Beatrici Attano
Yeah, that was a rather gross chapter last time. But it was true to all of Percy's limited wordly experience and the restriction placed on him that he couldn't just kill the bullies.
Though killing the bullies is a much more fun thing to write about. There's just something so satisfying about little fish who think they're big getting swallowed alive by sharks….
Anyway.
Don't know if you know this or not, but uh…the Shin'en and Persephone story is up. Not a lot of love being sent its way right now. Y'all did get the email that it was posted, right?
If you didn't, now you know.
This is an interim chapter that sets everything up for the Titan's Curse chapter coming up next.
So, bear with the exposition and the lore and the world-building, 'kay?
Also, if you're reading "Tea" as TEE, that's not right. "Tea" is short for "Galatea," and so her name is pronounced Tey-UH. Just something that crossed my mind when I was re-reading the last chapter to refresh my memory for this chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or Dishonored
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"That was what you had in mind?" Wendy asked in total disbelief.
It was the car ride home after the school day, and the mother of two (technically three) had just finished listening to the story from her two kids about how Percy had handled their bullies. Needless to say, the woman was a bit confused, a little concerned, and disgusted. She also felt a great deal of sympathy for the poor nurse who had to deal with all of those soiled and smelly children.
"Yeah," Percy chirped. "I once saw this one kid, another bully, get knocked off the playground, and he peed his pants when he landed. His other bully friends started bullying him, and that's where I got the idea."
"…okay~," Wendy drew out slowly. That did make a bit of sense.
If that was the only way Percy knew how to handle a bully without killing them, then that was the only way he knew how to handle a bully. If you didn't know, you didn't know. Of course, just because you didn't know didn't mean you couldn't find out. It was the fact that Percy didn't think of any other methods beyond making the bullies wet and mess their pants that had Wendy scrunching her face up in confusion and bewilderment.
"I mean, I could've just cornered them in the bathroom, murdered them, turned their body into seawater with my Void powers, and flushed them away to never be seen again," Percy offered.
Wendy sighed in defeat. "Okay. Making them ruin their pants is a whole lot better than killing them."
"Meh. I guess."
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The effect Percy was hoping for came to pass the very next day. Tea's bullies all came to school, awkwardly shuffling, and their social lives were totally annihilated when a few enterprising individuals went up and pantsed the girls, revealing the crinkly protection they were all wearing as punishment from their parents for seemingly soiling themselves on purpose.
The unimportant two lackeys just went running to the restroom to hide their faces, while Ashleigh, the head of the little clique, actually went running out of the school without her shorts on, leaving her diaper exposed for the world to see. Tragically, and rather morbidly hilariously, her humiliation lasted no more than 30 whole seconds. When she ran out of the front doors of the school, she got nailed by a school bus.
The driver had been distracted by a huge commotion going on in the backseats and those brief seconds were enough for him to not see the eighth grader go running in front of him and get reduced to red mush.
School actually got canceled for the day due to that horrible accident, and the buses were called back to come get the kids, and a general alert was issued to all the parents whose phone numbers were registered with the school.
The Gates siblings thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
Wendy, being a parent, was almost driven to tears as she thought about the devastation Ashleigh's parents would be going through. First, they punish their daughter by sending her to school in a diaper for her accident yesterday, then she gets pantsed and humiliated in the hallway, and then she goes running out of the school and dies.
But, the bottom line is that Tea and Bell had no more bullies to worry about for the rest of their schoolyear.
Speaking of their schooling, it hummed along rather unremarkably. The kids all had the occasional homework assignment to do, a project that required a trip to the arts and crafts section of Walmart, tests to study for, and Percy and Tea had their cross-country meets to run in (cross-country was the Fall activity; track and field would come during the Spring, so all the football and basketball boys could compete). It was difficult for the siblings not to stand out too much amongst the other middle-schoolers, as they could both easily smoke their competition, but couldn't for the sake of not arousing too much suspicion.
Neither of them knew how to manipulate the Mist, or even that it was possible to even do that, and so the Gates family had this fear that if they showed their powers too much, they find themselves being approached by men in dark suits wearing darker sunglasses.
School life was simple, and homelife was just as simple.
Monday through Friday, the kids woke up, had a breakfast of so many bowls of cereal (or microwave waffles, or pop-tarts, or even oatmeal if a wild enough hair struck somebody), then they washed those bowls out for reuse the next morning, made their lunches, then it was off to brush their teeth, use the toilet, and get dressed for school.
Typically, Bell was on the commode as Percy brushed and Tea got dressed, then they rotated. Percy went to dress, Bell went to brush, and Tea went to poop. Then Bell got dressed, Tea brushed, and Percy had to undress so he could use the toilet. By them time all of that was said and done, the bathroom fan was running loud and proud to clear the air.
Dinner in the house was kept to a strict schedule by Wendy. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were cooking nights. Hamburger helper, spaghetti and garlic bread, soup and sandwiches, mac and cheese with green beans, precut chicken nuggets from the frozen section of the store, homemade enchiladas, tacos, and burritos, and whatever other, simple, homecooked meal that they could think of. Thursday night was leftovers night from whatever remained from the previous days, if anything, which led to rapid adaptation, and Friday nights were the best nights.
Wendy splurged the kids, getting something like a pizza, individual pints of ice cream, and a rental movie from Blockbuster.
What they did on Saturday depended on whether Percy and Tea had a cross country meet or not. If they did, then the whole day was built around their meet. If not, then it was up in the air as to what they'd do. Lay around the house all day, watching movies, TV, playing videogames, or go out and just do some walking and looking around through stores and malls. Of course, it was a common practice for the kids to practice the deadly art of swordplay in the backyard to keep up their skills, and also practice with their powers as children of Poseidon.
