A Matter of Time
24th of the Month of Harvest, 1852.
Almost five weeks after Delilah's Coup.
The doors to Dunwall Tower's throne room creaked open.
The hall was in shambles. Bits of masonry, from tiny shards to great slabs of stone, were scattered all over the place. Power was out—the requisite circuitry was destroyed, and the witches had no use for it anyway. With most of the room's pillars cracked or shattered completely, the task of holding place together fell to the gnarled, twisting roots that dug through the entire tower. Stems a foot or more in diameter spread up the walls and out along the roof, organic buttresses with spikes and flowers.
Besides the rubble, the room contained five things. A fallen chandelier in the middle of the carpet. A statue of a man in desperate peril, arms outstretched. A throne, inlaid with runes and linked to the vines, at the end of the hall. A wide canvas, metres across, positioned just to one side…and Delilah, stood at that canvas with a paintbrush in her hand.
When the door opened, she turned to face it, a frown marring her features. When she saw the person who came in, that frown turned confused.
"Fiona?" She asked. "What is it?"
The young woman looked utterly awful. She stumbled in on what looked to be a broken foot, and was sobbing uncontrollably. One of her arms was wrapped protectively around her own midriff, while the other held a crumpled piece of paper.
Fiona sucked in a desperate, shuddering breath, looked down at the paper, and said,
"Hey th—oh, fuck—Hey there, Delilah. I—I've come to apologise for giving you such…such fuck-ugly makeup, and, and—"
Her tone was rote, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"And for pretending that—I'm so sorry, she, I—and for pretending that anything…that anything could be done about your fuck-ugly face!"
"…What?" Delilah said, because What, but Fiona didn't even hear it because the moment she finished, she crumpled up the paper and teleported away.
Behind her, stood in the doorway, was Emily Kaldwin.
Oh.
The confusion dripped off Delilah's face like wax, leaving annoyance on her countenance while excitement built in her belly.
"Well, well, well. Hello, my dear niece." Delilah flicked her paintbrush away. It clattered off behind a pillar. "Did it make you feel good, traumatising my poor witches in order to insult me?"
Emily nodded.
"Hmph. I suppose honesty should be commended."
Delilah stepped out into the centre of the throne room. Her eyes drunk in Emily's scarred face, the missing limb, the stretched, pale skin—and she smiled.
"Though, I must say, there's something about kettles and pots to be said here. Karnaca doesn't seem to have treated you well, darling. I suppose the sun just isn't good for a Dunwall girl's complexion."
Emily raised her hands, started moving them through the air in sharp, practiced gestures. Delilah tensed, expecting a spell…then fully laughed.
"Oh, Emily, do you really think I have bothered to learn sign language? Please."
Emily's arms fell, and she shrugged.
"Don't worry, I'm quite content for you to be silent and occasionally nod your head." Delilah tilted her own. "I've been hearing about your adventures in Karnaca. Exciting, if ultimately pointless. Did you have fun?"
Emily raised one hand in a so-so gesture.
"Always the danger of travel, isn't it?" Delilah's gaze sharpened. "Did you kill Breanna?"
Emily stared at her for a long time—far longer than the little bitch needed to—before shaking her head.
A knot in Delilah's stomach unwound itself, and she wasn't sure how much of that showed on her face. "Thank you. I'm not sure how exactly I can reward you for that, since you're going to die anyway…I'll not actively hunt your friends down once I'm done here, how fair does that sound?"
Emily took a step forwards.
"Ah ah ah…not another move." Delilah leisurely drew a pistol from within her jacket. She didn't really need it, but she'd been carrying one around for the last few weeks in preparation for precisely this moment.
"It's amusing, actually. No, beyond amusing: This is utterly hilarious. Look how entirely unprepared you are! All that busyness; watching me come back, deposing poor Luca, visiting another timeline? All of it entirely meaningless. Because I'm still here and I'm still immortal."
Emily didn't move. Delilah languidly took a few steps closer…and then pointed her gun sideways, at the head of the statue of Corvo Attano.
"Did you genuinely ignore my phylactery? No, you're not that stupid. Destroyed it, maybe. But I can't feel the fragment of my soul, so you haven't brought that back, so you can't kill me here. And, of course—" She cocked the gun. "I still have this. So, here's what happens now. You're going to drop all your fun little toys on the floor. And you're going to turn off your magic arm. And you're going to prostrate yourself before your Empress. And if you do all of that, then I'm not going to blow your daddy's head to pieces. Do we have a deal?"
