(Daud POV)
Following swiftly after my provocation, a loud noise of glass shattering sounds out, glass shards launching around me.
The shards of glass hit the floor noisily, completely covering up the nearly silent pair of footsteps.
The footsteps of a pissed-off Corvo Attano, coming for MY throat.
Well… I would do the same thing, I'm in his position, wouldn't I?
I knew the moment when I first laid my eyes upon him. On that fateful day when I shoved that sword through the Empress's torso, the moment as I watched a man's world fall apart through his very eyes… he will be the one to put an end to me.
Besides, this is what I want anyway. Useless emotions such as anger impede people, making them slip up. And that's exactly what I'm waiting for.
Corvo charges at me with a speed comparable to my own. He swings, I block. I swing, he blocks.
A pattern that repeats itself constantly in our fight, a fight between equals.
In fact, it feels more than that. Almost like I'm fighting a clone of myself. A doppelgänger is trying to take my place.
SHIIIKKK
CLINGGG
I counter Corvos's diagonal strike, locking my blade around his own and twisting with both my hands, an advantage he lacks.
"Come on now, Corvo! You aren't fighting Lady Boyle now!"
I provoke him, trying to get under his skin as I did as we started our battle. But he doesn't respond anymore, all that anger gone, simmered away.
But I know better. I know it's still there, compressed to the core of Corvo's being like poison in his stomach, just waiting to harm him.
So I keep going, digging deeper into his mind… just waiting for him to explode.
"Come on! Strike as if you mean it, you know I killed her."
His blade flips around high into the air, distracting me briefly as I try to calculate where it would land. Though this only happens for a split second. Still, this is a major slip-up.
After all… a second is all we need.
Looking at Corvo, I instead come face to face with the barrel of a pistol, forced to look inside the darkness of its chambers.
BOOM
I barely react in time. Dodging to the left and hitting his pistol to the right with my hand.
The recoil also contributes slightly, knocking his hand back further with my aid. The gun shop misses by a long shot, hitting a wall metres to the side of me and…. Blowing it apart?
Wow, I need to know who invented that.
I slash my sword at Corvo in a counterattack, but he dodges away with a blink and appears ten feet away. Just in time, actually, in time to catch his sword that was just about to go flying off the edge.
A shame really, would have given me a bigger advantage.
Though I do take advantage of the distance between us and send a couple of bolts at him from my wristbow. Something he can't give back because my so helpful subordinate.
Perhaps the only one left. Well, other than those on missions outside the empire.
In response, the runes on Corvo's strange-looking hand (?) light up, slowing time to a crawl and bringing both of us into the silent world.
"This is who protected the empress? What a joke."
Corvos slowly walks to the side as we come out of the slowed-down world, watching behind that mask as the bolts fly inches away from his neck.
And for a second, we both just stop, looking at each other, bodies primed and ready for violence. But beyond the man's mask, all I feel from him is a hidden rage and… mockery?
Before I even get the chance to process that, I watch as Corvo blinks away from his place. Blinking further and further till he reaches the edge of the broken apartment complex we stand upon, directly opposite me.
Curious, I observe him. Watching as the man bends his body, lowering himself into a running stance.
Then he suddenly launches himself forward,
coming flying straight at my position. He chains multiple blinks in a row, building and building up a terrifying amount of momentum, something I didn't know could happen with the power.
He makes it to me in an instant, stance all ready up, charged for a horizontal strike.
Obviously, I'm not stupid enough to stand there and take the attack like a hero from a child's book. Especially with the advanced form my blink has compared to Corvo's own.
A blink that, when activated, completely freezes time from my perspective. Making it appear like only my brain is trapped inside the frozen world. The rest of my body was trapped outside, along with my victims.
Though… it seems that effect doesn't work on him completely like intended, partially nullified by him. Maybe due to a similar power, one that creates an overlap?
Just as I successfully relocate myself somewhere not about to be blown up by a sword strike with the force of a cannon, I'm not given a single second of time to rest.
He appears to be able to locate me instantly. Even without sight or sound, I'm professional enough that I wouldn't have a problem hiding them. It's like he was using another sense.
One I have no knowledge about.
Corvo twists in on himself, turning his body so suddenly while carrying so much of that force that even from here, metres away, I could hear the creaking and cracking of his bones so clearly.
The back wound I inflicted on the man tears open and widens, bursting apart with a spray of blood just from the strain on his muscles alone.
He spins 420 degrees in a circle, ending the turn with him facing me, blade already leaving his hands, while the force itself creates shockwaves and launches the chunk of metal straight at me.
I of course predicted this and preemptively blinked away, dodging the follow-up by miles… or at least that is what should have happened.
