Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Corvo gasped as a chill ran through him, marble splintering and falling away from him in an instant leaving him shaking and numb. He remembered Delilah, the Coup, and afterwards... only murky memories, despair, and loneliness. He breathed acrid air and coughed painfully. How long had it been?

He lost consciousness before he could truly confront what had happened- what had been done to him.

When he woke again, the light was the same twilight as it had been. He could have been unconscious for minutes or days, but now the numbness had worn off. The cold was still there, leaving him shivering; it highlighted how much he ached and the pressure... something was on top of him, pinning him down. It hurt, it hurt so much; perhaps in part to his time in stone, but now everything raked at his oversensitive nerves like he’d been flayed.

Corvo’s palms stung as he pushed on the weight in vain. “Help” he tried to call, but it died in his throat and left him coughing harshly. The thing on him, rubble maybe, bit into his ribs with the movement of his chest. Is anyone there? He thought helplessly.

A whooshing noise, interspersed with crackles like a dying fire, had Corvo’s head lolling to the side to see.

The Outsider smiled from the shadows, black eyes glinting. “Corvo Attano, it’s been a very long time.”

Corvo shuddered, “Outsider...” he choked.

The Outsider’s head tilted and he raised a brow.

Corvo frowned, his vision was blurry and his confusion only continued to grow, but he thought the Outsider looked... flat somehow... diminished, more shadow than figure. “Help?” Corvo mouthed.

“I’ve never played favorites” the Outsider said, but he flickered out of existence and reappeared crouched at Corvo’s side. Close enough to touch.

Corvo jerked in surprise and it sent every muscle screaming. It took several minutes of careful breathing to banish the spots from his eyes enough to focus again.

The Outsider was different. His image flickered at the edges, transparent or washed in a golden glow, eyes entirely inky black or ordinary but with irises washed in silver.

Corvo swallowed painfully, mouth dry with the realization that perhaps his dreams- and nightmares -while in stone... hadn’t been. “What happened to you?”

The question was at a barely audible whisper, and slurred beyond recognition, but the Outsider had never seemed troubled by Corvo’s inability to communicate- not even at their first meeting where torture and trauma had rendered Corvo all but mute. Now the God seemed to keep his expression purposefully impassive. “Those I’ve chosen to mark have always caught my interest at moments where they stood at a threshold of desperation, the knife’s edge to determine whether they will thrive... or fall to ruin. For you, the murder of your empress and all that came after; and yet against all expectations, though you emerged a broken man, you kept your hands clean. No other among my marked can claim the same, no matter what I’ve given them, no matter that their choices were always their own... they all wanted more, or someone else to blame.”

The Outsider dissolved into ash again.

Minutes passed and Corvo was struck with terror at being left alone, trapped. His breathing went rapid and uneven. “Outsider? Outsider!” He thrashed, bucking against the slab of weight across his torso. Renewed blood flow to his feet left his toes in pins and needles with hot agony lacing up his legs, and he could tell that his lower legs were free. However, there was no way to get the leverage he needed to free himself.

“Shhh...” the Outsider soothed, somewhere Corvo couldn’t see, but he’d worked himself into full panic and couldn’t stop the way his limbs strained or his breathing devolved into ineffective gasps. He couldn’t tell exactly when he passed out again.

Something almost like fingers were running over Corvo’s scalp when he woke once more; the Outsider humming. Corvo shuddered, exhausted and wrung out.

The Outsider paused in his motions, “My dreaming in the void has always been lucid, how was it for you? I marked Emily, I wanted to see if she’d show your restraint, do you know what she chose?”

Corvo whimpered low in his throat and shook his head as memories came to mind, fragmented and blurred like dreams, but too well remembered for them to be imagined. Years worth of memories, decades, perhaps even centuries.

The Outsider answered anyway, “disgraced Lord Protector, your charge carved a bloody path through the empire in the name of her second lost parent. Then, when the corpses lay cooling beneath her throne, she decided to leave you safe and sound in your stone prison, rather than free you and face that inevitably- sooner rather than later -she’d lose you for good.”

A sob caught in Corvo’s throat, and he closed his eyes against the sting of tears.

“Shh...” The Outsider hushed, “now you’re free”, he murmured, beginning to comb barely-there fingers through Corvo’s hair again. “Freed too late. The Void has turned away, and were humanity to survive to see tomorrow night, they would gaze upon a sky filled with the ghosts of devoured stars, each night after showing fewer and fewer until there would be nothing remaining but blackness above and below.”

“Why?” Corvo rasped.

The Outsider met his eyes, ink black for a moment and then pale and human. “I’m here to give you a final gift”, he said instead of answering. “At the end of the world, the last gift of a twice-murdered god, existing now only as Void and space and time collide, to a twice-failed Lord Protector. I’m giving you a choice and a chance.”

The Outsider disappeared, reappearing in front of Corvo again, one hand outstretched in offering.

Shakily, with no other options, Corvo took it.

The god smiled, his grip surprisingly strong even as his form lit up gold, wisps of light dispersing in tendrils that licked up Corvo’s arm. The burning on the back of his hand was familiar, but not the way it leached up further like it was reaching through his veins for his heart.

“For what it’s worth...” The Outsider said with a mournful smile as transparency grew over his body, “I am sorry. It’s no small thing to unmake a timeline, and you’ll bear the brunt of it even as you stand in the eye of the storm.”

Corvo was gasping like a whale on land, the heat was spreading, scorching up his neck and deep into his bones, burning the air in his lungs; there was a roaring in his ears though somehow the Outsider’s words rang clearly.

The Outsider’s other hand, the one not merging into Corvo’s, brushed over his jaw, then as strong as iron forced Corvo to meet the dead god’s eyes. “This is the last time I’ll see you Corvo. As always, what you choose to do with my gifts is entirely up to you.” He seemed to falter for a moment, like he had much to say and no idea what words would actually convey it all, “I don’t know what state you’ll arrive in through your displacement, but I hope... I know you will weather it as you have everything else....” His eyes turned human, pale and watery. The Outsider visibly gathered himself, “I’m scared. After centuries of isolation and apathy, now I find that here at my end... I don’t want you to hate me.”

Despite the burning and pain, tensed so stiff he could almost be stone again, Corvo blinked in surprise and sudden sympathy. His lips worked, but he found his voice to be beyond him.

The Outsider smiled regardless, the transparency had taken over all but his face and the arm that led to their joined hands. “Goodbye Corvo Attano” the god whispered and dissolved into gold that surged around and into Corvo.

The burning flared to an inferno and Corvo screamed.

Chapter Text

Daud wouldn’t call himself a happy man, but he thought this might be the closest he’d been since childhood.

The recent flooding of the Rudshore district had left a good number of buildings abandoned and difficult to access with the lower floors entirely underwater. Some, where construction featured largely wood supports, were already beginning to sag with water damage, but others constructed more with stone, brick, and metal were in good condition. The old commerce building in particular was stately with large and plentiful rooms to serve as headquarters, and surrounding apartments to house his ever-growing group of subordinates.

The waters were infested with hagfish and the moisture had encouraged river krust colonies to sprout up, making the entire area both difficult to traverse and naturally defended.

It was the safest he’d felt in recent memory, and his whalers were enjoying picking rooms and exploring their new abode.

Daud also thought that the stability of a set home might help some of his younger wards feel more secure and comfortable. Doing right by his people and providing properly for them, was one of Daud’s greatest concerns, unwanted though the company had been initially... Daud had now accepted that accepting strays was a weakness of his. The homeless, abused, and downtrodden- somehow now under his care. Sometimes Daud felt guilty that all he knew, and all that he could provide them, was the ability to kill. Sometimes he worried that they might have been better off where he’d found them, but none of them ever left, so he did his best to dismiss those fears.

Currently, from his perch on top of the commerce building, as he watched the Whalers practically frolicking like children, exploring and chasing each other across the rooftops and through buildings, Daud felt surprisingly certain that somehow this at least was something he’d done right.

Hidden and protected from outsiders, the floods providing deep pools to catch anyone who fell... this could be home.

Perhaps it was this uncommon sense of security that left Daud surprised when he stumbled upon the shrine. Frozen in front of the window, Daud considered the drapes of purple cloth and haphazardly constructed mix of driftwood and barbed wired.

It had been years since the black-eyed bastard had deigned to speak to him, and Daud wasn’t sure he wanted to break that trend despite the runes singing from the shrine. Looking over his shoulder, Daud could hear the woops and delighted shouts of his people, and it made a shiver of discontent chill down his spine. Annoyingly vague as the Outsider could be, sometimes he did give hints to future events. The strange desire to be advised by the entity had Daud resolutely cross the room.

His fingers brushed the runes and the Shrine exploded and then contracted like a blooming black hole, and then Daud was in the Void.

The Outsider appeared in a wisp of ash, arms crossed and expression stern. “I’d wondered if you would find this shrine” the god said, “your reputation has grown and you’ve gained a title ‘Knife of Dunwall’. If your enemies knew you’d settled, even in this abandoned place, do you think they’d leave you to your peace? Or would they brave the dangers of these waters to...” he trailed off.

Daud frowned “does anyone know?” He asked, scowling as the Outsider tilted his head as though listening to some distant thing. Much as he disliked the god, it still rankled to not be the only thing to grip the Outsider’s attention.

“Not yet” the Outsider mumbled, surprisingly forthcoming, even as his brow furrowed in an unusual show of confusion. He turned, scanning the depths of the Void with his ink black eyes.

“Then whe-“ Daud started, but cut off at a sharp motion from the Outsider’s hand.

“There’s something” the Outsider said, “discordant in the singing.” He raised a hand like he could touch the sound waves, and drifted closer to the edge of the floating island Daud stood on. “There, a single note, familiar, but...” the Outsider dropped his hand, “a bid for attention perhaps, but an uncommonly polite one. So many shout and vie for my favor, but this... like a soft knocking on my door. This has never happened before.” The Outsider raised his arm again, with more purpose, like reaching to grab.

Daud rocked on his heals in discomfort, “should you really answer?” He asked, “if you don’t know what it is?”

The Outsider didn’t seem to hear as he regarded this distant thing with wonder, “something new”, he murmured and closed his fist.

Daud staggered and cringed as a sudden bout of loud whale song left his ears ringing. The island he stood on bucked, creaking, and the assassin barely kept his feet.

He looked up to see the Outsider, engulfed in dark smoke, throw his head back with an expression approaching pain. When the god’s fist unclenched, the smoke abruptly dispersed and the din quieted, even as the Outsider jerked like he’d been struck and dropped.

Years of experience in killing meant Daud knew precisely how loud a body could be when it hit the ground. An uncaught target could mean the difference between a perfectly executed stealth assignment and an ungainly scramble out the window when the guards came running to investigate the thump.

Daud will blame those years of experience entirely for the instinct that had him dashing forward to catch the Outsider before he hit the stone. The god’s momentum still left them both on the ground, but Daud would take the bit of bruising over... he wasn’t sure what he’d take it over... the source of his magic getting a concussion?

The Outsider was unnaturally light in Daud’s arms, as the assassin struggled into a sitting position to take stock of them both. Daud could feel the bruises already, those were fine, but the Outsider was limp and unbreathing, pale skin even more transparent this close, almost grey tinged. His face was lax, his eyes closed with sockets dark. He looked like an exceedingly young corpse. Too thin, too tired, too human.

Daud found himself unnerved by how much the god’s apparent fragility bothered him. Up until this moment he might have easily taken a contract against the Outsider himself, were it possible to kill the bastard. He didn’t appreciate this newfound pity for the creature.

Disgusted with himself, Daud rolled the Outsider off his legs and positioned him on the stone in a curled recovery position. The Outsider had no heartbeat and no breath, but Daud didn’t know whether he’d had either of those to begin with, and he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Standing, Daud grit his teeth at how small the Outsider was, and forced his eyes away to look at the Void. Nothing seemed to have changed in the expanse; there was no indicator of a way out, and no islands close enough to transverse to. He was effectively trapped, which meant that in the waking world his body was in a trance and undefended as who knew how much time passed.

As safe as Daud had felt in Rudshore before, now paranoia bloomed at the thought of some enemy stumbling upon his body while his mind was in the Void. Long-term exposure to the Void probably wasn’t great for one’s sanity either.

Cursing, anger banishing the pity, Daud turned his attention back to the Outsider.

The god’s shoulder was boney, delicately muscled, matching the chill temperature of the Void, and Daud had to work to keep his frustration rather than giving in to his growing sense of fear. “Outsider” he said gruffly, shaking, “wake up”. He kept shaking for several minutes before giving up and rolling the Outsider onto his back. Pulling off a glove, Daud rubbed the bones of his knuckle across the Outsider’s sternum in a way that he knew could be shockingly painful.

Finally a hint of reaction, the Outsider twitched, lips turning down in a slight frown and brow furrowing.

“Wake up!” Daud demanded, “Outsider, you need to wake up.”

The Outsider’s black eyes cracked open, “Daud”, he said, as though he’d both expected him to be there and forgotten he was, “I caught a glimpse of him, but now I can’t see him anymore. A future is in fluctuation, before it was almost a certainty, but not now... not anymore. He’s changed things, is changing things, will change things.”

“What are you talking about?” Daud asked. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Daud swallowed, apprehensive.

The Outsider shifted, his hand gripped Daud’s arm with surprising strength, “find him. You have to find him. The future of a multitude is in his hands; you’d best hope them to be kind ones. I can’t help, I can’t see... there were few hints in my glimpse as I grasped him and pulled him through before I dropped him.” His eyes drifted into a middle distance, expression pensive. “It was dark, sound of running water and the Void singing, smell of decay, taste of blood heavy, desperation born of pain and terror, he was lost, so lost. I was lost.” The Outsider sighed and his eyes drooped, “I’m not supposed to be capable of sleep, already dreaming, four thousand years of constant watching. I’ve never been this tired. Will I die, do you think? If I close my eyes completely and rest....”

“If you’re planning to die, let me out of here first” Daud said dryly.

The Outsider opened his eyes to stare at Daud with something approaching disappointment. When his body dissolved, so did the Void.

Daud blinked, grimacing at his dry mouth and aching back. His knees buckled and he found himself swaying and lightheaded on his knees.

“Sir!” Someone shouted and a mug was pressed into Daud’s hands.

Recognizing the Whaler as Thomas, Daud sipped at the liquid and found it to be a delightfully spiced and salty broth. His stomach growled loudly and he gulped it down quickly, thankful that it was cool enough to not burn his mouth, but warm enough to chase away the lingering chill of the Void.

“Welcome back Daud”, Billie, his second in command, said with a bit of wry humor in her tone. “He must have had a lot to say.”

“Less than you’d think” Daud grumbled, shifting uncomfortably, “how long have I been....”

Billie’s mask was inscrutable, “nearly two and a half days by our estimate. It took us till dinner to notice you hadn’t returned from your exploration, and a good portion of the next day to find you. Might have been sooner, but it wasn’t safe to search at night.”

Daud nodded, standing slowly to test his legs. “Explains why I need to piss like a mad racehorse”, he muttered, taking note of the bed rolls now present around the shrine. He felt warmed by the evidence of concern. “Meet me in the Commerce Building’s loft in a few hours. The black-eyed bastard himself has given us a job.”

He paused only long enough to tap Billie’s shoulder fondly and give Thomas a thin smile before he transversed away.

Chapter Text

Corvo could only compare his current situation to Coldridge.

He woke with wounds he remembered from decades- centuries? -ago, his mind still so muddled from his time in stone. Torn skin, broken bones, burns, and bruises... and his mouth and throat ravaged from more than just screams. His spirit felt well and truly shredded, body and mind exhausted, but Corvo forced himself to open his eyes anyway.

The room was small with a single door at the top of a set of stairs and short windows high on one of the walls, indicating a basement. The floor was uneven, the lowest areas filled inches deep with the water seeping through the cracks in the foundation stones. The air was rank with mildew, rot, something dead and decaying, and a heady overlay of brine.

Shelving units, mostly collapsed, lined the wall beside the stairs. And in the corner a shrine with lanterns dark, looking almost as derelict as everything else, though it seemed to shiver when Corvo blinked, in turns black and white, or brand new, but then aged and worn when he focused. It made Corvo’s head ache to watch it for long.

Corvo himself lay on his side atop a damp mattress, partially slanted up the wall furthest from the stairs. A token attempt to roll his too-heavy body further onto his belly caused a painful tugging on Corvo’s aching wrists.

He blinked dumbly at his hands. Thick metal bands and a chain shackled his wrists together with only a couple feet of leeway. Another chain looped the shackles and secured him to the wall with a spike. On the back of his left hand... Delilah had stolen his mark before turning him to stone, but with the Outsider’s blessing it had returned, changed, white like an old scar instead of black like a tattoo. No Void whispers or shimmering light rose to his will.

With a sigh, Corvo let his hands drop and closed his eyes. Powerless. Trapped. Again. Or was it still? He wanted to just go to sleep and never wake up rather than face that once again he was in a position to suffer. However, anxiety kept the exhaustion from taking hold.

Clenching his teeth to restrain the sob that wanted to break free, Corvo forced himself to his hands and knees, and then with the wall’s assistance, to his feet. If not for his legendary stubbornness, and the wall of course, he would not have been capable of keeping upright.

Opening his eyes, Corvo shuffled unevenly towards the shrine. The sun-bleached drapes of fabric fell loose easily with a tug, leaving the strange static shifting of the rest of the shrine to settle a pale periwinkle color in Corvo’s arms. They smelled of dust and mold, but Corvo draped the fabric over his shoulders anyway tucking the ends down past the circle of arm-chain-arm, and struggling to belt the fabric like a tunic. With the shackles he wouldn’t be able to put on a jacket if he’d had one, but hopefully the curtain would help keep him warmer.

The action also forced Corvo to confront the fact that he was not as he remembered.

The wounds were all too familiar from parts of Corvo’s past, but the rest of him.... His limbs were coltish and his body gaunt; he was all-around smaller than he was used to. Barefoot and dressed in rags, hair a mess of knots down to his chin, and skin only as pale as he’d ever gotten after half a year away from the sun. Nothing showed a clear enough reflection for him to recognize himself, but he was definitely... younger.

Shaking the thoughts away and swallowing painfully, Corvo gathered what focus he could and set himself to limping around the room to find anything of use. He hissed and shivered at the frigid salty water on his wounds, but there was little other choice.

The broken shelves still housed a few tools, some pieces of bone, and three cans of food that had escaped the kind of extensive rusting that would have spoiled them. The bristles of a broom in the corner had rotted away, leaving behind a smooth piece of wood, which Corvo quickly employed as a cane to help keep some of his weight off of the burns on the bottom of his left foot.

Considering the cans, Corvo shuffled back to the shrine to rip another couple lengths of fabric. He wrapped the cans in one, the bones with them after a moment of hesitation, and tied it to his waist in a manner that hopefully wouldn’t spill them out later.

Already Corvo could also tell that the chain on to his shackles wouldn’t be long enough to let him all the way to the door at the top of the stairs, so he grabbed the mallet from the tools before making his way back over to the mattress.

His collapse wasn’t graceful, but even the few trips across the room had left Corvo shaking and stiff with pain, so he allowed himself a moment of rest before shredding his last piece of curtain into long strips. A smaller strip was used to tie a couple of broken fingers on his left hand, two bigger strips he wound around his feet, with extra padding torn from the mattress to soften his steps and protect his soles, what remained he used to wrap his hands for warmth and protection.

He had nothing remaining for his wounds, but Corvo didn’t like his chances at avoiding infection as it was, and he would waste away before that became a problem if he didn’t get out soon.

Exhaling shakily, he forced himself back up with a groan and staggered over to the spike that held his chain in the wall. It was deep set, but like this situation itself, inexplicable. Despite Corvo having just arrived, the spike was well rusted and the wall crumbling from water damage.

Corvo wondered grimly for a moment if he was actually possessing someone, or perhaps recreated (wherever he was) in the place of some old corpse or pile of bones that had been left for dead in this basement. It would be just to the Outsider’s style to do something so macabre.

Such ruminations were not helpful, however, so Corvo grabbed the chain and pulled. A few crumbles of brick and mortar fell from around the spike, but nothing else. Huffing, Corvo hefted the mallet and swung as hard as he could at the side of the spike.

The impact jarred him, muscle and bone, through his whole body, but Corvo grit his teeth and struck again, and again, changing the angle to try and use the spike to break the wall so that he could pull it free. When his arms were aching, his fingers and back burning, and his breath ragged, Corvo set the hammer down to pull on the chain again. It budged a bit, so he tried twisting and wiggling as he pulled. It came a bit further, then seemed to catch on something. Despite the pain, Corvo picked up the mallet and hit it a few more times. A puff of dust and finally the spike fell free.

Corvo stared at it for a minute before he broke out of his daze enough to realize that he’d succeeded. He laughed abruptly and the mallet dropped from his hands as he pressed them against his mouth. Tears escaped his eyes as he tried to muffle his hysterics to spare his throat. It felt torn open and raw, and Corvo very purposefully avoided thinking about why.

Finally he got control of himself again, slumping down beside the chunk he’d just pulled from the brick. Gasping, Corvo checked that the tins of food were still tied at his waist, then he picked up the spike and tucked it in his belt, he grabbed his staff last and used it to heave himself to his feet once more.

The chain dragged behind him as Corvo eased himself up the stairs step by step, but at last he was at the door. It only opened a foot before running into something that blocked it from opening fully.

Growling, desperate to be out, Corvo shoved hard with his shoulder, slamming himself into the door. He could feel the obstacle budging back with each slam of his frail body. He forced it open a bit more, before he felt that his smaller-than-remembered form could squeeze through.

The other side looked like an abandoned whaling factory, machines silent, and ceiling collapsed, old blood dried and flaking across the tools. Corvo shuddered and picked his way slowly through the wreckage. Something compelled him to pick up the small bits of bone he saw as he went, tucking them into the pouch with the food.

Then finally he stepped out through a door-less threshold and he was under the open sky. The air was clearer than he remembered, the nearby river bustling with ships, the buildings further inland lit in the windows and obviously occupied.

A black bird cawed at him from the top of a notice board.

Corvo shuffled over to look at the news and froze at the date. Before the coup and the stone, before Jessamine’s murder, before the rat plague, before everything. If this date was correct he could change it all. He could... but him... weak, small, injured, nothing to his name, no name either if a Corvo Attano already existed here... he could fix it all, but he didn’t know how.

Chapter Text

Daud sat at his desk, going through recent job requests and waiting for his search teams to arrive back for the day. They’d been searching for nearly a fortnight for locations that fit the Outsider’s description, setting up watches to keep eyes on places that seemed especially likely. So far it had been a waste of men who could have been helping with other jobs or building the scaffolding so those without transversal could navigate the compound without touching ground.