Emily looked at her. Looked at the floor. Took in a deep breath through her nose, and let it go.
Then she shook her head.
Before Delilah could respond to that, Emily whipped her own pistol out and fired.
Delilah jerked away on reflex—
But Emily wasn't aiming at her. The bullet from the girl's handcannon smashed into Corvo's chest, and shattered the statue into thousands of pieces.
For the second time that day, Delilah was utterly dumbstruck. The third time occurred a split second later, when streaks of green light burst free of the statue and tore into her body.
Delilah was whole again.
Oh, fuck, that wasn't supposed to happen.
It was hard to think, hard to move, with the torn piece of her soul finally reunited with her. It was a moment of true ecstasy, as the feeling of emptiness and brokenness she'd endured for her own safety was finally healed. But there was a memory, a memory that wasn't quite hers, the memory of another Delilah from another time, whose return to wholeness had been followed by immediate destruction at the hands of her enemy.
And so, her nirvana tainted by a desperate panic, she fled.
Emily's sword swept through the air where Delilah's neck had been moments earlier.
Emily hissed, looked around, and saw her target stumbling towards the throne. Emily grappled to the throne, threw out a back kick that knocked Delilah away, then leapt off with her blade flashing.
Delilah managed to draw her own sword and get it in the way. Emily locked blades, kneed her in the chest, and shoved the weapon away, going in for a strike—
And Delilah teleported again.
Fuck.
The bitch stepped out from behind a pillar a second later, glaring furiously with focused eyes. That was bad. Emily's best chance had been while Delilah was recovering from the procedure.
"You really just shot him, huh?" Delilah looked at the wreckage of the statue. "Heh. I knew you had it in you. I wonder, do you think he could see you? Was he begging you to stop?"
Emily was reloading her pistol (and had no tongue) so didn't reply.
"You are a determined, heartless little whore, aren't you?" Delilah clicked her tongue, and smirked. "There's proof we're family, if you didn't believe me before. Oh, but you inspire such loyalty in the people you barely care about. Did you know, Admiral Havelock was rejoicing hearing you lived!" She sighed. "Even as I killed him. Oh, yes, I did that too. I'm curious, do you have any friends left—"
Emily finished reloading and grappled forwards. Delilah hurled a brace of magical spines and Emily slid beneath them, swiping at Delilah's legs, and Delilah Blinked away again, but Emily was ready this time, turning and firing her pistol at where her foe had reappeared, but Delilah conjured a Blood Briar that tanked the bullet, giving her time to flee to the PAINTING—
The oil and parchment split, twisting into a portal of white light. Delilah leapt in without a moment's hesitation, vanishing.
Emily narrowed her eyebrows, reloading her pistol again. Checked behind the painting, because of course she did, she wasn't stupid. But when she didn't find anyone…
Nothing's ever easy, huh?
Emily took two steps back, inhaled, and jumped.
The bodies didn't stop, as Thomas and Billie made their way into the Shindaerey quarry. But they did get stranger. Inside the mountain caves, more and more of the corpses had prominent stony markings on their bodies, some almost completely covered in the stuff.
Thomas was nauseated enough with the surroundings that he was perfectly content keeping his head down and following Billie's lead. Billie herself, however, was looking at every body with an expression more of confusion than disgust.
"Noticing something?" Thomas prompted.
"…It was already here." Billie said.
"Beg pardon?"
"Whatever did this…the bodies aren't positioned like they were defending against something from outside. It came from within."
"Well, that was an incredibly ominous thing to say." Thomas felt for the reassuring presence of the Twin-Bladed Knife. "But that means it's probably gone, right?"
Billie put her own hand on her sword's hilt. "Depends. Was it escaping, or was it protecting something?"
"Extremely ominous, again."
"Sorry."
Billie led him further into the cave. It was a full-on base of operations, with sleeping quarters, a dining room, and even a library. But past all that, a staircase led higher and deeper still, with shrivelled flowers and extinguished candles lining the steps.
"Our target's up here." Billie said, wincing. "It's—ah, fuck, it's bright. Just up ahead."
