a danger that Corvo cannot size up and measure against her skill, so she deigns to avoid confrontation.
Satisfied with Corvo’s consent, Granny Rags takes the rat from her shoulders and starts chattering to it, making every impression of a madwoman. The hairs on the back of Corvo’s neck stand up as she turns and walks up to the front door with her blade open.
The gang members are dead before they fully realize that the masked figure that opened the door isn’t a weak old woman. Adrenaline surges through Corvo’s veins and awakens a bloodlust. She bares her teeth under the mask when the smell of blood reaches her. Soon, the Lord Regent and his hired assassin will also stain her boots red.
She turns to see Granny Rags standing unnervingly close to her. Her blade twitches, but she folds it and places at her belt.
“Splendid work, dearie,” creaks the hag. “I left your gift upstairs. Go ahead, you will need it.”
Indeed, a rune sings to Corvo through the ceiling, and she rushes up the stairs to fetch it. Briefly, she wonders if the old woman bewitched the item to do more than other bones, but she has no way of telling as the bonesong settles into the thrum of her ribcage. She tries to weave it into a power, but it isn’t enough. Another rune, then. The one that first drew Corvo into the building still nibbles at her periphery.
She tentatively makes her way back to the ground floor, tension stitching her back when she finds Granny Rags to be nowhere in sight. She blinks into her other vision and is marginally relieved to see the yellow silhouette in the room by the entrance. She blinks again and the world resumes its normal hues. The door behind which she suspects she will find the rune opens easily enough, and she finds herself in an alleyway enclosed on all sides, with a bend some way ahead. It is a curious place, a glitch in the architecture of the city. A hideout, a prison. The barren earth boasts only some moss near the walls.
Corvo blinks ahead, keen to be out of this rat trap as soon as possible. Her plans are cut short, however, when she picks up the rune from the rickety shrine and immediately reality folds on itself to make way for the Outsider.
Corvo’s breath catches. The air stills. The dull purple light casts deep, jagged shadows on the deity’s grin.
“Stay careful, Corvo,” she greets, nothing in her tone encouraging caution. “The call her Granny Rags. You wouldn’t recognize her real name, or even the name of her family, but know that an emperor begged for her hand once.”
Corvo briefly wonders if she is going to hear anything useful this time. The Outsider prattles on about Granny Rags’ long lost youth. The lilt of her voice is more worth listening to than her words are, Corvo decides, admitting to herself that something like a pleasant buzz has nestled behind her lungs while the deity remains sharply focused on her. As though noticing the effect she makes, the Outsider crosses her arms with smugness, and her next words hold a teasing note.
“You are on your way to face the High Overseer, leader of a great cult dedicated to loathing me. What will you do, I wonder?”
Before the words sink in, the ghastly figure dissolves along with the rune Corvo is clutching, and the bonesong sets into Corvo’s chest. She realizes that no time has passed since she touched the rune and its dissolution, and discovers that it can gift her the same power.
She tests it immediately to sneak past Granny Rags. The old woman looks like trapped in thick honey as Corvo breezes past her, yet the white eyes follow her step unwaveringly. Corvo makes haste down Bottle Street, trying to shake the discomfort crawling on the back of her neck. Behind her, the old woman starts chattering to herself.
She flits from shadow to shadow, behind and above the City Watch guards dotting the streets, and making only a brief stop to knock out two gangsters threatening a peddler. She accepts his thanks and picks up a bone charm tucked away in his ruined apartment.
She stops between two blinks, perched atop a broken frame of a light-up banner, when she notices the old witch watching her from the street below.
“Would you do one more thing for me, my dear?” she croaks.
Corvo agrees, partially because she dreads learning what the hag’s wrath would feel like.
It takes her half an hour to scour the residence of doctor Galvani and sneak into the Bottle Street gang’s nest to poison their elixir, as per the hag’s bequest. She accepts Granny’s rune and makes her way to Holger Square, relearning familiar streets from the new perspective of street lights, rooftops, and deep shadows.