Daud had command of a good four-dozen assassin’s of mixed novice and master status, with a few too-young children and non-bonded adults who didn’t participate in jobs. It was a lot of mouths to feed, and even though they were assassins, actual assassination jobs were few and far between compared to other unsavory tasks they completed to make ends meet. Information brokering, blackmail, theft, arson, sabotage, and even the occasional request for protection, kept Daud and his people dressed and fed. Assassination jobs, when they came up, just tended to pay a lot more.

A quiet sound of displaced air and a whisper of coolness across Daud’s marked hand heralded the arrival of one of his Whalers.

“Daud” the newcomer said, voice and attitude recognizable as Billie, “there’s an old factory in Slaughterhouse Row. The building is abandoned, but we found a shrine in a basement room that’s... unsettling, to say the least. Thomas is scouting the area surrounding it for more information. There’s very little doubt that this is the location the Outsider was describing.”

Daud stood with a nod, checking over his weapons and the gear he had on him. “Show me.”

Without further prompting, Billie took off.

They paced themselves, so as not to become exhausted, but still practically raced each other across rooftops and through the sewers. Some of the tension in Billie’s shoulders faded as she became more playful, and even Daud felt refreshed at how the physical work stretched and eased muscles that had grown stiff from deskwork.

When they reached the old slaughterhouse, something in the air brought the tension back, raising goose bumps across Daud’s neck. There were vague disruptions in the dust, but the factory floor looked mostly untouched, until they got to the basement door. There was an overturned workbench braced against the door with gouges in the floor from somebody forcing it open.

Daud frowned at the small gap, and tilted to look at the backside of the door. There were some thin smears of blood, fresher than that from when the factory still operated, and one almost unrecognizable set of finger marks.

“The inside?” Daud asked.

“Only what we could see when we broke out one of the windows, we thought you’d prefer we not move anything until you got here.”

Daud nodded and gestured to the workbench. Together they moved the heavy table out of the way, and opened the door.

The basement was partially flooded, the few small windows dim and grimy, with little of interest beside the shrine.

The shrine was far more than unsettling. It was unnatural. It seemed to stutter between realities or times. A good demonstration of why the Void had driven more than a few poor souls mad.

It was difficult to look directly at it, but Daud made his way over and brushed his hand across the wood, noting that the fabric drapes were missing, leaving only a few scraps of sun and salt bleached fiber. Despite the obvious connection to the Void, the shrine seemed inert, and the Outsider did not appear.

Turning to look closer at the rest of the room, Daud knelt and ran his fingers over a hole in the wall that had dropped rubble onto the floor, there was no mold yet, but there was a great deal of rust. More drops of blood were on a damp mattress pushed up on the wall, torn bits in the side that also lacked signs of moths or mildew. A mallet, rusted on the head and the handle was dropped on the floor, a fine coat of brick dust coated it.

“Something was taken off these shelves” Billie announced from the other side of the room, “the dust marks match the size of these cans of spoiled food.”

Daud nodded, “someone was here, recently. Small, if they could fit through that door gap, injured, plenty of fresh blood, they must have taken the unspoiled cans of food.” He turned to look at the wall again, “they stopped to pull something metal from the wall here... not sure what.” He brushed his hands across the legs of his pants and crossed his arms, “let’s go see what Thomas has uncovered.”

Billie nodded and transversed ahead.

With a last glance at the shrine, Daud followed. He quickly climbed the neighboring buildings to get a nice view on everything below, sometimes using Void Gaze to see inside the buildings.

Despite the poor state of the buildings, most of them were occupied. Citizens of industrial districts were frequently poor, overworked, and exceedingly bitter about it. Gangs held the streets, and even the unions weren’t always very friendly to those who didn’t share their specific type of struggles. In other words, it was better to avoid everyone as much as possible.

But then... Daud felt avoidance was the best tactic with most civilians. Interaction inevitably led to violence, or adopting another stray; neither was worth the hassle.

The ash of transversal and his whalers appeared on the horizon.

Daud leapt off the roof towards them and transversed as needed until he was beside them.

“Sir” Thomas said, voice as smooth and even as always.

Billie ignored them both, kneeling at the edge of the roof, gazing down at the streets.

“Report” Daud ordered.

Thomas’ shoulders dropped and he stepped into an easy posture. “Locals have been complaining about a ghost the past few days. Accusations towards the ghost include missing coin, stolen fruit, and witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft?” Daud asked.

Thomas shrugged, “mostly on account of nobody having really seen them beyond flashes, that quickly vanish, and....” He swallowed visibly.

Daud raised a brow expectantly.

“It might be unrelated, but... half-consumed rats... have turned up. Not many, but... left in odd places. People have started setting up traps to try and reduce the number of rats preemptive to finding one with a bite taken out of it in their beds.”

Daud hummed, “where has this ghost been hiding then?”

Billie waved an arm down into the alley, “they’re a new player, as far as we know they’re living on the streets.”

Daud grimaced, “alright, set up a patrol of the district, make sure every party has someone capable of Void Gaze to look into buildings. Let’s catch this ghost alive.”

“Sir” Thomas said with a nod, placing his fist over his heart in a solute, before he transversed away.

“You think we can catch the ghost?” Billie asked, “it is pretty impressive to have never been seen.”

Daud smirked, “and it’s unlike you to doubt our skills... we have them beat in numbers, and likely fighting prowess as well. The hard part will be finding them and getting close enough to subdue them.”

Billie hummed, “I wonder what they’re like, to have caught the Outsider’s attention.”

Daud snorted, “they’d have been better off without his interest.” He left before she could continue. Billie’s open interest in the Outsider always made him uncomfortable. He wished she’d believe him when he disparaged the god, but he knew it would be extremely hypocritical for him to outright tell her not to pursue the power the Outsider could grant.

He only hoped that they would find the ghost soon so that he could go back to business as usual, hopefully without drawing the Outsider’s eye in the meantime.

Chapter Text

Corvo groaned as his attempt to climb through a second-story window pulled at the welts and lashes on his back. His clumsy entry was compounded with a clunky roll that left him sprawled on the floor, chain digging into his back, and his staff clattering away. Rather than risk standing, Corvo crawled to the side and leaned against the wall. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, making only a soft sound.

At the signal, his one companion swooped through the window after him.

The large black bird ignored Corvo’s offered arm and landed instead on his knee. It regarded him with dark eyes and chittered admonishment. It hopped a few times before launching itself back into the air and out the window.

Corvo sighed and dug an incredibly bruised pear out of his sash. His teeth ached at the pressure to break its soft skin and the juice stung, but he forced small bites down his throat anyway. It took several hours to finish the single fruit, by which point the raven had returned proudly carrying a five-piece coin in its mouth.

It dropped it at Corvo’s side and fluttered up to his shoulder to preen at Corvo’s tangled and greasy hair. I have witnessed crippled whales drown in the deep, the bird burbled in the Outsider’s voice.

Corvo snorted, rolling the coin across his scraped and bloody knuckles.

The sun moved and Corvo’s eyelids drooped. He fell asleep against the wall to the raven crooning, whalers, whalers, the whalers appear, whalers, whalers, there are no whales here.

The next day it poured rain.

The deluge didn’t seem to bother the raven. It straightened its feathers, turned beady eyes on Corvo for a moment, then fluffed up and disappeared out the window.

Rather than risk going out and slipping or freezing in his only set of clothes, Corvo stayed in, working at his manacles with a metal file occasionally, but mostly napping. He ate his second pear, just as slowly as the first, but had nothing left to quell the growls of his stomach later in the evening. Instead, Corvo huddled against the wall and wrapped his arms around his middle to conserve body heat.

The raven reappeared at the same time that the heavy drops started tapering off to a light mist. It landed roughly, struggling to keep hold of the rat it carried. The rat’s tail was in its beak, the white fur around its head and neck bloody, but it still twisted and lurched with attempts to escape.

Corvo grabbed the rat with barely a thought beyond how difficult it must have been for the bird to keep hold of the thing.

The raven immediately flopped on its belly with wings spread across the wood, blinking at Corvo expectantly.

Corvo let out a breathy hum, but obligingly bit down.

The rat squeaked once and fell limp.

Using teeth and hands, Corvo tore the rat apart, swallowing what bits of still-warm meat he could manage. He was long used to ignoring this action, and no disgust registered. Corvo blinked, pausing a moment when something like Void song abruptly appeared. He dropped the carcass and licked his lips, listening intently.

It was well-honed intuition that had Corvo slamming his head back and spinning before his raven had even managed to cry out warning.

The person behind him let out a surprised grunt at the head-butt, and fell back, hands flying to their masked face and presumably broken nose.

Corvo snarled at the sight of the whaler mask and the uniform coat, and grabbed his staff to lash out. The age-weakened wood cracked loudly across the assassin’s head, splintering into two pieces even as the whaler was knocked unconscious. Another bout of louder Void song had Corvo releasing the broken bits of wood and running for the window with a pause only long enough to scoop up the raven and toss it into the open air in front of him.

The bird rocketed out and up to circle above.

Corvo also went up, scrabbling up an air unit and then along its venting pipes to get to the roofs, wary that going down would only put him in position for an assassin to drop on him from above. He limped heavily without his staff, but adrenaline numbed some of the pain from his swift movements. Corvo barely paused on the roof, having expected the dark figures of more whalers. He dashed towards the one in the way of running further down the line of buildings, sliding into him, so that they both tumbled off the short drop to the next roof.

Corvo allowed the man beneath him to take the brunt of the fall, and then slammed his head down for good measure. He took off again, leaving the body behind.

The raven dived into a low swoop over Corvo’s shoulder, and he immediately adjusted course to follow its erratic path. Escaping the whalers without possessing supernatural abilities to match would be difficult, but he trusted the Outsider to lead him through the course that would give him the best chance.

For a while it seemed to work; Corvo was keeping ahead simply by virtue of being difficult to predict. He used the rain slicked slanting roofs to slide when he could, and broke sightlines as much as possible, but he knew he was slowing. His heaving breaths burned in his mouth and lungs, the taste of copper coating his tongue, and the cloudy grey skies blurred into the slate roofs at the edges of his vision.

The pounding of Corvo’s heart covered the transversal of an assassin, and it was luck alone that had Corvo dropping to slide just as grasping hands caught on his tunic.

Corvo’s escape was short lived, however, as the long chain from his cuffs abruptly caught and jerked him off balance as it unwrapped from over his shoulder. Corvo got a glimpse of the whaler on the other end, bracing, before the building dropped away and he was falling.

A short shocked scream from his raven broke off abruptly, time seemed to slow, and Corvo had a moment to consider how wasted the Outsider’s last gift would be upon his death; then he hit the balcony below. The breath whooshed from his lungs, and Corvo was sure he blacked out for a moment.

He came back wheezing and curled up on himself. Below him was a dry mattress that he was sure hadn’t been there before he started falling.

Crouched beside him was the whaler who’d gotten hold of Corvo’s chain.

Corvo jerked and hissed at him, lunging without thinking, and looped the short chain between the manacles around the assassin’s neck before he could react. Corvo pulled as hard as he could while the larger man choked and struggled.

A low impressed whistle made the two people inside the adjoining room register. “I’d let him go if I were you”, said the one in a mask. The whaler who’d spoken, dressed in blue, was cradling Corvo’s raven in his hands; he stood at the right hand of a man in red.

Daud.

Corvo glared at him, and tossed his head towards the bird, twisting the chain until the whaler was doing little more than twitching from the lack of air.

“The bird’s alive” the blue whaler said and set the limp animal down gently on the only table in the room.

Eyes narrowed, Corvo released his whaler hostage in favor of scooting around the edge of the room. He was cornering himself, and he knew it, but at this point he was as good as caught. All he could do now was make sure the raven was actually okay. There was no way he’d leave the fragment of the Outsider behind. Reaching the point of the room closest to the two assassin’s watching him, Corvo finally inched closer. As soon as he was able, he lifted the bird into his arms, carefully folding the delicate wings in to its body and supporting its head.

Daud twitched, and Corvo skittered back against the wall snarling at him angrily and pulling the rusty spike from his belt. Miraculously he hadn’t lost it in the chase.

Daud tilted his head, eying the makeshift weapon with his lips twisted in something like amusement. He waved at the blue-coated whaler, who turned and strode with purposeful nonchalance to check on the whaler Corvo had left choked out on the balcony.

Corvo kept tense and ready to attack at the slightest misstep as he kept piercing eyes on both of them.

Daud huffed shortly, his voice rough, “you hungry kid?”

Chapter Text

A child was not what Daud had been expecting.

In some ways he hadn’t even expected a human. How could a human have affected the Outsider so greatly in his own domain and rattled the Void? Initially he had in fact thought him to be some manner of cryptid, with the way Void Gaze had shown him tearing into a live rat, and then the speed with which he’d lurched off across the rooftops and dropped three of Daud’s men like they didn’t have years of combat training.

If not for the bird....

It had been an impulsive move to hit the raven with a sleep dart, freeze time, and toss that mattress onto the balcony. He was grateful that Thomas was such a quick study, following Daud’s lead, and catching the bird so that everything was ready once Daud’s hold on time broke.

And then for the first time, Daud was face to face with the kid.

Ragged bloodstained clothes, all stringy muscle and sharp bones, beaten, chained, and starved, and clearly barely into puberty despite the way tense lines of pain aged his face. His eyes were dark, irises so black there was no distinguishing from the pupils, and the look of them... wild desperation; not truly anger, but fear and tired resignation. The kid had let himself be trapped in the same manner a condemned man might walk on his own feet to the gallows; everything and nothing to lose, but defiant by rote.

Daud recognized the pieces that built these emotions; he’d seen them on the faces of each and every refugee and street urchin he’d adopted into his gang, some of the more downtrodden mercenaries too. Yet somehow none of them had ever approached the raw brittle steeliness that this kid achieved.

Daud had known that this was a retrieval mission. One way or another the kid was going to come with them when they went back to the flooded district. Now, however, Daud hoped he could gain the kid’s trust enough that he’d come willingly. With the wariness in the kid’s eyes... it might be a pipe dream for the time being, but most youths, even healthy ones, were somewhat susceptible to food bribery.

Based on the kid’s body language, Daud assumed that the child was more comfortable with Daud himself, rather than with the other whalers. Understandable enough, considering that reading the mood and intensions of a person in a mask was much harder than reading someone whose face was bare, never mind that Daud had been called an ‘unfeeling bastard’ before due to his stoicism.

Daud kept an eye on the boy as he slowly joined Thomas on the balcony, barely sparing a glance for the unconscious whaler when he could clearly see his chest rising and falling steadily. He leaned in close to Thomas, speaking low, “get the injured back to base and bring back one of the medics and some food. Set up guard out of sight of the kid.”

Thomas saluted, tone bemused but without judgment as he asked “a new stray, sir?” Evidently the question was rhetorical, as he grabbed the unconscious whaler off the balcony and transversed away before Daud could offer a retort.

Daud snorted and turned back to find the kid glaring at him, still carefully cradling the raven in his arms. It gave Daud hope that the kid wasn’t entirely feral, considering he’d bothered to socialize and care for such a mercurial animal.

Daud sat, to make himself seem less threatening, leaning against the wall beside the balcony. He tried to soften the growl of his voice, “you got a name, kid?”

The kid flinched at being addressed and didn’t answer, running his finger’s across the raven’s feathers in some nervous tick. His motions paused every once in a while to check for pulse and breathe.

“How about the bird?” Daud asked, tone light, “he have a name?”

The kid froze, expression turning incredulous, before he finally broke eye contact to glance down at the bird with a frown. A second later he jerked and gave Daud an impressively dirty look.

Daud shrugged lightly and crossed his arms, eyeing the boy speculatively. The kid obviously understood the language, but he didn’t seem interested, or perhaps capable, of speaking.

It took over an hour, spent mostly in silence, for the bird to start rousing itself, and Daud couldn’t help his amusement at the kid trying to stop the animal from moving. Still groggy and disoriented, the raven’s attempts at walking ended up with comical meandering and summersaults as it overbalanced and rolled from its natural top-heaviness. When its first and only attempt at flight had it veering immediately back to the ground when its wings failed to beat in sync, the raven finally settled on the kid’s lap and began smoothing out its mussed feathers in between lilting grumbles.

Finally, a few of the worry lines smoothed from the kid’s face.

They returned a moment later when Thomas reappeared on the balcony, their only field-rated medic close on his heels.

“Sir”, Thomas greeted.

Daud nodded, “Thomas, Leon”.

Dressed in cream and burgundy, Leon was immediately distinct from the masters and novices in their blue and grey. The only other one who wore those colors was Montgomery, but she didn’t seem keen on leaving the base now that she had a proper, stationary medical wing to manage.

Leon stepped forward, doing little to hide the once-over he was giving the child, and tisked in sympathy. He eased forward slowly to see the wounds that weren’t covered by cloth; the burn up the left side of the kid’s jaw, bruises still washed in dark purple, the bloodied cloths, and the heavy manacles.

The kid growled and shifted away stiffly.

Leon rolled back on his heals and backed up slowly. He turned back to Daud and leaned in, speaking lowly, “honestly sir... this might be an instance of better to heal the body before tackling the mind. We should get him to Montgomery, and I’m sure Rickard could get those irons off.”

Daud sighed, “prepared for this, then?”

Leon nodded.

Daud glanced to Thomas and dismissed them both with a head motion.

They stopped at the balcony to arrange a plate with some fruit and bread, and Leon pulled a container of soup out of his bag, which he poured into a bowl and left with a spoon. He gave Daud a significant passing glance before the both of them transversed back to the roofs.

Daud took both plate and bowl and kept crouched low as he moved to the child.

When he was a foot short of where Leon’s position had prompted the kid to look for escape routes Daud stopped and set the food down. “Hope you don’t mind” Daud muttered and tore off some of the bread for himself, “we have some fruit and...” he took a sniff of the soup, “smells like Yuri’s chowder with...” he poked at one of the small pale clumps in the bowl with the spoon, then shrugged and scooped it up to taste it with nonchalance. He dropped the spoon back in the bowl as he chewed and nodded “hagfish this time.”

He pushed the dishes closer to the kid and sat back cross-legged, which was a rather relaxed position, and had the added benefit of putting him another foot or so further away from both kid and food.

“Sometimes he makes it with canned eel or whale, if fishing is rough” Daud continued. “Fortunately the haul has been good, so fresh fish it is. I’m sure we’ll all be sick of it in a few more weeks.” Daud let his eyes go distant as though thinking of ways to deal with what could be considered a logistical issue, “if we could find someplace in Gristol that sold proper spices...” this disdain was real, “some flavor variety would go a long way... we could try growing our own if we got seeds....” Daud chewed on his bread thoughtfully “depends on if we could actually get some sun here”, and pulled a notebook and bit of graphite out of his pocket to jot things down.

He might actually come back to this idea later, but for now it made him look busy while still allowing him to keep an eye on the kid in his peripheral.

The bird approached the food first, picking at the bread and dodging when the kid tried to grab at it. Eventually it got annoyed enough at the sabotage that it winged its clumsy way up onto the kids shoulder, batting him in the head as it landed. It chittered angrily a moment, then stopped and bumped its head against the kid’s jaw. It murmured lowly, head tucked under the kid’s chin, and then fluttered back to the floor, eyes locked on the kid’s.

The kid stared back just as intensely, before he looked away, apparently cowed. He reached for the food soon after, ripping some small pieces of the bread for the bird as if in apology before going for the soup.

Daud wondered then if it wasn’t just a raven. He quickly wrote ‘bird and kid – communicate’ on a blank page of his notebook, and smiled thinly as the kid took a small bite of the soup.

Chapter Text

The Knife trusts the ones he finds, more than the ones who seek him out, the raven had said, his children remember the cold, and the pain, and the hunger, and the fear. Their hearts are soft for all that many of them have blood on their hands.

Corvo didn’t know why, but he trusted the Outsider. He had vague recollections of the Outsider’s voice heralding a feeling of security, though the words themselves were jumbled.

When he’d received the mark, he’d felt... vindicated... that he’d been given the chance and the ability to succeed. The curiosity and interest of an otherwise apathetic god hadn’t seemed like a bad price to pay for the aid in returning his daughter to her throne. The Outsider himself for all his capriciousness was rather dependable; his warnings came with hints for alternate routes, and his blessings came with threats, but for all his riddles and omissions he never lied and he never made promises.

His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart. A different voice from a lifetime ago, but Corvo held no illusions that the words had come from the Outsider, not Jessamine.

The Outsider had been speaking with Corvo for the far greater portion of Corvo’s existence, such that he almost couldn’t remember a time before. He’d grown used to interpreting the implications of the Outsider’s words on more instinct and feeling than logic.

So Corvo trusted when the raven implied that for the time being neither Daud nor the whalers intended him harm.

The soup was good. Salty and creamy, barely more than lukewarm after its trip from... Rudshore... Corvo assumed, and easy enough to swallow in slow sips. It was still warm by the time Corvo decided that the beginning of fullness in his belly indicated he’d had enough after days of starving. He was surprised he’d managed to eat so much so quickly without his throat feeling like it was being ripped open.

Corvo swallowed, blinked slowly, and turned muzzily to look at the raven, whose sleek feathers seemed especially lustrous and beautiful. The bird’s calm hum echoed lightly.

The realization hit him hard, even as slow as it was to register.

Heart pounding, Corvo threw himself to his feet.

It was more momentum than grace that had him barreling into Daud when the man stood to meet him. Corvo’s weight knocked them both back and into the wall. Daud’s hands grabbed his wrists, but the assassin didn’t exert any force to stopping Corvo. The assassin was remarkably dispassionate even when Corvo’s palms pressed down on his throat with as much weight as Corvo could muster.

Corvo snarled at him, his attempt at an accusation no more than a strained rumbling at the back of his throat. Poison.

Daud’s hands shifted up Corvo’s arms and finally tightened on his biceps to push him away enough for a wheezing breath.

Corvo jerked against his grip and renewed his effort to strangle the man, but his vision was wavering and his limbs trembling. He swayed, and could feel his strength waning in the way that Daud kept rasping even, if shallow, breaths despite his stranglehold.

Corvo whined when he’s knees knocked, and suddenly it wasn’t his arms pinning Daud to the wall, but Daud’s arms stopping him from falling. Daud eased them down, and Corvo wasn’t aware of how his fingers had moved to grip Daud’s coat until he was on the floor, half cradled, and no longer focused entirely on balancing. The world spun and Corvo keened and clenched his eyes shut. He felt both nauseous and like his stomach was remarkably attached to its contents.

