Corvo heads out to get rid of the High Overseer, but the first real taste of the Outsider's power is going to his head.
[CW violence and injury, drug reference]
--/
Corvo sat in the boat with a kind of cold trepidation for what he was headed toward.
The Abbey of the Everyman. Rescuing an ally for the Loyalists. Finding and killing High Overseer Campbell.
He'd fight and kill when forced to it, in the heat of the moment when there wasn't another option.
The idea of deliberately choosing to kill was different, and he didn't like it.
No matter how it had been suggested that his actions in defending a person from attack and defending an empire from malicious machinations were essentially the same.
Cold blood. He could see where that name came from. Trying to confront the idea was like brushing his hands over the surface of an unknowably large bulk of solid steel no heat could ever warm.
He might owe Campbell a terrible debt for months of torture, by some reckoning.
He'd imagined making Campbell scream and enjoyed it. Imagined killing him slowly, sticking a sword through his guts and leaving him with a wound that would take days to die from.
But that was not something he was proud of, not something he wanted to remember having imagined.
Corvo hadn't ever been one to kill out of anger or convenience or even a healthy dose of better judgement. Even though that one had nearly cost him his life a few times. It had been half and again why his old teacher had taken him in, one last pupil before she had passed away peacefully in his garden in Serkonos.
The best swordsmen should hope to die in bed. She'd said. But failing that without regrets.
He glanced down at the black mark on the back of his hand, like tattoo ink just under the skin.
No. He had to see that Overseer Campbell finally got a chance to face his fear of the Outsider. No matter how much he disliked the idea of doing it himself.
--/
Removing Overseer Campbell proved tricky but in a way, satisfying work.
As soon as Corvo learned he could administer something more in the way of poetic justice than a sword in the back, he'd set about doing just that. The terrible cold weight of being an assassin vanished.
Without the Outsider's powers he'd never have dared risk it. Not with all that was at stake, but with them...
He began to feel invincible, like nothing could touch him. He drifted beyond the world and between it, no longer subject to its laws and whims.
It was horribly disquieting in a way, feeling that. He had enough sense to know where that kind of thinking could lead if he wasn't careful.
--/
The Abbey of the Everyman had been built in fear of the Outsider's power but certainly hadn't been built to defend against it, the place was riddled with ledges and nooks and easy places to stow hapless overseers rendered unconscious by a nerve hold.
A few hours of careful waiting and sneaking and sorcery later, artifacts looted and unconscious guards placed in insulting positions atop bookcases and ledges, he dropped the High Overseer none too gently into his own torture chair and fastened his hands into the restraints.
Corvo regarded the overseer's unconscious, gurgling form warily, though it was unlikely anyone was left awake to hear and come to his aid if he started screaming. The nerve hold should leave him out for hours, but Corvo didn't know what would happen when someone was inflicted with terrible pain while under the influence of it. He hadn't ever needed or cared to find out. No. I'm not like Sokolov. He thought darkly.
Corvo reached up above a high shelf and pulled down the long handled brand from where he'd stashed it an hour before.
Instead of being designed for burning red-hot, the flat of it was encrusted with a greenish sheen of small crystals. The instructions were simple enough "Immerse in seven parts water, one part ichor of forma. Apply."
The coating was likely lye and caustic metal salts and worse things, designed to activate in the solution.
The High Overseer screamed terribly when the brand was pressed across his face but he didn't wake.
Something harsh flickered through his mind. Some darker part of himself that had considered doing other, worse things to Campbell should he be awake to feel them. His stomach twisted and he shut his eyes for a moment, trying to block out the room, the smell of pain and death in it, sick that the thought of adding anyone's misery to it was even there in his mind. However hidden it might normally be.
He threw the brand aside and left Campbell there to the mercy of his underlings.
--/
Things went wrong on the way out. The place Samuel was waiting to meet him was on the other side of the lower ranking overseer's barracks, a collection of irregular brick structures next to the huge white bulk of the Abbey proper.
Crossing the district wouldn't have been a problem, he found himself thinking later, if he hadn't gotten so used to the idea his new powers granted him access to places no one else could reach.
If he'd been more willing to use the darkvision spell at every opportunity, uncomfortable as it made him to look in on ordinary people's lives as a consequence. With either of those he might easily have slipped over the roofs and ledges unnoticed and unseen.
He ran into one of the overseers, almost literally, as he crouched low to cross the corner of a flat rooftop from one vantage point to the next. The man was just off duty or just about to go on it, in full kit except for the mask, and had probably slipped out a window onto the roof for a smoke. Corvo didn't see him until it was too late, the overseer let out a startled yell and drew out his pistol and sword.
Surprised marksmen rarely hit their targets even at point blank range, but this one did. The bullet hit Corvo like a hammer strike just under the side of his ribcage.
Corvo smacked the overseer's blade away, sunk his own sword between the man's ribs, and fled, desperately blinking from one ledge and light pole to the next. Too carelessly... The whole barracks district had heard the commotion and it wasn't long before they spotted him.
Bullets spat stone chips from the marble clad building where he was perched. He used his last scrap of mental energy to blink to a hiding place they wouldn't find him for a while, leaving spatters of blood on the ledge and half a red handprint against the wall.
He staggered back against a chimney framing, high up out of the light. Shaking with pain, holding an arm tight against his side to try and put pressure on the wound, slow the bleeding. Trying not to give in to the temptation to slide down the brickwork onto the flat roof and lay there for a while.
It took deliberate effort just to breathe, to make himself remain upright and moving instead of curling up there and staying very still until he bled to death or the overseers managed to find him.
He reached into a pocket for a vial of Sokolov's Elixir, holding it tight and working the cap off with teeth. He drank it and pulled a wry face. It might slow the bleeding a little and make him feel like he wasn't dying, but he knew it wouldn't keep him from that. There was too much damage to be fixed and too little time to do it in.
He didn't have time to wait out the overseers and slip away carefully either, he was already starting to feel a little light headed from blood loss.
He pulled out a blue vial next, almost dropping it, uttering a string of curses. This one tingled and tasted somewhat like good champagne, and it hit like Pandyssian kona leaves. He shuddered a little and uncrossed his eyes, raised his left hand, and whispered the blink spell again.
A dizzying, desperate run brought him at last to the meeting point with Samuel. He just about fell into the boat and yelled at Samuel to get away, fast.
Samuel kicked the engine into action and with a roar and a lurch the boat sped out over the water. He leaned down low as yells and gunshots came from the bank and bullets zipped overhead.
Then those faded, and it was just the sound of the engine and the rushing water.
"Don't think they're following and I don't think they can catch us, but maybe I should-"
"Need to get to Piero, Samuel." Corvo said through gritted teeth. "Now."
Corvo lay on his back in the bottom of the boat, one leg still over the side. He tugged the fasteners of his jacket apart, tried to bunch up his shirt and use it to put pressure on the wound. The whole front of the shirt stuck to his skin, wet with blood, and he could feel more of it oozing steadily down under his back.
Samuel looked down and uttered a startled curse, and quickly handed him a pocket handkerchief. Corvo pressed it into the wound and stifled a scream.
"Hang in there Corvo, we'll be home pretty quick." Samuel said over the roar of the engine, taking a turn fast enough to heel the boat over hard and splash them down with spray.
It still seemed like a long way back to the Hound Pits. His mind began to drift on pain and blood loss and fading adrenaline as he fought to remain conscious. If he died now... He'd never get to see Emily again... Never get to...