A Matter of Principle

Captain Malum would be very glad when this voyage ended. Provided it didn't end with him dead or worse.

Twelve days at sea was normally easy. He'd led journeys from Serkonos to Morley or Tyvia, and those could be frightening, particularly when the seasons turned the seas stormy or half froze them over. The trip from Karnaca to Dunwall took three weeks even on a slower ship, and he'd made it dozens of times over his life. Could probably have made it alone, on a sailboat without a map. Only this time…she was here.

He stepped up behind her, coughing to announce himself. "We're almost there, your majesty. Can't see it through the mists, but we'll be making port in less than an hour."

Emily Kaldwin nodded, not looking back.

That was the trick. She hadn't done anything. That meant she hadn't done anything wrong, yes, but it also meant she hadn't done things like talk. Or move, much. Or blink. Or noticeably breathe.

The Empress had come up the gangplank in a wheelchair at the start of the voyage, with an eyepatch, a missing arm, and…well, she looked nasty enough to give kids nightmares. She'd signed some quick instructions (he was the only one who knew a smattering of Gristol Sign) and then shut herself in her room. Food and drink were left outside her door, which vanished when people weren't looking. Nothing was seen or heard of her for seven days, though on the fifth day, Malum had overheard some of the men saying their bone charms (illegal, but who was he to deny his boys a little superstition) had gone missing. By the eighth, crew started seeing glimpses of her skulking about the ship, especially at night, and by the tenth she'd been willing to come out and stand on deck. Looked an awful lot better now than she had before her hibernation, but still, she did nothing besides stand and stare towards their destination.

"Your friends weren't clear on what sort of reception we're expecting, here." Malum said, mostly to himself. He moved beside her, leaning on the railing. "From the city, I mean. Whether we have allies there, how you'll contact them. We're…obviously not military men, if you catch my drift."

The Empress didn't even indicate she'd heard him. He sighed, resting his head on his arms. The gloomy quiet that had pervaded the ship wasn't fun, but hey, at least it let him enjoy the atmosphere. The sound of the waves, the wind, the engine, the…huh.

There's no gulls. We should be hearing seagulls, this close to shore.

"I'm just saying." He grumbled. "This was meant to be a round trip anyway, we don't need to resupply. If it's not going to be safe, we could drop you off in a skiff and—"

She slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand.

It was abrupt, and shocking enough to make him stop and turn to her in confusion. She pointed ahead, and signed 'Danger'.

"The fuck—" He squinted, then pulled out his spyglass, peering through the fog. Nothing, at first, and he could still see a couple hundred metres before the fog obscured everything.

And then a dark shape loomed out of the grey.

"Shit." Malum snapped the spyglass shut, turning back and shouting "All hands to stations! Ship incoming!"

The tense silence hanging over the crew snapped into a panicked frenzy. The men's calls and the stomping of boots overrode the sounds of the sea, as the outline of the approaching ship grew and solidified.

She was a big one. Military battleship, Malum had to guess. And the closer she got, the more he wondered how she was sailing; there were pockmarked holes in the hull, no sounds of engine or crew, and…vines spread all over her.

"Hard to port!" He shouted. "Get us—"

A hand on his shoulder—fucking Emily, again—and she came up in front of him, shaking her head and signing 'Straight on.'

"Are you mad?" Malum demanded, looking with wide eyes between her and the rapidly approaching battleship. "If we hit it, it'll crush us! We have no armaments!"

'You have me.' She signed, before turning back to the prow.

Malum gulped, but called "Belay that! Straight on!"

He got looks for that, crewmen who were already regretting this job starting to worry he'd lost it. But the helmsmen kept to their course. All eyes fell on Emily, on the tense, silent standoff between a crippled woman and a thousand tonnes of metal.

"Is she gonna sink it?" One of the men asked.

"She's gonna die here, and so are we!"

"She did it before, didn't she? In the song, when they lost control of the—"

"That's just a song! Even if she's a witch, how can she—"

Emily jumped.

Her body twisted, elongated, the gloomy skeletal blackness of her arm spreading across the entirety of her as she hurled herself off the front of the ship.

It was impossible to tell whether she was flying or she'd just launched herself with that much force, though the violent lurch of the deck as she jumped lent some credence to the latter. She whirled through the air like a shadowy bullet, covering the fifty-odd metres to the battleship in a few seconds.

