The Time: The early 26th Century. The Festival of Jul - Christmas - is nigh. The people are congregating in the old/new traditions.
The Place: The land of Heer, in what was once western Norway, a bit north of the now-flooded port of Bergen.
A visitor to Heer has arrived, a land that does not like visitors, for they always come from the south. For in Heerish lore, south's an inauspicious direction: It's where Hell lies.
This visitor is not like the others. He brings earnest gifts, and hopes for only one thing, the one thing his native empire can't give, won't give, won't ever allow him: freedom.
He's hoping to participate in the exchange of gifts. And he will.
He's hoping to meet nice people and make new friends. He does.
He's hoping to save them from the horror that stalks them all.
His results are...inconclusive. And here we go.
In the 167th Year of the Ash, the people of Heer had gathered to give prayers to the gods, honor to the king and his lords and stave off the fear of the slow, meticulous horror that stalked them all.
Huginn the Hunter approaches the large village, a well-fashioned mix of high wood and stone halls that, if one overlooked the holographic emitter lamps singing carols to the gathering Heerfolk, one might mistake for a Viking town of the 11th Century.
The presence of yaks as draft animals in Scandinavia would be odd twice over. Yet they are here, Huginn thinks, patting a shaggy flank with his right gloved hand as he passes one of the beasts. A good thing, as they exist no place else on Earth now.
The yak's owner, a dark-eyed, dark-bearded man, eyes Huginn. "God Jul," he greets.
"God Jul och Gott Nytt År," Huginn replies with a grin. He is a stranger to Meland, on the western shore of Heer. And he had come from the south, an inauspicious direction.
The yak driver relaxes and smiles in return.
Why wouldn't he? It's Christmas Eve; everyone's family tonight. Though the customs have reverted somewhat, the hunter adds as he rounds a corner and the Festplassen, an assemblage of high-peaked tents , comes into sight.
Huginn's turn draws him into a cross traffic of citizens. He is swept along by chattering attendees hugging baskets of bread, hefting coolers of meat and balancing small kegs of beer on their shoulders. And they'd be drinking mead, if bees still existed in the wild. That, of course isn't so.
"Where is your feast offering, sir?" a young girl, perched on her father's neck, asks. She emphasizes her question with the point of a toasted bread stick.
Huggin smiles, gathering his thoughts. I'm not carrying food. However, I'm not empty handed. He reaches into a right side pocket and produces a trio of ultracapacitor packets. "I'm offering one of these to the Yule, the other to the Lord of Meland and..." he catches the eye of the girl's father "looking for a man interested in making a trade."
"Keep your batteries," the man replies, his eyes on Huginn's jacket. His left hand falls to a conspicuous fray on the hem of his own coat.
"I've another coat in my pack," Huginn offers, slowing down a half step to gauge the man's interest. "Never worn."
The man slows as well, though the moving crowd's collective irritation spikes briefly as it adjusts to move around the now-still men. "Why would you have two coats?"
"I'm a hunter, sir. It wouldn't do to lose a coat to accident or theft and be left in the cold." Huginn introduces himself and learns his counterpart is Berchtold and his daughter Brita. He drops his pack and drops to one knee. He sets a hand to the pack before opening it.
"Were you praying just then?" Brita asks through the last crumbs of her bread stick.
She's an observant one. Huginn reaches into his bag and pulls out a coat, exactly like the one he wears, only it is new. "It's a magic pack," he answers Brita teasingly. "Your coat, sir."
Berchtold takes the coat, hefting its weight. "It's light." He sniffs the cloth. "It smells like copper..." he pauses. "Are these knitlike fasteners... oh, what's the word?
glidelåser?"
Zippers, Huginn translates to himself. "They are." He demonstrates the sliding and fastening process on his own coat. "It's very secure and easy to manage once you get the hang of it."
Brita fingers the zipper hooks thoughtfully. "The weak link is the fabric to which the metal is attached father. It stretches and warps over time and eventually the glider clamp starts to stick. It's why..." the girl pauses "zippers fell out of use before the Ash and why buttons and hooks still around."
Huginn reassesses the danger in which he's placed himself. These two are not just observant but educated. I should get away from them promptly. "Young Brita is correct; this coat isn't suitable for trade. Please accept it as a gift and God Jul to you both."
"Takk, and nonsense! If we won't trade custom we'll trade gifts. I'll share in our offerings, Huginn, for the price of your company."
