Eyes of the Void

by Stormbutterfly

The aftermath of the coup posed many challenges for Emily Kaldwin and her father, but less than a year later they have a new trial to face. With the Outsider freed from his long imprisonment, their world's magic no longer has a guiding hand. Nothing remains that is capable of regulating the Void's power as it pours into physical reality. And the Void doesn't let anything go.

1. Chapter 1

Eyes of the Void

Chapter 1—A Brief History of Timelessness

Disclaimer: I do not own any portion of the Dishonored® franchise. To the best of my knowledge and belief, Dishonored® is the intellectual property of ZeniMax® Media, Inc. This transformative work (fanfiction) is produced as a tribute in honor of the series and was made solely for the pleasure of creating and sharing said tribute. I receive no financial reward for its production. I own only the original storyline which I personally created, any original characters featured, and the exact order in which I wrote down the words of this story. Everything you recognize from Dishonored® and any references made to other published works are the property of their individual copyright holders.

Author's Notes: Allen Saunders once said (though it was John Lennon who made a paraphrase of the line famous): "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." This story is a bit like that. The seeds of it appeared in my mind shortly after Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (DOTO) was released. Once planted, they grew into vines and began spreading like kudzu, choking the life out of all competitors for my attention. I tried to ignore them and stay focused on the stories that I'm supposed to be writing, but my efforts were futile. This story wants to be told. Apparently, the Void has some things to say. It became clear that I won't be able to focus on any other work until this beast is written. That said, due to real life obligations, this will be posted as time permits. Accordingly updates may be sporadic.

This story is largely based on the canon storylines from Dishonored, Dishonored 2, and the associated DLCs, including Death of the Outsider. No reference is made to any of the associated novels or graphic novels. While canon is largely followed here, there will be some divergence. This story assumes that the protagonist of Dishonored was a low chaos Corvo Attano, that the protagonist from Dishonored 2 was a low chaos Emily Kaldwin, and that the non-lethal ending of DOTO was chosen.

NOTE ON TERMS USED: This story presents the Void as both the endless realm glimpsed in dreams and visited by the player characters AND as the conscious entity that is the spirit of said place. Technically, the location IS the entity, i.e. the place is also a person. However, for the sake of clarity, the location is referred to as the void (no capitalization) or the abyss while the entity is referred to as the Void (capitalized because it's a proper name). Further, as there is no canon name for the actual planet that Dishonored is set on, I have named it Torazsince I have to call it something.

***DISHONORED***

And lo! In the Month of Darkness

And lo! With his name destroyed

And lo! He still whispers in silence

And lo! He went into the void

from "The Month of Darkness" (The Outsider's Song)

In the beginning there was nothing, and it woke up. Amongst the most ancient of powers and the eldest of the gods there was much debate regarding the origins of things. Regardless, there was one fact upon which they all agreed: the Void came first. It was long before the beginning, and would be long after the end. Even in those barren places where mortals had turned their faces away from the divine, the Void yet remained. It required no belief to sustain it, no offerings to feed it power. No prayers were needed for it to intervene. The Void WAS and it did as it would for its own inexplicable reasons.

The Void followed a number of ever-evolving rules when interacting with creation. Both gods and powers took comfort in this knowledge. Less fortunate was the fact that the Void itself had determined these rules by trial and error and followed them only of its own accord. They did not represent any true limitation. If any force existed capable of controlling the Void, the gods were unaware of it. None-the-less, the rules provided a framework by which they could predict its behavior, and that alone was a great blessing.

When creation first formed, the Void, curious about this development, explored the limits of what physical reality could tolerate. It quickly realized that it shredded the fabric of reality and distorted the weave of time when it wasn't mindful of these tolerances. Early on, mistakes had been made. Several worlds were lost due to its failed attempts to interact with their inhabitants. Understanding required experience and experience often came at a high cost. The Void never forgot a lesson learned. From its position outside of time, its experiments were spread out across multiple realities. A world destroyed in one timeline, thrived in another. The Void did its best to minimize the damage left behind. It was curious by nature, not cruel. Unfortunately, the limits were not altogether consistent. What one world could tolerate would tear another asunder. Thus the need to learn more continued unabated.