She didn't just hit the hull. She went right through it.

A horrible rending noise emerged as the thing tore into the battleship's hull. It vanished, then burst out a second later, leaving another hole. That repeated twice more, before there was a boom and an explosion of flame burst up from inside the vessel, fire ripping up through the deck and sending shards of wood flying for miles.

"Brace!" Malum shouted, ducking and covering his head as bits of the wreckage rained on their own ship.

The battleship lurched to one side, tilting dangerously as it made a hard starboard turn. Malum watched in horror as it scythed out of their path, the vines about it burning in the flames of its whale oil reserves as it was wracked by a series of secondary explosions. The word 'Patriot' was just barely visible written under the mess, before the ship began to sink under the waves.

Malum and his crew sailed right on by.

And then Emily was back on their ship. Just, back, with no indication of how she'd gotten there, brushing some soot off her suit's shoulder. Everyone on deck moved away from her.

'Continue.' Emily signed, turning back to Malum. 'There may be more.'

Reshuffling an entire nation's government in the aftermath of a violent coup. It was, shocking nobody, pretty darn complicated.

Fortunately, Bella didn't have to deal with that. Much. As the new commander of the Grand Guard (name change pending), she just had to do two things: Purge all the corrupt bullies from the force, and try to maintain order throughout the city during the transition.

Shocking at least some people, that also wasn't easy. Judging who was tolerable and who was a pathetic excuse for a human was difficult, when 'abuse your power' had basically been standard operating procedure under Abele. Judging everything herself would be way too prone to error, Bella knew that, and if she immediately sacked or tried to jail everyone who'd been out of line…well, she'd probably end up with more targets than enforcers.

The best case she'd come up with was jailing everyone she knew for a fact was evil, blanket-pardoning everyone else, and then setting up a very strict set of guidelines for where guards' new powers stretched (and where they didn't), coming down like a statue of a despot on anyone who stepped out of line. This of course came with its own set of problems: What if people lied? What if there was no proof of an incident besides one guard's word against another's? What if she accidentally incentivised bad guards lying about their co-workers? What did she do when a miner stabbed a guard for killing his wife under Abele's reign?

Such things would normally be designated to the court system. Abele basically hadn't had one of those. So now Bella also had to set up the courts again.

"Can I go back to working for the tyrant, please?" She groaned, flopping into her cushioned armchair at nine in the evening. "Shooting innocents was easier than admin."

Upside of new job: Awesome quarters. She was stationed in the Grand Palace for the foreseeable future, and while a lot of the indulgencies were being sold or phased out, she still got to enjoy the room of someone, like, twenty times above her previous earning bracket.

How much am I making now? Am I being paid? Well, people keep feeding me. Once I stop being fed I should check if they're paying me.

Nobody responded to her clever wit, which was mildly concerning because the room was occupied. Bella turned her head to see Bridget (fuck knows if she's being paid for anything) standing on the room's balcony, staring at her own hand. They had basically been roommates since the coup, which was probably bad because there were still spare rooms in the lavish palace and this one only had one bed, which always led to awkward evenings and then one of them crashing on the sofa.

"Bridget?" Bella called. "You good?"

"Hm?" Bridget turned, startling slightly. "Oh, you're back. Sorry, I was just…"

"Brooding?"

"No not brooding! Just—" She sighed, walking back into the room. "My…my powers are gone. They've been slipping away all week, but today is when I finally lost them."

"Oh." Bella said, sitting up straighter. "I'm…sorry. Those were cool." Don't say that you moron that's so stupid—

"Yeah, they were." Bridget sniffed. "Sorry, can I…can I do the thing?"

"Sure." Bella said, on reflex, before thinking to ask "Wait what thing—"

Bridget jumped on her (getting an "OOF!" in response) and wrapped her arms and legs around her.

Oh, right, that thing. Bella smiled, and hugged Bridget back. "How long has it been since you've sat on my lap?"

"Bout three years." Bridget said, voice muffled by Bella's shirt.

"Heh. I think you're heavier now."

Bridget's head came up. "I'm what?"

"That's a good thing!" Bella reassured, trying not to sound panicked about it. "You were kinda…well, things were tight back then, we were both pretty slim. We're eating a lot better now."