Thomas nodded, summoning the Knife and moving up ahead of her.
But there were no corpses on these final stairs, nor even a sign of what had caused the massacre. Just a collapse in the cave wall, behind which was a ruby-red, ovaloid crystal.
It looked an awful lot like an eye.
"This must be what the cult found." Thomas said, activating his own Darkvision. "It's…yeah, ow, I don't know what it is but it's magical alright."
Billie touched her own eye. Not the natural one; the shard of red crystal in her socket, that was now glowing brighter than it ever head. "Emily said the Outsider called this 'the Sliver of the Eye of a Dead God.' I…I think we've found the God."
She reached out, very fucking tentatively, with her magical arm.
A dim light emerged from within the crystal as she got closer. Thomas moved behind her, guarding the way they'd come, as she hesitated, squeezed her eye shut, and reached out to touch the surface—
The Void was bright. That was fucking unusual.
The place Emily arrived in was…vague, was the best word she could think of. A street of some kind, Dunwall from the architecture, but blurred and indistinct. Everything was white and textureless. The street and the surrounding walls were flooded with people—statues, with simple faces and empty eyes. They had their arms in the air, hands to their breasts, mouths open in cheer…rapturous celebration on all of their faces.
At the end of it all, Delilah sat on a throne.
"Do you like my painting?" She called, as Emily walked closer.
Emily licked her lips. "Eh. Bit abstract for my tastes. Could use a bit more detail, shading…maybe some colour…"
"How do you still have the energy to produce so much sass?"
Emily smiled, but it didn't reach her eye. "I don't know. It doesn't make me feel any better, at this point, it's just automatic."
"A little puppet, dancing along without realising its strings have been cut." Delilah spread her arms. "In my defence, I didn't technically paint this. Just, sort of, vibed at it. This is my dream, Emily. My thoughts made real in the Void. And when I sit that throne, they will be made real in the material world, too. My destiny, manifest."
Emily tilted her head. "And you couldn't have done this in the last two weeks because..?"
"Oh, I was waiting for you. See, I suspect that those Marked by the Outsider would resist its effects, throw a wrench in the whole spell." Delilah shrugged. "So I needed them all removed. There were seven Marked people in the whole world when I came back. I hunted down and killed five. All that was left was me, you, and Daud, and he died when you took Karnaca. Right?"
"…You can feel us. Through your link to the Outsider."
"Bingo." Delilah waved her hand, and the curiously stony looking Mark emblazoned there. "I just needed to wait for you to arrive, so I could take you out of the world."
"…May I ask why you're explaining your entire evil plan?" Emily asked.
"Oh come on, there's no harm in explaining my evil plan now. Either I kill you or you kill me, there's no other way for this to end." Delilah smirked, and stood up. "And besides. You haven't even heard the half of my evil plan."
"Can I have the other half?"
"No."
"Oh, come ooooon."
"Alright, fine, I'll give you a hint." Delilah tapped her cheek. "I just told you about one important magical ritual. But I've actually got two. I'm going to do the second one now. See, this whole clash of ours feels far too fair, so I want to cheat a bit."
Emily lowered her stance. "But you need me dead for your rituals to work uninterrupted."
Delilah tutted. "No. I said I needed you out of the world. And here you are." She smiled. "Bonus hint. I'm distracting you."
She pointed over Emily's shoulder.
Emily wasn't stupid—she shot Delilah in the face and then turned to look. Another Delilah was up on a high tower behind the entry portal, surrounded by swirling blue energy.
Shit.
Emily grappled, pulling herself up the tower as fast as she could, but there wasn't nearly enough time, as energy built up around Delilah and then exploded outwards, the witch vanishing into the emptiness as the Void shook and—
Emily was in the Void, and Billie and Thomas were both at its doorstep. So when the world as they knew it changed, it was quite reasonable for them to miss it entirely.
24th of the Month of Harvest, 1852.
Al Ost fiVe wE ks fteR De ila 's CoU
Emily's tendril fell apart in the blast, and she was flung backwards, but quickly reoriented, shot out another, and caught the tower.
She was too late, she knew that. Delilah was gone, leaving nothing but a strangely familiar distortion in the air.
Billie wanted more than anything to not be seeing what she was currently seeing.