“You’re fine, just let it happen” Daud’s rough voice rumbled through Corvo’s head, sound waves almost a more tactile experience than audial. “Go to sleep.”

Corvo thought he felt another set of hands on him and flinched, gripping tighter to the fabric already clenched in his hands. His trembling increased until finally he couldn’t fight anymore and every shivering muscle gave up and went lax.

Corvo dropped into sleep with the paradoxical feeling of being lifted.

...

He had an impression in the darkness of a loud roar, and then his hands fell off. He couldn’t stay aware enough to panic.

...

He felt a bit more clear the next time he managed to crack open his eyes, but the Outsider was standing over him, silver eyes soft, so perhaps Corvo’s assessment of lucidity was off.

The Outsider smiled, an expression Corvo had never seen on the god before. I’m sorry it’s so cold here, he said softly, but this is the safest place I could bring you while you dream. Corvo blinked and the Outsider’s face was twisted in fear, half engulfed in stone, eyes black. He stared in dread. Don’t worry... neither of us will be here forever. The Outsider’s voice was sad as it echoed through the empty Void. A bird landed on the half-flesh-half-statue of the Outsider, the pale skin of its eyelids as it blinked more striking than its dark plumage against the cold grey stone. Sleep the raven said.

Corvo did.

...

Warm water sluiced over Corvo’s forehead and he gasped. His eyes felt glued shut, but he was warm and the air smelled like mint and linen. His fingers twitched with a detached tingling sensation, and the rest of body felt like jelly. He wondered if this was what jellied eels felt like, safe in their tins of brine. He giggled light huffs of air and turned into the hand cradling his head.

Low sounds like whale song, though more structured, buzzed through the air.

Pleasant tugging on Corvo’s scalp left him sighing and dropping back into the embrace of inattention. He was comfortable in the muted sensations. Laying in softness and warmth, with delightful coolness only where there had been sharp and biting before.

Something trickled past his lips, and Corvo swallowed by habit. The smell was slightly sweet, but the flavor bitter; both were washed away a moment later by cool water.

He felt like a thin ray of light dissolving into more sun as drapes were opened, everything bright and soft.

There was stinging across Corvo’s ribs, but the sharp feeling quickly fizzled away as just another strange aspect of his overlapping senses. It was somewhat overwhelming being muffled under all that softness, so Corvo drifted back into the dark.

...

The Outsider wasn’t looking at him, and the Void seemed strangely washed with gold rather than the usual greys and blues. Corvo was still warm, the Void was warm, he wondered if the Outsider was warm.

There were gods before me, the Outsider sighed, I always wondered if there would be one after me. Now I know that I will be the last. I wonder if my dead eyes will still see everything, forever, like my predecessor, without the living will to make anything of those visions. The Void hungers, it does not know why or for what, but perhaps it is the need for a living avatar. Perhaps the ones who made me into this were right in all their ramblings. But... maybe there’s some other way.... The Outsider turned around and his eyes were blood red. He pressed a hand, icy cold, to Corvo’s chest, gasping as blood bubbled from his lips. I see. I see... there are no choices left.

Corvo recoiled and his throat burned.

A twin-bladed knife, wet with the red blood of the Outsider, clattered to the stone where the god had vanished.

He was cold

...

Corvo thrashed, confused and tangled up in the darkness. He gurgled an attempt to call out and choked when a roll sent him off the edge of a soft mattress and onto a hard floor. His body flared in chemically dulled pain and a dim light appeared.

Corvo blinked to adjust until he could see past the light to the illuminated features of the woman holding the lantern. Her face was age-lined, her long braid of black hair peppered with silver, she was wearing an overcoat with portions pale and dark over a white nightgown.

She dropped to her knees beside him and set the lantern down, shushing him as she rubbed gently over his back and helped untangle his uncoordinated limbs from the blanket. “There you are, you’re alright. You’re alright. I wasn’t expecting you awake till tomorrow. Good sign, yes, a strong lad aren’t you, hopefully a speedy recovery.” She bundled Corvo back up into the bed and tucked him in without pausing in her rambling.

As his heart settled, the cadence of her voice made Corvo tired again, he couldn’t have interrupted if he’d wanted to. He was barely settled back on the mattress before his eyes were drooping again in slow blinks.

“Yes, yes, rest is what you need to heal” the woman said, “tomorrow we’ll see about letting you up proper for a good meal. Too skinny, I swear, and still growing.” She huffed and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Sleep, and no nightmares this time” she ordered as though he could control what he dreamt.

Corvo snorted lightly and drifted off.

Chapter Text

The raven spent the nights in the rafters of Daud’s office after Montgomery declared that she would not abide animals in her medical wing. It certainly didn’t seem pleased by the separation from the kid, but was remarkably non-hostile. It maintained an air of civil distain and kept well out of reach during the day, soaring around the compound to watch the Whalers build and train, and only returning to accept the bits of meat and berries that Yuri brought when delivering Daud’s meals.

It felt strange trusting that the bird would return rather than fly off, but Daud was glad that keeping it around seemed to be a nonissue. It didn’t seem like it would go anywhere far without the kid coming with. In fact, Daud thought that it spent some of its day perched outside one of the medical wing’s windows.

Daud himself had only seen the kid to the medical wing and Montgomery’s care, and not in the two days since.

This morning, however, anticipating the kid waking, Daud set off to the medical wing with a book in hand. The raven eyed him knowingly from the window; the level of intelligence the animal displayed was borderline creepy. Daud quite purposefully ignored it as he donned his coat in a sweeping move and strode out his office doors. He ignored it even more determinedly when the raven followed him instead of going out on its own as it had the other days.

The medical wing was carefully selected to be easily fortifiable and difficult to locate for those who didn’t know where it was. It was on a lower level of the commerce building, entirely cut off from the rest of the building, and currently only accessible via transversal. They had plans to arrange the wrecked hall leading to the wing so that there was a hidden passage for those who couldn’t transverse due to injury or because the arcane bond didn’t take hold.

Montgomery met him at the main doors to what she was now calling the recovery room. It was the largest room in the wing and currently held six beds to accommodate injured, though currently only one was occupied. “Sir” Montgomery greeted, her whaling mask belted at her waist instead of worn, “I assume you’ve read the report I sent”.

“I have” Daud agreed, “but summarize for me.”

Montgomery nodded and folded her hands behind her back as they walked slowly into the room. “The location of most of the injuries is quite deliberate, torture rather than random beatings. Burns have a theme of following the bone structure, the main exception being the one on his jaw and the bottom of his left foot, presumably intended to prevent escape. Several of these burns required debridement, but are now taking well to treatment. There are lashes on his back, again not random, someone... skilled.” Her face twisted in disgust and her Morley accent strengthened with her anger, “the malnutrition and dehydration are compounded by the injuries to his mouth and throat, burns like he was made to drink river krust acid; diluted, or he would not have survived. Four broken ribs and two fingers, fractured wrist, strained knee, multitude of bruises and abrasions, and his wrists rubbed raw from the shackles.” She breathed, face calm, but eyes burning, “I’ll gut the bastard responsible for this meself if we find him.” She shook herself; “we won’t know the extent of nerve damage ‘til he’s conscious for tests.” Her brow furrowed as she became pensive, “there’s a... scar across his neck. It looks quite old, but the apparent depth of that wound concerns me. With the burns to his throat... he mumbled much in his sleep, but quite distorted. He may never speak, or at least not with much clarity or volume.”

They stopped at the kid’s bedside.

Still deep asleep, cleaned and bandaged, the kid kept curled up small with the blankets pulled up past his ears. Aside from soft breathing and the occasional dreaming twitch, the kid barely moved. Without the stress lines his face looked about fourteen years, though his height and gangly limbs indicated he might be closer to sixteen or seventeen, though perhaps a late bloomer with the lack of facial hair.

“You say he should wake today” Daud stated.

“Aye” Montgomery replied, “he did in fact wake a minute last night from terrors, but dropped off quickly when I tucked him back in.”

Daud glanced at her sharply, “and his disposition at that time?”

Montgomery smiled, already fond, “confused, but lucid. A wee bit skittish, but he calmed quickly enough. I dare say he’s not one prone to violence.”

Daud hummed with a degree of skepticism. Trauma only went so far in building the instinct and reflexes the kid had displayed in the industrial district. Additionally, in a lot of ways it was quite easy to kill when things came to blows. It took training for a person to be able to handle the adrenaline, to know the weaknesses of the body, and how to exploit them. It took even more training to know how to incapacitate without killing. The kid certainly had some such training and also impressive restraint. More, Daud could admit, than he’d had at the same age.

“I’ll sit until he wakes then” Daud said, dismissing Montgomery with a careless wave as he pulled up the chair at the headboard. He opened his book and settled in to read about birds. Surely the raven was unnatural.

It was approaching lunch before the kid made any significant motion, stretching out from his ball and rolling onto his other side with a sigh. He seemed to drift off again for a few minutes before finally lifting his head to blink groggily at the midday light pouring in from the windows.

The moment his eyes landed on Daud they went sharp and he stilled.

They stared at each other until Daud closed his book with a snap. “Up in time for lunch, if you’re able.”

The kid didn’t move beyond breathing.

Daud sighed, and leaned back to sit more comfortably. “I promise it won’t be drugged this time.”

A startled blink and some of the hostility faded. The kid turned away hesitantly and sat slowly with one arm braced against his ribs. He barely winced, however, and set to investigating the bandages, tugging up the over-sized linen shirt he’d been dressed in after Montgomery and Leon had cleaned and tended him, to prod at the wraps around his torso. Then he pressed lightly at the dressings on his wrists.

Daud frowned when the light caught on the back of the kid’s left hand; he reached without thinking and got a flinch in response. “Sorry,” Daud said, eyes still locked on the kid’s hand, “may I?” He left his hand out palm up.

The kid hunched his shoulders, but the earlier hostility didn’t return. Confusion perhaps, but it seemed the kid was realizing that Daud didn’t intend anything that would hurt him. Slowly, he reached out and placed his palm in Daud’s hand, expression equal parts curious and distrustful.

Daud brushed his finger across the kid's knuckles, gently tilting his hand so that the light caught the silvery scar. The kid was dark, despite his sallow pallor, dark hair wavy around his face now that the knots had been combed out, probably Serkonan based on coloring alone; and yet somehow the pale mark seemed to dissuade notice. Certainly it hadn’t come up in Montgomery’s missives. Daud tugged off his left glove with his teeth and dropped it in his lap, putting their hands side-by-side to compare the lines.

He’d been sure before, but like this there was no doubt. The scar of the Outsider’s mark was perfectly formed, too perfectly formed to have been caused by man.

Daud met the kid’s eyes and slowly let go. “Since marking me in my youth, the Outsider speaks to me” he said, voice automatically reverting to the growl he used to give information and orders to his men, “in a vision he told me to find you.”

The kid grimaced, posture defensive.

“I’ve never seen a mark like yours; mine” he tilted his hand to show off the crisp black lines, “gives me power. Does yours?”

The kid glanced away, expression lost.

“It doesn’t, does it” Daud stated, “interesting.”

The kid snorted, then jerked, glancing around the room quickly. He clicked his tongue sharply. With a wing beat as his only warning warning, Daud ducked as the raven swooped just over his shoulder to land on the blankets.

The kid and bird looked each other over critically. The kid’s fingers smoothing the feathers at the back of the bird’s head and the raven grumbling and hopping over his knees.

Lucky that Montgomery wasn’t in the room to see the animal in her medical wing. Again, Daud was struck by the uncanny intelligence of the bird and the strange ability the two seemed to have to communicate. His thoughts went again to the reverse mark on the kid’s hand and the strange method of the Outsider.

As though on signal, both child and animal turned to appraise Daud. Their eyes were equally dark. “Kid-“ Daud started, unnerved.

The bird retorted with an arch and deliberate sound. “Koro, koro”, as though trying to speak like a human.

The kid looked nearly as surprised as Daud.

“What’s he saying?” Daud asked, half not expecting an answer.

The kid pointed at himself, then glanced around with his brow furrowed. His eyes landed on Daud’s book and he pointed at it instead.

Daud scowled in confusion, but passed it over.

The kid flipped through ‘The Birds of the Isles’ until he apparently found the page he wanted. He leaned the book so Daud could see and pointed. The chapter covered corvids, the page on crows, and the kid pointing at the scientific name ‘corvus’.

“Corvus” Daud muttered, and the kid nodded once. “That your name?”

The kid shrugged and waggled his hand in the air, and then his gaze went distant. When he looked back at Daud again his expression was determined and he nodded decisively and tapped the word again.

“Corvus” Daud repeated. There was a moment of comfortable silence. “Care for something to eat?”

Corvus grinned.

Chapter Text

Corvo hadn’t expected this version of Daud.

The Knife he’d met before had been wane and tired looking, with tense acceptance in the lines of his face and a slump to his shoulders. Even after Corvo spared him, he didn’t lose the weight of guilt; if anything... in the moments before he fled it looked like it weighed even heavier upon him.

This Daud had some level of vibrancy and purpose that the older one had lost. He was patient, had a dry sense of humor, was curious, and, most surprisingly, caring.

He had obviously taken care of Corvo’s raven and had arranged for Corvo’s wounds to be tended professionally.

Last time, in the care of the so-called ‘Loyalists’, Corvo had largely been left to lick his own wounds. Piero had tried to help, but his interests in natural philosophy veered greatly towards engineering and chemistry rather than medicine. His spiritual remedies helped somewhat with regaining energy, and Sokolov’s elixirs with holding off infection, but otherwise... Corvo’s wounds had healed rough and raised, some parts numb and some parts painful even years later. Already he felt like this time would be better.

It was strange then that Daud was indirectly the cause of these wounds, and now he was the direct cause of their healing.

Corvo met the Outsider’s raven eyes and watched him blink slowly. Pale eyelids, the silver of the Outsider’s human eyes... Corvo had never seen anyone else with that shade of clear green-blue. For now, perhaps inevitably, his spirit is entangled in a future of regret, the raven said.

“Montgomery wants you off that foot until the burn has healed” Daud remarked.

Corvo looked at him, Corvus now, he reminded himself, looking at the wheelchair Daud had pulled along side his bed. This was not the Knife he had known; perhaps that Knife need never exist. Perhaps this was where Corvo-us... could have the greatest effect.

Corvus shuffled into the chair, stealing a blanket off his bed for warmth, and beckoned to the raven with a chagrined half-smile. Clever fragment.

The bird, as always, knowing his thoughts, puffed its plumage smugly and with a wing stroke landed on Corvus’ wrist, beak lifted imperiously.

Corvus snorted.

“Does the bird have a name?” Daud asked once more as he began pushing Corvus towards the doors to the wing.

Corvus glanced over his shoulder at the man and shrugged. He doubted ‘Outsider’ really was the entity's name, almost more a title, and the bird was more a shattered piece than a whole. Corvus felt a pang of grief, twice murdered, the Outsider was dead, and his time was dead. Corvus swallowed thickly and huddled further under the blanket, wringing it in his hands.

He had dreams of the Outsider’s company, clearer since those fever-warped nightmares of the past few days. A warm voice, narrating things Corvo hadn’t been able to see, or bringing visions to him of what was happening outside of his stone prison. Then the double-edged knife, and then the Outsider drifting beside him flickering gold, sometimes lucid enough to tell stories or give explanations, to speak of history and magic, but sometimes more trapped in despairing contemplation than Corvo had been. From the ghost’s ramblings, things said as though compelled, Corvo imagined he knew the Outsider better than anyone else in this time.

Much was cut away with my name, the raven said, as much has now been lost as has been regained. I am not as I was. It tucked its beak into its chest feathers. Mourn if you must, but do not pity, for I am with you until time runs dry. The Outsider’s tone shifted from consoling to grateful.

Corvo didn’t realize they’d stopped moving until Daud was crouched in front of him. “Alright?” The assassin asked.

Corvo took a shuddering breath, blinking at the tearing of his eyes. His jaw worked with all the things he couldn’t say as he looked between the raven and Daud. What could he say? His throat was ravaged. Once again his longest standing friend was dead, killed in front of him, but for a lingering fragment. His daughter had become the murderer the papers had been accusing her of. The Void had killed off the world. And now he was back in a time where he could either fix things or relive them.

There was much to be overwhelmed by, but all he could think of was the consuming grief of having been helpless as once again someone he cared for was murdered before his eyes.

“Breathe” Daud said, voice firm and calm, “breathe kid- Corvus. Follow my lead.” He pulled Corvo’s hand to rest over his heart and breathed deliberately, slow and even.

Corvo– Corvus –followed. He felt dizzy as his breathing and heart rate relaxed. Then Corvus flushed as he realized he’d been having a panic attack in front of his should-be-enemy.

Daud hummed, “don’t worry about it. Do you still want to go to lunch, or would you prefer I bring something back to you?”

Corvus shook his head and motioned forward. The last thing he wanted was to be left alone. He’d been alone for far too long. It gave him a fitful type of appreciation for Daud taking him in. Had he been given a choice, he certainly would not have gone with the assassins who’d carried out Jessamine’s murder. However, he was increasingly convinced that this was the most advantageous place he could have ended up.

Corvus focused on their surroundings so as not to fall back into the pit of his roiling emotions.

They came to a dead-end where the floor above had collapsed and blocked the hallway, but Daud simply braced an arm across Corvus’ chest so that he was in contact with both Corvo and the chair, and then transversed to the other side of the blockage.

The method of teleportation felt different than Corvo’s blink. Blink was like the breath in his lungs being grabbed and pulling him along to the new location in a swift breeze. Daud’s version was... slow... somehow; like the still before he might decide to take a dive, only to then realize he was already in the water. Both left a lingering Void chill, and Corvus wasn’t sure he preferred one to the other beside familiarity.

The trip didn’t require any more transversals, but it did confirm that they were at Rudshore in the Commerce Building. It seemed a recent habitation, with platforms outside the windows only half built and rubble in some areas only partially cleared. It also appeared there were large swaths of the compound that Corvo hadn’t managed or known to access when he’d passed through last time.

He certainly hadn’t found the large room and kitchen where the whalers had set up their mess hall. He also hadn’t ever encountered the sheer number of people who currently filled the room.

There were at least fifty people packed into the room, all wearing the uniform coats in varying colors and states of formality, though their masks were scattered about the tables and floor or hanging from their belts. With few tables, they sat on chairs, on rubble piles, on pillows on the floor, as they ate and socialized. It wasn’t loud exactly; surprisingly quiet for a crowd even, but there was conversation and laughter filling the room in a low buzz.

Daud steered them to a shadowed table in the back corner, apparently left open for Daud’s convenience. It gave a good view of the room while maintaining some privacy, and already had a single occupant who, like Daud, was wearing red.

“Daud” the woman said, “kid” she gave Corvus an ambivalent look with a raised brow, “got you some of today’s offerings before these wolfhounds could eat it all.” She waved her hand at a few dishes already set on the table with a wry smirk.

Daud grunted acknowledgement and set up Corvus’ wheelchair so that his back was to one of the walls and he could see the room, then took the chair that left his own back to the crowd. “Billie, this is Corvus. Corvus, this is Billie Lurk, my second” Daud introduced once he was seated. Then he pushed the bowl of soup in front of Corvus and pulled the plate of bread, meat, and cheese to himself.

Corvus eyed the woman speculatively as he picked up his spoon. Daud trusted her.

The raven chuckled tersely and tossed his head. She betrayed him once and refused to disappoint him again, and so drove the knife into my heart. His daughter in all but name, she still sails in her dreams with a loved one she lost. His bit spoken, the raven hopped up to the table and picked at a small bowl of seeds and nuts.

Corvus sat frozen at a table with two murderers. This woman killed– would kill –the Outsider. The apple didn’t fall far he mused grimly.

Chapter Text

Daud watched the kid’s face blanch and became certain that somehow the kid and bird could talk to each other, more... the raven must be Void touched, potentially by the Outsider’s will. What secrets did Corvus receive that would cause such an extreme reaction? Did it make the kid dangerous to them?

He watched Corvus’ hands shake as the kid forced himself to eat. If it was an attempt to act natural, it was a poor one.

Then again, the kid was a traumatized wreck. The physical was obvious, but there were psychological wounds as well; triggers that Corvus himself probably didn’t realize he had. Already in the course of an hour he’d gone from suspicious to cooperative to a panic attack to assessing to the shock he was in now. It was hardly a surprise when the kid started head-bobbing and yawning when he was only halfway through his bowl.

Whatever complications the Outsider’s meddling added to the situation, it didn’t change the fact that Corvus was a child in Daud’s care... and thus also at his mercy. The latter was obvious, the former, however.... What Corvus needed was not interrogation, but support and patient attendance as he recovered.

In the process, Daud could earn his trust as he had with the other rescues.

The kid jerked awake when Daud stood, looking bewildered like he couldn’t remember falling asleep. He was still dosed with a fair amount of painkiller, so it was entirely possible. Corvus’ eyes were sharp nonetheless, especially when Billie also stood. He scooped the raven onto his lap, despite it’s squawked protest, and circled his arms loosely, but protectively, around it.

Daud paused, then gestured for Billie to go first while he swung around the kid’s chair in order to wheel him back to the medical wing.

As expected, Corvus tensed and spared Daud a glance when Daud moved behind him, but otherwise kept his wary gaze pinned to Billie’s back as she walked ahead.

Billie kept an air of alacrity as she gave information on the reconstruction as they went, but stayed at the collapse instead of entering the wing with them.

Corvus practically collapsed in relief and exhaustion upon realizing they were alone, slouching and letting his hands drop away from the raven who’d been patiently enduring the results of Corvus’ stress.

Daud noted with interest that it was Billie alone who unsettled the kid, but held his tongue until Corvus was back in bed.

“Did Billie do something?” Daud asked, watching carefully for what the kid didn’t say.

Corvus hesitated, eyes tired and expression pensive, but he eventually shook his head.

Daud hummed and sat at the footboard, “will she do something?” He asked next in a softer tone.

Corvus blinked, suddenly far more awake, and his hands twitched and he gave a jerky shrug.

“She might do something” Daud surmised, smirking at the kid’s amazement while trying to think of what he could ask that wouldn’t cause the kid to clam up. “Is there anything... you can tell me about it?” He asked slowly.

Corvus glanced at the raven, now perched at the window preening the feathers Corvus had mussed. He wrung his fingers, wincing when he bumped the broken ones before turning hopelessly back to Daud and waving his hand in a circular motion with a wince.

“It’s complicated” Daud interpreted.

They sat in silence for few minutes, by which point Corvus’ eyes were spending more time closed than open, so Daud stood slowly and tucked him in. He left a glass of water within reach, and tapped on Montgomery’s door to let her know he was going, before leaving.