Bridget gave her a sceptical look, then shrugged and leaned back into her. "True. You were still freakishly tall though."

"I am not freakish."

"Yeah you are. You loom. That's not very ladylike."

"Well for three years you got dressed by rolling around in some grass, so you're not very ladylike either."

"Hehe. Guess not…"

They sat there silently for a few minutes. Having a person sat on you isn't typically considered comfortable, but Bridget wasn't that heavy. And there was also the fact that her body was going 'Hey, you know how you've not been held for more than a minute total since you became a guard?'. So she was sort of getting a bit emotional about this, actually.

"…So, I'm not unhappy that I betrayed Delilah." Bridget said, eventually. "Unless she wins, in which case I'll be very unhappy and then dead. But even if I never actually liked any of them, I did like the superpowers. And…now that I don't have those…I sorta—you're gonna be cross at me again."

"I'll try not to be." Bella pat her on the head.

"…It was a thing I had, maybe the only thing I had, that made me special." Bridget clutched her tighter. "And now I don't have it. And I'm worried that you won't—okay, no. I know you'll still want to hang around with me even if I can't teleport, and I know you'll think it's stupid that I'm worrying, but I also…I like feeling like I have something to offer. And I like being good at things, for entirely unrelated reasons, and I now feel worse about sleeping in your room."

"Uh…Okay one, totally get wanting to feel special, I'm not gonna try to take that away—" Bella found herself thinking very rapidly to try and tackle all of this fast enough, "two, I guess you could try and make a pact with Emily, after this, if you wanted your powers back? Heck, I might, apparently in another—world, or something—we could both teleport and that sounds awesome. Even if not, three, please continue to sleep in my room, I'm actually realising now that I really like this arrangement. Four, you have a lot to offer besides teleporting me up stairs I don't want to climb."

"Oh yeah?" Bridget raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

Bella opened her mouth. "Like—"

Bella stopped. Bella closed her mouth, cheeks going red, and looked away. Bridget clearly noticed, because she tensed up in her lap, and oh yeah Bridget is in your lap you maniac why did you allow that to happen she's going to notice—and NOW IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING USEFUL FOR HER TO DO—

It was actually Bridget who broke the stressed silence first, sitting up in Bella's lap and hissing. "And there I go. And now I'm—I gotta stop doing this—"

"No no no, you're fine!" Bella blurted. "Sorry, I didn't mean you couldn't offer things I just—"

Bridget covered Bella's mouth. Not particularly elegantly, she just sort of shoved the back of her hand on top of it. Then took a breath.

"I need to…I need to stop being a nervous wreck about this. Because if I fuck this up that's bad, but we both almost died last week and if I don't at least try before we die then that's worse." Another breath. "And this thing we're currently doing where it's like when we were kids again, except we both get flustered when it's time to get changed or I sit in your lap or we say the wrong thing—It's good, its better than I had any expectation to have again, but it's also. Sort of. Incredibly agonising."

She took the hand away.

"…I'm sorry?" Bella squeaked, not allowing herself to actually think about anything that Bridget just said.

"And you're not letting yourself think about anything I just said, are you? Because you're as terrified of this as I am. Maybe not for the same reason, which is part of why it's terrifying, but…" Bridget sighed. "Maybe that's what I can offer here. You always say what's on your mind, but not about this. So it's my turn."

"…You're absolutely going to have to say whatever it is, you're right, I'm way too terrified of hurting you to do it." Bella eventually made herself say, because she had to say something. Because Bridget was sat in her lap and looking at her, and sure it sounded like—like Bridget meant—

But she might not, and if she didn't Bella would be ruining things, and she could not afford to ruin this after she'd come so close to getting both of them killed—

"Bella." Bridget said, hands tense on the arms of the chair. "Can. Can I kiss you, please?"

…Oh.

"Yes." Bella squeaked.

And Bridget leaned down and kissed her.

And Bella finally allowed herself to think all the things she'd been desperately not thinking for weeks now. Like how Bridget was adorable, like, really adorable, but also absurdly attractive in a very adult sort of way, and also the only person around whom Bella had ever felt even remotely comfortable, yet how around her Bella would find herself filled with this aching tension where she just wanted to grab onto her and—

At some point, Bridget had let go of the armrests and collapsed forward onto Bella's chest, and Bella's hands had ended up cupping the side of Bridget's face and curling into her hair.