She was a down-to-earth lass with a practical mindset, who'd survived decades of working with literal magic by treating it as a tool the same as any other. It had rules (well, more like guidelines), and she acknowledged those rules and didn't pry any deeper into the 'why'. The Void was some other place, the Outsider was some powerful weirdo, and if Billie got close enough to Daud or Emily she got to teleport. That was all she needed to know.
But touching the Eye of the Dead God had woken up the Sliver, and now Billie was actually seeing, and if this kept up much longer she was going to go insane.
She reeled away from the crystal, landing in Thomas' arm and groaning. Around her, two worlds blurred into one. Empty space was stone was empty space, the rocks were alive and the plants were dead, space folded into itself, things looked different if she looked from a different angle, different place, if she thought from a different angle. Because there weren't two worlds, of course there weren't, the Void wasn't a place. It was a part of reality, woven into their material world like a—like a—she still couldn't think of any fucking metaphors!
"Billie!" Thomas was saying, close but far away. "Billie, are you alright, talk to me!"
"Th—there!" Billie wanted to close her eyes, but even though she could close her own she couldn't close the Sliver. But she knew where they were. Finally, she could see where they were, and where they weren't and she knew where they needed to go. She pointed a finger, at the place where (if you were looking from where Thomas was looking) space knotted in just the right way. She didn't know how she knew that was the spot, if she thought too hard about how she knew she would know how she knew and then she would be insane, but she didn't need to, she just needed to convey—
"Make a portal!" She insisted. "There! Quickly, the spot will change five minutes ago!"
Oh, goodie, she was struggling with time now.
Thomas propped Billie up against a wall that wasn't real, and summoned the Twin-Bladed Knife. Stepped over to the point she was indicating, and squinted. "Oh, you're right. I can…hold on!"
He stabbed the blade into the air, and twisted. To a normal human, it might have looked like nothing was happening, but Billie could see, see what he was tugging on, see the snag he was pulling open in the air—
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, that's quite enough of that.
Billie reached up and gripped the Sliver, focusing on her bond with Emily. Genius, it was, the Outsider was a genius, or perhaps he just used what was obvious when you saw how he did, how Billie did. Emily was miles upon miles away, back in DunwallAndTheVoid, but through the path of the Bond she was right there. And frankly, the Outsider had given Emily the stupid magic eye rock, so she could take care of it.
Screaming, Billie yanked the Sliver out of her eyesocket. And then, before she could forget where she was, reached out with it in just the right direction—
A hand pressed the Sliver of the Eye into Emily's palm.
She looked down, and said "Huh. Thank you very much." And reached up to put it back in her own head.
Billie collapsed backwards onto the floor, groaning.
The world was normal again. Or at least, as normal as it had ever been. And she still knew what the world really was, but it had been brief, and maybe if she got drunk enough before she next slept she wouldn't remember it come morning. That was probably the safest way to go.
"Billie?" Thomas called. "If you're insane, say pineapple."
"What the fuck is a pineapple?" She demanded, stumbling to her feet.
In front of them both was a portal. Spinning, glowing white. Void stone swirled around it, fragments of debris from the cave around them caught in a current and flying freely through the air.
"Emily's cut portals with the Knife before." Thomas said, steadying Billie and turning to it. "But this is different. It felt…further."
"The centre of the Void." Billie said. Then, before she could stop herself "And it's edge." Because those were of course the same thing.
"Lovely." Thomas shivered. "So, then. Shall we go meet God?"
Which would have been a great moment for them to go through the portal together, were it not for the monstrosity that jumped out at them.
Billie didn't get a good look at first because Thomas immediately shoved her away, and the claws of the thing barely missed taking out her remaining eye. It collided with Thomas instead, and he went sprawling down the stairs before booting it away and breaking his fall.
The thing sprawled onto the stone, and looked up at them. They stared back down at it.
"…Martin?" Thomas gasped.
But it wasn't the titular High Overseer, even Billie could see that. The monster below them was almost a person, but wrong in too many places to count. It looked like someone had hacked a person (or people) to pieces, and then tried to reassemble something out of them, getting a little too creative as they went.