Billie was still waiting, making a game of flicking bits of rubble at her mask, which was propped against the wall. She stood abruptly when she noticed him and crossed her arms. “What the hell happened back there?”

Daud hummed and kept walking, knowing she’d follow. “I believe the bird is connected to the Outsider. The boy... is able to communicate with it.”

“How?” Billie demanded.

“How are we to guess the Outsider’s motives or methods? This whole situation is quite unique. Regardless of how... I believe the bird shares secrets with him; even glimpses of the future.”

“The future...” Billie repeated, “then... the bird said something about... me?”

Daud stopped to look at her with full attention. Her mask was gripped tight in her hands, the lines of her face spoke of concern rather than guilt or anger. “Yes. However, I don’t know what he was told, how much he understood, or how us being forewarned might change things.” He grabbed her arm to ensure she wouldn’t act rashly, “If he’s uncomfortable around you... for now I think you should keep your distance. Once he’s on his feet and can hold his own, then you may approach him. If we’re to convince him to stay, then above all we need him to feel safe with us.”

Billie breathed out slowly, “he’s mute?” She asked slowly.

Daud released her arm and nodded, “the damage is severe; Montgomery isn’t sure how much of his voice he’ll regain. Perhaps none.”

Billie winced in sympathy and tucked her chin down, calculating. “Then perhaps, there is a way I could build good will preemptively.” She transversed before Daud could ask what she was planning.

Daud sighed and also transversed, quick bursts that got him back to his office in short time and left him out of breath from exertion.

His office wasn’t much of one currently. He had a single desk on the lower level, tucked in the corner, with cluttered stacks of books and papers dominating a large portion of both the desk and the floor around it. The loft had a bed and a chest and little else. It was all quite Spartan.

In his absence a few shelves had been relocated into the room, most of them small, but one of the archive units had been pushed up against the handrail of the stairs leading to the loft. Daud was impressed that the thing had been fit through the doors.

He glanced up to the hole in the roof, considering where in the room would be safest from rain, and got to work using pull to move shelves and furniture to his liking. The Outsider given abilities made the task a short one, and soon he was organizing papers and books, occasionally getting distracted by bits of ill-remembered reports or other administrative tasks.

Daud’s method of organization was detailed, but organic, subjective in a way that would make it difficult for anyone unfamiliar with the Whaler’s jobs and Daud’s personality to understand. His files and papers put to order were a map of corruption and political strife. Dirty secrets, murder, gang and familial and political feuds, and more.

Laid out under Daud’s eyes, he could almost see job offerings before they happened.

The remaining council members from Emperor Euhorn’s rule were getting upward in age. Younger men with a taste for power and the moral ambiguity to claw for it by any means would start to take chances in order to claim Empress Jessamine’s favor and gain a role in the government as they came available.

And they would have to claw.

Jessamine Kaldwin was a uniquely discerning woman; sycophants out for their own gain at the expense of others would not easily fool her. And with the loyal (and by all accounts prestigiously skilled) Lord Protector at her side, and with the favor of the masses, she was practically untouchable.

No... unrest would occur among the nobility beneath her station first. There was little to regret over taking out members of the greedy upper crust; bread and butter for Daud’s like.

Daud sat back from his filing and stretched.

Perhaps it was unfounded paranoia, but Daud felt that there was a storm over the horizon, and the current peace was the breath of calm before it hit.

Storm clouds were thrice cursed.

For all Daud knew, the renewed interest of the Outsider was the first.

Chapter Text

When Corvus woke again he ached everywhere and was groggier than he’d been when he’d woken for lunch. Now the sky was cast in orange and red, dawn or dusk. It took only a short reflection to remember all he’d been struggling with when he’d passed out.

He cursed his lack of control and scrubbed a hand over his face.

He was– used to be –the Royal Protector, so his continual displays of weakness stung at his pride, however his current lack of direction gave him no solid base on which to center himself. He was overly emotional, physically dependent, lacking intel, and just otherwise at the mercy of a bunch of assassins with nothing to his brand new name but a companion who had been a mercurial god, now in the fragile form of a bird.

Corvus blinked and glanced around the room, finding no sign of the Outsider fragment, but the medic, Montgomery, was grinding herbs at a workbench in the far corner of the room. For once she was wearing her whaling mask, though the hood of her burgundy and cream overcoat was still down.

Regardless, Corvus knew precisely how much those masks contributed to peripheral blind spots. A poor idea, sneaking out might be, but Corvus felt he needed some measure of time where he was truly in control in order to comfortably think things through.

He shuffled quietly out of bed, mussing one of the blankets and tucking it in to look somewhat like a body, and then took off crawling across the room. Even without pressure on it, the burn on his foot throbbed, and Corvus knew that he wouldn’t be able to go far in his current state, but he didn’t need to. He just needed some privacy.

He wouldn’t say he had forgotten about the collapse blocking the hallway out of the medical wing, but he was hopeful he’d find a way through despite the obstacle. He had barely cast an eye over the problem when a low croaking interrupted.

Following the sound revealed the raven peaking out from behind a large piece of cracked plaster.

Corvus shuffled over and hummed as he peered into the space. It looked as though there was actually a large cavity concealed behind the plaster, large enough for Corvus and the raven to both fit with a bit of room to spare at least; so Corvus knocked a crumbling panel loose along a crack and crawled on his belly into the space, propping the piece he’d broken off back into place once he was sequestered in the hiding spot.

The raven churred at him and fluffed its wings, hopping up onto some nebulous lump in the dark.

Corvus pulled himself over to inspect it, feeling satin fabric over hard lumps. Familiar fabric, familiar lumps. Corvus didn’t need his eyes to tell that this was his missing sash of whalebone. He wondered how the bird managed to get the bones to this place without notice.

The raven cackled low in its throat, and even in the dim light its eyelids flashed silver.

Corvus stroked a finger over the raven’s toes, and wondered how the fragment got him here and what to do now that he was.

The raven nipped at his knuckles. In stone, they would gather at your feet and call upon the void. Magic they bound with blood, bone, ritual, and intent. They all were children grasping at that which they did not understand. But I have been the void and possessed nothing that I could not give up, save you.

Corvus’ eyes stung, and he wondered briefly how much the Outsider sacrificed to pull him through time, before forcing himself to remember.

The death of the Outsider had cut off the power of the marked and of runes, which also bore his mark, but had little to no effect on bone charms and the like, which drew more directly from the Void rather then through the avatar. Charm carvers and witches boomed among the populace, to the dismay of the Abbey.

There were gaps, bits of time where he’d been lost in the Void or in despair, but Corvus could remember watching and listening as witches gathered by him and taught their trade. Bound in stone, halfway between the Void and the real world, his statue bled Void power and was an easy place for them to perform and pass on their craft.

Corvus ran his fingers over the cloth-wrapped bones thoughtfully.

In theory... he knew how to perform the magic he’d seen. Focusing, he almost felt he could hear lilting song from the bones he had already collected, echoing... or perhaps resonating... in his mind. Still he hesitated.

Magic required trust in one’s ability to stand before the Void without loosing sight of one’s self. In this time and place, Corvus didn’t know yet who he was. He, like the Outsider, was not what he had been.

The raven nipped at Corvus’ fingers. The captain has sunk with the ship, the Outsider’s voice murmured, now he and the sea are one and the same, but for his bones awash in salt and kept by the sand.

Corvus frowned at the riddle and ruffled the short feathers at the back of the bird’s head. His lips quickly turned up again when the raven leaned into the touch and its eyes shuttered in pleasure.

Corvus hummed, considering how, like he was no longer Corvo, this fragment was no longer the Outsider. The raven, as an animal, might have the easier task in reinventing itself, but they both were clean slates.

The Outsider lives, the title his right. Our name was stolen and forgotten, the raven replied lyrically, it would discomfit me to answer to a name that is dead.

Corvus considered this response. His ears were beginning to ring with the silence since the Outsider’s voice only seemed to hum in his bones rather than his ears, and the cavity within the collapse was growing uncomfortably warm from their body heat.

“Occhi Pallidi” Corvus shaped slowly on his tongue; not even a whisper, barely a breath, “Occhi.”

The raven twisted his neck to look up at him. Then he crowed a delighted and raucous laugh, abruptly loud in the silence and overwhelming in the small space. Simplicity in two flippant words! Why should I not answer to your cheek? The caterwauling grew impossibly louder.

Corvus laughed back, almost getting a mouthful of feathers as Occhi flared his wings to keep from falling over in mirth.

It was a relief to find such straightforward amusement to give pause to the stress Corvus had been feeling. He could also hardly be blamed for naming the raven after the features of the Outsider that had consistently drawn Corvus’ attention; the Outsider’s irises, silver green, and unlike anything Corvus had seen grace any other human’s features, and the pale white eyelids of the raven, stark against the iridescence of it’s dark feathers. A bit of dark humor even, to call the raven ‘Pale Eyes’ when everyone knew the Outsider’s eyes, sclera and all, were inky black.

Corvus’ ribs were aching when he finally ran out of breath and had settled into just the occasional chuckle. They hurt extra sharply when he startled at the sudden light of someone pulling the plaster away.

Backlit, Montgomery’s expression seemed especially severe, “what do ye think your doing?” She asked dryly. “Bout gave me a heart attack when I’d noticed you’d up and left, I was worried you’d fallen out a window somewhere, but no, you’re in here laughing your fool head off.”

Corvus ducked his head sheepishly and nudged Occhi roughly enough that the raven squawked and batted back indignantly.

Montgomery eyed them both a moment longer before releasing a long-suffering sigh. “All right, get out here lad before this thing collapses on your head.”

Corvus bit his lip to keep from laughing again, glad that at the very least he apparently looked young enough to get away with some childish behavior.

The glee didn’t last long when faced with consequences of cramming himself into such tight quarters for so long. Every muscle had stiffened and his injuries started throbbing with actual pain rather than mere discomfort as he worked himself out of the hole. It didn’t help that he insisted on pulling his whalebones out with him.

Once Montgomery coerced him back into the wheelchair, Corvus hugged the bundle to his chest with Occhi settled on his wrist, and stared her down in a clear demonstration of possessiveness. It earned him another sigh, but she moved into position to push him without argument.

It was lucky they hadn’t started moving yet, because suddenly another assassin appeared immediately in front of them, facing the same direction, with their back to Corvus and Montgomery.

The coat was red, but it wasn’t Daud.

Corvus would entirely admit to the sudden surge of malicious pettiness. She may not have killed the Outsider yet, but he still hadn’t forgiven that she would-could-had in his future. He responded very maturely to this spite by jabbing his unbroken fingers into Billie's lower ribs before anybody else could say anything.

Billie vanished in ash again with a strange thud and reappeared, facing them this time, twenty feet down the hall with her sword in her hand and her eyes wide.

Corvus’ heart rate ticked up, but he swallowed down his apprehension and crossed his arms, reproachful despite having been the one to start it.

Montgomery sputtered as though not sure who to scold.

Billie blinked back at them, tense and baffled before sheathing her sword and walking back with her shoulders hunched and her entire body language screaming her mortification. “I didn’t- you surprised me” she said defensively, “I wasn’t expecting you-“ emphasis towards Corvus, “er... either of you” she backtracked, “to be right here.” She cleared her throat and forcibly straightened her posture.

“Yes, well” Montgomery waffled, “this one thought it wise to go crawling about in the collapse.”

Corvus flinched when the medic brushed a hand through his hair, dislodging a small cloud of plaster dust that had apparently accumulated on his head.

Billie nodded, “right well... I was just bringing-“ she stopped and stooped to pick up a thick book from the floor, evidently the cause of the thud when she’d transversed, and brushed at the cover as she stood again. She thrust the book at Corvus, “I thought this may be of use to you” she blurted while not meeting his eyes, “while you recover.”

Corvus took the book after an awkward moment, and ran his fingers across the smooth leather cover. He recognized the title ‘A Study of Serkonan Sign’.

When he’d been recovering from Coldridge, speaking had been both painful and anxiety inducing. Too much damage, and too much time spent biting back sounds. Emily had coerced Sokolov into finding information on gestural language and had brought this very same book to Corvo. It was quite comprehensive and well illustrated, and Emily thought that knowing Serkonan Sign as apposed to Gristolian would mean that nobody else would understand them; a secret between them both.

They’d gotten enough of a vocabulary built that simple phrases, orders, and warnings could be shared, but Corvo had recovered his voice before they got to the stage of true fluency, and Emily had become disinterested, too busy with her mounting duties as she grew into her title.

In his current state of injury, it made sense that Corvus should brush up on the language, especially with the implication that there would be some among the whalers who also knew sign.

Corvus settled the book on his lap underneath his bundle of bones and gave a short nod without looking at Billie Lurk. His throat felt tight for reasons unrelated to his injuries.

He barely noticed when the assassin nodded back and left.

Montgomery asked something and Corvus hummed back, thoughts instead consumed with Emily.

When she’d turned eighteen and first presented herself as a grown woman, she’d publicly recognized him as her father and talked down all backlash with poise, he’d thought they were closer than ever. Growing near to the end of his prime, concerned that he would soon be unable to protect her, and skeptical of anyone else’s ability to take his place, Corvo had trained her to be her own Royal Protector if the need arose. He made her the best, so that she’d always have a choice. She chose to kill.

Occhi warbled in low sympathy.

Above all else, Corvus wanted things to be different for Emily this time. He’d had over a decade and a half to come to terms with his failure to protect Jessamine, and her subsequent death, even before the centuries in stone. Now he wanted to save Jessamine so that Emily wouldn’t have to know what losing her mother was like. Perhaps Jessamine would do a better job raising her, perhaps without the trauma of Jessamine’s death....

Corvus had always been proud of Emily, thought he might burst with his love for her and all she was accomplishing; Corvus would always love her, but... she broke his heart... and he was terrified that it was inevitable that she would again.

Montgomery cleared her throat and Corvus blinked back to himself.

They were in a large bathroom, a shallow wash basin set up with lightly steaming water in the corner, bath salts and fresh bandages were placed on the counter, fresh clothes folded neatly on a chair by the door.

Corvus glanced from the basin, to Montgomery, and back again, then down at his dusty hands and dirty linens. Flushing brightly, Corvus realized that the medic’s intent was to wash, re-bandage, and dress him. Humiliating, but... he knew well what a privilege it was to be clean.

Occhi had little pity.

The raven cackled mockingly and fluttered up to the rafters and well out of reach.

Chapter Text

The Outsider had lived for a very long time... if his god-state could be called ‘living’.

He had thought he’d seen everything; thought nothing could surprise him any longer, certainly thought nothing could faze him. He’d been alive for a very long time. Immortality, as an experience, was in a word, disappointing.

Perhaps it was boredom, perhaps the urging of the Void, or perhaps just habit that had him continuing to mark people who caught his eye. Though fewer and fewer each generation as the centuries passed. Something about these individuals caught his fancy, not always in good ways he would openly admit if prompted, but how else was the Outsider to rage.

His place, his seat of power, was in the Void. It was hardly satisfying to enact destruction on a realm of stone and splinters with no one to witness his malcontent.

Desperation, determination, the desire to change things... against the odds... these might catch the Outsider’s eye, but there was always something more to the ones he marked. Something that made him ache in the space where his heart had once beat. The addictive nature of feeling anything at all, good or bad, had made it such that the Outsider couldn’t tell between the emotional symptoms... pains? He hardly knew how to react beyond curiosity over the cause.

He had stopped arguing long ago when humans called him apathetic or cruel. They were probably right and he was far beyond caring.

But Corvo....

Corvo had been, or had become, something the Outsider had craved. Something he craved without having realized how starved he was.

There was legitimate surprise at Corvo’s choices. He never seemed tempted by the corruptive nature of power, or vain at having the attention of a god. There was pleasure at how Corvo neither fawned nor disdained the Outsider’s appearances. And there was a realization like the rising sun at dawn that Corvo had skill and wit enough to live long enough to make some of his goodness truly affect the world, using the Outsider’s gifts frugally and nigh selflessly as none had done before.

Soon it was not just to Corvo’s actions, but to the man himself that the Outsider attributed an aching hope that someone- anyone –could or would prove themselves an exception to the wickedness the Outsider had fallen prey to, and the wickedness he’d been forced to witness for centuries upon centuries.

It wasn’t a pedestal, the Outsider was well aware of all of the Royal Protector’s faults, he was only a man, but there was certainly something precious about Corvo that the Outsider... coveted.

A jagged chasm of sharp stone, all bitterness and pain, suddenly finding itself worn smooth by a flash flood. A parched mouth suddenly being offered water. The rain finally falling when the moisture of the air built, and built, until it could no longer be contained as vapour. Ears popping and sound becoming clear when before it had been muffled. A stretch to ease muscle and sinew.

The Outsider could think of a million analogies, but none so personal, none more painful, than the recollection of the first breath he’d taken as a god. The stark clarity when death did not end his consciousness, that the empty spot hungering in his breast had once been filled with something of indescribable value that he’d taken for granted.

That space had numbed with misanthropy across the years, but Corvo had ripped it open and revealed it to be an unhealed wound if not a festering one.

Always a little more innocence left to loose.

The Outsider had thought himself an exception, or perhaps too disenchanted for such a thing as innocence. No scandalous, taboo, horrific secret had been hidden from his gaze.

Billie Lurk’s foray into deicide was hardly the first assassination attempt the Outsider had faced.

He’d viewed the concept of his inevitable death with a hint of curiosity, more giddy anticipation than he’d thought himself capable of mustering, and a large portion of relieved resignation.

He’d only realized his mistake when the reality of the event was too far in motion to be stopped, the blade already in his chest.

The end of the world was an inevitability; he’d foretold before that the Void was to swallow the sky. As the only possible eventuality it hadn’t mattered when it would occur, except for... Corvo... maintained in stone far past his natural life span.

Corvo Attano wasn’t supposed to get caught in the death rattle of the world, the whimper of the Void’s self-destruction. It wasn’t good enough. Rather, he deserved better.

Billie Lurk hadn’t even noticed the statue of the Lord Protector, hidden behind the rock outcrop of the Outsider’s preserved body, kept safe and secret, and so very close; the bearer of all the Outsider’s hope. The Outsider could no longer tell the shape of that hope, how far it had sunk its claws into his lungs, just that it was so potent that everything else the Outsider was capable of feeling paled in comparison.

Regret like a tidal wave anchored the Outsider’s weary spirit to that spot, preventing him from dissipating as would be fitting for the care-worn apparition he made.

He stayed for his hope and his regret, and realized that once again he was as good as powerless. Once again he had stalled for too long to save himself. For all that he had been a god he was also the same weak purposeless outcast he’d always been.

Corvo was all that he was not and could never be.

Corvo was therefor the only thing that could actually matter while everything else dissolved.

When a chance came, a stuttering in space and time, the Outsider gathered the cobwebs of his essence, the wisps of his power... and gave it away without hesitation.

He had no regrets left to hold him, save a selfish wish.

The Outsider surrendered to oblivion.

...

The raven opened his eyes.

The world was large, but that was the way it had always seemed no matter how far his vision. He was small, as usual, but for once he felt like he wasn’t stretched thin. Instead contained. Physical.

The Void still whispered through his mind, but there were no more teeth to its bark.

He felt light and warm. He couldn’t remember the last time- or he could, but distantly. The memories of the cold were equally distant. Like he’d read and reread someone else’s story until he’d nearly forgotten it wasn’t his own. But it was his story wasn’t it?

He preened, the repetitive motions of a beak running through feathers instinctual, soothing.

He wasn’t anxious, he wasn’t in pain, he wasn’t otherwise distressed, but why deny himself a simple comfort? The day was pleasantly sunny, his dark feathers soaked the sun heat up eagerly, and he was content and mildly confused. He was a bird? He was quite sure that he hadn’t been a bird before.

He was missing... the thought slid away. There was nothing he needed to do, nothing he had to do, but his peace was disturbed nonetheless by the feeling that there was something he wanted to do.

Wanting... such a novelty.

He wanted without burden or reserve. He thought he remembered that there was something to hold him back, something that discouraged wanting. He was equally sure that whatever it was didn’t exist anymore.

He took to the sky with ebullience, delighting at the air, the salt on the updraft, the sky, the sun, the open world, the flexing of flesh and feather, the straining of heart and lung. This was freedom.

He followed his desires, however modest, tumbling in loops just to feel the exertion and exhilaration. He let the wind lead him, catching breezes until his wings ached with exhaustion and he had to land.

He preened again, relishing sensation, awash with the high of being in the moment; a single time and a single place, a single body.

A boy stumbled out of the nearby building and the raven coughed in recognition and greeting. He could feel now the entangling of their spirits, which had guided his erratic path to this place.

Blood and bone as sacrifice, willful intent to direct, and ritual to bind. He remembered.

This bond was a mistake.

But it was not the raven’s newest cage. It did not take anything from him beyond what he’d willingly given, and what he received in return was more than payment. He would not be alone again, could never be.

As guide, companion, confidant... whatever was needed... he would be with Corvo forever.

The raven landed on the boy’s shoulder and it felt right. It felt like liberation. It felt like purpose. It felt like home. It felt like soaring.

Chapter Text

Montgomery was a credit to her profession and Corvus wished he’d had the pleasure of her bedside manner decades ago.

It may have been the balance she struck between clinical and motherly, but Corvus had found himself bathed and dressed with, unexpectedly, far more grace and dignity than humiliation. Then Montgomery set him up in bed with extra pillows so he could comfortably sit for his next meal and dose of laudanum. She’d refused to let him go to the mess hall after straining his injuries with his brief escape, but she did allow Occhi to stay in the medical wing, which contributed a great deal to Corvus’ good mood.

Belly full and comfortable, Corvus then spent an hour studying sign language. He attempted to practice by signing at Occhi, but... it was hard to tell if his signing was any good when the Outsider fragment could understand his thoughts even before he’d articulated them. The session ended when his poor condition reared its head and he drifted off with the book still on his lap.

Corvus woke again as the sun was setting.

He tried to read a bit more by lamplight, but quickly ended up with a headache and decided against further late-night studying for the time being. Instead he attempted to mentally project questions about bone carving at Occhi. If he was going to be in forced bed rest to heal, he would at least pass the time learning useful things for later.

The raven did not disappoint.

The more traits to the charm, the greater the focus required for its successful crafting, Occhi said. Many charms become corrupt because the crafter is unable to properly sustain intent, or lacks the imagination to conceptualize the affect or affects. The bird met Corvus’ eyes knowingly. A trait referred to as ‘statuesque’, for example, prevents one from being seen while standing perfectly still.

Corvus felt his spine tingle with sudden dread and discomfort.