They parted, briefly, faces hovering a scarce few inches from each other.

"…It's been weeks since we met in Addermire." Bella breathed. "Could we have been doing this the whole time?"

Bridget, flushed red, was nonetheless beaming at her. "We could have been doing this for about three and a half years now." She admitted.

Bella blinked.

"…Then. I think we have a lot to catch up on, don't we?"

"Yes. I think we do."

"And you're—like, you're sure you want to—"

"Outsider's eyes, Bella, yes!"

"Oh. Good."

And Bella leaned back up and kissed her again.

Royal Spymaster 'Slackjaw' Mayhew manoeuvred around a firepit on his way through the Dunwall Tower gardens. The witches that sat there (turning the corpse of probably-not-a-human on a spit) gave him dirty looks as he passed. They whispered and laughed about him the moment his back was turned…but none got in his way. Delilah had ordered them not to, and when he'd killed the last witch to push him, Delilah had not objected.

Calling this space a garden was something of a misnomer, now. Over a month of mismanagement (or active corruption) had seen the once vibrantly green space converted into a mess of weeds, poisonous plants, and Overseers strung up on spikes. The recent barrage of cannonfire had been the last straw, adding an exciting seasoning of craters and rubble to complete the obliteration dish.

The witches—those that had survived, at least—seemed to enjoy the result.

Delilah herself was standing in the gardens' gazebo, looking out at the city. It was the one thing that had remained untouched by the barrage—perhaps by luck, or perhaps some lingering sentiment of Delilah's had pushed her to defend it.

Slackjaw approached and bowed low, his eyes locking onto the memorial for Jessamine as he said "Your majesty."

"Ah, Slackjaw. Good to see you." Delilah turned and smiled. It was a warm, genuine smile, only it looked like her jaw might unhinge and swallow him at any moment. "Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Bringing my project to completion has been quite engaging."

"Not at all, your majesty." Slackjaw righted himself. "It's my job to take care of things so you can continue as you please."

"Ah, see, that! That's what I love about you, Slackjaw." Delilah came over and grabbed his cheeks, rubbing them. "You're Just So Dependable! I should give you a raise. Am I paying you?"

"No. You give me power and I pay myself."

"Hah! Ah, if only the populace were so self-reliant." Delilah patted his head and turned, gesturing vaguely at the city. "All these complications, all the time. Like, all I want them to do is worship me like a goddess and obey my every command. I don't give a shit what they do with their petty lives, you know?" Laughter broke through at the end of her sentence.

"Of course, your majesty." Slackjaw inclined his head.

Delilah shook hers. "Ah…but, yes, I do have questions for you. How goes the purging of the resistance?"

"It goes well, your majesty. My teams have made a number of promising arrests, and even now are hard at work interrogating their suspects."

"What kind of interrogation?"

"The kind with pliars, your majesty."

"Ooh, my favourite. But you have yet to capture the remaining ringleaders?"

"Correct, your majesty. They've been forced to ground, as it were. Most who engage in active resistance are taken down immediately." Slackjaw carefully avoided naming the Rhymes.

"Quite right, quite right…" Delilah crossed her arms, and looked pointedly at a nearby crater. "But this business with the navy, the other week. How did you let this happen? I was interrupted for almost an hour. If they'd managed to damage my ritual, I could have been set back weeks."

"An error, your majesty. I beg your forgiveness." Slackjaw bowed again. "Havelock should have known better. Shelling the Tower was not only pointless, it would put him directly in your sights and leave him dead. He knew that, and he did it anyway, and he died." His expression soured. "I didn't think he'd be so foolish as to throw his life away for nothing…but he did. It shows how desperate the resistance is becoming."

"Hm. I suppose viewed in that lens, it is good news." Delilah's foot tapped on the marble. Once, twice thrice. "They were singing, when I arrived to stop them. They'd recently learned Emily was still alive."

"Well yes." Slackjaw said. "We knew this already, Abele mentioned it in his private reports. The takeover in Karnaca happened just hours before the ships attacked us."

"But how did they know?"

"It's possible the resistance is keyed into our communications in some way." Slackjaw explained, playing with his moustache thoughtfully. "I've already set my team on discovering how they're getting faster-than-mail international news. We may soon be able to feed them false information, catch them out."

