There were stories repeated by just about everyone in Dunwall. Real interesting ones, too - valuables found in the Rudshore Financial District. Not just whatever was left to rot in the panic of the flood, but something even better, something almost invaluable in this day and age. Wars between gangs, wars between people, between politicians would break out for this resource that could keep them more comfortable and alive than all the coin and all the valuable stuff in even Boyles' mansion.

A storage of just food. Good, clean food was a luxury to everyone with a small exception. The poor lived almost entirely off canned foods, the homeless off the rats that plagued us. They were actually very good, once cooked thoroughly the chances of catching the plague from them was very small. But just plague causing rats were not all of the risks of going to the Flooded District.

It was advertised as a way to quarantine if you came clean about having the plague. A safe place to hide yourself from the healthy, to wait out the illness with access to Sokolov's elixir, food, housing, care. That is the exact opposite of what happened, of course. The reality was published in newspapers weeks ago, "'QUARANTINE AREA' IS THE RECENTLY FLOODED DISTRICT. NO ONE HAS COME BACK FROM QUARANTINE. DO NOT GO TO THE CITY WATCH FOR HELP." in big, bold letters across every newspaper stand in Dunwall. Not one of those papers seemed to talk about how bad the Flooded District really is, according to returning Officers, drunk off their asses in local pubs - when they were still open.

It wasn't meant to be a place for quarantine - shit, that shoulda been obvious since the flood came. It was a dumping ground. Mountains of corpses all over the streets, thousands of times as bad as Dunwall. Corpses changed the river banks, river krusts now invade every bridge, every tunnel, every sewer. Hagfish have free roam over the streets, and to everyone or thing that enters the water. I was told you can't even see into the water because of how much decay and rot pollutes it. None of that is the worst part, not even in the same leagues as the Weepers. Fucking weepers, sometimes I can hear small groups of them down in the sewers, moaning and crying as they get closer and closer to death every passing day. I don't really understand it myself, but the way I see them, is that the plague is far too advanced in them. Once you're considered a weeper, you're dead from plague in days. They say the plague eats at their minds. Eats away until nothing but their basic instincts are left. Find food. Find shelter. Survive. They can't even talk anymore, they just moan. Which is where the name comes from - they sound like they're crying in the distance, but if you go near them, they will attack you, and if you get their blood, spit, anything inside you somehow, you will very likely die from plague too. There's no way around it, unless you have constant access to medicine, which folk in the Flooded District and folk like me won't get access to. Not without a lot of stealing and bloodshed. Once the price of Sokolov's elixir rose, it was every man for themself.

But at this rate, I was a goner anyways. Evicted from my apartment when a neighbor contracted plague, never found work near any safe buildings. I move around constantly looking for safe places to hide from the Watch at night, who knows what they would do to me for breaking curfew. I can't even be seen by them without getting in some kind of trouble these days. Friends are gone, a couple somehow securing a ship to Serkonos before it got this bad, some dying by rats, plague, most getting killed by guards.

But luckily for me, I think I've found my one way ticket into the Flooded District. Officers have been patrolling the same hallway now for hours, but they haven't realized I'm watching them in the janitor's closet, waiting for a cart. The cart will definitely be unpleasant, but there aren't many other options to get in without getting shot or blown up by a tall boy. Tall boys are easy to avoid. It'll be a piece of cake getting around a district full of them.

The electricity on the tracks sparked into the air. A cart was coming in. Wheels in the distance groaned and screeched against the steel, the stench of rot quickly filled the room. With a long, metallic screech, the cart finally stopped. Now was my chance. I was quiet, stealthy, just like the rats when I stepped out of the closet, shut the door behind me with no noise but a faint click, and hopped into the cart. I gagged at the smell of the old sheets tying these corpses up, covering my nose and mouth with my hand as my body seemed to sink into the fucking corpses. Old... juices seeped into my clothes, drenching my backside with rot. Thank fuck this was the closest station to the Flooded District, I would have given myself away had I decided to do this anywhere else.