It is a frequently corrupted ability, the bird continued gently, few humans can adequately discard ego enough to comprehend what it is to exist, but be overlooked as though an object.

Corvus shuddered; skin itching with an imagined chill.

He forced himself to remember past the discomfort, separating himself from the stone for a measure of objectivity. He could recall times when he was aware of the world around him, numb for a time to his own despair, but achingly aware that as far as anyone in the real world knew he was only a statue. He had been an object.

For a time Emily had been the only one who would really look at him, others around the palace avoiding his visage in shame or fear. Later he’d been equally admired for his ‘accuracy’ as well as critiqued for his grotesque stance and expression, discussed more as an example of some unknown artist’s skill than known to be a previously living being. Eyes had also passed over him, dismissing him as nothing more than eccentric decoration. Hell! Absent-minded maids had dusted him off with barely a hint of acknowledgement beyond their cleaning.

Corvus could easily imagine the feeling of ‘I can’t move’ combined with the concept of ‘I am not worthy of attention’; standing in one place, watching, but not being watched.

Just so, Occhi tittered and smoothed his beak over Corvus’ knuckles after giving one of his fingers a light pinch as though to help ground Corvus back in the present.

Corvus hummed and stroked Occhi’s head, scratching lightly at his crown. He stopped suddenly, realizing abruptly that his frequent casual treatment... petting... might offend the former god. He was a bird now, but he still had the mind of a human if not a godlike entity.

Occhi chuckled lowly and Corvus relaxed at the tone of it.

If it walks, talks, and looks like a blackbird Occhi teased lightly.

The raven shuffled his wings and stared in a manner that seemed very familiar. Corvus couldn’t help his lips twitching in amusement. He could almost see the Outsider with arms crossed and black eyes unblinking superimposed over the bird.

I’ve always appreciated the candor of your treatment of me, Occhi’s tone was sober, when before I appeared as a man, you addressed me accordingly. It lent a refreshing degree of ease to our interactions that I hadn’t experienced in.... His eyes went distant, blinks slow, and his tone soured. Humans are intrinsically selfish in all the best and worst ways.

Corvus grimaced in sympathy and, with only a bare measure of hesitation, gently scooped the raven into his cupped hands. Like a warm living nest, it was the closest he felt he could come to a hug without overwhelming the small animal.

Occhi sighed and snuggled down, accepting the contact.

Corvus could tell that the action was a conscientious move. The Outsider had frequently acted like he had no shame, simply because he didn’t care enough to follow social convention. And why would he? Corvus ached with sympathy for the loneliness centuries in the Void must have caused the young man. Perhaps it was cynicism that led to the god’s morbid sense of humor and standoffish attitude.

Corvus lost himself in consideration for a bit, thumbs stroking methodically over Occhi’s back. An idea had him jolt in manner that woke Occhi, the bird having fallen into a dose.

Corvus’ brow furrowed as he tried to organize his thoughts enough for Occhi to understand. He really wished he could talk, but his throat still protested even just swallowing. He was somewhat scared to try, in case this time his voice was gone for good.

Occhi twisted his head up to see Corvus’ face, tilting his head curiously, so Corvus refocused on the idea he’d had.

Occhi blinked hard and shifted a bit so that they were facing each other. Many things are as achievable through bone charms as they were through my mark; increased agility, strength, vitality.... And, as Delilah demonstrated, witchcraft can perform much if you understand the medium. Delilah was a painter and sculptor. Her first coup involved using a portrait of the young Empress Emily to possess her body and thus her throne. Later she was able to store her soul inside a statue, an epithet for herself, which made her functionally immortal until soul and body were reunited.

Corvus scowled at mention of the witch, but ended up with more questions.

Occhi shook his head and puffed up his feathers defensively. I thought my interest in Daud had run dry, but when I gave him her name to ease his guilt... he sought the witch and found her. He killed one empress, and saved another, leaving Delilah to languish in the Void. I thought Delilah’s life was ended, but she had always been aware of the ruthlessness required to survive in a world that had never been fair to her. She crawled her way out, taking part of me with her, and did her best to ensure she’d never end up under my dominion again. But in the end, her ruthlessness was no match for your daughter’s.

Corvus sighed at the reminder of Emily’s actions. This time... this time he’d make sure she got her full childhood.

Occhi exhaled with a sound almost like a hiss and clicked his beak. His wings unfolded just to drape across Corvus’ hands.

The feathers were a mix of soft down and stiff pinions, the warmth of him pleasant on Corvus’ broken fingers. He marveled at how light the raven was, so small and so alive, with a fluttering heartbeat that felt too slow. Corvus had possessed birds... before... he could swear that aside from the intelligence there were aspects to Occhi that revealed how unnatural he was.

Corvus meditated on Occhi’s shape, remembering, and reviewing all he knew and had learned about magic. He glanced at the pale mark on his hand and felt a twinge of jealousy that in this time, Daud had a working mark, but he didn’t. Corvus stroked over Occhi’s head, across his cheeks, traced the shape of his beak- getting a soft nip in return –gently manipulated the wings to fold back in, and shuffled Occhi to perch on the bed’s headboard. He yawned and tried to blink away his exhaustion for a few minutes longer.

If he was to stop the future calamities from occurring, he needed to heal. He needed information, resources, and magic to level the field, he might even need allies. Fortunately, the Void had seen fit to have him found by a group that might prove capable of providing him with all of those things. The Whalers were directly related to most of the events to come, especially if Daud had... would... go up against Delilah years before Corvo had even known she existed. If he could convince or prevent Daud from taking the contract on Jessamine... anything was possible.

Corvus’s jaw clenched even as he relaxed and straightened his shoulders. For the first time since the stone, he felt like he could breathe without the flutter and tear of panic in his chest.

Soon he would be back on his feet. When he was... he was resolved to be a force of nature.

Chapter Text

Corvus could tell Montgomery was unsettled by him... or perhaps suspicious was a more accurate word.

This was not Corvus’ first time recovering from grievous bodily harm; he could almost be qualified as an ‘old hat’ when it came to healing. He couldn’t occupy himself with reading and learning alone, so began to work himself through exercises and stretches he’d learned to mitigate the harm done to his body on the first go-around.

Mongomery had done a shocked double take the first time she caught him doing the physical therapy without having received instruction on it. After that she’d watched him with a hawk’s focus and seemed somewhat off-balance.

Corvus could imagine where her concerns lay.

One, that he knew the proper exercises. Two, that he had a great understanding of how to balance his efforts between physical exertion and rest to optimize his progress. Three, he had yet to find a mirror, but Corvus knew he probably looked too young for his given experience. And four, beyond his in-depth and incredibly fascinating discussions with Occhi about magic and the practice thereof, Corvus had taken to doodling out runes in a notebook he’d swiped off Daud.

Or... he had been, but Daud had noticed within a day.

The man had given him a scathingly dry stare-down when he came to retrieve his property, but the assassin had also given Corvus his own journal, brand new and bound in leather, as well as a fountain pen, so Corvus assumed that beyond being forgiven, the stoic man must have been somewhat impressed.

If Daud weren’t so faithful to his chronicling, Corvus didn’t think he’d have noticed as quickly as he did that the book was missing in the first place. Corvus did have some very light fingers... and now he had a bit more insight into this Daud who had yet to kill an Empress.

Unshattered hubris was the biggest difference and potentially something for Corvus to manipulate. Daud thought he was important. As far as future events hinged on him, he was, but he was not special. Despite his disdain for the nobility, he himself fell into the same trap of superiority.

Corvus had never liked how his role as Lord Protector forced him to interact with the snobbish upper-crust, but by this point he had decades of experience. Daud at least appeared to have a real sense of honor in spite of his dubious sense of morality, which put him above a good number of nobles Corvus had needed to pander to before.

Regardless, the journal was a godsend.

It was good to have something to write ideas down in... plans, runes for bonecharms, questions about witchcraft, observations on Occhi. All of it in a mix of the shorthand he’d developed while fulfilling the dual roles of Lord Protector and Spy Master for Emily, and runes, which Occhi was adamant he learn to read before any actual attempts of calling on the Void without the Outsider’s mark as a channel.

Despite still consistently requiring naps after midday meal, Corvus was quite pleased with his recovery. He wondered if he’d have recovered so swiftly last time if he hadn’t been running around playing ‘Masked Felon’.

His voice remained elusive.

Corvus instead conversed via sign with the twins Andrei and Aleksander whenever the two men were available for a tutoring session. They were as inseparable as they were identical and it wasn’t clear which of the two was the deaf one, or whether it was by birth or injury. Both were apparently fluent in several types of sign, could read lips, and spoke in a slow lisping way that turned ‘r’ to ‘w’, ‘s’ to ‘th’, and ‘th’ to ‘d’. They told stories of being pirates before falling in among Daud’s whalers, but their mischievous and joking manner made Corvus unsure if their supposed backstory was true or just a series of tall tales. Either way, the duo were an entertaining and good-natured pair of teachers.

Daud who visited either in the evening or for a mealtime each day seemed to know about as much sign as Corvus, so attempts to communicate that way tended to involve just as much teaching as learning in order to pool their combined vocabulary, which was as frustrating as it was amusing. Otherwise, they merely sat in each other’s space reading without much interaction beyond occasionally catching eyes.

Without exhaustion and guilt clouding his mind, Daud’s silver-grey gaze was shrewd, and Corvus knew he’d be a more difficult opponent than the ghost of a man he’d fought before. That old Knife had seemed more than eager to commit suicide using Corvus’ blade. This Daud seemed more intent on figuratively cutting Corvus' head open so he could read all the secrets Corvus was keeping.

There was much that Corvus wouldn’t be able to hide. There was his connection to the Outsider, his connection to Occhi, and if he kept at it, soon there would be whatever magic ability he cultivated. Corvus came off as unnatural as the raven and he knew it. There was only so far he could push his eccentricities off as Void influence before Daud became suspicious of things that he couldn’t know if Corvus’ plans to change the future were to work.

First and foremost... nobody could know he was from the future.

Insightful was fine, some degree of prescience, maybe, but time travel... and de-aging... those moved into realms of being dangerously attractive for the amoral. Better it be that no one knew for his own safety.

Chapter Text

The smart ones transversed away from Daud as soon as they saw him.

Daud wanted to be annoyed with one of them, but the only one he really felt he could blame was himself.

The kid had been less of a problem than most brats his age. Healing and exercising, learning sign, sketching out the occult in his book... and it was an affront that he’d managed to steal Daud’s journal at all. Like a crow indeed, the little thief... and Daud knew he had no actual right to the pride he felt, buried under the disgruntlement.

Daud had yet to truly figure out what the symbols covering two pages of his journal meant, but... he’d forgotten amid pleasant reading sessions that the kid wasn’t tame. A few weeks of routine to make Daud complacent, and somehow he’d forgotten that crouched silhouette as the kid bit into a squirming rat. Corvus had been so... obedient... for the most part, very little of the typical testing-of-boundaries until today.

Now Montgomery was in a panic and Daud was stewing in self-admonishment as he stalked through the building to find how far the kid had gotten in the scant few hours since Montgomery had checked Corvus’s healing.

Because Corvus was missing.

And the raven with him. /Pale eyes/ the kid had signed to Daud, /OCCHI/ he’d spelled out with his fingers.

The smug cackle and the beady black eyes, withheld information that logically Daud knew the raven couldn’t tell him. It only spoke to Corvus. But it was more obvious than ever that the bird was of the Outsider based on its glee at Daud’s puzzlement at its illogical name. Some manner of inside joke between the two steeped in whatever depth of history or secret Corvus and the raven- Occhi shared.

But where the hell had they gone?

And nobody had seen the kid.

How could nobody have seen him?

It was one thing to have healed enough to walk, and another to be healed enough to climb the barricade out of the medical wing, let alone without powers manage to sneak by a plethora of assassin’s trained in observation and combat.

Obviously, after nearly a month and a half of settling into their new home, it was not just Daud who’d gotten sloppy. Or maybe the kid was just that good.

Daud growled under his breath.

Thinking circles around how the kid escaped was pointless. Where would he have gone?

“Daud” Billie said, stepping up beside him, “what’s got you in a mood?”

Daud counted the seconds of his inhale and exhale, holding his temper in favor of making a plan, “the kid’s skipped.”

Billie’s stride stuttered, her shoulders dropped a bit in surprise, body language making her mood clear despite the mask on her face.

Daud stopped with a grating sigh.

There wasn’t much he knew about the kid, the language barrier made conversation tricky even beyond what the kid didn’t care to share. But there was plenty Daud could understand from his observations of the boy.

He was clever, practical, and despite his apparent trust issues... something about him was... unguarded. Not vulnerable, but... open. Whatever the kid had been through, however it had shaped him, it hadn’t beaten him or turned him into something that he wasn’t. He was deadly, like Daud, but if Corvus were a weapon, and if Daud was more inclined to allegory, the kid was one kept sheathed. Daud admired that almost as much as he admired Corvus’ scrappiness.

“We’ll have to hope he hasn’t left the compound, and that familiar faces might lure him out. Tell the twins to check for him in the library. Leon’s overlooking practice in the training hall, ask him to keep an eye out there. Thomas is already posted in my office, Montgomery in the medical wing, Yuri in the kitchen and mess. I want you to check at the Outsider’s shrine. Everyone else should be on high alert... in case he’s gotten stuck somewhere....” Daud paused, brow furrowing.

“And you, sir?” Billie asked.

Daud’s lips twisted, “I’m going to the armory.”

Billie hummed, “you think he might arm himself?”

“It’s what I would do” Daud replied darkly, “and we already know he has a connection to the Outsider... double the incentive.”

Billie nodded, a hint of admiration in her tone, “the bone charms... I understand.” And then she was gone again, leaving nothing but ash and the chill of the Void.

Daud pinched at the bridge of his nose as if it could ward off his oncoming headache.

He truly hoped that one of the others found Corvus.

The armory was no place for a kid in his condition, combat and weapons training be damned; and bonecharms weren’t always safe for the layman- regularly drove them mad. Additionally, the route to the armory was one of the more hazardous; requiring a harrowing several-story climb that could easily spell death for anyone who slipped; provided they didn’t have the ability to transverse.

Daud was chilled by the thought even before stepping through the Void-chill of transversal.

He hated the rock in his stomach. He hated the hunch that put the stone there. And now, looking down through the collapse- a hole through stacked rooms down to the sewer gate passage -he hated that his intuition was right.

Chapter Text

The basement access to the sewer was moist; puddles everywhere, and cool enough that the heat from the levels above condensed into wisps of mist around Corvus’ legs. He didn’t understand why Daud had decided to store the Whaler’s spare weapons here where there was such a high risk of rusting.

Then again, with how much it rained in Dunwall, everywhere had a high risk of rusting. Perhaps weapon turnover was just... high enough... that it wasn’t a problem?

Now that he was down here though, Corvus could also admit... he’d been... over-confident.

His healing had been going so well: bones reknit, if still aching like a growth spurt, bruising gone, cuts scabbed or scarred over, and burns pale and merely over-sensitive. He thought he’d been ready for some more physical action- antsy for it.

It was a miracle he hadn’t fallen on the climb down.

He wasn’t stupid. He’d wrapped his hands to protect them, and had used the fabric that had held his whalebones to make a friction jig so that slipping or losing his grip would be less likely. He’d also found someone’s quilted vest and some- slightly too-big -boots, so he wasn’t actually all that bothered by the chill.

But now his whole body was wracked with exertion tremors and he wasn’t sure he could stand on his own power let alone climb back out.

Consequence of rest and recovery... even the exercises he’d been doing had evidently only helped him keep full mobility; they hadn’t stopped his muscle loss.

Too bad there wasn’t much padding to sit on down here either.

Corvus hummed, gently stretching and massaging what he could, while Occhi dropped another bone charm onto the steadily growing pile at Corvus’ side. Corvus ran his thumb over the rune on it. He felt like he could hear an echo of whale song, but... the instinctive knowledge he’d had while marked was gone. He frowned at the shapes etched into the bone instead.

A mark for water? And one for defense... and healing. So... a charm to heal you while swimming?

Occhi tisked a few times. Close. As close to expert as some charm-crafters might be, few of them reside here, this city the seat of the Abbey that would slay them. From inexperience come mistakes, yes, but also surprising ingenuity. This crafter did not know ‘submerge’, so used the phrase ‘water as if shield’, additionally linking the defensive rune to the healing for ‘impervious healing’. Presumably their vocabulary also did not include ‘regeneration’, which is what was intended.

Corvus chuckled, tracing the runes again as he parsed out the sentence again. ‘Regeneration when submerged in water’... a bit ridiculous.

An expansive vocabulary is a necessity for succinct sentences. The shorter the sentence, which still captures the intent, the more aspects you can carve on a single charm. Better crafters can link three or four aspects without detriment, and with less whalebone wasted.

Corvus couldn’t help but laugh again at the clear disdain in Occhi’s voice and manner. He was very expressive for a bird.

/Why WHALE bone?/ Corvus asked /Different bone? Water AIR bad for bone?/ He growled, frustrated, and made a mental note to look up the signs for ‘whale’, ‘air’... probably just weather and fish terms in general. It wasn’t like he needed to sign to Occhi. He was practicing!

Occhi bobbed his head encouragingly, any bone, and any medium has potential for magic, but... the Leviathans are descended from the last Void-god. They resonate with the Void and their song fills it. A wing-beat sent mist curling off the tips of Occhi’s primaries, though he kept his perch on the pile of charms.

As good an indicator as any for the topic change.

Bone is porous. Quick changes in humidity can cause the bone to crack, damaging or corrupting the effects. Polishing with oil can prevent this. A long-handled charm will absorb the oils of human skin and yellow. A charm kept in a family can grow affinity for that family from this handling across generations, as they... contribute... to the charm.

Corvus nodded thoughtfully, musings interrupted when his stomach growled loudly. It was sudden enough in the unbroken silence that both Corvus and Occhi flinched.

Unfreezing after a moment, Corvus sighed and let his shoulders slump. He stretched again before levering himself up using the weapons shelf. As he shuffled along it, he tucked a folding knife into his pocket. He’d never considered himself overly sentimental for objects, people yes, but not objects. He’d left his Blade Verbena trophy with his mother, nothing else worth any amount of pride, but now... he missed his mechanical sword so much.

He wrinkled his nose at the swords kept here. Strong, sharp, with a blood channel, short and heavy; fine for assassins, but lacking the elegance Corvus had gotten used to.

The chain rattled and feet thumped on the ground as someone dropped behind him.

With legs still shaking from his own climb, Corvus whipped around, sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, bracing his back against the shelves.

Daud’s red coat glowed in the single ray of light from above, the silver just beginning to grow in at his temples catching the light. His lips were pinched in a thin line, the scar over his eye grim even though his face was mostly passive. Daud’s eyes roamed first over Corvus, taking in his defensive stance, then at Occhi and the disorganized mess of charms scattered where Corvus had been sitting.

Corvus bristled, annoyed at the vague feeling that he’d done something wrong, but let his stance droop as the moment stretched without violence.

Daud looked back to him at the movement, raising a brow sardonically. “What do you think you’re doing?” He growled.

Corvus scowled, sliding the sword back onto the shelf and, after a moment of consideration, blatantly slipped the dagger and its sheath into his right boot. /INVENTORY/ he spelled out once his hands were free.

Daud’s lips twitched in a smirk and he snorted.

Corvus crossed his arms and glared back.

...

Corvus’ stomach growled.

...

Daud’s brow raised higher, smirk becoming more of a crooked smile.

Corvus blushed, /help/ he finally signed and craned his head back to gesture sheepishly at the chain. /Tired, hungry, cannot climb/.

Daud shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with a gusty sigh. “Alright brat, think you can hold on?”

Chapter Text

Billie huffed as she raced across the buildings, pushing her speed to recklessness just to feel her lungs burn. If asked she’d say it was out of worry for the kid, but... really she’d just like something else to focus on beside the sick oily feeling in her stomach.

She was angry.

She was angry at Corvus, angry at Daud, and also angry with herself for being angry with them. Angry with herself for the squirming bristling thing in her chest.

She leapt a gap and caught herself on the windowsill, pulling herself up into the room with the Outsider shrine. She’d taken the long route, but even the shorter route was a trip of a couple blocks. It didn’t really surprise her that the room was empty beyond the structure of driftwood, wire, and fabric.

She paced in the small room, angry and tired, and....

Envious.

She was Daud’s protégé, trained by him personally in all matters of combat, information gathering, and running the compound. She was basically his daughter, though he’d never said so. It had been obvious though. He didn’t treat any of the others the way that he treated her, didn’t interact with them the way he did with her... she was different, special. The understanding between them was complicated and unspoken, she was his second in command, but one day she would replace him. If she was like his daughter, then he was basically her father, right?

Billie didn’t know. Her bio-dad had skipped out on her mother before she was ever born. Her mother had turned to drink to deal with the abandonment. Billie had never had much luck with parents.

Even with Daud there were the boundaries of professionalism to consider.

Again, complicated.

And now it seemed... there was another.

Daud didn’t treat Corvus the way he treated any of the others, he didn’t even treat him the same way he treated Billie, which made sense. The kid was younger, still mostly an unknown, but... Billie recognized the glint in Daud’s eye, the same as when he’d caught her trying to- her stealth has improved greatly since then. It was a glint that said Daud saw potential.

Like it or not... it appeared that Billie was going to have a lineage sibling.

She did not like it.

Daud was hers.

Billie growled and drove her fist into the wall, plaster bits cracking and falling away. Her hand stung, even with her gloves she might have fractured something, but the pain was clarifying.

She was 23 years old, an adult, she could respond to this with maturity and prove that she was still the more worthy successor even though...

It had taken Billie years of training to be able to sneak away under Daud’s nose, and she was still pretty sure he was aware that she read through all his papers, but now Corvus had disappeared while barely out of recovery. She didn’t want to be jealous of a teen who’d obviously been tortured on top of being trained since childhood into being a weapon.

Sure, Billie’s life had been hard, but... she’d chosen to become a thief and assassin all on her own, and she wasn’t sure this kid had gotten another option.

So... nobody would be able to find fault with her, it wouldn’t be sabotaging him, if she... let him be a child. She’d already given him the book on sign, she could learn sign too, teach him all the things that weren’t about being an assassin... just survival and....

Daud was hers, but... maybe Corvus could be hers too- if she could figure out what the bird had told him that made him so scared of her -though not for himself. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the boy had been shielding the bird behind him ever since that meal, guarding the bird from her....

Looks like she’d have to make nice with the raven too. Occhi, she thinks Daud’s notes said, Occhi Pallidi, he’d been named. She’d read up on ravens, and Serkonos... she was pretty sure the name was in some kind of Serkonan dialect.