Sunday was even more up in the air than Saturday. Never was there a meet on a Sunday, and since the Gates family didn't go to church—the whole pagan god thing—that opened up the whole day. Typically, that was the day the family would go to the store for the weekly groceries, clean up the house, and commit to even more vegging.
All in all, the Gates family operated just like your average middle-class family. It was rather wholesome, really, a single mother and a trio of kids that were all non-neurotypical, all three with superpowers, the middle child having some really serious social-behavioral problems due to his upbringing, but they all made it through together.
With only the occasional spat between the kids.
Come on, they were siblings. It wasn't like they were totally happy with each other their every single waking moment.
But fights never lasted any more than a couple of seconds, only as long as their temper burned. The embers might've glowed for a little while longer, but they always died out. The plumbers got a lot of business in the surrounding neighborhood though.
Because ruptured plumbing was a thing due to the kids' powers and how their emotions affected their powers, it was in Wendy's best interest to help her kids with some emotional control exercises, and help them however she could in regards to controlling their powers. They trained on their own, of course, but Wendy's browsing through the internet yielded some interesting websites about "kinetics," people who could apparently control the elements and other aspects of the universe, such light and shadows, time, etc., and on all these pages were "abilities" a kinetic could work towards, along with techniques and exercises a kinetic could use to control and strengthen their powers.
Fascinating stuff, really.
In their training, the kids found that the only real limit to what they could was how big they wanted to go. The bigger a thing they wanted to do, the more their gut tugged really hard, and the hotter they're body became. Bell described the heat they all felt as the kind of heat he felt when he ate too much ambrosia and drank too much nectar. Those things were explicitly for the gods themselves, and while a demigod could consume them for healing purposes, too much consumption of the godly foods would literally make them burn up. Overloaded, if you will.
That was how the kids felt when they started doing really big things with their powers. They were drawing too much godly energy, and it was straining their human halves. But like how things, tolerance could be built. Like how muscles grew stronger with exercise, tearing and healing, tearing and healing, the kids found that pushing themselves further and further, they could pull off bigger and bigger things.
They were getting stronger and more powerful in their own backyard.
In their experiments with their powers, the children of the sea god found they had one really scary, really niche power: the could mimic the abilities of all known marine life.
For example, the Cuvier's Beaked Whale could hold its breath for over two hours under the water, and the kids could hold their breath for just as long (it was a really interesting experiment, that one). They could mimic the shark's electro-sensitivity, able to feel out the electricity in people and things. Like the mantis shrimp, they could deliver massively devastating punches with force comparable to that of bullets—rather terrifying, something the size of a fist coming literally coming at you like a bullet. And of course, calling all the way back to Green-Eyed Ghoul, where the idea of children of Poseidon being able to mimic marine life first originated, they kids could indeed change their sex like the clownfish.
Bell and Tea did it just to drive their mom up the wall, whereas Percy did it because he was Percy.
And honestly, that didn't sit well with Wendy, Percy following whatever fancy that suddenly struck him. If he suddenly wanted to dye his hair, paint his nails, do his hair up, wear a skirt, wear a raincoat, not wear a shirt, go commando, etc., he did. To Wendy, Percy had serious impulse control issues and maturity problems, and she was worried about how that would translate into his future.
You know, today Percy's whims were his wardrobe and appearance. Tomorrow, his whims could be what he did to a girl he ran into on the street, or whether he decided he was going to take over some person's house and make sure that person was never seen again.
It was one thing for a toddler to follow his whims and go exploring the house and touch everything there was to touch; it was another thing for a maturing teenager with supernatural powers to follow his whims, whatever they suddenly were.
In her attempt to counteract Percy's fancies, during the summer, when she had rearranged the kids' room, Wendy had actually bought Percy sets of girls' clothes. That way whenever he decided he wanted to wear a dress, he had his own already on hand and therefore didn't have to go rummaging through his sister's wardrobe.
Wendy's idea did not work purely because Percy didn't operate on the idea that he his own "stuff." It wasn't that if he wanted to wear a skirt he found the nearest skirt and put it on; it was that if he wanted to wear a skirt, it was that he wanted to wear that specific skirt.
And now he had the power to make his anatomy match his clothes.
Wendy decided to give up. Percy was going to be Percy, and there was nothing she could do about it. Whatever happened to him because of his whims was entirely his fault.
Back to the mimicry power, it was not without its drawbacks.
Holding their breath for hours like a whale left them gasping for minutes afterward like a fat man that just climbed five flights of stairs. Sensing electricity like the shark left them with a nasty headache, and also left them with teeth falling out of their mouths, only to be replaced by more teeth. Punching like the mantis shrimp left their eyes hurting so bad they couldn't see, since the mantis shrimp had eyes that could see colors the human eye couldn't. Changing their sex with the clownfish power just left them feeling really tingly between their legs, and not in the fun way.
Tea once mimicked the octopus's camouflage power, and the next time she farted, she blasted ink into her underwear.
She was mortified. The boys were in hysterics.
So, that was how things were for the Gates family. Pretty normal, pretty average, just with the added abnormality of the kids having weird powers.
For Percy and Sally, things had been strained for a little bit. The fact that Delilah had been a crazed liar had rocked Sally's spiritual existence. Of course, being a spirit tied to the Void placed her in a state outside of the human understanding of time, and so Sally had a lot of time to think about things.
She loved her son more than anything in the world. The fact that he could literally become the daughter she had originally made him to be was just a bitter icing on the cake at this point. With that love came the fact that Sally had to put the past to rest. She would always love Delilah like the big sister she never had. Insane or not, Delilah had been kind to Sally, caring of her, loving and supportive of her, and Sally would not throw those good memories away.