The carriage couldn't move fast enough for me. I swear I can feel someone's teeth through the sheets. There's a weird lump up by their nose. Shit, why don't they just let people go into the District? Nothing in that district will be worse than playing dead on top of very rotted dead.

I could hear the alarms as the cart began to stop. I can't risk being seen by the Watch, so I stay laying on my back, until the cart stops completely. It groans, and tips over, dumping me and all the corpses - I made it to the Flooded District.

The corpses plopped, all at once, on top of me, in what used to be a canal. I briefly glimpse what looked like the skeleton of a ship before I crawl out from underneath at least 10 bodies. I could hear moaning, some screaming in the distance. I walk down the hill of bodies the best I can, slipping and sliding until I find the lowest point - the ground in this canal had been covered in corpses too. Flies buzzed aggressively around each and every body. Rats who had seemingly finally ripped through the linens of one swarmed it, the sheets enlarging and shrinking unnaturally as they ate.

Nothing no one could have said would have correctly prepared me for it. Every single word said about it was accurate. Piles of corpses had turned into hills and then mountains. Somehow, some had begun acting as dams against the rivers, some spots completely dry as though all the sheets used on the bodies had soaked up all the water. It wasn't any wonder at all now why the Watch returning home would go straight to the pubs.

Sweat dripped down my brow as I hoisted myself over more corpses, finally onto solid pavement. Rumors had it, the food storage would be much closer to the old dam than this. Alright, well, I got here. The most difficult part was done! Next was to find a weapon. I'm pretty sure the weepers accelerated the plague's... effect on a person, I think, so at the very least a pistol and a sword would make this plan much, much less ridiculous. It was far too late to have second thoughts anyways.

A post where someone of some sort couldn't be far. No one in this district would be friendly by any means, but they would have to have something useful lying around in whatever rundown building they have found. Sneaking in and out of one of those couldn't be difficult, right? There had to be more open space in the walls than there was before.

But it was dead silent. Dead except the moans from the dying, echoing and fading through the streets. The only things living near me were the rats in the canal. It looked like no one had lived in Rudshore for decades, rather than just a few months. I swear, ghosts watched over this place now.

My legs ache after hours of walking, searching for signs of something that would help me the deeper into the district I can get. There was nothing. Whoever ransacked this place before had done a damn good job, as nothing but fucking copper wire and cans of jellied hagfish, long expired, could be found amoungst the rubble. Pieces of scorched wall lay messily across the ground, surrounded by bodies with blood staining their face and clothes like tears. Weepers. It had to have been a tall boy that swept the area and was attacked by the hoard, not that 11 weepers would ever, in any way, damage a tall boy.

Men walking atop steel stilts, incendiary arrows always ready to rain down on whatever whoever controls them has the order to destroy. In a lot of cases, that is groups of weepers like this, since they could not be infected from 15 feet up in the air, untouched by the flames of the bolts they shoot at the slightest of movement. Those things were absolutely not to be messed around with, even worse than weepers, really. Armored bitches' only weakness were oil tanks, briefly exposed if you just so happen to be above them, ready to fire in the split second it takes for one to turn around. Unfortunately, I have never seen one just lying around to snatch and run off with either. A true waste.

It wasn't hard to find a bag big enough to carry enough supplies through the district, although it had a sketchy smell, and I had to wipe some... thing off of it, I don't want to know what it used to be. Further into the abandoned complex, there were a couple of useful things overlooked by whoever else was crazy enough to try to live here. A part of me doesn't want to know where they could be right now - with weapons and safe hiding available, they could be a much bigger problem than when they first came here. Maybe someone on patrol will say something useful once I find them.

