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The sky is heavy with clouds. Blood drips from his sword on a muddy street. A woman’s lips open in a silent scream, her eyes wide. A single tear falls down her pale cheek.
The fight was quick. Corvo sneaked up to a witch, slit her throat before she noticed him. It should have been quick and clean, like many times before. He knows his profession well. He’s a killer first, no matter how others see him. He fled to Karnaca and made his way back to Dunwall, leaving behind a mountain of corpses. Corvo Attano isn’t the Crown Killer people feared; he’s much worse.
His path is clear. Atop Dunwall Tower waits the fake Empress. No matter what Delilah sends at him, he’ll get to her sooner or later.
But he didn’t expect this.
Corvo can’t take his eyes off the woman’s face. His hands tremble, bile rises to his throat.
He crouches down, on impulse he brushes a lock of black hair from her forehead. Her glassy eyes stare at the stormy sky, their shade of brown perfectly matches his daughter’s eyes.
He has fought Delilah’s witches before but this time it’s different.
Delilah made the witch look like Emily.
The witch has his daughter’s face, the same shape of lips now opening in a silent scream; the same colour of eyes, now empty. It must be an illusion, a cruel joke and Corvo knows it’s not Emily – yet he can’t help himself. He brushes the woman’s cheek with his fingertips and shivers.
Bile forms a tight ball in his throat. His moment of weakness is gone.
The blade of his sword cuts clean through the woman’s slender neck. He picks up the head by the hair, it spills from a bun; the witch even combed it just like Emily. Blood drips from the neck, stains his shoes. He throws the head away so he doesn’t have to look at it any longer. It lands in the mud near two dead wolfhounds.
Corvo swallows, pushes the bile down. His hand shakes barely so.
Without much thought he Blinks up on broken tracks, then higher on a balcony, and continues with a clear goal in mind.
Delilah’s head will roll.
He pushes forward, towards the high walls of the Dunwall Tower. Another witch falls from his sword. He watches Emily’s face scream at him in rage. She claws at him, her body jolts when he pushes the sword deeper until there’s no more life left in her (Emily’s) eyes.
He observes the way Emily’s face changes, fury turns to fear. He’s seen a whole range of emotions on his daughter’s face before but this… It’s upsetting, to say the least.
It’s her face, alright, but the witch didn’t quite get the shape of her eyes and lips. The witch’s eyes are too big, lips too thin. An imperfect copy. And yet, part of him revolts at the sight of “Emily” dying by his sword, and he almost stops himself from delivering the final blow.
Almost.
Would he stop if Delilah managed to possess Emily and send his own daughter at him? – the question remains buried deep at the bottom of his soul.
The witch’s blood stains his sleeve. He wipes the blade of his sword with her coat and continues forward.
Another witch falls. Killing shouldn’t be so easy. But it is, hisses a low, rumbling voice in his ear. Perhaps it comes straight from the Void. It is and you’re good at it.
A different witch begs him to spare her, kneels on the dirty ground and reaches out to him with hands stained with blood.
“Please, father,” Emily’s face says. Her lower lip trembles, just like it does every time she forces herself not to cry. Tears well up in her eyes.
In a moment of weakness his hand shakes. He hasn’t seen Emily in months. She still must be in the throne room, turned to stone. But what if…
The woman’s eyes – Emily’s eyes – look at him, pleading.
What if Delilah found a way to twist the powers of the Void and possess his daughter. What if the woman he’s killing right now is Emily? It’s a perfect copy, this one. So what if–
A spike brushes his side when he jumps away from danger, his instincts kicking in. Another witch creeped up to him and attacked, making use of his moment of weakness. Emily’s face laughs at him as the witch sends more thorns to attack.
Something cracks inside him then. Corvo grips his sword so hard his knuckles go white, his left hand reaches for his gun. Time stills, bent to his will. He Blinks to the witch who attacked him and shoots. The world begins to move again, the woman’s body jolts, littered with bullets. Shock and fear painted on Emily’s face, no trace of laughter anymore.
Corvo then rushes at the still kneeling witch. She shrieks, the sound is cut short as he slices her head off. Her body collapses on the ground. His heart is pounding and he breaths heavily.
It’s not Emily he kills, then why–
He shakes his head and forces himself to move.
Once he’s done Dunwall Tower is littered with bodies. Some were there before he arrived. Dead Overseers, guards, old staff and hounds. And then there are bodies of the witches, each dressed in different clothes, with different markings, but hey all have the same face of the young Empress.
He cannot say how many different expressions on his fake daughters’ faces he’s seen. These Emilies laughed at him, belittled and cursed, screamed in rage and cried. Some begged for mercy. And they all wore his daughter’s face.
Corvo drags Delilah’s body to the throne she prepared for herself in a twisted version of reality. The sword weighs heavy in his hand. It’s heavier than the body he throws on the throne. His back hunched, head low, Corvo makes his way back to the throne room. The fake reality Delilah painted collapses behind him.
He can’t say he remembers much of the fight with Delilah. He fought her again and again, killed her in more ways he can count, until the copies stopped coming and the real witch appeared. He killed her, too. His blade is sharp no matter how much blood stains it. When he pierced her head, stabbing her in the right eye, he saw fear in her other eye. A raw, genuine fear. Just like in the eyes of some of those fake Emilies he killed.
They all look the same when they die.
Emily – his daughter, not some cheap impostor like before, stares at him with unseeing eyes. She hasn’t changed at all. He can only hope she sleeps a dreamless sleep, doesn’t feel the cold wind blowing through holes in the ruined throne room, or smells the rotting flesh of the dead.
Corvo hesitates. He reaches out but his hand stills before his fingertips can brush his daughter’s stone face. Dunwall is ruined, destroyed by Delilah’s coven. Streets are littered with corpses and rats. Karnaca is in chaos after the Duke’s death.
Is this the world he wants to show Emily?
His hands are stained with blood. The sight of the witches bearing Emily’s face haunts him more than he wants to admit.
“You’re safe, my dear,” Corvo whispers more to convince himself than to her, before he walks past her, towards the throne.
He sits down, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Dunwall Tower is silent. Dead people don’t speak.
When he opens his eyes a plan is already forming in his head. The world is a hideous place but as long as he’s the last one standing he’ll take his chances. And if anyone dares to threaten him or Emily again, he will hang their corpse from the top of the Dunwall Tower.
Sitting alone in the throne room, surrounded by dead witches wearing his daughter face, Corvo looks at his daughter again. Delilah is dead and gone yet the witch’s magic keeps Emily frozen in time, a stone statue unaware of the death and destruction around her. Safe.
He sits up straight. His eyes sweep the throne room. There’s much to be done.
The throne isn’t comfortable but it matters not. He’ll leave it at it is. Corvo the Black won’t need a crown. His sword and the Mark on his hand will be enough.