None of that had been a lie.
The plot of revenge, however. A huge, unintentional lie.
But it didn't matter anymore. The Kaldwin family didn't matter. It was new world, with new threats, new dangers to Sally's son, and that had to be her focus. Sally would hold Delilah's love dear to her, and push aside the madness.
Thalia sent the Gates family a letter from Virginia. A letter of all things. She'd found Annabeth, they'd had a big, watery hug, lots of catching up, and of course, many, many tears over Luke. Thalia moved in with the Chase family and even attended with same all-girls school with Annabeth. The former empress made note that Frederick Chase had received a rather lucrative offer from University of California at Berkely, and so they were gearing up to move West.
They had been scheduled to move in time for the Thanksgiving Break.
Speaking of the holidays, Percy got to learn about Halloween.
"We dress up as whatever…and we go to people's houses…and they give us candy?" Percy asked.
"Yeah!" Tea and Bell answered enthusiastically.
"Just like that?"
"Most of the time," Tea said. "Sometimes you have to play a little game. Depends on the house."
"Or if you're doing a trunk-or-treat at a church," Bell chimed in.
"Trunk-or-treat?" Percy blinked.
"It's where a bunch of people use the trunks of their car to set up a little game. You win the game, you get candy."
Percy nodded. "Okay, here's the plan: us three will go find the nearest trunk-r-treat thing and win all the games. Meanwhile, here in the neighborhood, I'll have Doppelgangers out in different costumes collecting even more candy. Sound good?"
"Yeah!" the Gates siblings cheered.
Meanwhile, Wendy was white as a ghost as her mind ran wild with daymares about the three kids jacked up on so much sugar.
And so that was Percy's first Halloween. He didn't know a lick about the history or the lore of the holiday, only that it was competition against the clock to gain as much candy as possible. Wendy had to shush her wallet when she went out and bought no less than twelve different costumes, since Percy broke out his assassin gear—his gas mask and his coat—and had a Doppelganger wear that, whereas Tea and Bell had their own costumes, and the other Doppelgangers each had their own costume.
Tea went as a "warrior goddess." Some plastic battle armor and a bedsheet for a toga. Bell went as Darth Vader. His costume kind of sucked, since it was a generic bodysuit bought from Party City with a cheap mask. The collapsible lightsaber was okay, though.
Stating how man individual pieces they got combined between the siblings and all the Doppelgangers would take too long. The easiest way to put it is that the siblings and Percy's duplicates hauled in a combined 453 pounds of candy. With fifteen total trick-or-treaters (the three siblings and Percy's twelve Doppelgangers) that was an average of about 30 pounds of various sources of diabetes a bag.
Despite this mountain of loot, the siblings managed to burn through it all by Thanksgiving.
The history behind the holiday was lost to Percy as he had no idea who the Puritans were or what they had to do some Indian tribe or a guy who was called Squat. But he got a week off from school and got to enjoy a humongous feast of turkey, ham, chicken, corn bread, mashed potatoes, gravy, beans, green beans, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, cookies, brownies, ice cream, Big Red, and a finale of about 30 straight minutes occupying the toilet in preparation for seconds.
Some miscellaneous stories about the Fall semester included, but were not limited to, all the times Percy decided to roll up to school with his nails painted and his hair done up. There weren't any rules in the dress code that dictated what boys could do with their hair, only that their hair couldn't be touching their ears, hang over their eyes, or be so long in the back that it touched the collar of their polo shirt. Nor were there any rules about whether a boy could paint his nails or not.
It was something Percy had way too much fun, playing with the dress code.
The only teacher that actually cared was that pesky first period English teacher. Well, so long as she remained a teacher. And her body had a location to it. She'd gone flying off her handle one day when Percy came in with his hair in a braid over his shoulder like that Reyna girl from Circe's island months ago, and where the teacher had ordered him to go to the principal's office to get a haircut (since the school actually had permission to cut students' hair if it violated the dress code), he simply refused, and kept refusing to the point that she came at him with a pair of scissors to cut his hair there in the classroom.
Long story short, the teacher was sent home for the day to await investigation and a decision from the schoolboard, but she was never seen again after she was seen going into her house. The camera over her garage captured footage of her pulling into the driveway and going inside, and then she just disappeared.
Obviously, Percy was so incensed with that episode that he showed restraint in school, and then tracked her down and murdered her in her home. And turned her corpse into seawater which he proceeded to flush down the toilet. Using Displacement to teleport inside her house, right in front of her as she was sitting on the toilet, he didn't even give a chance as he simply swiped his tonfa sword and lopped her head off.
Every part of her down to the tiniest drop of splattered blood turned to water and joined the water cycle.
Of course, the justice system didn't even consider questioning a poor, innocent minor like Percy as to whether he knew anything about the teacher's disappearance. Besides, there was no way he could've possibly known where she lived, much less have been able to break into her house without leaving any kind of evidence.
The disappearance of Ms. Goodwin would go down as one of the most baffling and puzzling cold cases in history.
There weren't any more bullies that came after the Gates siblings. Only a handful made any kind of connection between Ashleigh's clique and Tea, and so knew it was a good idea to stay away from her, and the same went for her little brothers. The reason why most of the student body stayed away from the kids was because Percy was just super fucking weird. The kind of weird that made people keep their distance.
There were only two times that a monster made it into the school. Only twice because the school hosted about two hundred hormonal teenagers, and it was smelly in the halls. The monsters never got to do any kind of damage, however, because Sally alerted Percy to their presence, and he took care of them.
The track coach figured out the best way of handling Percy and Tea was to not handle them. As it was the cross-country season, the name of the game was endurance and distance, and so the training for the meets was just to go and run so many laps around the track, or around the school, and even all the way down to the high school up the backroad and back.