The sky seemed to be getting darker the faster I got to where the real challenges would be. I haven't heard much about central Rudshore from anyone, so it is either just full of dead, or extremely dangerous because of the people who decided to stay there. How hard could it be to find out? I've nothing left to lose now. Nothing except for some wire and a dirty bag with who-knows-what on it. But the most irritating of all, I can't be wandering the canal when the night comes. I don't know what dangers come out at night, how many people might live here, or what other problems might come. I mean, what if the rats are more violent here? I don't know why they would be any different than the rest of Dunwall, but it is something to think about since I'm here.

Moans seemed to echo out of sewer grates and through manhole covers. They weren't there before. Did weepers get more active at night, or were they just rare by the docks? I had to find a place to hide for the night. Luckily, finding a small, clear-ish corner, away from whatever little light that might come through, and a nearby wall in the small case a tall boy comes to the canal. Probably silly to worry about, since I haven't heard them nearby, but probably not a precaution to ignore. Who knows what would happen out here.

I had a dreamless sleep, often interrupted by the cries below me, but I got a few hours at least. Just have to avoid going into the sewers as much as I possibly can. It sounded like a whole bunch of survivors hid below there and still got infected. Wonder how long it took for them to all pass from it, how long they survived before the first got infected. I think I'm gonna avoid being in any groups because of that. They'd want a cut of what I find anyways.

At least they seemed to be a little quieter. But maybe that's because of the alarms of the corpse cart rolling through to add to the mountains already here. What are they gonna do once the mountains touch the rails? That would surely catch on fire. What are they gonna do with a flood and a fire that would surely burn the entire district to the waters? It'd be an even bigger mess to clean up, whenever someone decided it was worth cleaning. Maybe they would, in a good decade.

It was a trek from the canal to the central area. My bag was full of some useful stuff - bullets left on counters, some canned food, some spare clothes. Life saving stuff, if it came down to it, which it probably will. There was an open door to a condemned building, right near the mouth of the street. From the outside, it looked like someone had managed to break down the barricades the Watch put up when rats infested a building - someone would need a fucking battering ram to take one of those down. Watch barricades were nailed pretty well to the ceilings, floors, and surrounding walls or bannisters to make sure no one, for any reason at all, could get up there and bring plague to whole new areas, or unleash a swarm of hungry rats on whoever happened to be nearby. I got closer to the building, not even hearing the rats' nails on the hardwood floors, slowly entering to find tens of rat carcasses littering the hallway and stairway. Who would even bother risking being eaten alive to get inside this specific building? There had to be something valuable in it, something worth all of this risk.

It was kind of stupid, but I walked further in, cautious of the creaky stairs, careful not to slip on rat guts as I checked the painting in the hallway for any secret buttons, lifting it up to see any safes that may have been hidden below, to no luck. I rummaged through the shelf next, sliding old books around. Finding nothing, I start heading further up the hallway. Smoke from candles polluted the air, hard to smell against the carcasses and corpses surrounding the building.

Candles, still lit, surrounded a table shrouded in long, dark purple drapes, golden runes hand crafted into the fabric with love and care, covering a painting and what content that no one in their right mind would have been found even breathing in the same area. The Outsider. Overseers from the Abbey have made countless people homeless for simply living in the same building as someone who worshipped him.

Worshipping the Outsider was a death sentence for more than one reason. After being evicted, I had stayed in an abandoned store with other folk in the same predicament as me, except for one man. Always seemed to find fresh foods - grapes, pears, bananas - in perfect state, never seemed to starve the way that everyone else did. Never the same worry about the Watch finding him when he strolled in the broad daylight, or about the possibility of an arc pylon around any corners. Man walked as though he had owned the world. I didn't figure out why until he was asleep one night, mumbling in his sleep about the Void, something small clasped protectively between his sweaty hands. He wasn't smart enough to avoid the guards, or knew anyone in the city who fled and left piles of food, he just held a bone charm wherever he went. I heard some stories about it, from older people on the streets, but I didn't think I'd find someone with one.

