Several months had passed since Emily was seen to her throne, crowned ruler of her land at last. Her suffering was not to end there – she had seen too much pain, had heard too much for her age through the walls of The Golden Cat to forget the screams so easily, screams that sounded harmoniously in her dreams with her mother's, drowning her.
Or perhaps, in some twisted fashion, Corvo only wished that was the case. His own nightmares haunted him even in his waking hours, drowning him in regret and pain and blood on his hands – his hands, tainted with her blood, only hers, the stench of salt and copper strong enough to be tasted on his tongue. Corvo had spilt no blood since her death, not out of fear or lack of desire. In his mind, he killed them all, laughter glinting in his eyes. One strapped to a chair, the skin stripped from his face, eyes gouged out before hot poison and fire branded him the traitor he was, left with blood bubbles forming around his mouth, blocking the screams Corvo knew would lull him into a peaceful sleep for once after those long months of torture, of nothing but self-hatred and hatred for others to keep him going.
But Corvo paused, his knife at Campbell's chin, watching blood slowly pool at the tip of the sharp steel. His target (prey) was already strapped down, a bruise forming around his neck where Corvo had reluctantly let go.
The halls echo with screams of those they call traitors, heretics. Walls built on their ashes and bones. How many? How many have bled and died here?
The voice more than whispered to him. It crawled inside of him, flowing through his veins, shivering down his spine. The same voice had done this (and so much more) in his past. He knew this. He refused to name the voice still.
Pity did not stay his hand. Nor did the voice coerce him in the end. There was blood on his hands already, still hot and oozing, dried and cracking under his fingernails – it was the thought of the bloods mixing on his hands, flowing and pooling together until they were one, until he could no longer tell hers from his. That thought alone kept his hands clean that night. He contented (settled. He could never content himself with this.) himself to branding him, the smell of poison and burning flesh filling his nostrils, screams bouncing off one wall and back again, ringing in his ears, until Campbell fainted from the pain.
Corvo knew not how many times he pressed the brand to the bastard's face, layering the burn marks, fascinated by the way the skin crunched up like the burnt skin of rats on skewers. He didn't bother counting. He simply didn't care.
Several months, and still the scent of burning flesh sometimes wafted on the breeze, caressing his checks, begging him to continue, to find Thaddeus (he sneered at even the thought of the man, his fingers itching towards the sword at his side, arms flexing at the thought of digging his heart out, blood still pumping, spilling the traitor's blood through his fingers) and finish his job. He sighed, fingers running calmly through his hair instead of eagerly through flesh and bone.
It - he - had not always been like this.
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First chapter was short for a reason; getting this out there will make me more likely to write the story. I have a problem with dropping stories sadly, and I'd rather not drop this one ^^'