Corvus was somehow learning runes, was collecting whalebone, liked charms, was probably looking to start making them himself; she could help with that first and continue from there as she got to know him.

Billie rested her forehead against the wall and sighed. She wasn’t being replaced. She turned back towards the window, intent on leaving now that it was clear that the kid wasn’t-

She froze, staring.

A man was sitting on the shrine. He was young, skin wan, eyes black and fixed on her. He was leaning back against the driftwood, heedless of the barbed wire digging into to the leather of his jacket, arms crossed. “Interesting...” he said, though his expression was bland, and then he turned his face away and vanished in a wisp of shadow.

Billie felt a chill run along her spine- awe -the Outsider.

Chapter Text

Corvus gave a nod and grateful smile to Yuri when the man passed him a plate with a mix of food. The older man seemed to think that Corvus needed fattening up now that he was capable of eating solids again, and there was a generous helping of meat and potatoes. Corvus had to move carefully as he was still wracked with tremors and didn’t want to spill anything.

The Whalers didn’t have any hounds yet, so anything dropped would be waste. Corvus’ mother had raised him better than that, and no amount of years living in the palace would change the fact that Corvus was well accustomed to times when pickings were lean.

The adventures of the day meant that Corvus was well and starving, but he still ate carefully so as not to overwhelm his body. He mixed the time between bites and writing notes in his journal about the charms he and Occhi had looked at. Further distraction came when Occhi made a game out of trying to sneak food off the plate.

The ex-god wasn’t really trying to be very sneaky, but the make-pretend made Corvus laugh and remember similar games with Emily. He was also still trying to wrap his head around the opportunity to be so near to a bird- interacting with a bird -in ways that most people could only daydream about. Corvus had possessed birds before, though he wasn’t so practiced as to have ever become a very graceful flier, but it was still just such a wonder to be able to brush his fingers over those glossy feathers, or toss Occhi up and watch him soar about the room.

It made him feel a bit bad really.

Occhi was always with Corvus, and hadn’t really gone off on his own for a good long flight in days.

The raven didn’t seem all that inclined to go out on his own, but still... the Outsider fragment was only now freed from the Void. Corvus wanted him to be able to enjoy all that that freedom allowed.

He pushed his empty plate away and tapped the finial of his pen against his lips. Freedom to go out alone, but... Occhi was a raven, not exactly a small bird, but still a bird all the same. There were plenty of predators. So, if Corvus were to design a charm to give Occhi a way to protect himself... against both regular predators as well as other marked.... Just thinking about Delilah getting her hands on Occhi-

Corvus shuddered in revulsion and terror.

-no.

The jarring sound of the Abbey’s music boxes came to mind. Part of it wasn’t just in his head either. If the music boxes sounded like Void turned inside out, then the hissing of corrupt bone charms was like Void played backwards, and Corvus was quite sure there was one in the room currently.

Corvus narrowed it down to one table.

He stood to take his dishes back to Yuri, or really to some poor novice who was on dish duty, and just... nonchalantly passed by on his way out. Daud and Billie were talking in the corner, so hopefully the chances of Daud noticing his slight-of-hand were low.

Occhi cackled, dive-bombing from the ceiling to land back on Corvus’ shoulder. He stopped to let the raven balance and took a glance at the charm he’d stolen.

Defensive rune ‘bone skin’, like an exoskeleton, ‘carapace’, activated on ‘attack by blade’, but the bone had cracked at some point, corrupting the charm. Corvus frowned, this was the first corrupted bone charm he’d seen, so he wasn’t entirely sure what form the corrupting took.

Guess, Occhi whispered, almost gleeful.

Corvus rolled his shoulder, half in chastisement, and half because Occhi was not as light perched as he looked while flying.

The crack crossed ‘bone’ and ‘attack’, so... the charm functionally made one immune to bladed weapons, at expense of taking damage to some other type of bone. Breaking bones was frequently an end to battle, hard to fight when down a limb or even a rib, so the charm’s corruption would make it pointless to wear unless somehow it was damaging only... nonessential bones?

Occhi clicked, talons kneading Corvus’ shoulder, pinching through his vest. Look at him, look at him! Children all lose them and call it a boon! When adults lose them, ’oh the horror!’ they swoon.

Corvus pocketed the charm and peaked back around the corner in dread and pity. He kept his gaze intent on the man’s mouth, and when he opened up to take a bite- sure enough -he was missing a couple teeth; the metal replacements glinted dully in the light.

Corvus glanced at Occhi, biting his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Surely Corvus could do better even as an amateur.

Together they started back towards the hospital wing, though Corvus brushed Occhi off when he came to an open window, insisting that Occhi got some time to himself. It probably looked a ridiculous conversation with Corvus gesturing wildly at the stubborn bird, but eventually Occhi did go, though not without a circle overhead in order to look back.

Corvus waved at him, then continued while returning to his charm notes.

He could remake the carapace charm, so that it would actually work, and he could work on a charm so Occhi wouldn’t be so vulnerable. The music boxes made him think of something like an audible attack. Maybe a scream attack? He was pretty sure he’d seen some of Delilah’s coven do something like that while he’d been a statue.

Eventually Corvus had to stop, the barricade to the medical wing before him. He stretched, back and neck popping. The hallway was empty, but.... fingers in his mouth, Corvus gave a loud sharp whistle.

Montgomery appeared a second later in full whaler garb. Her hands were on her hips and she was definitely hitting him with her most scathing glare though it was covered by her mask. “Where have you been!” She started shrilly, “young man, I swear to the Leviathan, ye are goin’ ta drive me spare with all this sneakin’ off!” She grabbed his arm to transverse them both. Despite the firm yet gentle grip, Corvus knew his lecture was only beginning.

Chapter Text

The sun woke Corvus by stabbing at his eyelids. Determined to go back to sleep and put off his misery for a bit longer, he flipped himself over with unusual stiffness and pain, and buried his face and a groan in his pillow.

He managed a doze for a good quarter hour.

Then Occhi decided to land on the back of Corvus’ head and hop what felt like a jig down his back.

“Naaaahhhh” Corvus complained hoarsely, “ihhhh hur’ssssss, ‘mmmm sssssslihhhhp.”

Occhi tisked, clicking his beak a few times before settling at the back of Corvus’ neck to nibble and tug at his hair. It is good to hear your voice again. The raven said.

Corvus glowered back mentally. It hadn’t hurt, but... it didn’t feel like he’d gotten his voice back. That weak slurring hardly sounded like himself, but then... Corvo had been locked in stone for an age, and was now forced to be someone else entirely in order to have any identity whatsoever. It still felt like losing part of himself all over again, and he mourned the loss keenly.

Occhi crooned back.

Of course, the raven had also lost much. At least they had each other. That was one thing that could be relied on.

Corvus stretched, freezing up with a grunt when his calves and shoulders seized. He breathed through the pain until he could get everything to loosen up again. Obviously yesterday had been... too much too soon.

“Meh-di-click! Meh-di-click!” Occhi trilled, taking flight just to circle over Corvus as he called out.

Corvus wasn’t honestly expecting anything to come of it, though Occhi’s attempts at words did fill him with more warmth of kinship. They were both finding their voices again. But then light footsteps approached.

“You called?” Leon said, tone light and friendly.

Corvus groaned, spine aching as he turned his head to side-eye Montgomery’s assistant healer.

The medic was not wearing his mask, for once, revealing himself to be a narrow-faced young man with mousy brown hair and soft hazel eyes. Entirely too cheerful given the circumstances.

Leon gave him a knowing and mischievous once-over. “Ah, I see... you know it will only get worse if you don’t move, right? You’ve got to get everything warmed up and stretched out again.” He leaned in when Corvus didn’t respond, pulling the blankets down.

Corvus gave a discontent hissing, but then Leon’s large warm hands were sweeping down his back, fingers digging in and releasing rhythmically. Any displeasure dissolved entirely.

“If you’re well enough to be causing trouble, you’re well enough to pick your own room” Leon said cheerfully as he continued the massage. “Assuming you’re sticking around, I mean... we’re glad to have you, but it’s your choice. I think Daud would be sad to see you go, Yuri as well, I don’t think Daud has ever kept such a regular eating schedule before we took you in. Great leader he is, but he does sometimes get in his own head. It’s a trick sometimes to get him out of his own thoughts before he does something stupid... Thomas usually is good at that... never ask Lurk... she can be a menace in her own right.”

Leon babbled on for a bit, and Corvus remained pliant as the man worked out from his shoulders and back and down each limb, even including his fingers. Eventually all good things come to an end, however, and Corvus was... convinced to get up.

It was mostly Montgomery who’d helped Corvus during his stay in the medical wing, the difference between her no-nonsense, but steady manner and Leon’s cheerful patience were like night and day. He could see how both were very affective caretaking approaches all the same.

Corvus moved sluggishly, and gingerly, like an old man. He was an old man, appearances be damned.

He shuffled slowly beside Leon, wincing regularly, and tired in a way that was all rollover from his overworked muscles. Leon’s continuous chatter was half annoying, half welcoming as a noisy backdrop to Corvus’ ill mood. He was moving far more smoothly by the time Leon was ushering him into a room just off from the dining hall.

“Petro! Scott!” Leon greeted brightly, “Corvus here is in need of some new threads now that he’ll be moving about the compound! Come meet the kid!”

Corvus eyed the bolts of fabric looming against one wall, the sewing machines with wear on their decals indicating extensive use, and the rack of thread cones on a shelf displaying the common colors of the Whaler’s uniforms. He wondered if they’d stolen all these tools, or if they’d somehow carried them with them on their travels... probably a mix of both.

“Would be nice, were you warning of arrival” a tall thin man in an apron drawled thickly as he unfolded from behind a cutting table, nudging a drawer shut with his foot, “never before have had such many materials... bit overeager was raid party, yes?” He cocked a hip and raised a judgmental brow at Corvus’ mismatched and oversized clothing.

“Be nice or I’ll sic Scott on you... wherever the hell she is....” Leon scolded teasingly, hopping up to sit on the table.

Corvus imagined that in comparison to this man, Petro he assumed, he must look quite shabby.

Petro was svelte and stylish despite the mottled marks of chalk on his apron. Tailored pants, a waistcoat, and dress-shirt with cuffs rolled up to reveal tattoos of roses wreathed about one forearm. He was probably only a few years older than Leon, with pale blonde hair plaited in a braid that fell to his shoulders, and silver-grey eyes. What lines he had on his face indicated he frequented a sneering expression about the lips, while his forehead was unlined. A pair of intimidatingly large fabric sheers were sheathed at his belt instead of one of the weapons the other Whalers kept.

Petro exhaled audibly through his nose and pulled a tape measure from the pocket of his apron, gesturing for Corvus to approach. “Come, I measure” he ordered flatly. And he did, from Corvus’ height to the circumference of his head, noting each measurement in a book as they went.

Corvus was exhausted and reeling by the time they left the tailors’ room. Standing still as measurements were taken had set his body aching even more, and trying to converse with Petro, and later Scott when she arrived, about styles was a lesson in frustration since none of the them were as good with sign as Corvus was.

Occhi’s only comments were a bitterly sung- they painted his eyes, they colored his clothing with pigments and dyes -and a short comment on Petro: his talents lay with more than just sewing needles; many among Daud’s students wear his work on their skin. By which Corvus surmised that Petro did his own tattoos.

It was all overly tiring, and Corvus was somewhat loath to have to continue through the ordeal of picking a room as well, but... he was also quite eager for some personal space.

“We do actually have barracks” Leon mentioned, “one where the majority of the novices sleep, and one where some of the masters sleep. We also have some family units taking up various apartments around this main building.” He reached to ruffle Corvus’ hair.

Corvus would have dodged if his spine didn’t feel so brittle. He settled for glaring at the man.

“I figured you’d prefer some quiet” Leon said, smirk spreading across his lips. He bit his lip almost shyly, “I actually... had one in mind for you.” The energy in his eyes grew softer as he waved at Occhi, “the building across the street has a two-story room... I know you haven’t seen Daud’s office yet, but... I think that building was the same architect. I’ll just show you.” He slung his arm around Corvus’ shoulder in excitement and transversed them both. It only took a few before they were standing just inside of a window in the building.

Outside, the flood barrier was only a few meters to the left, down to the right was the highly collapsed building that all the newly constructed walkways led to- the last guard point before you could enter the main building through the window -and the main building itself was just across the street.

Leon led Corvus down the hall to the last room. “I... may have jumped the gun a bit, but I already got some basics set up here.” He opened the door and gestured grandly, “don’t feel like you have to stay here because of that, just... I... you’ll see.”

Corvus gave Occhi a bemused glance, but entered the room.

Set in a corner where two streets converged at an acute angle, the room was a bit oddly shaped and doubly tall for half the room. The wide corner contained a sturdy desk, chair, and bookshelf- and had a lower ceiling, overhung by the second floor loft -while the narrow corner held a couple armchairs and a low table; made airy and bright by the large windows on each wall and the high ceiling where the loft didn’t reach. The second floor was made accessible by a wrought iron spiral staircase, a space conservative choice, as the room was not nearly as large as Corvus remembered Daud’s office being. It was much cozier though.

Lifting a hand up to Occhi’s shoulder perch, Corvus let the bird step onto his wrist, and then launched him up. Occhi flapped up eagerly to land on the second floor’s safety rail and cackled approvingly.

“There’s a bed, chest-of-drawers, wardrobe and roll-top desk upstairs” Leon said, “figured it’s more private up there, plus that’s where the bathroom access is. Transversal and pull make furniture moving easy, so any further furnishings you want we could easily get. And... uh... what do you think?”

Corvus turned in a circle, feeling really quite pleased. This was quite nice for a bunch of assassin’s squatting in a flooded district. He smiled up at Occhi, now preening avidly. It seemed quite safe, tucked behind the main compound, impossible to access from the ground floor, and difficult to access at all without Outsider given abilities. He could set up a zip line between this building and some of the others. And there was plenty of room for Occhi to maneuver, plenty of windows for light and sky access. Few places for anyone to sneak up on him, but there were exposed rafter beams that he could hide up on.

Corvus grinned at Leon and nodded. It was perfect.

Chapter Text

Leon had left with promises to get Rickard to set up the ziplines so Corvus would be able to get in and out without powers. And Corvus was finally left entirely alone for the first time in weeks. Or almost entirely alone.

He could hear Occhi’s feathers rustling as he went over to investigate the satchel Leon had left on the desk. Inside was a jar of the cream Montgomery had been treating Corvus’ scars and burns with; it had a pleasant minty smell and accompanying cooling sensation, and was wrapped carefully in a single change of clothes. All of his pieces of whalebone were in the bottom of the bag, along with the metal spike he’d used as his original weapon.

Corvus couldn’t help but grin at the memory of threatening Daud with it.

A Study of Serkonan Sign finished off Corvus’ short list of belongings. His journal and pen he kept on him at all times, the stolen corrupt bone charm as well for the time being.

Now that he had his own space, however... Corvus placed the bones on the eye-level shelf of the bookshelf, arranging them artfully. He considered taking the sign book upstairs, but ultimately decided to leave it on the shelf next to the bones.

The rest he took with him, inspecting the changing angles of the room as he climbed the spiral staircase.

“Crcrcrcrcrcrcr” Occhi purred a greeting, hopping closer along the rail and sounding almost like the engine of Samuel’s old boat.

Corvus dropped the satchel and its remaining contents on the bed and brandished the spike with a raised brow, /COAT HANGER/ he spelled.

Occhi clicked his beak and tilted his head in a couple jerky motions. Things of blood and history make good charm ingredients.

Corvus considered that, weighing the spike in his hand, and shrugged. He’d put it down with the bones later, then.

For now he scooped up the jar of medicine and went to check out the bathroom.

He was surprised to find that the bathroom included a bathtub with a shower attachment. Then again, while this was the financial district, he didn’t know if this building specifically had been offices, residential, or a mix of both. Either way, the basin was an unexpected delight.

He set the jar on the counter and startled... foolishly... at the movement echoed in the mirror over the sink. Corvus gaped as he was left staring at the stranger who looked back at him from the glass.

Not truly a stranger, but... this was the first time he'd seen a clean reflection of himself since... the morning before Delilah's coup, before she petrified him.

His hair was the same as it had always been, dark and curly, his pallor, and the general strokes of his appearance were all there. But his physical age was that of a youth, nineteen at the oldest if he was lucky, and his skin looked stretched differently.

He leaned closer, running a finger over his cheek and watching where flesh depressed under the pressure, and where bone held firm. His jaw was thinner, Corvus decided, chin perhaps a bit pointier, and his nose lacked the boney bridge that had given it a slightly beaked shape. And his eyes... his irises had always been dark, a brown that in low lighting could be mistaken for black, but now... the lighting was bright enough that he should have been able to see the hints of amber, but he didn’t. It wasn’t the tar-slick that the Outsider’s eyes appeared, not unnatural enough to draw attention, but his eyes were changed. There was also a pale scar over his throat that was... not his... he would have remembered getting a wound like that.

Corvus hugged himself, clutching at ribs that he now imagined didn’t belong to him.

He forced himself to look in the mirror again, counting his breaths to keep them steady.

He didn’t look like Corvo Attano, but... he could perhaps be mistaken for being a relation to him were they standing side by side. His sister had been finer boned than him, if Beatrici had ever had a child; Corvus could imagine his nephew looking something like the boy in the mirror.

Corvus dropped his head into his hands, digging his fingers into his eyes, and curling forward.

He did not look like Corvo Attano, his name was now Corvus- no last name.

This time period already had a Corvo Attano filling the role of Lord Protector for the still living Empress Jessamine. That Corvo Attano was Emily’s father, and that Emily was about nine years old.

Corvus’ shoulders slumped and he met his own eyes in the mirror.

He was not Corvo Attano. He would not be able to save Jessamine and then continue as her Royal Prtector, she already had one. He would not be able to give Emily her mother back and then continue as her father. She already- still -had all of that, without Corvus. All he could try to do, was keep them that way. A family, whole and alive... without him.

Somehow it hadn’t occurred to Corvus.... It had seemed like a dream, he was back in time and could fix everything, save everyone, and then what? He stood to change the future, make everything better, but... he himself was the product of a timeline that had gone very wrong. If he fixed it would he fade out of existence? If he fixed it and didn’t just... disappear... if he lived out his life as a second Corvo in this time, he would have nothing that belonged to this Corvo. And if he was to live out the rest of his life in this timeline, would it be so bad knowing his family was happy and alive without him?

No. It didn’t matter either way.

He was not dead, he did not wish to be dead, and if he could not live here as Corvo Attano, then he would make the most of being Corvus.

He had not cried, but his eyes were red-rimmed. He stared at the new face in the mirror, resigned and resolved. This face was that of Corvus.

Chapter Text

“This what you need?” Rickard asked, handing Billie a roll of leather.

Billie unwrapped it to reveal the carefully sized pouches containing a brand new set of tools. Bone carving was a delicate art; these chisels were sized less for carpentry and more for print-block carving, but were no less sharp for it. A couple of hammers and a vice clamp finished off the set.

“Never really used these” Rickard said, “bit fine for my typical work, so I’m glad you’ll be putting them to use. Nothing sadder than good tools left to rust.”

He crossed his arms over his modified whaler’s coat. The black leather was far thicker than standard to protect from sparks and cuts while smithing, and sleeveless to keep from sacrificing maneuverability despite the increased stiffness, though the cape still covered a decent portion of his upper arms. Without gloves on, the crafter’s hands were marred by small scars and calluses formed from work rather than combat. Not that he was any less dangerous. Rickard was a large man made strong by decades of hard labor. Rumor was he’d joined Daud after fleeing the law for accidentally killing a man with one strike in a bar fight.

“I believe these will do perfectly” Billie replied eventually, “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

“Before you leave” Rickard said, “the foundry on the industrial side does have a forge, it’ll take a bit of moving things around, but... let everyone know I should be back to my craft well before the Month of Nets. Until then I’d appreciate them not damaging their weapons in practice while I’m not able to do repairs.”

Billie gave him a curt nod; “I’ll have Killian post it in the training room.”

He gave her a smirk and slap on the shoulder so firm Billie had to brace for it- and that’s how she knew he was done talking.

Left once again to her own devices, Billie rewrapped the tools and pressed the package to her chest, mostly obscuring it.

It wasn’t that she was hiding it, but... she didn’t want anyone to talk to her right now.

She felt... anxious. It was annoying. And stupid.

Billie wouldn’t really call herself a people-person despite how much she appreciated being in charge. This was the first time she’d really cared about being liked since... since Deirdre. Since then every interaction had been a comparison of skill and professional regard.

She was probably just nervous because the kid already didn’t like her- for something she might do in the future no less. There was just something strange and other about Corvus. He was different.

His connection to the Void for one.

And then there was the other thing. The Outsider... who had spoken to her. “Interesting” he’d said. Was he calling Billie interesting? She was beginning to understand Daud’s complaints about the god being a cryptic bastard. But she’d seen the Outsider. And she didn’t tell Daud about it.

Billie shook her head, like the motion could pull the thoughts and confusion out of her head. There were things she just didn’t want to face right now, and things she couldn’t change. Instead she buried herself in the motions of striding through the halls, then focusing, transversing across the several story gap in buildings with a chill and a hitched breath. Up a flight of semi-intact stairs, and down another hall to the door Leon had described.

She knocked and waited. She remembered the first time she’d had her own place, the safety of it, after living on the streets. She wanted to make a good impression. Respect, then trust.

The door opened.

Corvus’ eyes were red-rimmed and tired, and he was still moving a bit stiffly after his escape two days before.

Billie was expecting to just hand over the tools and leave, but the boy waved her inside. “Are you... okay?” Billie asked slowly as she passed him.

Corvus shrugged and wiggled a hand, chewing at the inside of his lip in a manner that made him look even younger.

Billie, clenched her jaw a moment to keep from pressing, “right, I suppose everyone is entitled to their secrets.” She flinched when the raven cackled from above.

Corvus smirked /DAUD/ he spelled out with a questioning eyebrow raised.

Billie flushed, “If you really don’t want people to know something, don’t write it down” she retorted a bit too sharply to sound sly. The bird probably told him about her... tendency... to read Daud’s papers.

Corvus’ hands twitched briefly, but he somewhat covered by signing /right/ with a slightly uncomfortable expression.

Billie hid her grimace by casting her gaze around the room. She didn’t know how to talk to him, and she really didn’t know what his... triggers... were. “I heard you got a room” she said stiffly and crossed her arms so that she could feel the wrap of tools pressing against her chest, still safe in an inner pocket of her coat. She swallowed and straightened, a teenager did not intimidate her, “Petro and Scott said they’ll have some basic clothing altered for you by tomorrow. Our blacksmith, Rickard, will be capable of work by the Month of Nets if you have any metal-crafting needs.”

