Dishonored--The Veiled Terror

by Adam Christopher

  CRYPT OF THE HOUSE OF THE FOURTH CHAIR, THE VOID HOLLOW

  Date unknown, Month of Darkness, 1853

  She didn’t need to waste time trying to track Severin through the maze of the palace. Billie knew exactly where he was going.

  The crypt.

  Because whatever the artifact was that the Queen was using, it was there: the empty tomb, or at least the half of it that the King had blueprints of. That had to be it. She had seen it herself, in the vision of the crypt the Sliver of the Eye of the Dead God had shown her. There, the empty tomb was not a tomb but part of another kind of structure, a cracked and split plinth of some kind, with someone lying on it in tranquil repose, looking for all the world as if they were carved out of alabaster, just like all the other royal ancestors in the crypt.

  That someone was the Queen. And the tomb—the plinth, whatever it really was—must be the artifact. The fact that it was in the Hollow, not the “real” world, was why Billie’s future self hadn’t been able to find it, and hadn’t been able to discover where the Void Shadow vanished to after returning through the rift.

  The Hollow. The strange echo of the real world, a projected image stretched out across the gulf of nothingness that now separated the world from the Void as the Void drifted away, unoccupied by any controlling divinity.

  A place Billie was now in—and where she would remain, trapped, unless she could get hold of Severin and his runes.

  Billie raced along one passageway after another, eventually reaching the twisting stone stairs that led deep into the ancient foundations of the palace. She could already hear the hurricane roar of the Void Shadow as she approached the door, red and blue and yellow light blazing around the edges and through the keyhole. Of Severin there was no sign.

  Billie pushed at the door, but it was firmly shut—not locked, but there was a pressure behind it, like someone was pushing from the opposite side. She summoned her strength, and shoved. The door flew open.

  The crypt in the Hollow was similar to the one in the real world, but here, at the far end, the Void rift was an angry blaze of red, a terrible tear in the world that hissed and spat like burning oil. In front of it, the empty tomb was replaced, as in Billie’s vision, with an angular mass of black stone, the object clearly having been cut and carved and polished centuries ago, but it was now worn and shapeless, save for a few particularly sharp acute angles. The rear half of it was a rough, jagged edge, like the thing had been split in two.

  The Queen’s body was lying on the slab, her hands crossed over her chest. Above floated the Void Shadow, its vast black form expanding almost to reach the vaulted ceiling. Black dust fell in ash-like flakes from it, the particles drifting lazily to the floor and starting to coat the Queen’s body in a thin film.

  The Void Shadow still had the King in its grasp, holding him by the neck in one seemingly insubstantial, mist-like talon. The King was alive, but the kick of his legs in the air was weak, and he had both hands at his throat, trying to ease the pressure and prevent the Void Shadow from throttling him.

  In the other cruelly curved claw, the Shadow held the Twin-bladed Knife. It seemed to shine more golden than ever, the blades polished to almost a mirror finish.

  Billie approached the Shadow at a crouch, skirting around the occupied tombs that lined up down the middle of the crypt, careful to keep their ancient hulks between her and her enemy.

  The Void Shadow was looking at her, watching her, its oval head—nothing but a darker outline within a halo of drifting smoke—pointing in her direction. As Billie blinked, she thought she could see the thing’s eyes, two dark spots in an otherwise infinitely black face.

  “Billie Lurk,” said the Void Shadow, its voice like the howling of the wind. “You are too late to interfere now. You bear witness to the culmination of the King’s experiment, and my paramount success.”

  Billie stopped. She looked up at the arcane creature.

  “I don’t know what you think you’ve achieved,” she said, “but we—I—have fought against it. You know that’s the truth. All your journeys through the Void, all the moments you have tried to corrupt, they’ve never crystalized, have they? Every time you’ve come back, only to find time unchanged, history left the way it always was. You failed, over and over again. What makes you think you can succeed now?”