In 2007, things were a bit laxer than the modern day.
But yeah. When it came to Percy and Tea, just give them their assignment and let them run. Besides, they won all the meets they went to, so it wasn't like the coach could say anything.
Of course, this was New York, and winter was getting there. Temperatures were dropping, introducing Percy to a new kind of weather, and rain started to come down as something the arcane assassin had never seen before: snow.
Yes, Percy had never seen snow before. He had grown up outside of Karnaca on Serkonos, the southernmost island of the Empire, known for its tropical climate of sunshine and forests. More specifically, he'd grown up in a port town with unrestricted access to the warm, sandy beaches. He didn't know what cold felt like, and he certainly didn't know what snow was, beyond what he'd seen in in books and on TV.
It was a bit of a shock to his system at first, but he adjusted. Obviously.
And finally, the real meat of this chapter.
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Beatrici Attano.
You might recognize the last name as Corvo's, Emily's father. Beatrici is not an OC, but a canonical character in the world of Dishonored. In the series, she is Corvo's older sister. Not much is known about her, other than she's the oldest child of the Attano family and one day she moved to the island of Morley, the island just north of Gristol, the island in which the capital of the Empire, Dunwall, was located.
Beatrici is described as having an adventurous spirit, desiring to explore the world and sail the seas. It's not officially stated whether she packed up and left in the middle of the night to pursue her adventures, or whether there was a teary goodbye between big sister and little brother, and daughter and mother.
From the in-game book called "Diary of Paloma Attano," Paloma being Corvo's and Beatrici's mother, the woman writes, "…my wanderer daughter, setting off for who knows where, guided only by the stars…" From another in-game book is where it is revealed that Beatrici moved to Morley.
After that, there is no more canonical information on exactly what happened to Beatrici. There's an implication she might have run across a Brigmore witch restored to power after Delilah's return from the Void, since the events of the comic book The Wyrmwood Deceit revolve around a young boy called Milo who bears the face of Beatrici, and even claims to be her son. Milo tells his "uncle" Corvo that he and his mother used to sail the seas together until they were captured and moved around the isles to be used as leverage against Corvo in an attempt to kill him.
However, it is revealed at the end of the comic that Milo is just the product of the witch's painting and some magic. Milo is the painting come to life, and the reason why he has Beatrici's face is because the witch painted him to look like her, which is where the implication that Beatrici ran into the witch comes from. As Milo's existence is total fabrication, that means that his story about him and Beatrici sailing together is also fabrication.
What's fact about Beatrici is she's Corvo's big sister, wanted a life of adventure, then moved to Morley sometime before Corvo was sixteen. There is strong evidence she ran into a Brigmore witch as the witch painted a boy in her likeness for use in a plot on Corvo's life, but that is unconfirmed. What's also unconfirmed is the nature of Beatrici's relationship with Corvo.
Did she love him? Did she hate him? Did she regret leaving him and their mother? Did she ever intend to return? Was she almost frothing at the mouth when the chance to leave them behind arose? Were her mother and little brother just deadweight to her?
Because so little is canonically known about Beatrici, these questions will never have any real answers to them, unless Dishonored 3 comes out and has something to do with her, or another comic comes out, or a book. But until such time, Beatrici is shrouded in a bit of mystery.
Which makes her perfect for this story.
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There was indeed a heavy air around 20-year-old Beatrici as she stood by the railing of the outbound ship from Karnaca to Wynnedown, the capital of Morley. She had actually wanted to go to Dunwall and see the budding technology of the genius Anton Sokolov, but all the ships bound for the city had already left. The only ships that remained in the harbor were either going all the way up to the frozen Tyvia, or to Morley.
Morley had been cheaper. And closer. And it was so much warmer this time of year.
The route the ship was taking would take them right through the middle of Serkonos along the Grand Serkonan Canal, then it was around Gristol and up to Wynnedown. The voyage was estimated to take seven weeks. Just getting to the Dunwall area would take two weeks, easily, and then there was a lot of water between Dunwall and Wynnedown.
With her adventure-craving spirit, Beatrici was looking forward more to the journey than the destination. She was hoping to see whales, other creatures of the sea, and maybe even have a run-in with some pirates.
Beatrici didn't look it, but she could handle a sword. She'd watched some of the Grand Guard practice with their sabers, and she had practiced with her little brother. It was a great consternation of their mother's, her children swordfighting and cutting each other up, but she never dissuaded them or told them to stop. Only to be careful and not hurt each other too badly.
With the training he had with his sister, Corvo would go on to win the Blade Verbena contest at the age of sixteen, about a year from Beatrici's departure. The significance of the Blade Verbena was that anyone across the Empire could join. Lowlifes, scum, dirt, royalty, experienced officers, great military figures, and everyone below, in between, and beyond. Corvo, a working-class boy of sixteen, winning the whole tournament in a series of one-on-one duels, was nothing short of legendary.
It's how he came to be the Royal Protector of the future Empress Jessamine I.
Thinking of her brother and mother is what made Beatrici's heart heavy. She did love them, so much so that it was hurting to leave them. But she was still leaving them. Going forward with her desired path in life as a traveler to see all that she could see.
She had told Mother she was going up to Dunwall, because that was "relatively" close, but told her little brother the truth. He was worried about her, and cried in her arms the night previous to this day. Mother had still been crying.
Beatrici did not like making them cry.
Or anyone cry, really. She tried hard to be nice to everyone, but would quickly reveal her nasty side if she needed to. A few years ago, some playground runts who decided to pick on little Corvo had learned that the hard way.