It had three arms, two in roughly the right places the third attached awkwardly at its upper back. All longer than they were supposed to be, with an extra joint that left them curled and twisted and twitching in the air. Its torso and legs had received a similar treatment, dozens of different parts stitched together with thread and vine and metal bolts. It's head was that of Teague Martin, though its skin was peeling and its hair had mostly fallen out. Its eyes, burning with rage, didn't fit its skull properly, and when it opened its mouth the same could be said of its tongue, not to mention the absurd number of teeth that had been shoved in seemingly at random. It was naked, but covered with thorned vines that drew blood from its flesh as it moved. A patch of flesh over its chest swung with its movement, and behind that Billie could glimpse its heart. Green, mottled, and beating furiously, with the Outsider's Mark carved into it.
"What the—" Billie began
"Fuck?" Thomas finished.
"Hurts." Moaned the Amalgamation, in what Billie didn't recognise as Farley Havelock's voice. "All hurts. Protect the Outsider. Kill anyone."
It looked up at them, snarled, blood dripping from its nose. "KILL EVERYTHING!"
Billie drew her crossbow and Thomas drew the Knife and the Amalgamation screamed, a sound that ripped over them both with such a painful stinging volume Billie screamed with it, trying with all her might not to fall to her knees. She fired her crossbow, and the bolt dug into its skin to no affect as it bounded up the steps on all fours. Thomas swung the Twin-Bladed Knife, wildly, and tore a cut through reality itself, bisecting the Amalgamation at the shoulder. But as it split, vines lashed out through the emptiness and snagged onto the other side of the flesh, and it pulled itself back together, just leaving another gash in its flesh as it lunged for them—
Billie teleported backwards, closer to the portal. Thomas blasted closer to it, smashing his fist into its shoulder. Something snapped and the Amalgamation hit the floor, but it just howled and batted at Thomas with its back-arm, throwing him into the cave wall.
"GO!" Thomas shouted, shoving himself off the wall with a flying kick at its face —
Only for one of its arms to snag his leg, pull him off course and bash him into the ceiling. Billie had already reloaded, fired at its face, but the bolt just stuck in its cheek as its other two arms latched onto Thomas' other leg and grabbed him about the neck, hefting him into the air. He turned to her, face a bloodied mess, shouted "BILLIE, GO!" before devolving into an incoherent scream as the Amalgamation stretched him out in front of it and—
Ripped Thomas Moray In Two.
Billie stood in sheer horror, mouth agape as the parts of Thomas fell to the ground before her—
Then dissolved into rats, a flood of furred bodies that latched onto the Amalgamation in a screeching, biting tide, causing it to howl again and jerk backwards, flailing and rolling down the steps.
Billie didn't hesitate any further. She turned around and jumped into the portal.
It was probably bad, to be passing around ancient artefacts like they were Morleyan cigars.
Emily shoved the Sliver back into her eye socket without much care for how sanitary it was, giving herself a few seconds to adjust to the vision. The Void both fell away and more acutely asserted itself, the truth of Delilah's little demiplane being thrown more starkly into light.
(Emily Kaldwin was, at the end of the day, a much better witch than Billie Lurk. Insights that almost drove Billie insane were basically just clarifications where Emily already had working theories, or at the very least implicit intuitions. Of course the Void was interwoven with the material, that was just sort of obvious at this point.)
She needed the Sliver for the same reason she'd needed it back in Stilton's manor. Seeing through the cracks. And when she looked at the cracks that Delilah had just left, she hissed and clenched her fists.
Delilah had gone back in time. Of course she had.
Why the fuck would she do that? To 'cheat'? I'm in the Void. The Void doesn't care that the timeline got rewritten, Delilah knows that. Unless…Shit, I lost my eye to the other world. Maybe Delilah can gain something. The Twin-Bladed Knife, an army of a thousand witches—
Emily cut her imagination off before it could get too excited. None of that would happen, of course. The other possible worlds weren't her business, and she could fix the gash in time and set things back to normal as soon as she got the Knife back from Thomas.
"I don't care where or when you are." Emily said, reaching out with a hand and glimpsing flashes of the past through the Sliver. "After everything you've done, you're not escaping me."
She breathed in. Then folded herself into the space, and was gone.
2nd of the Month of Timber, 1837
The day after Emily Kaldwin's coronation
Emily Kaldwin, ten years old, skipped towards her quarters carrying a plate piled high with food. Her mouth contained a slice of gravy-laden beef, which she was munching on while humming the tune of 'the drunken whaler'.