"They do bring good luck," An old woman sitting on a mattress, near where the watch towers now stand if I remember right, "They'll bring you love, health, wealth, successful missions, ripe fruits, but they always, always, always take something too. There is always a price for the Outsider's blessing. Do not make the same mistake they do." I didn't believe her at all, thinking it was just the rambling of an old crazy woman, but the bone charm that man had. I swear it hummed, yearned, even whispered my name once I realized it was there. Urging me to snatch it from the hands that held it far too tightly for anything of the sort to succeed. I left that day. Didn't come back for weeks, and when I did, that store was condemned with rats almost pouring through every single crevice they could find. I don't think a single person survived that building.

The other cause of death from those charms were the Abbey of the Everyman. Every single one of their Overseers were holier-than-thou, no matter the stricture you broke. Stole a fish from the market to feed your starving family? Now, you'll never see them again, because they're going to shoot you dead for this. Your wife and mom will assume you fled them, to somewhere better, I don't know. Maybe you'll be found in Serkonos, she thinks, but really you'll be left in a ditch, buried with other folks in the same boat as you. There is never any winning when the Abbey decides you committed heresy.

But, oh, by the void, if they see you in the Outsider's cult. They don't just kill you, they take you. They'll interrogate you for days at a time with all manors of torture for having carved whale bone in your home, on your person, for being mentioned by someone who does have any Outsider artifacts. In fact, news just got around that the High Overseer Cambell was suddenly given the Heretic's brand and banished to the Flooded District. There was never any explanation, but he was a terrible overseer, so I don't think I mind.

So whoever made this shrine has to be fucking bonkers. There shouldn't be any Overseers in this district, but what would they do if they drained the flood? Cleaned up the river krusts, the bodies - how many will they find? I'm not even completely certain how they dispose of the few the Overseers talk about in passing. I only know about what they do to worshippers.

I moved a piece of the drapes off the table. I swear, nothing, not even getting dumped on all those corpses, invoked the dread I feel when my eyes landed on a rune. They're more powerful than charms, carved with runes, bringing stronger gifts and even worse punishments than the charms.

It was like it sang to me. Soft whale song, radiating from the rune, gentle and kind. Promises that it would be okay, just as long as I snatched it. It would be so easy. No one was here to stop me. There would be no one for a very long time, so no one could take it from me.

Floorboards creaked as loud boots stomped over them. Not in any particular hurry it seemed, but they lumbered their way up the stairs, blocking the only way I knew of out of the building. I slid into a closet, holding my breath as I watched a man walk in, dried blood caked below his eyes and on his shirt. It definitely wasn't just his blood on him, his sword was caked in it too. I swear I could see tufts of fur stuck to the blood of his saber.

He fell onto his knees before the shrine, praying under his breath, but I could not hear exactly what the prayer was. My heart raced against my ribs, trying to fgure out how the fuck I was supposed to get out of here. He clearly was not going to be happy seeing me hiding in his closet - I'm surprised he did not smell me on his drapes. Maybe he's too preoccupied doing whatever he can to get the Outsider's attention.

It was getting dark now. He still wasn't gone. I have to go eventually - maybe he'll go to sleep soon. He has to. I have to go before I expose myself accidentally.

It took a few more hours, but he had finally gone to sleep. I cracked open the door, slow and silent as I could, before taking one foot out of the closet, then the next. Every candle was still lit, cries echoing through the district. The hum of the rune seemed more violent than before as I walked past it, taking the dirty saber from the floor right beside his bed. I was almost walking on the tips of my toes as I left the room, then headed downstairs.

Thundering stomps startled me from the house I just fled. I don't know why it took him so long to wake up, but all it took was one hard swing with his sword to hit between his neck and shoulder for him to fall in his tracks, bleeding out in front of me. With one quick stab to the head, he was done.

I leaned over and threw up.

Thankfully I did not get his corpse. I had nothing to bury him with. I turned away, taking deep breaths, taking the scabbard from him before stowing my scabbard and turning away. I couldn't stay and wait for the rats to come dispose of his body. They could come for me just as quickly.