"You want in," Brita says. "You've come to make a toast before the people."
How do you know that? Huginn almost blurts out. Yet he knows the answer. "You're a reader," he says.
"Not at all," Brita replies. "Mother's a reader. I am a hyper."
Even worse luck - a hyper intellect. Huginn has means to thwart the memory reading and altering talents of readers. He cannot deceive the AI-level homunculus perched on her father's necks, only divert it. "You know who I am."
"You introduced yourself honestly, Huginn the Hunter. Father," Brita prompts.
Huginn's right arm is suddenly grasped by Berthold. Brita steadies herself on her father's shoulders as the hunter struggles to free himself. I have the strength of 10 men and I cannot budge at all!
"Father's a physical adept," Brita explains through a squeaky yawn. "You're wasting your time, Hunter." She leans down. "Relax, we're taking you to do your errand."
I can't let the printer pack fall into Heerfolk hands. Huginn begins to thoughtlink a self-destruct message...and then blanks out.
"Sorry I was late, loves," Herta the Reader apologizes, her right hand still at Huginn's neck. She peers around at the dumb look on the visitor from the south. "Our first visitor from the New Empire in twenty years. He's a scruffy one. And far older than he appears."
"He's nice," Brita says. "Don't wipe his memories."
"Please, child," Herta replies. "This is not some nice man with a Yule toast for our good fortune...." she pauses and blinks. "Then again..."
"What is it?" Berthold asks, setting Brita down to the ground.
"He's not like the others. He's not come to image and upload us into the Consortium. He brings gifts."
"Beware of Greeks bearing such things," Berthold grumbles. He releases Huginn's arm; Herta's control over the intruder is far more secure. "The policy is read and wipe the minds of any Imperial. That will tell us more than anything."
Herta cuts off her husband with a curt nod. "I dare do nothing more than surface readings. He carries the Gelding Meme." She shudders. "It's a risk just to touch him!"
"What is this danger?"
"It's a contagious cognitive application - it can permanently disable special talents like ours. Something the Chinese invented when the first post-humans appeared, but it was lost. Something the Empire's brought back to protect its people..."
"...and to destroy its enemies."
"We are too small to count as such," Brita adds. "He's not here to hurt, Mother."
"How can you know this? You are not an oracle."
"I can model human behavior with 99.9999868 percent accuracy," Brita folds her arms and smirks. "You're already given in."
Herta sniffs. "I'll play the game with you: What's this man going to say in his toast, if you can predict him so exactly."
Brita blinks and coughs and looks down. "He's not entirely human. And his message is entirely nonhuman in content." She looks up apologetically. "I don't know?"
"Perhaps the Three can determine more," Berthold suggests.
"So be it," Herta replies, guiding Huginn along by the left elbow. "The oracles are in the Festplassen already."
It takes the better part of half an hour to wend through the crowd, past the intensely curious guards posted at the main entry to the feasting tents. There is no rush; Huginn is going nowhere so long as contact is maintained.
Herta's forehead beads with anxious perspiration as she stands with the foreign man, awaiting audience. Berthold trades rhyming verses with Brita at a swift pace. He says a word, she finishes the verses.
If the Gelding Meme strikes, it will happen slowly, and in degrees. With luck, I will only lose some but not all my reading talent. Without it... I cannot bear to think of it! When a person's talent was exhausted, it was exhausted for good and with it their consciousness. The body lingered but in a demented and vegetative state called Diminishment.
"Bring him forth," the Three Norns of Heer command in unison. Herta obliges, her anxiety instantly apparent to the everyone, Norns, minor oracles, soldiers and onlookers alike.
The Norns are the chief of the oracles of Heer. Like all Heerish public officials they are elected, albeit unlike all others their terms are for life. Prophecy cannot be uttered under duress. For the same reason, the Heerfolk tend to elect older women as Norns. Herta agrees with the custom. There's more turnover that way.
"He has the Diminisher weapon in his mind," the Veroandi, the Norn of Present, informs.
"In some worlds, he's done his harm with it," the Uror, the Norn of Past adds.
"He will do no such thing, unless slain," the Skuld, the Norn of Future, finishes. "Release him, daughter Herta. His errand is true."
"Where is the bag of tricks?" the Veroandi asks.
"Here, Lady Norn," Berthold speaks up, and hefts Huginn's sack.