The Outsider's Mark remained entirely visible on the back of her hand. She wouldn't start wearing a glove over it for several years yet.
"Emily!" Huffed Vera Moray (who everyone just called Granny Rags, even now), following her down the corridor. "You are paying somebody a very respectable wage to set the dining table for you, at least have the dignity to dine in it!"
"Mmphrrl!" Said Emily, still chewing.
"Mouthful, girl!"
Emily swallowed. "I'm paying them anyway." She said. "Surely it shouldn't matter to them whether or not I actually eat at the table. It's less work!"
"It's unappreciative!" Granny Rags huffed. "Now they're going to have to take all the preparations away again and feel very silly."
Emily grinned.
"Stop smiling, that's not funny!"
"—'s kinda funny…" Emily mumbled, bringing the plate up to her face and biting into a potato.
"And in any case, you shouldn't be eating in your room! It's unladylike, and the chambermaid will have a fit if you get gravy on the bedsheets again!"
"ull schlschii—" Emily finished her bite and dropped the potato. It landed with a splat in the gravy, splashing some on her dress.
"Well surely the chambermaid's also being paid to do her job." She said, then swallowed. "And if you didn't want me to eat in my room, you shouldn't keep giving me so much work. Being an Empress is hard."
"I know, my dear…" Rags sighed.
"I mean, I keep planning to take a week off to go help the Outsider with whatever his problem was, but at this rate I'm not going to have a free day until the Fugue Feast, and that's months away!"
"Yes, yes, so you've said." With her hand, Granny Rags clutched the stump of her other wrist. "I'm aware you're busy, Emily, and everyone appreciates how hard you're working. But you must understand, these small acts of dignity are more important than you might—"
A ruffle of her clothing, and she stiffened, eyes widening.
Emily turned, a potato sticking out her mouth again, and went "Hmm?"
"Think…" Granny Rags finished, weakly. Then her head toppled off her shoulders, and her body slumped to the ground.
Emily's plate clattered to the carpet along with it.
Stood behind Granny Rags' body was an older woman in a fancy dress, wiping blood off the sword in her hand.
"Oh no, right, because she lost her Mark when you cut her hand off!" The woman knocked a fist against her own head, pulling a 'duh' face. "Have to go back further for her. Well, at least you're here."
Emily chewed off another bit of the potato, then spat the rest out. Swallowed. "You just killed my nanny."
"Yes, I did."
"That's really rude."
"Yes, well, it's fascinating to see the sociopathy has been there from an early age."
"Oh no I care. I just don't think the reality has set in yet. The anger should be here any moment." Emily reached up to adjust her dress. Narrowed her eyes. "Ah, there it is."
She whipped her slingshot from her belt, knocked the smooth stone she'd just snuck from her dress, and fired. The woman tilted her head to the side to dodge it, and Emily grappled in next to her, kicking down on her thigh with all of her weight.
But the woman vanished, and reappeared down the corridor.
She's a witch. Bother. Corvo and Thomas should be here soon, let's see if I can knock her out by then.
Emily conjured two doppelgangers that rushed the woman, then opened her mouth, and sang "Oh this is my emergency song, that I sing when I—"
And the woman had a hand at her throat, vines sprouting from the walls to snake around the heads of the doppelgangers and crush them.
Uh oh.
Emily choked, then placed a domino effect above her own head as well as the woman's, but the woman reached up and rent the magic away. She grasped Emily's Marked hand before she could try to grapple away, and a burning sensation blossomed as the Mark glowed and despite the choke Emily started to scream—
That was when the roof exploded.
A shadowy mess tore through the hole and fell upon Emily. The woman hissed and vanished, letting Emily collapse to the floor and gasp for breath.
"Oh, of course you can follow me here." The woman snarled. "Okay, fine, if that's how you want to play it—"
The shadows blurred towards the woman, further down the corridor, and Emily looked up to see a flash of colour and then the window exploded, shards of glass flying outwards into the evening sky.
The shadows didn't follow them, instead coalescing together into a human form. All but the arm, which remained a pitch dark. The form turned, and—
"Mother?" Emily gasped, on reflex. But no, this wasn't the face of Jessamine Kaldwin, not quite, and she was…broken. Scarred, frightening to look at, red eye glowing ominously.