So here Beatrici was: leaving behind her mother and brother, her father having died many years ago in a workplace accident, leaving behind her home and all that she had ever known to purse her dream of adventure.
The thought did occur to her that this morning might've actually been the last time she would ever see them again, but she refused to dwell on that possibility. She would see them again, when she was great, the greatest adventurer in all the world.
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Beatrici regretted every life decision she had ever made.
The ship only made it halfway to Morley—so they were still off the coast of Gristol—before it was attacked. But not attacked by some monstrous sea creature or even by pirates. At least, not like any pirates Beatrici had heard about.
These pirates had glowing yellow eyes, and near as Beatrici could tell, parts of their body were made of silvery stone. Beyond their abnormal appearance, they also possessed what Beatrici could only conclude were supernatural powers. Case in point, when the crewmen of the ship fired their pistols at the pirates, the pirates were able to deflect the bullets with their swords. The pirates could jump further and higher than anything Beatrici had ever seen, and their strength was incredible, able to swing so hard their blades cleaved men right in half, cutting through bone, skin, muscle, and organs with ease.
In the battle, Beatrici managed to actually one of the pirates, a man at that, using a combination of bullets, a grenade, an apple, her favorite pair of underwear, and some quick timing.
That was probably why she was still alive.
The only one still alive.
The whole crew and all the other passengers, even the children and infants, were all dead, their bodies tossed into the sea for the sharks and other carnivores. Beatrici was locked up tight in the brig, chains around her wrists and ankles, and there was a heretical object of bone just outside her cell that was sapping her strength, making her weak and sleepy.
She could feel it slowing down her digestion, so she counted herself lucky that she wouldn't have to worry about being left to stew in her filth for however long it was until they reached whatever destination they were headed to. Of course, the other side to that was there went at least some kind of chance to escape. If someone had come in, forced to change her garments due to the stench and concern that she might contract a disease, she could've made an attempt of some kind on them.
As for the Bone Charm, Beatrici knew what it was. She grew up in a house with a mother who was strong in the faith. Paloma was a staunch believer in the Seven Strictures as taught by the Abbey of the Everyman, and so was fiercely against all things considered to be heresy. Bone Charms, Runes, the Outsider, those who followed him, witches, etc. She taught her children to stay away from those who seemed to worship the dark god, and that if they ever found heretical artifacts, they were to immediately take them to the Overseers for destruction.
Beatrici had never come across any artifacts in her life until today, and it was the final clue as to who these people were.
Followers of the Outsider.
Beatrici heard the door open and shut, and one of the heretics walked into her field of vision. Tall, muscular, with light blonde hair, sharp, older features, glowing yellow eyes, and silvery stone was creeping up his neck to touch at the bottom of his jaw.
"We are sailing for Pandyssia," he said.
Beatrici couldn't even summon the strength to growl or scowl.
"You have demonstrated great courage, cunning, and willpower," the heretic continued. "We are the Cult of the Outsider, dedicated to his power and wisdom, and as you can see, we are rewarded for our loyalty. When we arrive and the ritual has been set up, you will have a choice to make: join us, or be sacrificed. Think on it. We have a long journey ahead of us."
And it was true. While there was no reference as to how big the Empire of the Isles was compared to Pandyssia, or a reference as to how the two landmasses compared to our map, it was a fact that Pandyssia was several times larger than the Empire, and the ocean between them bigger than what it appeared on maps. An intentional edit to the world maps, the size of the Pandyssian Continent and the ocean. A trick used to entice explorers and adventurers to actually go on voyages to the continent, and the size disparity was so the people of the Empire wouldn't feel totally insignificant.
With no official size comparison to our world, only conjecture can be used to determine the size of the Empire. For example, the climate of Karnaca is warm and tropical, so it can be assumed to lie along the equator of the planet, while Tyvia, the island in the northernmost part of the Empire, was said to have its top half covered in tundra and remain in the dark for half the year. So, from Karnaca to Wei-Ghon, the city at the very top of the Empire, it went from tropical to tundra, implying that the Empire stretched from somewhere around the equator to the North Pole.
A rough guestimate could be made that as far as height went, the Empire covered the same amount of planet as the middle of Brazil to the Arctic Circle, which effectively meant the individual Isles were freaking huge. But Pandyssia was even bigger. With how big it was compared to the Empire, it could be estimated that it was a supercontinent that stretched almost from Pole to Pole, and the amount of ocean between the continent and the Isles was roughly the same as the distance between Madagascar and Australia.
About 4,000 miles.
Considering the fact that Pandyssia and the Isles were the only mapped landmasses on the planet, that also reinforced the idea that they were freaking huge.
And so Beatrici was forced to endure the most torturous days of her life aboard the ship. Alone, no one to talk to, no chance or hope of escape. The Bone Charm never moved despite the tossing of the waves, and it kept Beatrici sedated during the whole journey, however long it was. If it was estimated that the voyage from Karnaca to Wynnedown was going to take seven weeks, Beatrici didn't want to think about how long it would take to reach wherever on Pandyssia they were headed.
But in not thinking about distance and travel time, Beatrici could only think about her little brother and mother, and about how foolish and stupid she had been. She could only think about her two choices, either join this cult and live, betraying her mother and everything she had been taught growing up, or die, and then her spirit would merge with the cosmos, never to see her brother or mother again as her individuality and consciousness would totally cease to be.
According to the Abbey, anyway.
It was a very long and torturous experience for Beatrici, and she regretted every moment of it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Seemingly an eternity of isolation later, they made landfall, and Beatrici was taken from the brig to another cell in whatever base the Cult had on Pandyssia. It was cold, so Beatrici figured they were somewhere on the northern coast.
Once again, she was alone in her cell, chained, and the Bone Charm that made her so tired and weak was once again placed out of reach.