"Set it by our guest," the Skuld says. "He will need it."
Herta glances to her right. "Should I rouse him, Lady Norns?"
Huginn stirs. "There is no need, Reader," he says. "I really hate it when you people get the drop on me."
"One would imagine," Herta replies uncertainly in response to the peculiar idiom.
"State your name, Huginn the Hunter," Uror demands.
"Huginn, or Raven in the old speech," Veroandi comments.
"Yet who is not Raven in any speech," Skuld concludes. "Yet something close..."
"Corvo," the man answers. "Major Darius Corvo, of the Imperial Corps of Medical Technicians." He brings up his palms, fingers of one hand over the other, to chin level. "Salve, Great Norns of the Heerfolk, truest sighted of all free peoples of the world."
"Only of the free?" Herta blurts out. "You insult the Norns!"
"Not at all," Uror corrects. "Only one is farther sighted."
"The Imperial Oracle," Veroandi replies. "And she is not free, either of imprisonment or of insanity."
"Which is why you are here, isn't it Major Corvo of the New Empire?" Skuld concludes.
"But you will have to trade us more than a new coat for what you seek."
"Truth," Corvo answers. "Then let's not trade." He gestures toward his printer pack. "If I may begin my deliveries?"
"Proceed," Uror allows. She turns to an aide. "Order the feast to commence - and bring refreshment for all present here. This will take a while."
Corvo grins and falls to one knee. Again he sets his hands to the pack. "Who wants to go first?"
The room falls silent. The people present look dumbly at one another. The Norns hide their smiles and trade knowing glances at one another.
Small bootsteps pad over to the visitor from the south. "Huginn," Brita says.
"That's not my name but you probably figured that out before anyone."
"I did," the young Heer girl admits proudly. "I memorized late 21st Century history, along with the rest of us that we have. I saw you - different face, one with lots of scars, but you were there. That was half a millennium ago and yet you are still alive."
"I was, and am." Corvo frowns. "It's less of a blessing than you might think." He blinks an shakes off the dark humor. "As for presents..."
Brita sets her hands atop Corvo's right.
"Brita!" her mother objects. "Don't touch him!"
"I am fine, Mother. The Norns say we are safe so long as the Hunter is safe. I was just getting my present." She backs away from the soldier, grinning. "There's so much data in you! And now I have it! I'm going to have so much fun inventing and dreaming this year!" Brita runs off.
"Brita! Wait! Don't we need to test her for memetic contamination?"
"She'd be the one we'd call to deal with it," Uror answers. "She has the best gift any such girl could ask for."
"News of the outside world, backdated 374 years," Veroandi marvels. "He carries it all with him, a dedicated archive, isolated from the datasphere."
"Including how to make more of these marvelous cornucopias!" Skuld exclaims.
"Oh, good point," Corvo answers, standing up. "In that case, I suppose between what little Brita knows now and this prototype, then we can perhaps move on to eating? I've been on the road a while and I'm famished."
Thus it came to pass that the people of Heer received, free of any return favor or obligation, half a millennium's worth of intelligence on a vastly larger enemy and the means to almost instantly build up a modern mid-Third Millennium industry. News spread of the wonders through the Festplassen, and of the stranger bringing such gifts.
And the Heerfolk wanted nothing of it, save the option to use it in dire need. For they had seen with their eyes and experiences the danger of excess. Corvo had then asks the Norns why.
"A people can be destroyed by plenty as surely as by poison," Uror answers. "The old world was destroyed because one became interchangeable with the other. And when poison and plenty are the same, the people change from the inside out."
"It's said this is why the talents first appeared, along with the horrible pandemics. Along with the ecological devastation and the mass extinctions of the early millennium," Veroandi continues.
"Were that not enough, the chaos and warfare caused by the advent of these abilities almost destroyed the world yet again," Skuld finishes. "We in Heer spent centuries healing the land as best we could - and learning to mend ourselves as a society continues to this day. That task might take thousands of years."
"It is the same in the Empire, all illusions of paradise to the contrary," Corvo answers solemnly. "Then my gifts are rejected. I accept that wisdom."
"Major - are they your gifts, or those of the Empress?" Herta asks.
"Mine, and yet not mine. They're thefts," Corvo answers brashly. "I stole them."
"I told you he was a nice man!" An unseen Brita calls out from the distance.