Delilah hummed. "So, like a back door?"

"An apt comparison, your majesty."

"I see…there's a lot of back doors in Dunwall I don't know about, aren't there?"

"If I find them, I make sure they're closed."

"Oh, but it seems like more open all the time." Delilah sighed daintily. "You know, a few days ago, while I was painting, I noticed a faint but peculiar scent. Oil, and black powder. I investigated and found a clockwork explosive under my throne. Can you believe that?"

Slackjaw tensed. "Your majesty, you should report threats like that to me immediately. The sooner I know, the easier it is for my team to pursue the culprit."

"Oh, don't you worry. I think I've found them." Delilah's eyes locked onto his own. "Emily Kaldwin is coming to Dunwall."

"All evidence indicates that, yes."

"Has she arrived?"

"No, your majesty."

"You're sure?"

"Certain. If Emily stepped foot in Dunwall, I would know."

Delilah looked at him for a long few seconds.

Shrugged.

"Well, alright. Just wanted to check in. As you were."

"Your majesty." Slackjaw bowed again, and turned to leave.

He made it three steps before her hand latched onto the back of his neck, wrenched him off the ground, and slammed his face into one of the pillars.

"You really thought you'd gotten away with it, didn't you?" Delilah hissed in his ear. "I'll admit, if I weren't already sure, I would have believed you. You're an exceptional liar."

Slackjaw choked, and tried to speak despite his face being mushed against marble. "Wh—what do you—"

"Emily Kaldwin is here. I can feel her. She destroyed my ships and stepped into the city less than an hour ago."

"W…word sometimes takes time to reach me!" Slackjaw protested. "Less than an hour—my spies are fast, but not—"

"And the excuses just keep coming!" Delilah flung him to the ground. "I bet you could keep going right up until I slit your throat. Always plausibly deniable, huh? But I know the truth."

He spat blood on the floor and tried to get his arms underneath him, as Delilah crouched beside his head.

"High Overseer Martin's team took a secret entrance to ambush me in my throne room." She hissed. "Forced me to use something I'd been planning to save for another project. How'd they know about that, hmm?"

"Martin was a…" Slackjaw coughed, "close friend of Emily's, she must have—"

"And you talked to Pendleton, didn't you, before the massacre at the parliament? Don't think I didn't notice. Tried to offer him a way out?"

"I wanted to…to make sure he didn't displease you, I was—"

"MORE LIES!" Delilah's heeled foot spiked into his back, making him cry out. "And then you told Havelock that Emily was alive. Nothing you could do to save him, of course, but at least you could give your old friend some comfort." She twisted the heel. "And then, with all your cards played and Emily returning, you tried to destroy my work. Should have set the bomb off right then, or set my painting ablaze. You'd have died a few days sooner, but who knows, it might have wasted some of my time."

"I…don't know what you're talking about!" Slackjaw gasped for breath. "Your majesty, please—"

"You almost had me. You really did." Delilah released the pressure on his back, and kicked him over, so he was looking up at her. "I almost truly believed that you were the heartless opportunist, willing to do whatever he had to to ensure his own survival."

She sneered. "But when we first met, and you first knelt before me, you couldn't quite hide all that hatred in your eyes."

Slackjaw kept looking at her in horrified, confused silence.

Then gave up.

"You got my fucking daughter killed." He spat at her, letting the weeks of pent up vitriol finally show on his face. "She was the light of my life and Ramsay Bolton killed her. Fucking Ramsay! You murderous, vain, honourless, morally bankrupt piece of shit!"

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, meeting her eyes. "You're going to die. Everything you've built is going to crumble around you and you're going to lose, and I don't care if I'm not alive to see it."

"Theeeere it is." Delilah loomed over him, standing astride his chest. "Oh, those eyes…I'm using them, I don't care if they're a late addition. She'll never know, you realise that? Emily will never find out that you sacrificed your friends, your dignity, and your life, all to help her."

"I'm the Royal Fucking Spymaster." Slackjaw hacked up some phlegm and spat it on her dress. "It's in the job description."

Delilah nodded a few times.

"…Okay, that was a good one, and I like you, so I'm going to let you have that."

And then her heel stamped down into his throat.