It was best, the Void found, safest, to work through intermediaries, but few mortal souls could withstand the warping caused by its unfiltered touch. Its earliest attempts at creating avatars had twisted beyond recognition. They became mad, eldritch things which caused far more destruction than the Void would have on its own. It was forced to seal them away in the deepest recesses of itself. Most powers would have destroyed these abominations. The Void never considered such an option. Monstrous as they were, they belonged to it, and the Void loved each of them.

Through trial and error, the Void learned to filter its perception, to distinguish between souls which could bear the stress of its regard, and those which could not. And so it waited, and it watched, and from time to time a soul would flare bright beneath its gaze. When it noticed them, it laid claim to those precious few—its lovely Chosen, the so-called Gods of the Void.

As time progressed some worlds developed a greater ability than others to capture the Void's attention. The young world of Toraz was especially fascinating. It was a desolate place that few powers ever showed interest in. Toraz was neither a world of high magic, nor one of high technology, but rather a cycling land where magic and technology rose and fell in intervals. Science and mysticism spiraled around each other in an endless helix, an ever-shifting terrain of knowledge, belief, and superstition. Most gods would have floundered in the changing of those tides. Few powers could withstand such constant inconstancy. The Void found it delightful.

The first tribal civilizations on Toraz arose in the depths of its vast oceans. Several sentient aquatic races evolved which all paid homage to a non-existent god of the deep. They served what they saw as an endless, unknowable, alien power that communicated its strange desires through the faint sounds of distant whale song, the movements of ocean currents, and the fragmented visions beheld in dreams. Their faith was great and their beliefs complex, but consistent. They were as devout a congregation as any deity could have wished for. Their god, on the other hand, was entirely imaginary. No divinity stalked the depths. Nothing listened to their prayers or received their offerings. For all of their dedication, they worshiped nothing, and so the Void decided that they deserved to have Nothing answer them.

It began subtly, trickling its energies into the deepest waters, sinking it into the barren bones of the primeval whale precursors that the denizens of the depths named leviathans. It took the faithful little time to discover these gifts, to learn to carve the singing bones into talismans of power. With proof of their god's attention in hand, their faith only grew. The Void marveled. It required no worship and was unaccustomed to receiving any. The peoples of most worlds that were aware of the Void's existence saw it and its avatars as things to be placated, not revered. The Void watched closely, looking for a spark, a shining soul to craft into its voice on Toraz.

That spark came in the soul of one of the mighty Whale Kings, the enormous sentinels of Toraz's oceans. The creature wasn't sentient exactly, not in the same way that the civilization builders were, but his thoughts were far beyond those of a clever animal. His soul burned bright, but it was drenched in loneliness and sorrow. From the time of his birth, his presence had made his brethren uneasy. He was too large, too fearsome—his massive head ridged with heavy spiked plates and strange, tentacle-like growths coiled out from his sides. A throwback, the Void realized. A genetic return to the primordial ancestors of his species. Not precisely a whale then—a new leviathan.

The Void made its choice. It reached through, bored cracks into the physical plane and laid claim to its prize. The Great Leviathan was pulled from the world of his birth and into the expanse of the abyss, only devastation left in his wake. The size of the Chosen was directly proportionate to the amount of power required to retrieve them. The Leviathan was too large to be lured into the vicinity of one of the Void's many shrines or other sacred spaces where such a task would require less force. For miles around the creature's former position, the sea floor was scarred and torn. Nothing there was left alive. Fortunately, the oceans were vast and they would recover.