"You seek asylum?" Berthold asks, clasping his wife Herta's hand. "I've never heard of such a thing being asked!"
"Nor offered, nor can it be, Major Corvo!" Uror says. "Heer is ignored, so long as we stay hunkered down in our fjords."
"And harbor no wanderers from the south, be they refugee or spy," Veroandi adds.
"He knows this. He always knew." Skuld stands and steps slowly toward the soldier. "You tired, weary thing. How old are you?"
"I was born in the year 2050."
"The year of the War of Holies... two years before the Anima Plague struck and the Quarantine thrown down on the tropics."
"Yes, Lady Norn. I was there when the New Empire was born. I was there when the false dawn could be... mistaken for the onset of a golden age."
"You were there when Atlantis was rising, before its fall into darkness," Veroandi, also standing, whispers loudly.
"Five hundred years is a long time to be bitter," Corvo's voice cracks. "I thought I would... I thought I could wait until the Lady of Stars returned..."
"The Lady of Stars!" many voices repeat. The phrase is but legend to the Heerfolk.
"Princess Astrida was her name," Brita says. "The youngest of the Seven Sisters of Atlantis. She left in the Golden Swan for the stars."
"The myths say when she returns, the world will be free," Skuld muses. "This time of return must be many centuries yet to come, for none in Heer can foresee!"
"Only one can, and has, who lives. I will need a means to still the Oracle's mind long enough to peer into the deep future. This is the one gift I seek: How your people stave off the Diminishment madness."
"You expect to leave here with such knowledge?" Berthold growls. "You'll never leave here, sir!"
"He doesn't expect to do so," Uror speaks.
"He knows his fate," Veroandi sighs. "It's why he's here; he said so already."
"This isn't a gift so much as a ransom for our continued existence," Skuld realizes.
"Yes," Corvo answers. "I've given you information and means to become strong in your homes, yet not strong enough to threaten the Empire. You will not be given time to implement these gifts unless the Empress receives her prize."
"What an odd play!" Berthold shouts. "She could have destroyed us all along, why are we here at all?"
"Insurance," Uror guesses. "We're a different path. A hedge bet. Perhaps we'd come up with something the Empire wouldn't because we think differently."
"There are other such pockets," Brita speaks up. "It's all in the data I just accessed. We're like the underground habitat arks the Atlanteans built across the world before the Ashfall." Again nearby she looks up at Corvo. "Why'd they stop doing that?"
"The Empress thought it too expensive; she adopted the old Indian method - image and upload, and reconstitute later."
"A practice with which we are familiar," Berthold grumbles again. "People used to go missing often."
"The Medics were taking samples," Brita explains. "We're genetically interesting to the Empress. Extremely interesting. Especially..." she pauses, shaken by a connection made. "It's why we all have jet black eyes."
"Is there another color?" Herta asks.
"People in Scandinavia, before the founding of Heer, often had brown eyes like Corvo here - and more often had blue ones."
"Blue eyes!" Berthold guffaws. "Who heard of such a thing?"
"He really does have brown eyes," Uror notes. "Remarkable."
"Corvo knows why the black eyes," Veroandi states.
"Random elements of Princess Astrida's DNA are in all of you - not enough to upset genetic diversity yet sufficient over four centuries to do two things. Make all of your eyes jet black like hers..."
"...and make us more likely to be adepts, especially hyper intellects," Brita says. "The Star Lady was a hyper like me! Which makes me... I don't know. We're not clones."
"You are not," Corvo assures her.
"We're not any more or less human."
"More than me, for sure," the major affirms.
"We're related," Brita says.
"Everyone is, if you go back far enough."
"I meant something else, Major Corvo. We're related to the Star Lady."
"I suppose so." Corvo sits down on his ankles. "Especially really clever girls like you, Brita."
"That's... the nice half of the idea, sir." Brita turns and steps away uncertainly.
Corvo frowns and stand up slowly. "What's... what's wrong?" He gauges the mood of the room. They're all upset. They're shaken to the core.
Then he realizes. Astrida fled to exile in the stars because she feared her intellect becoming enslaved to the Empress.
Her sister, the Empress.
"We're her creatures," Herta says hollowly. "We've been...things in a lab this entire time."
"We can't allow this to continue," Berthold says.
"We can't allow ourselves to continue," Brita. "The Empress cannot regain in us what she lost when the Star Lady fled."