Thomas Moray and Billie Lurk may have been different in a lot of ways, and gotten off to a shaky and suspicious start, but they also had a lot in common.

They were both witches (or warlocks, or Bonded, or whatever you wanted to call those linked to Marked individuals). They were both royally sick of Delilah Copperspoon. And, crucially here, they were both city mutts. Dunwall gutter rats. Their home was windy rooftops, firepits in windowless buildings, back-alleys soaked by rain and sea.

Neither of them were very comfortable trudging through the sodding forest for days on end. Up a mountain. In the summer.

"Why couldn't we have taken a boat?" Thomas grumbled, swatting a bloodfly that went for his neck.

"Those don't go uphill, police boy…" Billie grumbled right alongside him, swiping a fern away with her blade as she walked.

"Sure they do. Dunwall has waterlocks. Boats go uphill all the time."

"Great. Well when we get back, I'll tell Stilton he needs to install waterlocks leading to remote fuckoff quarries in the middle of nowhere."

"You do that."

"I'm not actually doing that. Now shut up, I—Agh!" Billie staggered back a step, clutching one hand to her head.

Thomas caught her before she could fall backwards, checking "Are you alright? Is it—"

"Yeah, it's the fucking Sliver." She hissed, pulling her hands down. The shard of stone replacing her missing eye glowed red, much more aggressively than it had in Karnaca. "I think we're close, which it tells me by stinging. How come you got the easy artefact, huh?"

"You think mine's easy?" Thomas flicked his wrist, space swirled, and the Twin-Bladed Knife manifest in his hand. "I almost cut my cock off with this thing the other day."

"Oh, what a great loss." Billie frowned at him. "What were you doing swinging it near your cock?"

"I wasn't! Controlling this thing's absurd, I just flick it and—" he flicked it. Three trees in front of them creaked and collapsed to the floor, a perfectly neat gash bisecting all three at the base.

Revealed when the trees fell was, in fact, their destination. Just up ahead was an end to the treeline, and a moss-covered stone wall.

Thomas and Billie looked at each other. Crouched, and crept forwards.

The building immediately in front of them was a squat, square thing, with a rusted metal door and broken-in windows. It was the first of many. An entire complex spread out ahead of them, with tracks and rail carts, discarded mining equipment, and a sagging tower at the back connecting directly to the mountain.

"Reckon this is it?" Thomas said, which he knew was pointless even as he said it.

"There's something in there. I can see it, it's glowing, even through everything else." Billie said. "Void knows if it's a way to the Outsider. Maybe the Void doesn't know if it's a way to kill or free him."

Thomas shrugged. "We'll wing it. We always wing it, and it's never gone wrong before."

"Except for—"

"Never gone wrong before."

Billie rolled her eyes, then paused. "I spy evidence of recent activity. The place is a mess, but it's lived-in."

"Wanna bet this is the cult that was puppeting the Eyeless gang?"

"I don't wanna bet it isn't."

Thomas nodded. "Wanna bet they have magic?"

Billie sighed. "I don't wanna bet they don't."

In the end, they did make Emily take the skiff to Dunwall. Or, at least, politely ask. By that point she'd destroyed two more of the possessed-ships, so they weren't too keen to make her do anything.

Dunwall was quiet. That wasn't right. This city never slept, not so long as there was power to keep the lights on. But the lights were out, the streets were empty, and a muted darkness blanketed the city that had nothing to do with the lateness of the hour.

The city of Dunwall was always ominous, but usually it was audibly, viscerally alive. Now the only life was the weeds growing from cracks in the pavement, and the creatures scurrying between alleys.

At least the rats were still there.

Emily walked right through the middle of the city streets, forgoing the rooftops that she usually preferred. Her eyes (or rather, eye) swept left to right, using Darkvision to give her an indication of who (if anyone) was still there. The buildings weren't all abandoned. As the story went, many had fled the city outright, but most remained hidden in their homes. Emily couldn't exactly call out to them, but some saw her nonetheless. Saw her walking—back straight, no mask, no fear—through the streets towards Dunwall Tower. And then, behind her, the whispering began.

Her original intent was to go straight to Delilah, but she did make one detour. The sound of voices drew her attention, and a flicker of a tendril brought her off the road and into the alleys. The source was some distance away, making it even more impressive that she'd heard it. Even more impressive was how close they had gotten to the tower without being silenced.