Admittedly, the Great Leviathan made for an unusual Void God. His ascension elevated his mind, granted him a complexity that nature had denied him, while leaving the patterns of thought native to his kind. His form altered, becoming even more alien compared to his mortal brothers. His presence seeped throughout that portion of the abyss which touched his home world and suffused it with haunting song. The Void accepted the Leviathan's song and made the sound into a part of itself—the ancient music echoed through to touch faraway worlds that had never dreamt of whales. On distant desert planets, where war was waged over water, future generations would stumble upon hidden caverns and marvel at the mournful melodies that spilled up from below.

Legions of the faithful rejoiced in the presence of their god and courted the Great Leviathan's favor. Honored priests sought out those places where the Leviathan's voice rang the clearest. They dedicated themselves to seeking the meaning behind each melody and passing the deity's wisdom on to their people. They hunted the sacred bones to craft talismans for the faithful. The Great Leviathan was wise and enigmatic, alien and mysterious, everywhere and nowhere. He was a momentary apparition glimpsed in the far distance, an unseen presence watching from the shadows, a singular song trembling through deep water. As the Void had shaped him, he was everything they'd sought in a divinity. They were content in their faith in a way that was rare amongst living creatures.

An eon passed. The last grand civilizations of Toraz's aquatic denizens crumbled to dust, as all things eventually do. In the absence of the faithful, the world was quiet and the Void turned its interest elsewhere. When sentient lifeforms arose on Toraz for the second time, they dwelt on the planet's dry landmasses. They were different from their predecessors, with different minds and expectations. Still, most of them clustered along the coasts, and they still relied on the sea to provide for their needs. Their tribal shamans learned which plants provoked visions that allowed them to commune with the Great Leviathan, as their aquatic predecessors had once done unaided.

Over millennia, the practice of seeking out specific plants transitioned into farming them. Many of the people moved inland. They sought the divine in those places which in some small way reminded them of the sea: the endless expanse of the night sky and the hidden recesses of caves deep within the earth. It made things more challenging for the Leviathan, but he adapted as best he could. Soon his song was heard in those lonely, hidden places, far from any shore. For a time, it was enough.

As the first true cities arose on the land, the Void saw that a new voice would soon be required. The humans craved a deity that wore a face to mirror their own, that spoke in a tongue they understood. It didn't occur to the Void to deny them. No other powers tended to the place. Watching over it had become a matter of habit. The Void was patient. Once more, it waited for a spark.

The spark that came was unlike any the Void had previously known. Brilliant as a star gone nova was the soul of this unloved beggar-child. Bright, the Void thought. Precious. Shining. The boy scrabbled to survive in the impoverished fringes of a prosperous coastal city. If the Void simply reached out and claimed him as it had with the Leviathan, the entire city would be lost to the sea. Ill-treated though he was, the child was kind-hearted, so the Void knew his soul would grieve for those undeserving dead. It would be optimal if the child were to enter a place where the veil separating the Void from the physical world was thin, where it could slip through without leaving destruction behind. This was…problematic. The Great Leviathan's main temple in the city was lavish, and sat amongst the grand homes of the elite. The city guard would never allow the boy near. The smaller, hidden altars maintained by the lower classes were in dangerous locations, and the child knew never to enter there lest slavers snatch him off the streets. The nearest tribal shrines were too far from the city. It was not a journey that a child could feasibly make alone. None of the pampered city priests were familiar with the old tribal rituals. Their understanding of the Leviathan's song was inadequate. The Void could not gain their assistance.

The ocean itself was the best option. The water near the docks grew deep quickly. An underwater cliff only a hundred feet from the shore plummeted to the depths. The boy could swim, of course. If the Void could lure him within reach of that deep water, then the Leviathan would be able to take him without significant damage to the surrounding area. Satisfied with its plan, the Void called to the child. It whispered promises of wonders to be found just a bit further from the shore. Months passed; the child ventured out further and further. The Void rewarded him with small gifts from the sea. A striped eel brought him a rare black pearl that he was able to trade in the market for new foot wrappings and several days' worth of fruit and dark, honeyed bread. A pathetic fraction of what the pearl was worth, to be certain, but the boy was happy. His belly was full for the first time in his memory.