No, no... this isn't how it was supposed to go... "What are you saying?" Corvo asks.
"The Empress will not get her ransom, because her threat means nothing," Uror explains as she files out. "We are the prize; we were all along. You were sent to confirm it was ready for her collection. Everyone in this room! Spread the word to the people: Skumring. Now, before the Furies come!"
Corvo falls to his knees. Screwed again. The bitch did it again...
A black and gold storm flares up right before the major. People run screaming from the Norns' audience chamber.
Out steps Anima, first of the Furies and their captain. "Salve, Darius," the gold eyed half-material, half-energy being salutes mockingly. "Good boy, scenting out the game."
Two other flashes appear in the distance. Two more of the Furies.
"We come for only three of you!" Anima's thunderous voice cries out. "The rest of you, stay clear of us, or perish!"
No, not them....
Anima smirks. "You could not have done better if you had tried. You found just the one the Empress wants - and her parents!"
"Played, so utterly played..." Corvo moans.
"Oh, don't sulk. I'm sure your Goddess will richly reward you." Anima touches her lips thoughtfully. "Or maybe just alter your memories to believe you have been. Now, for my errand..."
A squeal from behind the Norns' bench. Anima wheels around.
"Brita, run!" Corvo is bowled across the floor by a swipe of Anima's arm.
"Desculpa, Major Corvo. I should have thanked you instead" You're just making this more entertaining." Anima teleports out of sight. A flash appears, down the hall where Brita had fled. Another flash, then another, as Anima reappears before Corvo, with Brita under her left arm. "Short sport, alas."
"Set me down!" Brita cries out.
"Silence, brat! My orders are to bring you alive and undamaged. That does not include free of pain." A surge of energy runs through the little girl. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes," Brita sobs. "Don't do that again please."
Anima, satisfied she has obtained the child's compliance turns again to Corvo, now kneeling with his back turned. The Fury laughs. "If you are praying, sir, you are facing the wrong direction. I am over here."
Corvo turns around. As he does he draws a shield sized hexagonal frame out of his printer pack. "I know."
Anima casts Brita aside. "You'll buy yourself minutes. When we return we'll take the girl and her family and slaughter the rest!"
"It's a deal," Corvo replies and snaps the disentangler in half. Anima vanishes.
"Trojan Horse," Brita murmurs. She turns to face the Imperial soldier. "You are a nice man. We all saw it."
Corvo comes over to her, inspecting a nasty gash to her right temple. "Deus, you have been injured...I can heal this..." he turn to his printer pack.
"You could, sir, but it's past that for the Heerfolk. This is not that story with a happy ending...and I know from your history you've seen this before."
"I have," the major shudders, falling back on his haunches, wiping at his face.
"Brita!" Herta screams and runs to her daughter. Berthold limps after, nursing his right arm.
"What happened to you?" Corvo asks.
"My fool super-strong husband tried to fight the blue eyed one," Herta mutters.
"Plantagene," Corvo muses. "You'd have been outmatched even when she was alive."
"Perhaps so," Berthold answers through clinched teeth. "Is that what the Furies are, ghosts?"
"No, but something Astrida made possible before she departed. But there were only five templates made."
"Its what the Empress wants hypers for," Brita realizes. "She wants more Furies."
"Can you do it?" Corvo asks.
"Not yet," Brita answers. "You gave us all the raw knowledge and means to make such things ourselves. And I can feel a memetic virus now - I'm already working on the problem."
"Then stop!" Herta pleads.
"Mother, I can't! I'm reconstituting all of Princess Astrida's research. It's all here along with the historical data."
"You said Trojan Horse earlier, and you meant it." Corvo swears in disgust.
"We don't know Portuguese here but we know the tone of obscenities," Herta scolds. "Not around my daughter."
"Because I know the language," Brita explains.
"You remind me of her," Corvo says.
"Who is that?"
"You really are just like Astrida."
"You knew her?"
"Oh, yes. I was her bodyguard for many years. That was... long before her trip to the stars. She'd moved overseas... back when that meant something."
"That was when the world was more than one country..." Brita recalls from the data.
"...and a few dozen lab rat mazes," Herta adds bitterly.
"So, what now?" Corvo asks. "The Norn said that word: Skumring. What does that mean?"