The moment I arrive at my destination, a powerful force sends me flying back to where I came from. I attempt to blink away again… and again and again. But no matter how many times I use it, or how quickly I activate my power, it still doesn't obey my will.
The wind, or perhaps the energy that follows us from this void that powers it, is the one preventing the activation. The concentration of power is so high that it blocks out even my own. How ridiculous is that?
My body roughly hits that floor, sent back to my previous position. I hope, hope that now I'm prone to the ground and not standing, that he would have aimed at what would have been my standing form.
But my hopes are crushed.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
..
…
….
"Haaaaaaaaaah!! haaahaaaahaaa."
Looking around, I find myself somewhere different from the point of impact. Pain exploded all across my body, but mostly condensed to my head, entire back and where a sword nails me to a broken wall.
Corvo is just ahead of me. Strolling over at a cruel, slow pace, just watching me, taking pleasure in the maddening pain he can tell I'm experiencing.
Fuck
I always thought that when my death arrives… I would be okay with it; I would accept its embrace with open arms so that it could end my miserable existence once and for all.
….but I'm not.
Fuck, I'm scared. I really don't want to die.
Almost instinctively, the energy that fuels my powers glides through my body in a familiar hum, travelling to my marked hand and activating an ability before I can even finish the formed thought.
SLASH
But even that attempt is cruelty cut off.. alongside my hand.
His sword was ripped from my gut, cutting my hand off in the same motion.
It's in an instant that I feel the gateway towards my powers shut off completely. All of them. Forcing my body to get slower and weaker constantly with each moment that passes.
It's in the moment of losing my powers that my heart turns hollow. A part of me, something that I've had for decades, has just been ripped apart, taken from me forever.
It's so bad that I don't even acknowledge the physical pain, only the loss of power and grief.
But I know this is all karma. After all, did I not just do the same thing to him?
And yet, I want to live, even if it's just to finish what I started.
"I have one last surprise for you."
My words cause him to pause, his blade already at my neck, cutting into it and drawing a glob of blood.
"I ask for my life."
The moment these words leave my mouth, shock is written all over his body Language. I mean, yeah, completely understandable. I must be the biggest monster in his eyes, in a lot of people's eyes.
But it doesn't end in shock. His whole body starts swaying as if he were lightheaded, and he looks as if he is about to fall over. He only managed to catch himself by using his sword as a cane.
Seeing that maybe, just maybe it would work, I continued begging for my life.
"When I killed your Empress and took her daughter, something broke inside me. Now, I see the design on the back of your hand, the mark of the Outsider himself, and I remember all I've done."
Regret fills me as I reminisce about my life. From a boy, a slum rat who just wanted change, to a cold hearted killed… a blade for hire.
"The years of waiting for the right moment to step forward from an alley and drive a knife between the ribs of some noble. All the money is exchanging hands, from one rich bastard or another. Killing for one of them one year, then being paid to kill him in return the next. Remember bending ot the shrines, listening as the Outsider whispered that I was going to change things, that I was somehow important."
And you and I are so similar to each other, aren't we, Corvo?
So eerily similar that I would have thought you were my own brat if I actually spent time not shoving my blade into someone's neck and started settling down.
Though perhaps we are related? We are from the same place after all.
"It felt good, felt amazing to feel so powerful. To have all that power come so easily, so fast. And it made me believe I truly was powerful and not the pawn I really was."
…
"But what have I accomplished? More than you have, or less."
It's only now that I lie here, in the ruins of a broken empire, the debris of all I have built, that I allow myself to let go and stop thinking… just feel.
Allowing emotions I haven't allowed myself to feel for so long to pour out of me, to be released and relieve myself of this pressure in my heart.
"And now I want nothing but to leave this city. To fade from the memory of those who reside here, I've had enough killing.
…so my life is in your hands."
He lifts me by my neck as soon as I'm finished talking. Lifting me only by his one good hand and bringing me closer to his terrifying mask.
It's as I'm brought so close that I see his eyes hidden inside, trapped in a cage made by others, that I'm able to see his expression.
…Fear.
What do you have to be afraid of, Corvo?
That is something I would want to ask the man, the only person in the forsaken world that could understand me.
But I'm not given the chance.
He lets go.
For a single moment, I think he's sparing me.
Then he throws.
The world disappears into darkness beneath me. Wind tears past my face. The broken city rushes up to meet me.
Cold.
Dark.
Silence.
——
Word count; 2,081
A/n: apologies for the inconsistent realise schedule. We are reaching the end of the volume and I have been struggling to put my ideas into words. That along with the fact tha work has been busy and that I have my driving theory test soon😫.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.👋