Pleased with its success, the Void sent small, silver-scaled fish to the child with strips of edible seaweed and the tangy, aquatic fruits called seaberries. A sea snake gave him a second pearl, which he used to buy new clothes to replace his rags and more bread from the bakery stalls. Blue-shelled crabs approached him with copper coins they'd found in the water. It was customary for sailors and travelers alike to toss a coin or two into the bay upon their ship's arrival before docking—a token offered to the Great Leviathan in gratitude for reaching shore.

For the first time in his life, the boy learned the taste of the spiced, shrimp-filled pastries that had long taunted him with their scent when he passed by the hot food vendors. The child was clever, with the cunning found in those who survived on the streets. It took little time for him to realize that venturing deeper into the waves carried richer rewards. Men no longer kicked him or spat on him in the market. A peasant child in homespun with only a few coppers to his name was still treated far better than a ragged beggar. When drunken, violent dockworkers approached him, he learned to flee into the water. The schools of green-fin hagfish allowed him to pass freely, but savaged his would-be assailants with bladed teeth.

The Void understood the ways of the men of the new city, but not the minds that shaped those ways. The city folk were too different from what it had seen of the human tribesman before them. It relied on its avatars to provide understanding, and the Leviathan knew men's hearts no better than the Void did. If it had noticed the potential timelines that surrounded the city, tragedy might have been averted, but the Void touched myriad worlds and times. Only a small portion of its attention rested on Toraz, and that entire portion was focused on the choices of a single child.

The Void's favor had not gone unnoticed. Rumors of a street child blessed by the sea reached unfriendly ears. For years, the cultists had been searching. They had oracles, rare souls blessed and cursed with the ability to hear twisted fragments of the Void's whale song whispers. These seers had told them that the Void sought a specific boy-child. They insisted that the foretold child was destined to become a god. Not an ancient, incomprehensible thing like the Great Leviathan, but a god meant for their people. The faithful longed for such a deity, and the cultists dreamed of the rewards they would gain by delivering the child of prophesy unto the Void. Surely they would find eternal favor. Surely the former mortal would bless them for aiding in his apotheosis.

They came for him in the dead of night, on the ides of the Month of Darkness. They drugged his mind with moonflower, and caged his flesh in iron. They bore him to a sacred place, days down the coast from the city. The cultists had found the rift many years before. Hidden deep within a sea cave, there was a crack in creation, a fracture in time and space that permitted passage into the abyss. The cultists revered the rift, and they'd raised up a temple around it.

Upon their arrival, they prepared him at once. The priests cut the boy's hair. They trimmed and shaped his once-ragged nails and coated them with iridescent ebony lacquer. His body was washed clean and anointed with fragrant oils. The priestesses painted runes onto his skin, and applied a paste made of kohl and whale oil to his eyes. He was dressed in ceremonial robes with colors that shifted like the tides. The High Priest personally placed the rings upon his fingers.

Their work done, they carried him through the crack between the worlds and into the abyss. They wended their way to a floating island where ancient, withered trees ringed a stone altar. The cultists bound him to cold, black stone and began the ritual. As the chanting reached its crescendo, the High Priest raised the twinned sacrificial blade, and the boy knew the meaning of terror.

The Void was eternal, so its consciousness stood outside of time. It had never truly understood the speed at which things changed for mortals. It could shift timelines after all, could replay events again and again until it reached the desired outcome. Permanency was not a thing it comprehended. It was distracted by occurrences involving one of its avatars on a nearby world, and looked away for only a moment—a moment that lasted a span of weeks for the mortals of Toraz. It looked back just in time to watch the blade descend.