Herta holds her daughter head gently and sets it on her left thigh. Her hand brushes Brita's fair hair. "Long ago, when people would vanish, we began to give ourselves and our children a....means not to prevent capture but to prevent being taken alive."
"Suicide memes," Brita translates "Mother, it's okay I can hear grown up things."
"It's why we don't have so many Diminishments," Berthold explains. "When a person's time is close they gather with family and friends, make their fond farewells...and cross to the other worlds."
"The Norns teach us that the worlds recycle, each emerging a little later than the last. And all are slightly different," Herta adds. "We go on a million million times...even if all of us will die in moments here."
Corvo falls back on his hands. "No, this is unnecessary..." His shoulders sag. "I lied. It is, I know it is."
Uror, the senior of the Norns, returns. "The word is out, the Wyrd is concluded. When the three flashes return, the word will be Skumring."
"Twilight," Brita says.
Uror hands a long metal beaker to Corvo. "Take this."
"What is it?"
"It's mead - the last we have and perhaps the last such drink the world will ever know. It is our gift to you, Major Corvo."
"You know what gift I sought. Drink is not it..."
"Gift means two gifts when I say it sir."
Corvo accepts the beaker. He sniffs it. "Smells sweet."
"Sweet release from five hundred years of bitterness. Isn't that what you came for?"
"I think I came under that delusion but the Empress had other intentions all along..."
"Your came with true purpose. What I have handed will make your quest real."
A flash from outside. A few seconds later, a thunderclap and the roar of an outraged angel. Corvo hefts the beaker of mead. "That would be the one called Medusa, the disentangler effect is shrinking."
"Then we must be on our way," Uror answers. She turns to kiss Herta on the forehead. "We will go on, daughter."
"I know, Mother."
Two more flashes in the sky, this time closer.
"CORVO....." Anima's roar shakes the building.
"Don't tarry, Major Corvo. You have a place with us when you arrive." Berthold smiles wanly and closes his eyes.
Corvo leaps to his feet. When he regains his balance, he sees everyone's eyes closed.
They're still out there, most of their fates anyplace but this place.
Yet Corvo does not need clairvoyance, or empathy or any other power to sense the emptiness of the land of Heer.
Three flashes appear in the room. The disentangler will hold them off for moments. Moments enough.
"Yes... I'm glad you've arrived. I've some short remarks and then...applause would be in order."
"Corvo," Anima hisses. "You've cost the Goddess four centuries of work. You will pay with your life."
"Deal."
"Deal? Are you insane?" Medusa, the one with blazing white eyes, growls. "It's all over for you!"
"Now you're just flirting with me." Corvo holds up the mead. "I offer this toast to the people of Heer....no." He glances at the bodies of Berthold and Uror, Herta and little Brita and for the first time in bitter centuries tears flow freely down his face. Damn that feels good to cry. "To the heroes of Heer." He smiles primly, sets the flask to his lips and downs the contents...
But not before willing the printer pack to begin its self-destruct countdown. It won't kill these undead horrors but it will leave no meaningful trace of DNA in this room.
Anima, reaches Corvo first. She gathers him up in her arms. "Not so fast, Major. Remember before I was this I was a healer...."
Corvo feels his strength returning. Damn...if Anima teleports out, the Empress still wins.
I have one option...
"He's sending a thought signal!" Anima cries out. She turns to the printer pack, a device powered by several grams of metallic hydrogen, held in a piezoelectric superconductor lattice at extreme pressures. The gigapascals of containment are slowly relaxed, released the M2's energy.
In destruct mode, the lattice is shattered - enough to distort the force field flecks comprising a Fury, perhaps permanently. And, with Astrida gone along with all her 'cousins' in Heer, no one's about to make new ones.
And Anima knows this instantly.
"Sisters, fly!" Anima orders. The others flash away. "Now for us..." Anima fumes in surprise. "No!"
"Lingering tangle effect, maybe?" Corvo teases. "You can come and go but not with cargo...."
Anima gathers all her strength. "We will see."
"Added incentive." Corvo activates the audio destruct countdown.
"Twelve...eleven..."
"In theory you could save the prize by teleporting off with the pack."
Anima drops Corvo and rushes over to the bag.
"Six..five..."
"How will the Furies get on without you?"
"Two.."
"At last you die," Anima snarls and flashes away.
"One.."
"You forgot your bag!" Corvo smirks. Now I flash away.
Flash.