After so long alone with nothing but that damned Bone Charm, Beatrici was ready to give it all up. But she had a visitor.
"Hello, Beatrici."
The young woman's eyes widened to the point they almost fell from her sockets as he was just…there. Shrouded in the shadow of the lamp outside of Beatrici's cell, she couldn't see his whole form, only his silhouette and darkness-hidden features, but she knew who this was. By now, she was so lost and desperate she didn't even care.
"What an interesting hand fate has dealt you. Your adventurous spirit turned against you, bereft of your family, at the mercy of these idiots who think I favor them. They've placed you in a difficult position. Join them and betray everything your mother taught you, or refuse and die."
He picked up the Bone Charm, and it turned to ash in his hand. Those black eyes settled on Beatrici, and with regaining strength, she glared back in defiance. She couldn't see his expression, but she could swear he was smirking in approval of something.
"Let's see if we can do…better."
Beatrici gasped sharply when there was suddenly a hand gripping her wrist. She watched with a pained expression as a sigil was burned into the back of her hand.
"My Mark. Consider it…a gift."
Beatrici stared at her gift, and as she did, knowledge just came to her.
She smiled in the darkness of her cell.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A grunt of the Cult came for Beatrici, and when he found only empty shackles, panic gripped him. He turned around just to find a length of jagged black obsidian become buried in his chest, right through his ribs and through his heart, killing him instantly.
Beatrici pulled her sword, a weapon conjured from her newfound powers of the Void, out of the new corpse, and she let him fall face first to the ground. She put her Marked hand on the body, her Mark flickering with ethereal black and silver fire. After exactly three seconds, she removed her hand. The open wound of the corpse was filled softly flickering silvery black fire.
The scariest part was when the corpse stood up, and his eyes opened to reveal pits of the same unnatural fire.
Beatrici flicked her hand, and her thrall disappeared in a burst of the fire. Alone in the whole prisoner area, she went jogging through the corridors, finding nothing and no one. It was soon revealed that the prison area was actually underground, as there was a main passage that led up to the surface. That's when Beatrici activated another of her new powers.
Her body lost its natural form, becoming smokey and wispy. She dropped to the ground, as if walking on forelegs and hindlegs, and she moved. Faster than the fastest of four-legged beasts, and quieter than an ant in the dead of night, Beatrici raced across the ground, unseen by the Cultists in her form.
The exit/entrance of the prison area opened to a courtyard, with a stone path leading to an altar. A priest of sorts stood by the altar with a knife in hand, and milling around the courtyard were Cultists in ceremonial garb, about two dozen of them, all with their own powers from Bone Charms and their altered bodies from spending so much time in the Void.
There was a big mansion on a hill overlooking the courtyard, with some grunts patrolling the perimeter and the path up to the mansion. One of these grunts was yanked to the other side of a bush, where he was eternally silenced, and his body turned into a vessel for Beatrici's will.
She had to deactivate her Shadow Walk, as it had drained a lot of mana. She had enough to conjure another jagged sword, and she crept along until she got behind another grunt, killing him. She placed her hand on him, but instead of turning him into a thrall, she instead did something a lot scarier: she absorbed what little mana he had in him and refilled her reserves. Then she dumped his body in the bush, and started making her way up the path, silently dispatching the grunts as she stalked them.
She either turned them or drained them, up until she ran out of "slots" and her reserves were full. This came to pass when she'd made her way up to the mansion. Inside was a skeleton crew of only five more grunts of the Cult. Beatrici killed them all by systematically hunting them down and striking when they were alone.
Now, she didn't have any serious training in stealth killing, but she had a good head on her shoulders and could creep quietly. And slicing through the throat was a solid way to ensure death without any formal training in anatomy.
Once the mansion was empty of people, Beatrici looked back down at the courtyard. It was dark and it was a ways down there, but she could see in the flickering firelight that the Cultists were starting to get restless. She suspected it would only be a matter of minutes, no more than three, before things ratcheted up.
She had to move fast.
The mansion was filled with valuables, like weapons, books, journals, monetary things, and Beatrici decided she would destroy this place after she'd looted everything she could. As it was, for extremely personal reasons, and some practical ones, she needed to kill the Cult.
She'd counted a total of 22 robed members down there when she'd snuck past them all and assassinated her way up to the mansion. She had the advantage of surprise, and one particularly nasty trick up her sleeve, but it only had so much range. The best way Beatrici could determine to win this was that she needed everyone close enough together.
She could think of a way. She hadn't made those thralls for nothing, after all.
So she headed back down to the courtyard, sticking to the shadows. The Cultists were milling around, but they were getting antsy.
"How long does it take to get some girl?"
"Do you think Boris is raping her?"
"If he is, he's lasting longer than usual."
And that was it for Beatrici. With a point of her finger, a look of her eye, the visualization in her mind, and some mana, the Voidwalker summoned her thralls in different locations. She could only make six at a time, but she only had enough mana to make two before she was too low to make a third. However, that was circumvented by her mana-drain power. Between her drain power and the limit on her thralls, she had made the full six, and now they were on the attack.
Their sudden appearance, and their physical appearance itself with their fiery eyes and mortal wounds, allowed the six thralls to get a good few swings in with their momentum. Beatrici was honestly impressed with them, since their surprise attack nearly cut the Cultist gathering down by half. Nine members died in the initial attack, but then they got their feet back under them and the momentum shifted.
The thralls were only as good as they were in life, only as strong as they were when living, and they couldn't use any powers they might've had when living, but now they were impervious to pain and injury. The only ways to finally kill them were to damage them to the point they couldn't function anymore, like you cut them half or crushed their body or sliced it up into enough pieces, Beatrici canceled her power and released them, or Beatrici died. As it was, with the Cult's ignorance to her thrall's abilities, four more were killed by the undead tanks before said tanks were too damaged to operate further.