The scarred woman flinched at the word, looking at Emily with no small amount of…horror? Nostalgia? Heartbreak? Then she shook her head, looked back out the window, sighed, and blurred back towards Emily.
Still recovering from the attack, Emily barely had the chance to raise her hands before the scarred woman grabbed her arm and—
Swirling, blurring, warping—
Dragged her forwards a few steps, and when she looked up again she was in the Void.
"Who the fuck are you?" Emily said, swearing for like the fourth time total in her life because frankly this warranted it. "Who was that? Where did you both come from? What do you want with me, why did she kill Granny Rags?"
"Well isn't that a long story." The scarred woman ran a hand through her hair. "Good news, I can pull you into the Void, but it's probably only because you're Marked. Or you're you, which makes this easier for obvious reasons. But Delilah can get in here too, and who knows if she even plans to stay in this time…"
"WHO? ARE YOU? PLEASE?" Emily repeated, clenching her fist and letting her Mark glow threateningly.
The woman (no longer scarred, and in fact looking remarkably healthy, except for the crystal eye) sighed again. She raised her hand, back facing Emily. The Outsider's Mark there was also shining. "Who do you think?"
Emily blinked. Looked the woman up and down again. The connotation was that Emily already knew, but that was impossible. There weren't any other Kaldwins, Emily knew her lineage, no matter if this lady looked worryingly like Jessamine Kaldwin, or even an older version of—
Emily blinked again.
"…No."
"Yes."
"But that's not—"
"The Void does not care what you think is impossible." The woman straightened, and produced something almost like a smile. "Hello Emily. I'm you from the future. A witch I'm fighting has come to the past to change the future and I need to stop her."
"…"
"…So no, your life doesn't get easier."
"…"
"Well, it does, but then you get complacent and she cuts your tongue out."
"…"
24th of the Month of Harvest, 1852.
Billie fell flat on her face. Groaned, and shoved herself to her feet.
The portal whirled behind her, and she stumbled away from it, because if that thing had come through it one way it could probably come the other and oh fuck Thomas was dead—
No. He had Granny Rags' hand. That was supposed to give him a freebie every day, right? Actually, that's an absurdly powerful magic item if it does work that way—
FOCUS, girl!
She looked around. The Void was…heavier, somehow. The air felt tight, like with every breath she was sucking in a springrazor that might go off and shred her at any moment.
The bleeding whales swam through the unusually empty sky. Rats scurried in the corner of Billie's eye, then vanished when she turned to look. She was stood on a rock in the middle of an ocean of…blood. Lovely. And up ahead, an emormous rocky monolith, surrounded by white-grey motes of light that flickered like candleflames.
She knew where she was.
Billie jumped down to another rock in the sea, then Blinked across to another, making her way towards the monolith.
There was a great divide through it, just above the water level. Ten full metres of empty space between the bottom and the top half of the stone, with seemingly nothing supporting it. Billie teleported into the gap, ducking past another of the glowing things. As she got closer, they grew larger, some taking on an almost humanoid appearance. Some had faces briefly flash across their visage, some emitted quiet, nonsensical whispers. Some were crying. And as Billie moved closer to the centre of the obelisk, she saw what was holding the whole thing up.
And heard a voice.
"Come on, you useless old bastard! Look at me! Don't you remember who I am?"
Billie stopped dead in her tracks.
A pillar of stone —tiny, no more than a foot in diameter—stretched from the floor to the roof of the space. Sealed within it, arm outstretched, body mostly concealed, face frozen in a rictus of agony…was the Outsider. Billie had never seen him before, but there was no mistaking him now.
Before the Outsider were two men. One stood in front of the second, who was sat slumped on an outcropping of rock.
Corvo Attano twisted to look at her with shock on his face, but Billie didn't have eyes for him. She stared at the sitting man, with his white hair, sallow skin, and faded red overcoat.
"Daud?" She croaked out.
And Daud looked up.
One of the first rules of fanfiction is that if your idea makes life easier for the protagonist, you must also make the danger more serious so the plot isn't too easy. At least, if a story with stakes is what you're going for.
Delilah took notice of Emily's attempts to change the past, and has learned to do it herself. Ruh-roh. Oh, and we finally get payoff to all the mysterious final lines Delilah delivered to the people she's been killing all fic. I hope the monster guarding the Outsider is sufficiently nightmare-inducing.