  The Void Shadow seemed to cock its head as it regarded Billie. Then it lifted the arm holding the Twin-bladed Knife, darkness streaming out behind the limb like a cloak made of night.

  “You have brought the means of your world’s destruction to me, Billie Lurk,” said the Void Shadow. It lifted the Twin-bladed Knife in the air and turned the points to indicate the black slab on which the Shadow’s human body—the Queen—lay. “With the altar and the Knife, the two most powerful artifacts in existence will be reunited once more. There will be no power that can stop me.”

  With those words, the Void Shadow rose even higher in the air, then flung the King down onto the black slab below it, beside the unconscious body of the Queen. Before Billie could react, the Shadow swarmed down, collecting itself from the corners of the crypt and coalescing into the shadowed form of the Queen herself, the mirrored version of the body lying below. With a howling roar, it stabbed the Twin-bladed Knife down, slashing across the King’s chest, continuing across the Queen’s body. The King screamed in pain, but his cries were muffled as the Void Shadow condensed down onto the black stone, smothering both bodies lying on it.

  Immediately, Billie felt the Sliver blaze into life in her skull, the intense and sudden heat almost unbearable. She staggered backward, clutching her face with her magical hand. But that, too, was ablaze with pain, the impossibly suspended shards of metal and stone almost glowing as they were affected by the Void Shadow. Billie staggered back against one of the other tombs, and looked up, struggling to see with her human eye while the Sliver showed her nothing but red and blue sparks.

  The Void Shadow had enveloped the whole monolith, covering the bodies of the Queen and King as they lay on the slab. The entire mass had turned into a convulsing, bubbling shape so dark it was almost impossible to focus on, light disappearing into it.

  Quite literally—because as Billie watched, the blaze of the Void rift behind began to distort, wispy trails of energy lazily curling off the edges before being drawn down toward the shapeless mass of the Void Shadow. Within moments, the trails had become thick, bright tendrils of smoky energy, and the entire glowing form of the rift began to be drawn in toward the Shadow.

  Billie felt the drag too—on the Sliver, on her arm. She tried to turn her head away, but it felt like the Eye of the Dead God was going to be sucked from its socket, while her arm was pulled with steadily growing force toward the altar as the Void Shadow absorbed everything connected to the Void.

  Including Billie.

  She fought it with all her strength, but she was weakening. She slid across the floor, dragged by the gravity of the black whirlpool, and only just managed to grab the edge of one of the free-standing tombs to arrest her progress. She pulled with her human hand, trying to fight the pull of the Shadow, but knew she couldn’t last for very much longer.

  That was when she felt the hands under her armpits, and the weight of someone pulling her away. She slid back, and managed to get enough leverage to angle her boot up against the end of the tomb and push with all her might. Together with the hands helping her, she dragged herself away from the rift, back toward the door. She craned her neck up, and watched as Severin gritted his teeth and heaved, like her, using his feet against the sides of the tombs as the pair slowly pulled themselves back across the floor.

  The howling wind picked up, blowing the arcane ash around the crypt in a great tumult, and as Billie managed to crawl another six inches back with Severin’s help, there was a deep rumbling that shook the floor under them. There was a sudden slackening of the power pulling her toward the rift, and she and Severin collapsed together by the foot of one of the other tombs. She glanced at him
, but he was staring in horror over her shoulder. She turned to see.

  The Void Shadow was starting to rise, but it was no longer an insubstantial creature of dust and smoke. The thing had merged with the black stone of the altar, its body now a sharp, almost metallic collection of geometric shapes, its whole being composed of black cubic crystals. Behind it, the Void rift continued to power into the monstrous form, silhouetting the creature in a burning halo of red energy. Framed against the bright light, it lifted its rocky arms into the air and roared, the sound like a collapsing mountain.

  “Now I must feed!”

  With a blinding flash, the rift exploded, bringing down part of the crypt’s ceiling, a giant wedge of masonry and stone that crashed down onto the tomb in front of Billie. Ears ringing, vision clouded by dust and the smeary afterimage of the flash, Billie scrambled back as fragmented brickwork and alabaster showered across the chamber as the tomb was shattered. Then there was another crash; looking over her shoulder, she saw the single door to the crypt was now likewise blocked by huge chunks of debris cast down by the disintegrating ceiling.