By bone and blood and blade the cultists stripped the child of his name and mortality, binding flesh and spirit to the Void. Time warped and fractured. The Void reached out to stop the atrocity, attempted to rewind events and undo the evil that had been done to its Chosen. It was to no avail. Time itself had been damaged irrevocably in that instant. The sacrifice of its Chosen became a fixed-point, one of the few absolutes in a multiverse of near-endless possibility. There was no reality wherein the boy wasn't sacrificed on that accursed altar.

The Void trembled. Its scream of rage echoed throughout creation. The sound was beyond hearing, but it was felt. On countless worlds, mortals and gods felt the icy touch of dread upon them. The elder powers feared the Void would annihilate all of existence in its maddened fury. Those few, poor souls unfortunate enough to be in the direct presence of a Void God, were wiped from reality as the Void's wrath vented through its avatars. Near the most expansive fissures in the fabric of creation, stars winked out, consumed by the nothingness from whence they came. In the aftermath, gods and powers were left to wonder in vain about what was capable of inspiring rage in such a thing as the Void. Wisely, they voiced no thoughts on the matter, and would walk softly in its presence for eons afterwards.

In the beginning there was nothing, and it woke up. It was long before the beginning, and would be long after the end. It was an entity of near-infinite power that existed beyond the limitations of time and space. The Void had never known weakness. It had never felt fear, despair, or pain. Now, it knew. It understood what it meant to be helpless. Its Chosen screamed in anguish, his agony tainting the very substance of the abyss around him, but there was nothing it could do. For all of its power, it couldn't save its Chosen or spare him from his fate.

The Void reached out and ripped the cultists from their world. They had done this; it would have its vengeance upon them. It bound them to the ever-shattering moment of their sin, left them to feel the pain of being unmade for all eternity. Then it turned to the tortured form of its Chosen. With a fixed-point in place, options were limited.

With a pulse of power, the Void halted the flow of time. All of creation hung motionless—a fly caught in amber. The Void considered the possibility of leaving reality suspended. If time was not, then none of the horrible things that came with time could be either. Fear and pain, anger and despair: none of them would exist without time. Despite the tempest brewing deep within its thoughts, the Void knew that termination was not truly desirable. Neither was continuance. This dichotomy was bewildering.

The Void had long been a curious thing, but interest was not desire. The Void had never wanted before. Wanting was very near needing,and such concepts had been alien to its nature. It stared down on the frozen fixed-point and found that this was no longer true. It wanted its Chosen to smile like he had when eating pastries in the market. It wanted him to laugh as he did when the blue-shelled crabs danced on the beach around him. The Void loved all of its Chosen, but it had never actually wanted their love in return. Now, it did. It wanted.

As he was, suspended between seconds, the Void's favorite Chosen would never be able to love it. This was an unacceptable outcome. The Void contemplated other options. It could refuse the cultist's offering, which would free the child from his torment, but it was uncertain if his soul would survive the damage. It examined probability. No, it thought. The risk is too great. Mortal action did this and mortal action would damn well undo it. It shifted its focus, analyzing potential futures, calculating countless courses of action until it determined a solution. It wouldn't be easy. Millennia would pass before it was done, but in the end, all would be well.

The Void hummed in pleasure, satisfied with its determinations, and released the flow of time once more.

The Leviathan swam through the abyss towards the Ritual Hold where the newest Chosen was imprisoned. He wrapped his song around the now-nameless child, shielding the boy's consciousness from the overwhelming intensity of his fear and pain. The mind and magic of the Great Leviathan seeped into the boy, let spirit slip free of flesh and emerge in the swirling expanse.

The Outsider opened onyx eyes filled with starlight and surveyed his new home. His pain was constant, but no longer overwhelming, shielded now by whale song and the Void's immense power. He was not a proper Void God, his transition warped and incomplete. He understood the Void's intentions only in fragments and impressions, but he felt its love and the way it coiled protectively around him. Until the time came when he could be freed, it was the best the Void could do. For now, it was enough.

***DISHONORED***

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Special thanks to my lovely beta, CaptainXeno!