Billie frowned briefly, “Rickard might enjoy a visit from you before then if you’re up to it. He’s the one who removed those shackles when we first... acquired you.” Her lips twitched.

Corvus snorted. He wasn’t a very cheerful kid was he?

Billie looked up at Occhi Pallidi again, still perched on the railing above, then at the whalebones sitting on the bookshelf in the study. “I got you a housewarming gift” she blurted.

For once Corvus was the one who looked taken aback and unbalanced. It leant a vulnerability to his body language that made Billie feel... something... like responsibility for him. Which made sense. She was Daud’s right hand woman. Corvus was under their protection.

Billie pulled the leather roll from her pocket and set it confidently on the desk, clinging to her recovered sense of equilibrium. This was a mission. Mission parameters were to give the kid the gift. The intent was to start building rapport. Besides, if Corvus ended up specializing in bonecharms, it became more unlikely that Daud would consider him as a potential heir to the proverbial empire. Billie deserved that role.

She stepped back and crossed her arms behind her back, watching as Corvus approached the table. He gave her a slightly suspicious look, but gingerly untied the wrap and rolled out the leather to view the tools. He gasped under his breath and ran his fingers lightly over the chisels, then hefted one of the hammers.

His piercing gaze shifted to Billie and he offered a small, but genuine grin. “T’anks” he rasped, barely above a whisper. Billie had to read his lips more than listen to understand.

“You’re welcome” she said, mouth feeling awkward and unpracticed around the words.

Occhi, when she looked at him from the corner of her eye, tilted his head slightly and shuffled his wings, black beady eyes intent. Quoth the raven ‘interesting’, Billie thought with sudden hysteria.

Billie forced herself to ignore their audience.

Corvus was halfway through pulling out each chisel and checking the size, shapes, and sharpness, punctuated by pleased cooing.

“I can ask the scouting parties to keep an eye out if you want anything else, more bones?” Billie said.

Corvus nodded, then signed out a sentence too quick and with greater vocabulary than Billie currently had. She caught /bones... alcohol... pencil.../ but that was about it.

“Sorry-“ she interrupted “-I’m working on it, but my sign isn’t quite that good” she pulled her own notebook and pen from her coat, “write me a list?”

When he was done, Billie pocketed the list without reading it; she could add it to the main supplies list later. She left half in a daze, biting back an offer to show him about the flooded district.

Corvus was still recovering, once he was a bit stronger it was likely Daud would offer training, it was likely he’d offer the arcane bond. Corvus wasn’t normal, Billie wondered if the magic would even take.

Corvus was an enigma; suspicious, as was his right after his traumas, but shockingly approachable in spite of it. It made Billie want to give him the benefit of the doubt and open up in return, regardless of how her instincts screamed at her not to bare her throat like that. There might be some kind of honor to the boy, but Billie was certain that someday that openness would be taken for a weakness.

Someday, someone would take advantage, Bille thought darkly. She had much to teach him before then.

Chapter Text

Corvus’ fingers trailed over the tools on his desk, thoughts pensive. Billie was not what he’d expected, not what he’d thought. In some ways she reminded him of the Outsider, someone who’d been separated from ordinary society and now was displaced from how normal interactions should be performed.

Then again, here he was... first a practical street-rat set among nobles pretending to fit the level of status he’d suddenly gained as Lord Protector, then a presumed murderer and assassin among backstabbers veiled by righteousness, then a statue stuck observing, and now... out of his own time and dependent on the mercy of a band of assassins who stood to define the future. Corvus huffed a short laugh.

She is aware now of her limits in an area of your experience, Occhi muttered, she pulled herself from the gutter and built her self-worth on the value of death and her ability to cause it. Teach her humility and care, the value of life, and perhaps... things won’t end the way they did.

Corvus closed his eyes and grit his teeth. /I failed EMILY.../ he signed sharply. He couldn’t raise someone else who would go on to murder indiscriminately. His heart wouldn’t take it.

Eyes closed, Corvus could still feel when Occhi took flight without a beat, wings cutting through the air. He was not surprised when the bird’s feet landed on his shoulder and a beak tugged at his hair.

Billie Lurk is not Emily Kaldwin, Occhi stated firmly, to all appearances Emily was well adjusted, if inexperienced as an Empress. The danger you feared most for her was the one you watched befall her mother. So you taught her to defend herself. Her decisions were not- are not -your fault. His talons kneaded into Corvus’ skin in sharp pricks just short of painful.

Corvus scowled at him and rolled his shoulder so he’d stop.

She plans to keep you from being a rival to her position by pushing you away from assassination and towards magic. Occhi chuckled, she does not know how to be a civilian, but she would try to teach you.

Corvus tisked, and scratched lightly at Occhi’s head, cunning bird. Nothing teaches you more about what you don’t know than attempting to teach someone else; this would likely be a learning experience for them both.

Sighing, Corvus sat at the desk and pulled out his journal and pen. With Billie’s admission of snooping he was glad that his shorthand was now including more and more runes, since few people if any could properly read them.

Goal one: preventing the rat plague. Hiram Burrows would release the rats on the population sometime in the Month of Clans, giving Corvus a good ten months to stop it. Based on the time required to get to and from Pandyssia, as well as to catch enough rats, Corvus had to assume that plan was already in motion. This gave him the disadvantage of having to be reactive when it comes to stopping the plague, but... if he removed Hiram Burrows and his conspirators early enough... he could proactively stop the Empress’ murder. As extra protection against the plague, he could probably devise some manner of warding. He wasn’t sure of the limits of magic, but... if he had a series of charms or totems around the city that would repel the rats from entering the city....

It’s possible Occhi provided. I do not have access to the level of premonition I did before, I don’t know it will work, but it is possible.

Goal two: saving the Kaldwins.

If Hiram were arrested before the rat plague, then they should be safe. Failing that, the Lord Protector would do well enough against almost any other assassin group, if he could convince Daud not to take the mark. Failing that... he’d fight. Which would be easier with powers of his own. He gripped his left hand, digging fingers into the pale mark on the back. He had Occhi, but... why hadn’t this time’s Outsider contacted him? He didn’t want to seem presumptuous, but... he had thought...

Occhi made a gurgling noise and his feathers bristled.

Corvus raised a brow at the aggressive display, leaning subtly away from raven’s sharp beak.

You’re mine Occhi declared stiffly, from my future, from my ritual, bearing my sacrifice, mine. I doubt this Outsider can see you when he can’t read our name.

Corvus shivered. ‘My mark’ the Outsider had always said, but... somehow Corvus hadn’t thought that the god could be this possessive. As far as clues went, apparently the ritual Occhi had used to send him back in time was linked to the god’s former humanity. Corvus’ feet twinged, an ache shooting up his spine to make his fingers tingle- and Corvus decided that he didn’t want to think about it.

If he could get the arcane bond that Daud had with his Whalers, perhaps direct contact with the Outsider wouldn’t be needed. Though he would... maybe... miss the entity. Or he’d have to rely on charms.

Goal three: Delilah.

At some point before Samuel had left Corvus adrift in Rudshore, Daud had run into Delilah and... either killed her or trapped her in the Void, if he remembered Occhi correctly. Cut off from omniscience or not, the raven still had a tendency to drop unrelated but important information throughout his advice and lessons. Maybe, when the time was right, he could once again set Daud on Delilah. It was just a matter of keeping her gone so that she couldn’t stage a coup and rise to prominence later.

Goal four: project agrimony.

Corvus very carefully kept his thoughts from dwelling for too long or too deep on that project.

The more time he spent with Occhi, the more he noticed that somehow they’d been bound together. There was the way they could communicate thoughts, the way that he always knew which direction Occhi was and whether he was close, there was the way that Occhi was reluctant every time they parted, and the way that- if Corvus let his mind drift while Occhi was out -his mind’s eye conjured the reflection of light off distant waves and the small squares of rooftops far below.

There was a very real, solid link between their minds. It didn’t bother Corvus, but... project agrimony was to be a surprise.

And one that required he get better at magic.

Corvus flipped to his sketches and rune diagrams for the bone-skin charm. He could just fix it so that it would work as intended before it got corrupted. However, if he made one like that... Corvus imagined attempting to fight the whalers if none of them could be harmed by blades and shivered. No, in some ways it was for the better that the charm had cracked.

He frowned, thoughts whirling, maybe he could give it some other detriment. One that would still be useful to the man he’d stolen the charm from, but would still make it too much of a bother for any of the other assassins to be interested in it.

He remembered the man wearing fingerless gloves rather than the thick rubber gloves most of the others wore with their uniforms, his whaler coat was novice grey, but ragged and mottled with darker smudges. Overall, Corvus remembered being unafraid of that man in particular because... he didn’t strike Corvus as being much of a combatant, rather... a thief.

So maybe instead of a detriment to the charm he could do something like a pacifist clause.

Corvus wrote out a new charm, then whittled down the number of words required. ‘Metal’ instead of ‘bone’ let him associated the armor strength of the skin to the strength of the weapon, with an intent clause tied to the weapon rune inverted from the armor rune. The charm matrix then started to mean something more like ‘the greater the blade attack’s intent to harm, the stronger the armor of the skin, the lesser the defender’s intent to harm, the stronger the armor of the skin’.

Corvus’ lips twitched into a pleased grin. In runes the phrase was simple, but his interpretation was quite complex. The wearer’s lack of intent to do harm with a weapon would bolster the defense to make up for the fact that the defense was weak against someone looking to incapacitate rather than kill. And because he was using ‘metal’ instead of ‘blade’, the charm actually now made the skin like armor against any metal weapon or projectile. Corvus considered it a more than fair tradeoff.

Occhi cackled, pleased and proud with his student. A pacifist he was not, but a poor swordsman was he that fled and was stuck most from behind.

Corvus chuckled and picked out a chisel and hammer from Billie’s gift. A moment of consideration and he pulled the smallest piece from his current collection of whalebones as well.

Most of the bones from the corrupt charm could be reused, but he’d need some to replace the cracked part.

Corvus hummed and got to work.

Chapter Text

Corvus pressed his pile of new clothes to his chest and stroked the soft supple leather of the Whaler coat.

“Would have done sooner” Petro tisked, “but Scott adamant we customize for you.” He swept his hand down the coat, “we have coats right size, but Lurk inform us you are not novice, so... Scott dye leather while altering.” He paused a moment, then flicked his hands impatiently at Corvus when he didn’t move, “try on, try on!”

Corvus hurried to stuff the pile into his satchel, though he did try not to crease the fabric too much. Then he turned again to the coat and grabbed the lapels to swing it off of the display mannequin.

Despite Petro’s impatience, Corvus took his time to look it over.

The leather was fresh and clean looking under its new dye job. Instead of any of the colors he’d seen the other Whalers wearing, his coat was a dark dusky purple, which the iridescent waterproofing coat of whale oil made glimmer with brighter purples and blues in the light. And the lining....

The lining was the faded purple silk-satin brocade Corvus had taken off the shrine.

Corvus had to consciously remember to exhale, his breath was so taken away by the thought and care that the Whaler’s tailors had put into this.

Corvus slipped his arms into the sleeves and let the coat settle cool, smooth, and heavy across his shoulders. He swept a hand under the soft curls at his nape to get his hair out from under the collar, and tugged at the lapels to straighten it.

“Ah” Petro hummed, “is good, yes?”

Head tilting in consideration, Corvus lunged forward, miming a slash, then leapt up with a twist that sent him rolling over the worktable without disturbing the papers scattered on its far end. He landed in a crouch and stalked around through the shadows. Petro yelped and skipped backwards when Corvus’ stealthy final summersault left him poised low at the tall man’s legs.

“You are tripping hazard!” Petro growled, “this not training room. Look good, move good, go unruly elsewhere.”

Corvus straightened and grinned, grabbing his satchel of new apparel and signing a quick /thanks/ as he raced out the door.

He’d swapped his ill-fitting trousers and shirt the moment Petro had handed him his altered clothes. Body nearly recovered, with fitted clothes, shoes, and coat, he was beginning to feel a bit more like himself, though far less armed than he could every remember being.

“Corvus!” Daud’s voice snapped just as Corvus was entering the mess hall.

Corvus tensed and whirled on instinct, hands clenching as his heart hammered.

Daud raised a brow at him, looking over his new appearance and fighting stance briefly before crossing his arms. “Our boxman, Dominic, has misplaced a charm” Daud said dryly, “you’ve a knack for finding them it seems... any ideas?” He raised his fist and the Outsider’s mark shimmered briefly through the leather of his glove. In a swirl of ash, the anxious rat-like Whaler who Corvus had stolen from appeared.

Corvus flushed, but his hand hesitated over his pocket. He honestly hadn’t really considered that he could get in trouble for the theft, but now that he’d been called out on it he worried that they wouldn’t like the changes he’d made to the charm. It wasn’t corrupt anymore, but it did have the pacifism caveat, which could be seen as limiting even though it made the charm stronger and more stable.

Daud cleared his throat and Corvus blinked out of his thoughts, sheepishly presenting the charm to Daud instead of Dominic.

Daud’s brow furrowed, obviously confused by the changed pitch to the charm’s hum. He rolled it in his hands, using his mark to feel out the ability since he couldn’t read the runes the way Corvus could. “You fixed it” he stated blandly.

“What!?” Dominic yelped hoarsely.

Corvus used the ensuing distraction to slip into the mess hall. Daud would probably find him later to talk about things, so it was only fair to make him explain the repaired charm.

Occhi chirred cheerfully from Yuri’s shoulder on the other side of the room, and Corvus strode their way.

Yuri’s face creased in disapproval on seeing him, and he rested his hands on his hips, “you’ve been skipping meals, young man, meals you can’t afford to be missing.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, “then you send me your bird with this!”

Corvus nodded, he was hardly going to be intimidated by a cook.

Yuri huffed, “I get wanting to have some food security after starving” he said softly, “but it’s my job to make sure everyone is eating properly. Living off of canned whale and jellied eels isn’t good for you. You’re a growing boy, you need fresh foods and vegetables.”

/I know/ Corvus signed, he was unsure if Yuri even knew any, but... the man leaned back and didn’t seem confused or concerned, so....

Yuri sighed and set several cans on the counter, not just the aforementioned whale and eel, but also brined hagfish, pickled plums, and garlic-seasoned peppers. “I’ve got conditions” Yuri grumbled, “if I don’t see you here for at least two meals each day, I swear I will track you down and I won’t let you out of my sight until your ribs no longer show.”

Corvus snorted, like Yuri knew anything about his ribs-

“Your cheeks are still hollow, lad” Yuri deadpanned, “and don’t think I didn’t notice your hands shaking when you got dinner yesterday, you need to build some fat reservoirs.” He leaned forward, “so... two supervised meals a day, you come to me when you run out, so I can give you new cans, and so I can properly keep inventory, and... I want you here for kitchen duty every First-day at noon, so I can teach you some cooking skills.”

Corvus wasn’t sure he wanted to lose half a day each week learning to cook, but... he also wasn’t truly opposed. He used to help his mom when he was younger, so he did know some things, especially spices. It could be fun, actually. He nodded and held out his hand.

Yuri took it, not an actual handshake, but he was smiling.

Occhi hopped down onto their hands as well, for your health, dear Corvo, he crooned impishly, I’ll make sure you comply. When Yuri pulled away, Occhi stayed perched on Corvus’ wrist before he climbed with feet and beak up to Corvus’ shoulder.

Corvus dropped the cans into his satchel with his clothes, the bag becoming quite full, and Corvus warmed with gratitude for the Whalers who had taken him in and were providing for him. His feelings of confliction over the circumstances were easing somewhat as he got to know them, but he didn’t know whether he’d ever feel truly comfortable among them.

Yuri pushed a plate of steaming food into Corvus’ hands as soon as they were empty, and then a water canteen rather than a glass. “Stay hydrated” the grizzled cook ordered in good humor, blinking his one eye with such theatrics that he must have intended it as a wink.

Corvus nodded, tapping the canteen’s lid against his lip, then tilting it back at Yuri... /thanks/ with his full hand. He turned to find a table, only to met Daud’s eyes at the man’s usual corner table. The assassin’s expression was expectant, and not in a welcoming manner, but an authoritative manner. Corvus chewed his lip briefly, but obediently went to meet him.

He had hoped to have this conversation later, but it seemed he’d have to explain himself over his meal.

Chapter Text

Daud ran his hand over the charm in his pocket, leaning back in his chair so that he appeared more relaxed, but he knew from Billie, that his stare could still be steely regardless of his body language. Corvus, for all that the kid was the recipient of his gaze, didn’t seem to mind Daud’s inherent talent to appear threatening. He walked over steadily and set his plate down, and sat without faltering, then kept Daud’s eyes for a long, silent moment.

/Sorry/ he signed.

Daud blinked in surprise “for what?”

/Took charm without asking/ Corvus replied quickly, he ducked his head, looking a bit embarrassed, /didn’t think, acted/.

Daud hummed, “steal often then? You must be a pretty decent pickpocket for our own resident thief to not notice- let alone when you took my journal without me noticing -is this going to be a trend?”

Corvus blanched and he shoved a mouthful of vegetables into his mouth.

Patient, Daud waited, silence could be as good an interrogation tactic as threats or pointedly applied information. Not that he wanted to threaten Corvus, or knew enough about him for those other two techniques to work, but the kid wasn’t the type to be easily pressured and seemed to appreciate time to think before responding. So he let the boy eat a few bites.

/Maybe/ Corvus finally signed, a bit resigned. /Difficult life, stole sometimes to survive/ he shrugged, offering a piece of sausage to Occhi, /hard to break old habits/.

Daud nodded, glad that there had yet to be a sign that he didn’t understand, also proud of Corvus’ continued learning to communicate. He knew Corvus was interested in charms, possibly even magic, but... “of all things to pick-pocket... you took a corrupt bone charm.”

Corvus’ lips twitched slightly, /did not want him losing all teeth/.

Daud raised a brow, and, to encourage the lighter mood, bared his teeth to reveal his own metal tooth from his one and only time wearing the charm.

Corvus laughed, nearly knocking Occhi from his shoulder. The raven dropped from his shoulder to the table and puffed its feathers irritably.

“You changed it a bit” Daud broached, “now the wearer has to intend not to fight for the armor to work.”

Corvus nodded slowly /works better, more STABLE/. His jaw set mulishly as though daring Daud to disagree.

Daud stayed quiet and thought while Corvus ate. He’d misjudged the boy. He’d thought he’d be more timid, more skittish, but while he was wary... he was also confident. Daud was perhaps over-used to picking up drifters; people with no plans, no marketable skills, and-or no future.

It was obvious that Corvus had skills- and a plan of some sort.

The fact that Corvus was still here, with the Whalers, was therefor significant.

Daud narrowed his eyes at the Void-blessed bird, “what did Occhi tell you?” He asked bluntly.

Corvus started, looking up with a piece of carrot half in his mouth. His head twitched sideways, confusion expressed in a motion shockingly similar to Occhi’s.

“I know the bird is Void-touched, probably connected to the Outsider” Daud growled, “I know he talks to you about things that haven’t happened yet and whispers secrets to you.” His fists clenched and he scowled, “is something a threat to my Whalers, are you a threat to my Whalers?”

Corvus stared at Daud a moment, face blank, before he waved a hand across the table to force Occhi to shuffle closer. Further from Daud as though he had any intention of hurting the bird. The boy leaned forward over the table so he could tuck the raven under his chin. For a moment the kid’s dark eyes looked incredibly sad, lost, even pained.

Occhi twisted his head up to stroke Corvus’ cheek with his beak.

Corvus sighed, straightened and raised his hands /possible CALAMITY/ he signed slowly /------ and -------/.

“What were those signs?” Daud asked, repeating them as best he could after one viewing.

Corvus repeated the first sign, then /PLAGUE/ he spelled out, the next sign and then /WITCHES/.

Daud grimaced, checking the room for a moment to ensure that the privacy of their conversation was maintained, “my mother always warned me to never make an enemy of a witch.”

Corvus blinked at him lips parted in surprise before he grimaced and nodded /when witches make you enemy?/

Daud’s grimace deepened, a pit forming in his stomach “you think it’s inevitable.”

Corvus shrugged, brow furrowing stubbornly /no/.

Daud ground his teeth, counted his exhale, “you want to change it. Stop the plague, fight the witches... and you want Us to help.” He leaned across the table towards Corvus, tracking the way his eyes widened and his postured stilled. It was obvious the kid would fight if Daud made himself a threat.

He didn’t want to, but there was a lot he needed to know before he’d consider tossing his men’s lives into the balance of this Void-touched child’s ambitions. He needed to think, to send men to investigate. Perhaps he’d grown complacent after weeks in one spot. Perhaps there was something brewing in the dark underbelly of the city that had already left traces he could track in order to predict what was to come.

Daud flinched at the stiff-smooth brush of feathers against his wrist, the tense standoff with the kid broken. Occhi started up at him, black eyes knowing.

Daud pushed up from the table, cast Corvus a last dark glance, and stalked off with purpose. His stride grew longer, steps speeding up until he was interspersing his run with jumps and transversals.

He landed, catching himself by his fingertips and pulled himself through the window with a grunt, snarling at the shrine he’d left intact even after the last disaster in the Void.

The Outsider dead- or unconscious -on the rock... was there a difference between the two for a God?

Daud’s jaw clenched and shivers ran up and down his spine. “What have you got me into now?” He growled at the cloth and wood, eyes dancing about for any sign of the black-eyed bastard showing himself. “I disappointed you, I lost your interest, is this your way of making things interesting again? Or is this- your way of making things interesting again?”

His voice trailed off to a whisper as he considered the possibility that this path would lead to the end of the Whalers, most definitely preceded by his own death. He raged against the thought, but part of him twisted up in consideration of his own mortality. Is this how he’d die? At the machinations of an apathetic god? Is that what he deserved for his life as a heretic, as an assassin?

Daud rubbed at his temples.

He clenched his left hand, feeling the energy pull along the branching bonds that tied his Whalers to him. It left him exhausted and shaky, leaning on the shrine for support, but Billie, Thomas, and Misha all appeared in the room.

“Daud?” Billie asked, tone as worried as it was mystified.

“Trouble’s brewing and storm clouds are thrice cursed” Daud muttered tiredly. “Corvus knows something about it, Misha, I want you following him. No contact, but keep eyes on. Do not interact with him, do not let him see you, but make note of everything he does. Keep him safe if he seems to need help, but don’t risk yourself unduly. Brief a couple others so you can rotate shifts.”