  Then, nothing.

  As her hearing came back to her, Billie realized that the crypt was quiet. The roar of the Shadow was gone, as was the aura of the Void as seen by the Sliver. There was no pull on any part of her body as she lay on her side, against the huddled form of Severin.

  Billie pushed herself to her feet. The rift was gone—along with the Shadow. Somehow, a couple of the whale oil lamps that lined the crypt’s parade of archways had stayed alight, and the whole chamber was cast in a dull, flickering flamelight. Turning on her heel, Billie’s fears were confirmed. The ceiling had come down over the door.

  They were trapped.

  At her feet, Severin moaned and rolled onto his other side. Billie reached down and grabbed him by the front of his tunic. She lifted him bodily into the air, then shoved him against the angled slab of ceiling masonry that covered the door. He yelled out in fright and pain, his eyes wide behind his cracked glasses, his thin red hair a messed-up halo around his head.

  Billie pulled on his tunic, pulling him toward her. She snarled in his face.

  “You’re going to tell me everything about the Leviathan Causeway and the King’s experiment, and you’re going to tell me now.”

  28

  CRYPT OF THE HOUSE OF THE FOURTH CHAIR, THE VOID HOLLOW

  Date unknown, Month of Darkness, 1853

  “Please,” said Severin, struggling to maintain his calm, monotonous tone, “there is no need for violence.”

  Billie snarled again and pushed Severin back against the slab. He coughed as the air was knocked out of his lungs, then he whooped a great breath of dust-filled air as Billie dragged him back to her face again.

  “Whatever that Shadow has become,” whispered Billie, “we need to stop it. And if we’re going to stand any chance of doing that, then I need to know what’s going on and what I’m up against. If you want to get out of here alive, I suggest you start talking.”

  Severin looked up into Billie’s face, then he glanced down and made an effort to clear his throat. Billie released her grip on his jacket, and he fell back against the slab again. He winced, then ran his fingers through his hair, trying to get it back under control. Billie watched, but he was taking too long, so she slapped him across his face, sending his glasses askew. Severin nodded furiously and held up a hand.

  Billie stepped back and folded her arms, as Severin readjusted his broken glasses and took a breath.

  “It was after the… changes… that it started,” said Severin. “You must know about the dreams and the night terrors. It seemed like almost everyone had them. The Queen was very badly affected. The King tried to find a way of helping her. He is—was—a natural philosopher, but one more interested in the mechanisms of magic than the workings of the natural order. A heresy, I know. But he began experimenting with artifacts to try to cure the Queen’s affliction—he acquired part of the collection of a man called Norcross. Thousands of artifacts, far too many for him to study on his own. So he called in my organization, asked me to apply my knowledge of engineering to the problem of magic.” Severin shrugged. “I had been petitioning the Queen and King to pursue the causeway project for years. The King had taken a particular interest, and had visited my laboratories and workshops. He knew what my company was capable of. As well as engineers, I employed the finest natural philosophers outside of the Academy. So when he needed to conduct a large-scale study of the artifacts, naturally he came to me.”

  “Naturally,” hissed Billie.

  “It worked, for a time. Or it appeared to, anyway. The Queen seemed cured, but there was something different about her. We didn’t know it at the time, what that change would lead to, but in the meantime the King had us continue our work. In exchange for their patronage of the causeway project, we continued to study the artifacts. We soon learned that some of them—the runes and bone charms—had changed, somehow. As our work continued, we discovered that the nature of magic itself had altered. We didn’t know how or why, but it went some way towards explaining what had happened to the Abbey of the Everyman and the Sisters of the Oracular Order.

  “It was then that the Void rifts began to appear. That was fortunate for us, as we had the tools to study them. That was how we discovered this place, the Void hollow, and learned how to enter and leave it using altered runes.”

