Emily Kaldwin, Empress of The Isles, and ten year old girl, lay on the floor of her room, drawing with oil pastels. She was doodling things from her imagination, and things she had seen in books: whaling ships on the hunt, the Dunwall lighthouse, her favorite doll. There was still one corner of the page she hadn't used yet. She looked at her rack of pastels, performing the serious work of wondering what she should draw next. After a few minutes of careful deliberation, she was suddenly struck with inspiration: She would draw a pony. Her hands dragged the pastels across the paper with dexterity that surprised Emily herself, and within a minute she had drawn it, and leaned in to examine her work.
She had absolutely no idea why she had chosen purple, of all colours, to draw a pony. The isles didn't have many equine creatures, but ponies were brown, like dogs and cats, weren't they?
“Maybe ponies aren't purple, but what if…?”
In another flash of inspiration, she drew a narwhal horn onto the head of her pony. Something about it seemed… familiar, somehow. She decided to go see if she had seen it in a book somewhere.
She was still reading when Callista came in. Callista Curnow, the niece of Geoff Curnow, the captain of the city watch. She had cared for young Emily when her mother had been killed and usurped by the Royal Spymaster. Back when they still had to hide from the corrupt authorities. Back when Corvo was still slitting throats to meet the goals of The Loyalists.
“Bedtime, Emily.” Callista said to her in a quiet voice, “An empress needs her sleep.”
Emily sighed, “Okay, fine. Can I wish Corvo good night?”
“I’m not sure, he’s very busy…” Callista trailed off, it was pointless to try and contradict Emily, she could be very wilful at times.
“He’s probably bored sick, listening to the captains droning on about strategies.” Emily reasoned, “He’s a better soldier than an officer.”
Callista furrowed her brow. Emily seemed so innocent most of the time, and then the young empress would suddenly surprise her by saying something so mature and insightful. Callista agreed to let Emily find Corvo. The Watch Officers wearing steel plate masks outside of Emily’s room fell into step behind the empress as she made her way toward the tactician’s room, their boots thumping against the ceramic tiles in perfect unison. Emily could hear the strategists debating with each other as she approached.
“I still think we should make a push for Clavering Boulevard.”
“You know why we can’t do that, Captain Curnow, Holger’s Square is literally less than a block away; the Overseers will butcher anyone sent up there.”
“We have a unit of Tallboys-”
“-Stilt-Walkers-”
“-Of course, ‘stilt-walkers’, on Redmoor Road that can support any play we make for Clavering. Bottle Street runs pretty much directly under the boulevard, anyways. I’m sure Slackjaw’s boys-”
“Are you really considering placing the lives of your men in the hands of those inbred thugs and criminals?”
"They're tougher than they let on, Calhoun. A lot of those 'thugs and criminals' are ex-watchmen."
“Huh, that must be why I have such trouble telling you apart.”
There was the sound of a fist thumping against a table.
“I’d like to see you do better, you arrogant son of a-”
"Geoff!" This sudden call came from Corvo, who motioned to the entrance with a nod of his head.
The attention in the room moved to the open wall of the room, where Emily was standing off to one side. Geoff, who had sprung up from his chair during the argument, slowly eased himself back into his seat with a sheepish look on his face, as if to say ‘Oh, was I about to of punch the lights out of the rat-bastard across the table? Fancy that.’
The tension in the room was running high, but there was something about Emily. Standing pidgeon-toed, slightly off to one side of the entrance, in her white gown, rubbing the sleepiness out of one of her eyes, she was an epitome of innocence. The men assembled around the table were irritated, demoralised, and yet their hearts collectively melted on catching sight of her. Corvo glanced around at the faces of the other tacticians, many of them had daughters, sisters, sons of their own; people who they were fighting to protect. Corvo knew the look he saw in their eyes: the simple, yet non-negotiable knowledge that they would do everything in their power to preserve the young, fragile creature before them. Be it lay down their lives, or take the lives of any who threatened her.
One of the guards flanking the young empress cleared his throat.
“The Empress has requested a private audience with the Lord Protector.” He announced in an official tone.
Corvo smiled, and rose from his chair, glad to be away from the bickering officers.
***
There were many rumors flitting like bees among the officers and lower guardsmen of the watch, nothing could make a day interesting like a good, juicy rumor. The guardsmen had malicious, brutish lifestyles, and as such most of their rumors acted as such. Yet there was one speculation that broke away from the usual whispers, most of which were an implication, passed down from a scullery maid to a passing watchman who heard it from his cousin's brother. It was much more simpler than that.
Could it be, the guards pondered, that Corvo is Emily's father?
Corvo himself knew the answer to that, and he intended to take it to his grave. He had long since learned that secrets tend to be like the bottles of whale oil that had revolutionized technology in Dunwall: Harmless if you leave it alone, but you had best handle it with the utmost care, if at all, lest you cause it to explode.