Dusty street signs pointed towards Central Rudshore. Finally. I can't walk in the flood waters anymore, it's too deep, and I see hagfish following me along the shores, waiting for me to fuck myself up. Fortunately for me, there were plenty of open spaces to crawl into a building from the shore. The remains of walls were covered in scorch marks. I found a trustworthy looking spot, pulling myself up into the safety of a collapsed building.

No corpses. It seemed whenever the tall boys that crumpled this building attacked, no bodies stayed inside - thank the void. Even just the smallest break was something to be grateful for here. Not hearing anything moving upstairs, I walked up the sketchy staircase quietly. Anything left behind must have fallen into the waters, as there were scratch marks all over the floor, harsh and deep, leading to the collapsed side of the building.

I've never been so happy those tall boys were so effective, since they left big ass holes in the ceiling I could get through to avoid the water and river krusts even better. There was no sign of much valuable yet, although picking up some of Sokolov's Elixir is almost priceless now. If I didn't need it, and there was someone else living here, then I could have sold it to pay for more than enough fresh food for weeks. If there was fresh food more available. Once I find that storage, I shouldn't have to go hungry for the rest of my life.

Underneath a wall in the river, some river krust shifted, getting ready to spit acid at me. I don't know how they sense movement, but four of them were trained on me, their leaves shifting, a ball of hot green acid just narrowly missing my head. I fell behind cover before another would hit me, stalking behind a fallen wall as it rumbled, creaking as it was hit over and over again until they had decided I was gone.

Fleeing the river krust had brought me to something sinister. The Abbey had come here after the flood, but I have no idea what for. Overseer corpses covered a recently messily made walkway over the river, grenades, pistols, bullets, and a few swords littering the area. As useful a pistol would be here, I've never gotten my hands on one before. I won't risk self injury and keep walking.

The next building was what was the scariest. There was many open cans and jars on a table, next to which an open book with names:

Empress Jessamine Kaldwin

Emily Kaldwin

Corvo Attano

I turned and ran. Someone here knew the fates of the late Empress, her daughter, and worst of all, knew the Royal Protector's fate. All three of them had been rumored dead for a very long time - Jessamie was certain, but no one had seen or heard from Princess Emily since she was kidnapped from Dunwall Tower when her mom was assassinated. Everyone was saying it was the Royal Protector, Corvo Attano, but this ledger says very differently.

In fact, this was the perfect place to hide after committing such crimes. No one sane would go this deep into the district, not without plenty of warning. Did the Abbey know these were the people to carry out the assassinations and kidnapping? Were they framing Corvo this entire time? What would we even do if they were?

I didn't stop running deeper into the district until my lungs felt like they were going to burst from it. I didn't hear anyone on my way out, and I don't think I'm too keen on meeting whoever had that list. If they could get through the Tower for the Empress and her family, then who knows what they could do to me without any obstacles.

Rooftop shingles cracked below my feet as I walked as quickly as I could, further in. The sun set lower and lower, loud thuds in the distance. I coughed into my sleeve, walking towards the noise. Weepers wouldn't be near the tall boys. Officers would have some supplies laying around. It would be a win-win if I could get close enough to them.

Next to the tall boy, even in the middle of the night, I could not hear the cries of the sick in the distance. The tall boy's patrol pattern did not seem to come close enough to me to be seen very well through rubble. I hid underneath a decimated building, facing the path I came from. Officers were inside some other half broken down buildings, none of them paying attention to the outside.

I had an eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach. The dread of being caught. Looking up and down the narrow path mostly blocked by rubble, I couldn't see anyone. Not even when the tall boy's flood light showed through the cracks.

I looked directly ahead of me, up at the rooftops as pebbles fell from above. Someone was staring down at me. They wore a whaler's mask, dark gloves, and I realized too late a crossbow pointing right down at me.

Before I could even move, without hearing the sound of it firing, a bolt was coming down with a certain destination.

I had failed to find what I was looking for.