  “And here you found the last physical connection to the Void itself, which you turned into a mine.”

  Severin managed a weak smile. “Indeed. Our instrumentation also told us that the connection was tenuous at best, and would eventually collapse. The cavern was already unstable—the Void was disintegrating, literally. I sent engineers in to take samples, to analyze the Void stone. It was in the course of those experiments that we discovered the properties of it when combusted. We reported this to the King, and suddenly the causeway project was turned into something else entirely.”

  Billie began to pace the crypt. “The Leviathan Causeway was a civil project,” she said. “The start of a new type of rail network, able to link all parts of the Empire with fast travel routes.”

  Severin nodded. “Controlled by Morley, thus giving this country ultimate control over the entire economy of the Empire. It would have shifted the balance of power from Dunwall to Wynnedown. That has long been an aim of Morley.”

  “Except the King had you turn it into a war project.”

  “Yes,” said Severin. “The Void stone is volatile. We call it voidrite. It can be used as a fuel source, not only providing exceptional power, but also allowing the engine it drives to negate the effects of gravity.”

  “Allowing you to build machines that can fly.”

  “Quite so.” Severin adjusted his glasses again. “And the Void hollow provided the perfect staging ground. Here the King could build up his army, while work on the causeway continued. The King had me adjust the design of the causeway, turning it into a launch platform for a fleet of aerial war machines. Once we had built enough, we were to send them along the causeway, through the rift at Alba. Within hours, Morley would have taken control of Gristol. The rest of the Empire would have fallen in days. There is nothing else in the Isles that could counter our aerial supremacy.”

  Billie looked down at her feet as she paced, deep in thought. “Control the skies—”

  “—control the world. Indeed.”

  Billie paused, then shook her head. “So what about the King’s experiment? You said he used artifacts your company had adjusted to cure the Queen of her dreams?”

  “Initially, yes…” said Severin. He hesitated.

  Billie frowned at him. “But?”

  Severin sighed. “We found something else in the Void. Another artifact—or the remains of one, anyway. It was—”

  “An altar,” Billie interrupted, staring hard at him. “ The altar. You found the altar on which the Outsider was created.”

  Severin narrowed his eyes. “We found an
altar, yes. Our instrumentation suggested it had a magic of its own. We dragged it out of the mine, and the King had it brought to the House of the Fourth Chair, and said he would make it his personal study. He devoted himself to its study, eventually finding a way to tap at least some of its power. He wanted to use that power to help the war effort. But to do that, he needed a subject for his experimentation.”

  “So he used the Queen.”

  Severin nodded. “By that stage she had learned of his plans, and gathered her own forces against him. The civil war would have lasted more than three days, had the King not used the altar to gain control of her. From there, he continued to use her as the subject for his experiments. He had discovered the altar would allow the manipulation of the Void rifts. They could be used as travel portals, and if there was a way to open new ones, deliberately, then they would become the perfect way to transport troops. How better to conquer Dunwall than to bombard the city from the air with the Void-fueled warships, then march in an occupying army, instantly, through an artificial rift? The King’s forces would be truly unstoppable.”

  Billie stopped her pacing, and turned to face Severin. He flinched under her gaze.

  “But the Queen wasn’t entirely under the King’s control, was she?” Billie asked.

  “I believe that is apparent,” said Severin. “I had suspected as much. She was, effectively, a prisoner of the King, free only when he used the altar to project an astral form of her through the Void. He hadn’t yet found a way of transporting physical objects through the portals.”

  “That was why she had me brought to her,” said Billie. “She was free in the Void, and had learned about me. She thought she could use me to turn the tables on the King, regain control herself.”

  Severin frowned. Billie thought for a moment, then knelt down beside him, and explained how she had discovered that the Shadow of the Queen had learned to use the Void rifts to travel through time, and had been attempting to alter the course of history in her favor.

  Billie left out the fact that the Shadow had been foiled by her future self on a crusade to repair the damage caused to time.