In less than a minute since things had been moving so fast and violently, the number of present Cultists had been cut down from 22 to nine. And those nine were all right where Beatrici wanted them.
She activated another power, her movement power. Blink allowed for rapid, teleportation-like movement to a marker. Displacement allowed a user to travel outside their body and place a marker that they could teleport to. Far Reach let one be like Spiderman and launch a tendril of the Void at a surface, and then pull themselves to that place. Luke's power, Speed, was exactly what it sounded like. Beatrici's movement power allowed her to instantly "skip" unseen from shadow to shadow.
The reason she didn't just use this earlier because each skip cost mana, whereas Shadow Walk took its cost and that was it. Then it was just a matter of time before the power deactivated on its own.
Beatrici fell into her own shadow, her vision getting weird, and then she skipped to another shadow, then another, and then skipped into the shadow of one of the Cultists that were gathered around the dead thralls, investigating. Beatrici burst out of the Cultist's shadow and ran him through, using her drain power to refill what she'd spent in her skipping.
And before the eight remaining Cultists could recover and really put her on the ropes, Beatrici raised her Mark high, the sigil pulsing with silvery black fire. A pulse was released that traveled a radius of ten meters. The Cultists were all within this range, and they came to discover a horrifying fact: they couldn't feel their powers.
This power of Beatrici's? It cancelled all Void-related things within ten meters. No Bone Charms, and no magic.
Except for her own powers.
Beatrici conjured her jagged black sword and started swinging until there was nothing alive to swing at.
She took a deep breath when she was done, then looked down at herself. The dress she'd been wearing this whole time was splattered with blood, as were her arms, legs, and face. On top of the blood smell, there was also the stench of body odor, not to mention that now that the slowing and draining effects of the Bone Charm were gone, Beatrici was hungry, and in need of the bathroom.
She went back up to the mansion and the facility the needed. While she bathed, she came up with names for her new powers.
Her conjuration power she decided to simply call Black Conjure.
Her power that let her turn into a shadow monster already had a name per this story and official canon lore, and so it was Shadow Walk.
Her skipping power she called Shadow Skip.
The power that her let control corpses she named Corpse Controller.
Her drain power was called Mana Drain.
And there was one more to be revealed in due time.
After her shower, Beatrici left her soiled clothes in the bathroom and walked naked through the mansion to a woman's room. There were clothes there in her size, and so she dressed herself in a clean pair of panties, a new bra, pants, a shirt, socks, shoes, and a fur-lined overcoat for the outside chill. She got two big cases and went through the mansion, loading the cases up with journals and notebooks that revolved around the history of the Cult, their experiments, their research, their creations of bone, some weapons and equipment like guns, grenades, and a rather neat rifle that functioned with cartridges of compressed air rather than combustible whale oil, coins and other sellable goods, and changes of clothes.
And the necessary items for her female body.
Beatrici loaded up everything she could carry in the bags and cases available to her in the mansion, spending hours loading up the ship she'd been brought on, moored to the dock. After she went through the mansion one more time to make sure she had everything she thought she might need or want, the sun beginning to come up, Beatrici nodded.
She stood before the mansion, her Marked hand held at her side with the palm up, as if holding an apple. The sigil danced with the silvery black fire, and with a scowl, Beatrici used her final power: Fireblast.
The magic fire left her hand in its unique color, but when it struck the mansion and flared up, setting the structure ablaze, it turned to its natural orange and yellow.
Beatrici watched it burn with immense satisfaction. She'd been lucky enough to receive the Outsider's mark, but how many others hadn't, and therefore had been sacrificed by this deranged Cult? How many children? How many innocent people? Beatrici felt not an ounce of sympathy for those she'd killed here today.
Monsters, every one of them. They deserved what they got.
Beatrici looked at the Mark on her hand. It made her feel dirty, hypocritical—she'd been raised against these kinds of people, raised against this dark god, and now here she was, Marked by him, embroiled in a conflict with those that worshipped him.
Beatrici closed her fist with a determined look. It was her Mark now, her powers, her path, her choice. This wasn't the whole Cult, it couldn't be, and Beatrici would seek them out and destroy them in the name of all those they'd already butchered, in the name of all those alive that could fall victim to these madmen and women, and in the name of her family.
He Cult had singled her out on the ship for the skill she'd shown during the fight. Corvo was even more skilled than she, and so she felt that put a target on his back. The Cult could come for him one day. She had to stop them.
By herself, Beatrici sailed back to the Empire. Having dreams of adventure in her heart had driven her to learn how to navigate, and so she knew how to use the instruments and the stars. Since there wasn't an autopilot feature to the ship, the technology not being that advanced yet, and no one to relieve her, Beatrici was practically confined to the helm to make sure the ship stayed on course and didn't hit surprises.
It made eating, sleeping, and reliving herself difficult, not to mention her period on the several-weeks' long voyage across the ocean, but she managed. She even managed to get a whole lot of reading in while she sailed. The Cult's journals were extensive, spanning 4,000 years of history. How to make Runes and Bone Charms, all the recorded powers and abilities, records of members past and current, historical accounts.
All fascinating, breathtaking, horrifying, and eye-opening.
Beatrici would go on to live a very solitary, bloody life.
She had to park the ship somewhere off the beaten docks due to the fact that the ship would be listed as overdue, and there would be too many difficult questions asked of her in a main port. Where is the crew at? Where are the passengers? Where is all their stuff? What is all of this stuff? Etc.