Misha nodded, and transversed off with no questions. Among Daud’s Whaler’s Misha was best suited for taking point on this job. Their stealth skills were top-notch and they had a level head to match. Daud could trust that anyone else they chose would be perfectly suitable.

Daud sighed, pinching at his nose.

“Sir-“ Thomas started.

“We need more information” Daud interrupted. “There’s too much about this that we don’t understand, but we’re at the center of it anyway.” He looked between the two of them, “see what whispers you can find, anything talking change, anything unusual, hopefully we keep this from biting us in the ass.”

“Would it be safer to turn him out?” Billie asked hesitantly.

Daud stared at her, “no” he said lowly, “if he has an inkling of what’s coming I’d rather keep him where I can see him.”

Chapter Text

Corvus’ attention split, his jaw cracking in a huge yawn, but he shook it off and forced himself more awake as he followed Killian’s instructions, strapping the wrist-mounted crossbow to his left forearm.

The salt-and-pepper haired trainer checked his work and nodded, “precisely, now if you’ve-“

Corvus ignored him, the room was clear of other Whalers this early in the morning, so he turned and fired, in a single movement, at one of the man-shaped training dummies.

Killian went silent at the dead-center shot to the dummy’s head.

Corvus tisked, considering the crossbow. It was even smaller than the singlehanded light crossbow he’d used before, but the bolts were the same size. He assumed then that while they had decent accuracy at close to mid-range, the smaller bow would have a harder time launching the bolts as accurately with greater distance. It was something he’d have to keep in mind.

Killian coughed lightly, “anything else you want to pick out?”

Corvus considered him and the table of weapons that had been displayed for his choice. The Whaler swords were still unappealingly bulky, but Corvus claimed another dagger to fit in his other boot, some choke dust canisters, and stocked up as many sleep-darts as his quiver could hold, begrudgingly also taking a few sharps.

Killian eyed his choices with judgment if not a certain disdain, but a flicker of his eyes to the bulls-eye on the target turned his expression to one of consideration.

Corvus gave him a mulish nod and stalked out of the training room, blinking at the abrupt morning light outside on the catwalks the whalers had constructed.

Occhi cawed loudly from above, diving down to land heavily on Corvus’ raised arm. You are beginning to look more like yourself, the raven announced, head twisting as he observed Corvus. Though dressed as your once enemy, the adornment of coat and weapons gives you... poise.

Corvus grinned, /RICKARD?/ he asked. It was time to meet with the Whaler’s blacksmith.

He’s further than you’ve ventured yet in this time, Occhi replied, mantling his wings in anticipation, can you keep up?

Corvus clicked his tongue at the challenge and tossed Occhi up, immediately dashing off in pursuit as the raven led him away from the headquarters. Without the ability to blink, it was much more challenging to make his way through the obstacles of the flooded district, but Corvus had never relied solely on his powers.

While acting as Emily’s Lord Protector he had in fact hid them as much as possible. Emily’s reign had been tenuous at first and the last thing they had needed was the attention of the Abbey, so he’d taken to covering his mark and maintaining an air of deniability against the rumors.

Putting his physical prowess to the test after so much inactivity and recovery exercises had its own delightful exhilaration anyway. Breathing and heart rate a rhythm for his pace, Corvus fell into parkouring through the flooded district. With Occhi leading the way... there were no surprises to his path. He knew without seeing what was ahead.

He caught on the thought, and for an instant a different view eclipsed his own, and Corvus tripped.

Meditative state lost he had to scramble to keep from falling off the roof he was on. His breathing was heavy. He wasn’t yet back to his peak, but he also had to face the panic of the mistake he’d almost made.

Occhi circled slowly clicking his beak.

/I saw what you see/ Corvus signed rapidly /it took me by surprise/.

Occhi landed on the roof, my ritual was meant for you alone, and yet I am here.

/I’m glad/ Corvus asserted.

By accident we were bound, Occhi admitted, together we will learn the consequences.

Corvus nodded /together/. There were ways that their connection would be useful, but just like any Void-given power... he’d have to figure out the limits. It both scared, and didn’t scare him. Occhi may be a raven now, but he had been the Outsider... that he was mysterious and strange was not surprising or concerning, just how it affected Corvus. If anything he was both comforted and concerned by the fact that even Occhi didn’t know what had happened to them. He wished the Outsider would-

Wishes were not fishes that could be caught on demand.

For whatever reason, this time’s Outsider was out of reach.

Corvus had never realized how much the difference between Occhi and the Outsider bothered him, like he was the one who’d lost something- someone. It wasn’t fair to Occhi, but... there was a bittersweet edge to Occhi’s growing tangibility. The closer he got to Occhi, the more it felt like he was losing the Outsider.

Corvus shook himself and waved Occhi onward.

He refused to grieve the Outsider when Occhi was present and real. It was ridiculous; the Outsider likely couldn’t even reciprocate that degree- any degree -of attachment.

Corvus kept himself focused as they continued into the more derelict industrial portion of Rudshore. He tried to maintain a steady acknowledgment of the map Occhi was projecting into his head without loosing himself to Occhi’s point of view, so that he could plan his path without getting distracted. There were a few more close calls before he found a decent balance of awareness.

A headache was beginning to settle behind his eyes by the time they reached a building that wasn’t empty or silent.

Corvus climbed some boxes on the outside of the building and crawled through a window to the factory. It took a risky jump for him to end up perched in the rafters. From there he could watch a small crew of Whalers working to organize and move things in the room below at the command of the largest man Corvus could remember ever seeing.

Licking his lips to wet his dry mouth, Corvus crept along the beam until he was positioned close to the man.

Rickard the blacksmith, Occhi introduced, there was a gentle girl he fancied once, she loved the way he danced, but when a traveling show rolled in... she stole her father’s fiddle and left him with no chance....

Corvus huffed lightly, wondering how long it took Rickard to end up with Daud after that.

He swung himself down to hang from the rafter and dropped, landing with an audible thump a few feet behind the large Blacksmith.

Rickard turned, revealing that despite the deep creases on his brow, there were equally deep crowfeet from his smiling eyes. He sported messy curls of black hair and a well-trimmed beard and mustache. He smiled without teeth on seeing Corvus, a dimple pulling visibly even under the wiry stubble of his left cheek. “Corvus!” He greeted, “I was expecting you to drop by sooner or later, Daud mentioned you didn’t seem to like the blades available.” He crossed his arms and raised a brow in a manner that expressed good humor rather than offense.

Corvus still winced, but Rickard just chuckled.

The blacksmith motioned about the room, “I believe we’ll have the forge running sooner than I estimated, so... what can I do for you?”

Corvus reached into his coat and pulled out his journal. The leather of the cover was quickly becoming battered from how much use it received, but he quickly flipped through to find the correct pages. He didn’t know how Piero had made the folding sword, but he’d spent years practicing with it and subsequently caring for it. He knew the blade. He only hoped his sketches and diagrams would be legible for the Whalers’ crafter.

Rickard took the book carefully and inspected the sketches, raising a brow at Corvus’ request. “A folding sword?” He murmured, and pulled a pair of spectacles from his pocket to squint at Corvus’ notations. “That’s brilliant....” He whistled lowly.

Corvus shuffled self-consciously when the man looked at him over the top of his glasses.

“I’ll do my best to make this for you” he tapped at the pages, “I know blade-craft, but the mechanics...” he shook his head and grinned widely, “eh... it’ll be a challenge, and I’ll rise to it!”

Corvus smiled back, relieved that hopefully soon he’d be armed to his preferences.

Rickard dropped a larger hand across Corvus’ shoulder and pushed him firmly over to a workbench where he pulled out a large roll of paper and a pencil, “if you wouldn’t mind drawing it all out again, a bit larger. We can go over some of the details.”

Taking the pencil, Corvus got to drawing, referencing his notes and pointing things out to Rickard as he went. The man may not have understood sign, but despite his implied reservations he was a quick study and seemed to grasp what Corvus meant anyway. The folding sword was coming to life before his eyes, and though he felt he couldn’t claim Piero’s credit for its invention, he was proud of the improvements he and Rickard were discussing for the blade itself.

It wasn’t until Rickard’s team strong-armed them away from the blueprints that they both realized that they’d spent the entire day brainstorming and had skipped lunch.

Rickard, rather than sheepish, released a booming laugh accompanied with a knee buckling- but somehow comforting -back pat.

Corvus couldn’t help but get caught in that laugh, letting the warmth of mirth bubble in his chest, his own laugh joining in... and for once he didn’t mind the way his throat wheezed and hitched at the effort to vocalize.

“You best get dinner” Rickard stated, pushing Corvus gently back in the direction of the headquarters. “I’ll get on this project as soon as possible... come by sometime or send that bird of yours and I’ll keep you updated.”

Corvus ducked away from Rickard’s attempt to ruffle his curls and glanced up to find Occhi already gliding in a lazy circle above them. Corvus caught Rickard’s hand, shook it once, and then bounded off, stomach growling. The sun was already low, if they hurried, Corvus was sure he and Occhi could get back before dark.

Rickard’s chuckles faded behind them, but the happy feeling of making a new friend remained.

Chapter Text

Corvus dropped his head on to his arms, running his eyes over his workbench even though his new angle made it impossible to actually read anything. He had months yet to prepare, but something about sitting here planning without taking action was beginning to get on his nerves.

He was making progress carving plague rat repellent totems as more and more whale bone, wire, bits of driftwood, and other bits of interesting scrap were delivered to him by Billie Lurk. A totem finished every couple days was relatively quick production when he couldn’t feasibly dedicate more than four or five hours a day to carving without losing feeling in both his fingers and his bottom. His shoulders were sore from the work such that he had to spend at least a few hours exercising and stretching to keep himself from getting stiff.

Mostly he was frustrated with his progress on Project Agrimony.

There was no feasible way for him to test the magic on his own. It would be a spell, not a charm, something he’d never done before; and at this point all he could imagine were the disastrous ways that his spell could go wrong. The surprise of the project just wasn’t worth the danger to Corvus if it went badly.

And Occhi was the only available entity knowledgeable enough to give him a second opinion.

The ragged curtain, sheer so that nobody could hide behind it but light could still show through, fluttered as the raven in question dove through the window, body angling as he worked his wings to land delicately on the back of one of their armchairs. I could feel you brooding from Kaldwin bridge, the bird said dryly, are you actually going to tell me what’s making you so morose? Or are you still thinking it over?

Corvus sighed, thumping his forehead lightly on the heavy wood desktop.

It was one thing to admit to himself that he was stuck… and another to admit it to Occhi, no matter how much he was inadvertently projecting his dissatisfaction.

Corvus huffed out a breath. He’d already been complaining to himself that he want to take some action sooner rather than later. If Agrimony was the only decisive win he could get for the time being, he’d take it.

/I have… surprise for you/ Corvus signed slowly, straightening himself in his seat. He didn’t know the words, so pushed the thoughts to the part of himself that felt like Occhi /I hoped I’d be able to finish on my own, but… it’s not the kind of magic I want going awry when I’m still so new to this/.

Oh? Occhi said with amusement, his mind-voice sounding slightly breathless. He shuffled a bit, smoothed a couple feathers over his shoulder, but only took flight once Corvus had raised his arm to offer it as a landing point. Once there his claws kneaded rhythmically, soothingly, even after he’d shuffled up Corvus’ arm to his shoulder.

Corvus practically held his breath as he flipped through his journal to the most recent iteration of his theoretical spell diagram. He felt hyperaware of the way Occhi went perfectly still as he deciphered the spell.

The moment stretched, and with it Corvus grew more and more nervous to hear what Occhi though. /Well?/ He projected the query as Occhi’s perusal continued for several minutes. /Is it okay?/

It’s perfect, Occhi breathed.

Corvus got a foreign feeling of warmth even on top of his own relief. Warm, directed, almost sharp, but… in a good way?

Corvus cleared his throat to push the heavy warmth away /you think it will work?/

Yes. You… I’m amazed- with our thought mixing -I’m amazed you kept this from me.

/Same/ Corvus signed with a strangled laugh.

Your spell-theory has come a long way… but you did have creative ideas for the application of magic even from the beginning. Occhi clicked his beak. If you are to commit to this… to build a shape so we can both fly… I want you to use my feathers.

Corvus raised a brow at the bird, unsure if Occhi could even see it that well with how close they were.

I may be a bird now, but I am a creature of Void, using my feathers will give your spell more power, and therefor more stability. Occhi grumbled lowly, I have a few tucked in that blanket you arranged me.

Corvus nodded solemnly, and with a touch of anticipation. /Petro can do the art/ he signed, /now?/

Occhi nodded, launching himself up to the second floor to retrieve the feathers. There were enough of them that he was visibly struggling to carry them as he glided back down.

Corvus gathered them from Occhi and set them on the spell-page, closing the journal to keep them all together. Knowing that his diagram was correct, that his spell would work, that his gift to Occhi was closer to complete than his fears had let him hope… Corvus couldn’t wait. Days- weeks -of work was coming to fruition in this, his first spell.

Occhi coughed impatiently from the window, and Corvus tucked the journal into his satchel and ran for the zip-line. He thought briefly that the Whalers must be pretty used to him running everywhere by this point, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

He was no longer the Lord Protector, after all, he could run through the halls if he wanted to.

It was a short trip to the tailor’s workroom and quarters. Corvus knocked on the door politely and waited for an answer.

It was Scott who answered, the shy seamstress waved him in, eyes flitting across his body from collar, to seam-line to hemline. She gave a soft smile, “Corvus, it appears the clothes are treating you well.”

Corvus nodded, puffing his chest theatrically and brushing imaginary dust from his lapel with a kind smile.

“And yet… you are back here?” She mused, twisting a strand of fine mouse-brown hair between her fingers.

/Petro?/ Corvus gave the name sign the twins had taught him, a finger-spelled ‘P’, with a couple taps of the extended fingers as though they were scissors.

“Yes, he’s here” Scott said, looking relieved that he didn’t need anything from her. “Honey! Corvus is here for you!”

Petro shuffled into the studio, tucking a pair of round glasses into his pocket, “Corvus? Was not expecting such soon grow-spurt. Only had clothes short time?” His tone was disgruntled, but not hostile, so Corvus assumed he was forgiven from his shenanigans the first time he’d tried on his coat.

/Help with spell/ Corvus signed.

“Sorry?” Petro asked confused “ask someone more fluent for spelling.”

Corvus waved the man over, opening his journal at the cutting table, and carefully moving the feathers out of the way.

Petro hesitated, but came over, pulling the glasses back from his pocket and perching them on his nose. His fingers roved over the pages. “Oh!” He straightened, hand lingering to keep the journal open to the right place, “you want tattoo?!”

Corvus nodded.

“This tattoo makes magic occur?” Petro hummed, intrigue growing on his stern face. “This big design, take many hours to complete. This all details? Or more?”

Corvus blinked then leaned over the journal himself. The diagram was clear, the runes crisp even where they intersected with sketched feathers. He tapped on the page to draw Petro’s attention and wrote in the margins.

Petro hummed “ink made from ash of Occhi’s feathers and… hair.”

Corvus nodded, tugging lightly on a lock of his own wavy hair and miming scissors. He could use a trim anyway, his hair was pushing past shoulder-length at this point.

Petro sighed, “I suppose, Scott can give haircut. I prepare.”

Corvus sat, keeping an eye on Petro even once Scott found scissors acceptable for hair and started the trim job.

“Such lovely curls” she murmured, “we must keep enough length for some curl to remain.” She hummed a lilting tune interspersed by the soft ‘shick’ ‘shick’ sound of the scissors. Petro gathered the hair as it fell. An acrid smell filled the room as he burned and then ground the feathers and hair into fine ash and mixed it with alcohol to make the ink.

“There you go” Scott said, dusting loose hair off his shoulder into one hand, so she could pass it to Petro.

Corvus blinked at the mirror she held up for him, once again shocked by the general changes to his face before he could focus on his new hairstyle. He didn’t care much for what his hair looked like, but Scott had done an even job. The shorter hair made his face look even thinner, and thus also made him look even younger, but it kept some wave while being a bit neater.

Scott smiled warmly, looking to Petro. “I’ll get some food, so interruptions to your art will be minimal.” She gave her partner a peck on one sharp cheek before gliding out the door.

Corvus felt a resigned jealousy at the couple’s easy comfort with each other. He and Jessamine could never have been so openly affectionate, and even in private there had been a level of distance because of their difference in social status.

Petro cleared his throat, a hint of color gracing his pale skin.

Corvus stripped off his shirt and laid belly-down on some pillows as Petro directed.

“Don’t move” Petro ordered distractedly as he sketched the general shape on Corvus’ back, “this tickle a bit”.

Corvus exhaled shallowly, feeling the wings being traced across his shoulders, and the head and beak extending partway up his neck.

Petro hummed lowly, “now it stings, breathe through and stay still. Will take hours.” His voice was softer in his concentration, words an after-thought to his work.

Corvus closed his eyes and relaxed, focusing not on the buzz of Petro’s tattoo-gun, but instead meditating on what a raven was, what a human was, and how he could remember what it felt like to be both. The sting of the needle, when it began, barely registered.

Chapter Text

Daud felt a headache coming on.

Misha’s report on Corvus’ behavior was surprising mostly in the number of people the kid was interacting with. He didn’t seem to know many of the Whalers by name yet, and avoided most of the guards with practiced ease, but many of those who specialized were approached with little hesitation.

Killian, the head trainer, was raving about his natural ability with weaponry after only one meeting.

Billie had reported that she’d been delivering bones to Corvus everyday, and that he’d fixed every corrupt bone charm the Whalers had whether the owner was aware of the repair or not. He was apparently becoming quite the prolific carver… and was still pickpocketing Daud’s supposedly highly-trained Whalers.

Yuri informed him that Corvus was learning to cook with him once a week and should be encouraged to check in with Montgomery to check his recovery progress as he gained some healthy weight.

Rickard then casually commented that Corvus had a decent grasp of mechanics and had supplied him with a rudimentary blueprint for a folding sword. On seeing said blueprint, Daud couldn’t help but also be impressed. It made sense that Corvus was so skeptical of the Whalers’ standard sword if he was used to something more slender and refined. If Rickard got it to work, Daud wouldn’t be opposed to owning such a weapon himself.

Then Petro arrived.

All the rest was one thing, but this….

“You gave a teenager a tattoo” Daud reiterated.

“Yes” Petro agreed, “was very complicated, very precise, among my best work I say.” He scratched his cheek lightly with a nail looking incredibly pleased.

“I have no doubt of your artistry” Daud grumbled, “but you gave a child a tattoo. A large tattoo.”

“Corvus good canvas” Petro said, “no flinching, no complaining… very good. Was honor for helping magic.” He flicked his fingers a bit, “first he heal.”

Daud pinched the bridge of his nose, “you gave a child a very permanent tattoo… that involves experimental magic?”

Petro blinked, apparently only now catching on to Daud’s concern, “ah… yes.”

Daud sat heavily in his desk chair, “next time tell me before giving Corvus a tattoo- or giving anyone a tattoo involving magic”.

Petro gave a chagrined nod and transversed away.

Daud groaned and buried his face in his hands, “last time I accept a job from that damn black-eyed bastard…” he groused. Things were so much simpler when his main worries were keeping his people fed and away from the Abbey.

Instead he just had to go after the lead the Outsider had given him.

Now he had some clairvoyant raven, a Void-touched witch boy, and a vague warning about plague and hostile witches. But not enough information to plan any kind of defense.

The information gathered around the city didn’t give much to go on either.

The unrest among some of the nobility was growing as he’d predicted weeks ago, but there was nothing to indicate a coven of witches were living in the city. Only Vera Moray, known as ‘Granny Rags’, could use magic to any threatening degree; but while she had reappeared a few months ago, she generally kept to herself. Daud set a rotating watch on her anyway just to be safe.

As for the plague… how did one defend against something like that?

Daud stood, pacing in front of his map.

Surely Corvus was working on it, if only he could understand how everything Corvus was doing fit into what was to come and how to avoid it.

The folding sword and charm-crafting were obviously a means of arming himself, learning to cook probably had nothing to do with anything. The tattoo and bone carving was a bit more vague.

Daud shifted his papers to pull some sketches to the top.

Misha’s notes sketched out a pattern that Corvus was apparently etching into as many bones as he could. While Daud couldn’t read the runes, he did know that it wasn’t just for charms if he was making so many of the same thing. The tattoo sketch from Petro was a bit more understandable if only because it featured the image of a crow at approximately life-size in a mix of feathers and implied skeleton with a small humanoid shape left pale amid the bird’s dark ink. The whole thing was dense with tiny runes, bits of shading and even line work that changed from illustration to symbol-stroke on a dime, blurring the edges of bird to human.

Even without knowing that Corvus’ name meant ‘crow’, it was obvious the boy had put together a complex bit of spell work to take it more literally. If it worked.

Daud would believe it when he saw it.

Of all of those activities, the mystery runes etched over and over and over were the most likely to be something intended as a passive defense against the plague assuming that Corvus had enough information on its transmission to tailor his runes specifically for that purpose.

Daud might not be a witch himself, but you don’t last decades marked by the Outsider without picking up some general knowledge on the subject of magic even with the Abbey doing its best to stamp it out.

It wouldn’t be efficient to use the runes as charms, which had to be worn by an individual to work, not with the implied breadth of threat that the word ‘plague’ implied. So it had to be area based. A ward or boundary or field anchored across the city using the bones.

Daud pulled an old map from his collection. It wasn’t as nice as the one he kept on the wall, but it was accurate enough and already had the district boundaries indicated.

Drapers Ward, the Old Waterfront, the Estate District, King-sparrow Bay, Slaughterhouse Row, the Red-light District, the Distillery District, the Kaldwin’s Bridge area, and the Rudshore Financial District. Nine districts, eight if you considered the smaller Red-light District to be part of the larger Distillery District.

It made sense to stagger layers of protection across the city, potentially even between districts.

Daud sighed and sat back at his desk.

There was little point in attempting to anticipate Corvus’ actions at this point, but he could ask his Whalers to scout for good hiding places for the runes while on patrol and give Billie the map. She could pass it on to Corvus when she next delivered bones.

Something would give eventually.

In the meantime he felt the need to either scream at the Outsider or rant about his frustrations. Sighing again, Daud pulled a fresh card from his drawer and fed it into his audiograph. It clicked to indicate it was ready to record. He’d burn the card when he was done, just to make sure Billie wouldn’t listen to it, but talking out loud was a good way to think.

Until Corvus actually took action or asked for help it was a waiting game. Daud could be patient, whether he liked it or not was another matter.