Once beyond the gate leading into the Everyman’s domain, she makes quick work of choking out the zealot taunting Overseer Martin. She doesn’t pay much mind to his words as he thanks her.
"There are few brave enough to laugh in the Outsider's face. But Teague Martin is one,” the Heart pipes in.
“Surprising then, that he isn’t Marked,” she retorts internally when she parts ways with the Loyalist. “He sounds like someone she would enjoy taunting so.”
“He has been a soldier, a highway robber, and a man of faith. He always had his sights set on the Abbey's highest office.”
“An opportunist, then. How terribly boring that must be.”
The Heart does not respond.
Corvo observes the looming structure of the Abbey’s offices from a wide ledge lining its first floor windows. Her Void sight reveals numerous hounds two floors below, the expected army of Overseers scattered all about the building, and two City Watch guards, a sign that Curnow is going to meet the High Overseer soon.
She manages to sneak into the meeting room before the two officials, and takes the opportunity to look around. She snatches the rune displayed above the fireplace and investigates the two wine glasses. It is not good taste to pour ahead of one’s guest’s arrival, and she isn’t surprised that the two glasses smell differently. Curnow wouldn’t bother worrying about offered wine - he was a straightforward man, suited for his position, but not for political games. Corvo winced at the thought of Campbell poisoning him. She carefully pours the wine from both glasses back into the pitcher and blinks atop a shadowed bookshelf at the sound of voices outside.
She considers her options while Campbell jovially spins some tall tale to avoid pouring the wine and invites the Watch Captain to his secret chamber. Curnow seems to be unsure how to avoid that, but the Overseer ropes him in. Corvo follows.
The chamber is in the basement, and Corvo finds it challenging to pass in their trail unnoticed. When she enters the hidden room, she has only enough time to arm her crossbow and lodge a sleep toxin dart in Campbell’s neck as he raises his sword against Curnow’s turned back.
The sudden halt in the Overseer’s monologue and the clattering of his blade as it falls to the floor alarm Curnow at once. He whips around, startled, and looks around in panic. He spots Corvo when her crossbow clanks against her belt.
She stands to her full height and puts her finger to where the mask’s approximation of a mouth is. Her sword is sheathed and her hands are bare, and Curnow relaxes minutely.
“I’m going to take the liberty of assuming you are here for him, and not me,” the Watch captain says, his hands lax, but ready to dart for his pistol and blade. He considers the unconscious man on the floor for a while, even as Corvo goes around the room, pocketing documents and valuables. Curnow yelps, startled, when she breaks the glass housing a rune along with some antiques.
“Are you going to brand him?” he asks, increasingly unnerved. “I mean, with the sleep dart - oh. You just wanted this.”
The captain falls quiet when Corvo kneels by Campbell’s side and pulls a black notebook from his belt. Curnow’s words give her pause.
“Brand?” she manages to articulate, the r slipping awkwardly on her burned tongue.
Curnow narrows his eyes. “I overheard some Overseers mentioning it. The heretic’s brand. From what I understood, to an Overseer it means disgrace and immediate excommunication, no matter their station. If you can make your way into the archive room, you will probably find more on the topic.” His expression suddenly turns sour. “Though I can’t imagine why a bullet to the head wouldn’t be your first choice. Less trouble.”
Corvo stands still over Campbell’s limp form. His eyes are half-shut, face grotesque. The rage and loathing that simmer in the back of her soul rear up. Here lies the man who watched her go into the gazebo six months ago, knowing that she would witness and then bear the blame for the death - the murder - of her Empress. Her Jessamine. Who had her body and soul cut and mangled and burned ever since.
The urge to raise her sword and drive it through the man’s heart sings in her veins like a savage storm. She flips the blade open, left hand pressing against the Heart in her pocket. Curnow flinches. “Corv-”
She looks at him slowly, the maelstrom solidifying into cold resolve. She nods at him solemnly, folds her sword back, and gestures to the door. Go.
The man wastes no time. His boots click quietly on the stone floor.
Campbell will suffer. She will not grant him the death of the innocent.