Regardless of any connection by blood the Lord Protector had to the child Empress, he was about as close to a parent as she had left, and he intended to fill the role to the best of his abilities.
Outside the bastion of Dunwall Tower, atrocities were being committed. In some buildings, Weepers- advanced plague victims, were no doubt staggering about, the plague controlling their brains and directing them toward the healthy, with the intent of spreading the disease. Tallboys would be wading through the normally chest-high waters of the Flooded district, their stilts allowing them to move through the collapsed ruins and high waters with relative ease as they attempted to sight out the remnants of Daud's Whaler Assassins with their compound bows. But for now, for this one, serene moment, he could believe that there was peace in the world, as he tucked Emily in and read her a few pages from 'The Gaffer's Tale'. Eventually wishing her a good night before exiting. He nodded to the two elite watch officers standing on either side of the entrance wearing steel face-masks seamlessly fitting under their low-brimmed helmets, who snapped out a salute in unison. The Empress Emily would rest without disturbance tonight.
Without disturbance from any physical source, at least.
***
Emily felt herself waking up, but with that sort of warm fuzziness surrounding her that suggested she was dreaming. She looked about, to find herself sitting in her own room, which dropped away into nothingness a few feet away from the foot of her bed. She remembered this dream, it was no dream to her, but a nightmare.
She remembered it when Corvo had rescued her from where she was being held captive and delivered her to the safehosue of The Hound Pits Pub. Soon after, she had found an artifact half-buried in the mud near the river, a flat whalebone, with an interesting design cut into the surface of it. She had kept it under her pillow as she slept, and it had taken her to this same place where she was now. A wind blew through, and she shivered, she decided to crawl back into her bed, and wait until she woke up. Then he appeared again: The man in the brown jacket, as she had called him. When she had first seen him, he had merely stared at her with his deep black eyes. This time, to her horror, he spoke to her.
"Hello, Emily."
That wasn't so bad, Emily thought. Her imagination had devised all sorts of strange, scary and creepy voices that would fit this strange man, but his voice sounded relatively normal.
"You can trust me." The Outsider informed her, "Corvo knows me quite well, although I doubt he would pleased if he knew we spoke."
He leaned forward slightly, "I'll need you to do something for me, Emily."
Emily said nothing, she assumed that she didn't have much of a choice in the matter.
The scenery changed, and they were suddenly situated in the workshop of Piero Joplin. Emily had seen him around a bit when she was at The Hound Pits Pub, Corvo talked to him a lot. Since her coronation, Piero had been given his own workshop in Dunwall Tower. Not that he acted bitter, but the inventor tended to mind his own business, and Emily generally found that if someone liked being left alone, it was a good idea to just leave them alone. Besides, there was a permanent, acidic stench of whale oil permeating from his workshop at all hours of the day. Him and the Tyvian Philosopher, Anton Sokolov, had been responsible for creating the cure for the plague. She saw Piero, curled up a little ways from his desk, he had folded up his jacket into a makeshift pillow, and was sleeping on it, assumably so he wouldn't have to go far from his desk.
"Piero, the scholar," The Outsider gestured to the snoring inventor at his feet, "he seeks a way to unlock the secret of long-distance travel in the blink of an eye, to transcend the temporal and secular boundaries of existence."
The haze shifted slightly, to reveal Piero's "Door to Nowhere". His workshop in The Hound Pits Pub had a similar project. Piero had been looking into a way to achieve what he had called 'teleportation'. Emily hadn't seen the logic behind the bricked-off door, with the black circle painted into it. A similarly structured doorway was located in his new workshop, but now there was a panoply of machinery centred around it.
"He believes that through mathematics, he can turn the lifeless brick and stone into a bridge with the pull of a lever. And we are going to help him."
The Outsider paused, making sure Emily was listening.
"Tonight, you will sneak from your bedchambers, and enter Piero's workshop. Write my mark onto the stone, and activate Piero's machine. Your guardsmen will not notice you. All will become clear once you do this."
***
Emily woke up, and sat bolt upright. She took an unsteady breath, and had a soreness in the back of her head. She tried to tell herself it was just a bad dream, and tried to fluff out her pillow. She heard something crinkling inside of the pillowcase. Intrigued, she pulled off the pillowcase, and found a small piece of paper, written on it was that accursed insignia.
Emily gulped, trying to keep herself from screaming. It wouldn't do to have it known that the Empress suffered from night terrors- even if the guards believed her about the dream, it wouldn't do either to have it known that she was cursed by the Outsider. Instead, she went to her pastel rack, and gingerly plucked the black pastel from it's place. She went to her door, and timidly pushed it open. True to the Outsider's words, the guards were still standing vigilant, but they seemed not to notice, almost as if they were in a dreamlike state themselves. The young empress took one last glance at her bedchamber, and left for Piero's workshop.