As Above

Chapter Five: Bathed in Poison

Saying goodbye to Corvo hurt. Quite a bit, if she was being honest. Even then, she said her farewells with all the usual politeness and courtesy that she had to show, being the Empress but on the inside... If Jameson hadn't been by her side, she would have broken into tears. Instead, she put her best face forward and had done nothing as her only ally left in Dunwall left on a boat, leaving her to fend for herself.

It could be said that she was surrounded by people who trusted her, who put their support in her, but that was not true. The nobles of Dunwall did not care who was on the throne as long as they remained in power. They did not come this far by putting someone else's power before their own. No, Emily could not trust her advisors, nor could she trust the people who had sworn to be her allies. She ruled a court of vipers, dancing above their snapping jaws on a tightrope. A single misstep, and they would strike.

Suffice to say, she most certainly could not trust them.

As Jameson ran through her schedule, she couldn't help but long for Alexi Mayhew. Her death had hit her the hardest but that tended to occur when you watched one of your closest friends die in front of you. Especially if she'd died because she supported you as Empress of the Isles. It had taken every single moral bone in Emily's body to trap Delilah within her own painting rather than killing her outright, and in the end she hadn't done it in the name of justice. She had done it in the name of her mother.

Jessamine Kaldwin, who had once loved Delilah as the sister she truly was.

Jessamine Kaldwin who regretted what she had done to Delilah, and wanted to make it right.

Jessamine Kaldwin who swore to never take a life if it was not necessary, and even then... Even then, she would rather die than raise her hand against her own people.

She'd never—always—done the right thing but she had tried, and that was the legacy Emily wanted to live up to. She wanted to say that she had tried, even if the final result was worse than the start. Even if things were worse than she could have ever imagined, she wanted the world to know that Emily Kaldwin had tried.

Emily endured a day of meetings without complaint. She endured listening to countless nobles drone on about their petty, childish problems. Did it truly matter if Esma Boyle had inadvertently insulted a visiting diplomat from Tyvia when the Void threatened to devour them all? Some part of her said that they knew about their dire situation. They knew that the ice they danced on—threw lavish parties on—was starting to crack but to acknowledge the threat would require them to put an end to their lifestyle. To acknowledge their threat, they would have to look up from their pocketbooks. She endured Jameson's company when her father should have been there—he really did mean well, and they were close but she was already starting to miss Corvo—and endured her lecture from Corvo's substitute Spymaster, Barnes Donnegan, regarding the rationing, and never once did she complain.

She did what Dunwall would have to do in the coming days. She put her best face forward, and endured, all the while knowing that someone was watching very closely.

Her suspicions came true when Jameson finally gave her a moment's peace, despite very clearly not wanting to have the Empress die on his watch. He'd settled for allowing Emily onto a private balcony with glass doors where he could watch for any signs of trouble while giving her the illusion of solitude. The door had only just closed on Jameson when the entire world stopped.

She relished the feeling of the Void taking over her surroundings, was all but ecstatic when she opened her eyes and Dunwall's skyline had been replaced by countless islands of slate the colour of charcoal. Then, before she could do anything, the island she sat upon broke in two. It began as a small fracture that she had not noticed, and in the next, her world had begun to tilt. It was as though the bottom of the island was made of some sort of fabric as the stone did not simply break then fall below, rather it remained connected, a web of black smoke connecting the two parts. A web of black smoke that was quickly being torn in two.