She spends the next twenty minutes sneaking into the archives. She manages to read some notes on branding without being noticed.
Hauling the stocky High Overseer up two flights of stairs and down a winding corridor is another matter entirely. Corvo decides to save herself half the trouble and chokes out the patrols on her way. Dragging the man in red then is more of a chore than a challenge.
Campbell’s scream at the touch of hot iron on his face rings in Corvo’s ears long after she’s descended the chain down to the river and Samuel’s boat. Martin tries to talk to her, but when she pulls off her mask and he sees the savage glint in her eyes, he gives it up.
Back in the Hound Pits, she thrashes in her bed, unable to sleep. The emotional unrest that has laid dormant for the day has awoken, chasing rest away. Eventually, she rises, pulls on a pair of breeches, and quietly makes her way downstairs to brew herself a cup of tea. She finds some ground cocoa in a battered can under the counter of the bar, however, and after another while of rummaging she also locates a small bottle of milk that, by a stroke of luck, is still drinkable. She manages to heat it up without letting a skin form on the surface.
A memory flickers from the back of her head. Emily, five years old, clutched in Jessamine’s arms after she was woken by a nightmare and the winter wind howling against the window. A sleepy maid handing Corvo a tray with three cups. The warmth of the hot cocoa against their palms and eyelids drooping in the hearthlight.
The smell that made Corvo remember Serkonos and, in that moment, she felt more at home than ever.
There’s more milk that can fit comfortably into any intact mug in the Hound Pits, so Corvo rinses a dusty pitcher and grabs a small cup.
She meets Cecelia on her way up. Fatigue is written heavy on the girl’s form. She startles when Corvo materializes from the shadows mere steps from her. The empty bucket she’s carrying dings against the wall, cleaning paraphernalia clanking inside. She stills and listens if she’s woken anyone up.
“Miss Corvo,” she greets, voice low and raspy. “Apologies.”
Corvo raises a hand. No apology needed. After a moment’s thought, she gestures to her pitcher and cup, hoping to convey an invitation. It takes the girl a moment, but she catches on.
“I’ll put those in their place and join you for a minute. Thanks.”
Corvo nods, points upwards, and resumes her climb.
A while later she’s sharing a companionable silence and the warm drink with Cecelia on the rooftop of Piero’s workshop. They look out on the Wrenhaven and the lights of the Estate District reflecting in the water. Corvo hears the cries of a swarm of rats somewhere along the banks. Her mind slowly settles into the closest approximation of calm she can reach these days. The city is almost serene, and minutes tick by unnoticed.
A weight settles on her shoulder. Cecelia sighs softly when Corvo turns her head to watch the messy mop of auburn hair roll slightly to adjust. The servant is half asleep; only conscious enough to keep the mug in her hands upright.
“Sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m so tired.” She sighs again. “You smell nice. Dirty, but nice.”
Corvo lets herself chuckle. She manages a slurred, but legible ‘thanks’, and takes the half empty mug from Cecelia’s limp fingers. The girl sobers a little at that.
“Please pardon me, I didn’t mean to… oh.” She sits up, ready to leave, but Corvo’s hand on hers stops her further words. She looks at Corvo’s face, trying to read it in the dim moonlight. “I’ll go to bed, if you don’t mind. Thank you for the cocoa.”
Corvo smiles at the genuine gratitude in the other’s voice.
When she’s gone, Corvo suddenly feels cold. She downs her lukewarm cocoa and gathers the crockery, deciding to take it down to the kitchen in the morning. She should apply Piero’s salve to her burns, but she only has enough patience to smear some on her face and, tentatively, the inside of her mouth.
The taste is foul and she winces, but the warm feeling that has nestled underneath her sternum drowns out whatever resentment rises in her.
She recalls the weight on her shoulder and the warmth at her side. She has to hold her breath and fight to swallow down the despair that she will never share a moment like this with Jessamine.
She keeps her mind carefully blank when she lies down. She needs rest.
When sleep finally comes, it is void of dreams.