Beatrici found civilization, and using the coin she had on her, rented a big enough carriage to load everything onto. Using the black market, she sold most of the items she looted and opened a bank account, bought a house, and stored everything she had in it. Buying an assortment of belts and pouches, and tough, sturdy clothes, Beatrici fashioned something of a costume for herself, arranging her weapons and gear around her body for optimal mobility and ease of access.
She got the life of adventure that she wanted, she just never expected it to involve magic and hundreds of gallons of blood. She hunted the Cult of the Outsider across the Isles for years.
1814 was the year in which 16-year-old Corvo won the Blade Verbena and started his life. Beatrici was 21 by that time. 1850 was the year that the Brigmore witch used a portrait of Beatrici to paint Milo and put into action her failed revenge plot against Corvo. In that year, Beatrici would've been an old woman of 57.
Would've.
Years of hunting and killing the Cult took its toll on the poor big sister. Ambushes, traps, stab wounds, cuts, bullets, explosions, capture, escape, broken bones, and more. She made a big dent in the Cult, wiping out half its members during her hunt, but it came with its prices. Stress, fatigue, cynicism, longing for a normal life with a husband and children, longing to see her mother and little brother again.
Beatrici had only learned many years after the fact that Paloma had passed away shortly after Corvo had been sent to Dunwall to be the Royal Protector. Her heart couldn't take the disappearance of her daughter and the faraway assignment of her son.
Beatrici never saw Corvo again after her departure, at least, never in person. She saw him in newspapers, and heard gossip and chitchat in the streets, but she never got to hug him and tell him how proud of him she was, or tell him that she was okay. Or that there was an Outsider-worshipping cult in the world influencing politics and worldly affairs so she could enlist his help.
Instead, Beatrici had died during the early days of 1835, at the age of 42. She'd slept with a man late in 1834, her hard life of solitude driving any sense of decency and womanly pride out the window as she slept with a man whose name she didn't know. She contracted a disease soon after, and while it was identified, there was no cure for it.
Even after her diagnosis, Beatrici still couldn't force herself to see her little Corvo. A big part of that was that the Rat Plague began taking hold in Dunwall during 1835 and so travel to the city was heavily restricted, but the biggest part was her Mark. Though she used it liberally in her hunt of the Cult, it was a badge of shame of sorts.
She couldn't face her brother with that Mark on her hand, proof of heresy and a betrayal of everything their mother taught them as children.
And so Beatrici died in an undignified way, alone in her house as her body succumbed to her disease.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Hello, Beatrici."
The woman started out of bed, eyes going wide as a sharp gasp left her. Air filled her aching lungs like it did when she was young, and that's how she knew things weren't as they should be. The next big clue that things weren't right was the fact that she was standing on a floating platform of rock, her bed behind her, and all around her was an empty expanse save for other platforms of floating rock, and the occasional structure.
Beatrici swallowed as she realized where she was. She looked at the black-eyed man that was levitating a few feet off the ground with his arms crossed, a neutral expression on his pale face.
"You have provided a great show," the Outsider said. "Using my gift for the sake of others and not for personal gain. Hunting down the Cult that worships me, punishing them for their crimes. But the show isn't over…yet."
Beatrici's eyes narrowed at the being she had been taught to revile as the devil. "What do you want?"
"To offer you the choice I never gave you. I give you two options: life or death. You can continue as you are, living your last seconds in your bed, in which you will die and cease to be, or you can live somewhere else, as someone else. Someone not too different than you are now."
Beatrici blinked. "What?" she asked blankly.
"I offer you the chance at life in another place, in another time. There, you would have a life like you did. An absent father, a loving and devoted mother, and a little brother that thinks the world of you. I would allow you to keep my Mark and your memories."
"What about here? What about Corvo?"
The Outsider made a gesture with his hand, and some rock slabs came together to make a large frame. The open frame became filled with moving colors, leaving Beatrici awed.
"Corvo's life will be one of chaos and love. The Rat Plague will provide a great challenge for him, but he will win in the end. Empress Emily Kaldwin, his daughter and your niece, will take the throne after her mother's assassination, and she will face her own great challenge in the years to come. One day Corvo will die, like you, but not before becoming a great man."
Beatrici's heart was racing. "Will you…will you give him this choice too? The chance for another life? Will we be together again?"
"Perhaps. I see many futures and possibilities."
"What happens if I choose to die?"
"You will cease to be, and will become one with the cosmos as the Abbey teaches. You will definitely never see Corvo again."
Beatrici couldn't be sure, but she swore the Outsider was being sarcastic with that remark.
"And if I choose this next life…I'll have a new little brother."
"Yes. A chance to correct your mistakes and heal your guilt."
"But I could see Corvo again."
"Perhaps."
Beatrici found the decision to be easy. "Then I choose life."
"Then I have one request of you."
"Yes?"
The Attano woman leaned back as the Outsider leaned in uncomfortably close.
"I expect you to keep up the good show."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The excitement the Gates family had in their home as Christmas neared was put on hold by Grover.
He was on an assignment up in a school in Maine to investigate two kids that were suspected of being demigods, with one of the teachers suspected of being a monster. A manticore, to be precise. The reason Grover called specifically for Percy, and also Thalia, was that of the two kids, a big sister and a little brother, the big sister had the same mark on the back of her hand that they did.
There was another demigod Voidwalker in the world.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
And that's that.
This could've been two chapters, with the recap of the Gates family being one chapter with that little bit just above serving as the cliffhanger that would lead into the whole part about Beatrici Attano, but I decided to make them one. That way we can get to the Titan's Curse next chapter!
And, yeah. The Promised Year is up, the story about Shin'en's year with Persephone. If you didn't know, now you know.
Fav, Follow, and Review please!