"I've gotten the same reports from four different people, sirs!" A man in an Overseer mask said, in the dingy remnants of an old pub. Within were two dozen people in worn uniforms. "The Patriot, the Righteous Indignation, and the Pride of Dunwall have all sunk, sirs!"

"Are you sure?" Asked…yep, there he was. Captain Jack Rhyme, with Geoff stood beside him. Emily almost managed to smile at seeing her two friends again. "That's what they think, but what did they actually see?"

"They…three explosions out on the water, sirs, visible even through the fog." The Overseer was panting for breath, had his hands on his knees. "Those were the only ships still out there, weren't they?"

"Unless something else came in and sank them." Geoff pointed out. "But, let's be honest, Delilah blowing up her own captured ships isn't out of character."

"Do you…think it's her, sirs?" The Overseer asked.

Jack and Geoff looked at each other.

"…Recall all scouts from around Dunwall Tower." Jack ordered. "Quietly. We don't want to tip Delilah off, but we can't let her have any hostages."

"And if it is Emily, and she's back for Delilah, we'd best clear the splash zone." Geoff finished. He looked at the Overseer. "You look more excited than I'd have thought."

"I…I didn't used to believe Emily was a good witch, sirs." The Overseer admitted. "Didn't think there was any such thing as a good witch. And then a bad witch showed up."

Perched by a window on the floor above them, Emily watched for another minute or so before grappling away.

Maybe she should have made herself known, attempted to rally them…but what would be the point? They couldn't help her. And if she were going to die, it would be crueller to give them hope and then crush it right before them.

Shindaerey Quarry did contain the Cult of the Outsider, alright, and they did have magic.

Thomas and Billie stood across from one of them now. A nobleman once, from his expensive dress, but his clothes were ruffled and his hair was wild. The influence of magic was plain to see; he had a pair of bone charms hooked into his belt, and various patches of his skin had turned to the colour and texture of silver-grey stone. Void stone.

He also had a great gaping hole in his chest, and was very very dead.

"…Well, that wasn't me." Thomas said, for the sake of clarity. "That wasn't you, was it?"

"Nope." Billie crouched down next to the body, wrinkling her nose and inspecting the wound. "Something was…shoved right through him. From behind, by the looks of it. He's been dead for a few days now."

"That hole is, what, five or ten inches wide?" Thomas wrinkled his nose up. "Not a sword or pistol wound. Maybe a shotgun?"

"If it was a shotgun, we'd see shrapnel." Billie gestured at the red smear on the ground beside the man. "But there's just…guts."

"So it wasn't a projectile. What kind of weapon could make that hole?"

"Nothing a normal human could wield. But since we weren't expecting it to be normal…" Billie looked back at Thomas. Clenched her jaw.

"What?"

"It looks like what would happen if you punched somebody. Without holding back."

Thomas winced. But he didn't dispute it.

There was another body in the next room, this one with her neck snapped. In the adjacent building, they found a man who's head had been crushed against a metal shipping container. The courtyard past that looked to be the place where the alarm had been raised, and the cult had rallied together to fight whatever the threat was.

The evidence for this claim was that the courtyard was strewn with corpses.

"Seven fucking strictures…" Thomas swore, and found himself clutching the Hand of Granny Rags (still itself clutching his shoulder) for comfort.

Calling something a 'bloodbath' was usually a theatrical exaggeration. Not here. With the dead easily numbering above twenty, and that number being hard to confirm because of how many pieces everyone was in, yeah, it was probably possible to take a dunk in the red stuff.

"No evidence of infighting, no dead of any other faction. Not that I can tell, at any rate." Billie had lived a decidedly grislier life than Thomas, but even she looked disturbed. "Something came through here, something strong, and they didn't stand a chance."

"Who besides us even knew these guys existed?" Thomas asked. "Never mind found them without tipping off the Eyeless?"

"Maybe nobody did." Billie said, voice hoarse. "Maybe something was here for the same reason we are. And these people were just…in the way."

We're in the Endgame now, gentlefolks.

Emily returns to Dunwall, while Thomas and Billie close in on the Outsider. And Bella and Bridget get a nice wholesome conclusion to their romance, before I start ruining everything for everyone.

Things, remember, can always get worse.