Eris sipped slowly at the cup of red wine. The Veshod vintage was rightfully renowned for its excellence across Esenia, and though she enjoyed it in her room, in the late hours of the night, she intended on savoring it while she could still think.

A single candle blazed on her desk. Darkness shrouded everywhere else. She felt alone anyway—alone, for the first time in months. Really alone.

She found it unsettling. Corvo was a whole three doors down the hallway. She had tucked him into bed some hours ago before blowing out his candle and leaving him in darkness. He would have been asleep by then. And he was safe here, from man and monster. Nothing would happen to him.

She considered checking on him anyway. Then she did, once; and finding him well and sound asleep, she managed to suppress the urge when next it came.

No armor weighed her shoulders. A robe clung to her loosely, with ample skin on display. Her hair was, at last, worn loose. Her feet were bare, and the Veshod wine was tolerable. Each sip helped her convince herself that Corvo would be safe, and she soon relaxed as she had not since summer.

Yet even as she let her fear of the Shadow Man go, she could not shake her thoughts of Dorian. She considered the memory of him, blade to Corvo’s neck, and felt magma in her veins. She could scream about it even now. Red clouded her vision at the thought.

Yet then she would imagine him with a wooden sword crossed with Corvo’s, laughing, playing, or showing him how to ride a horse, and the anger would fizzle into a very strange grief.

There were only two people Eris had ever bothered to grieve. One, a halfling rival whose death came at an unexpected moment; the other, a lover who threw his life away at a revoltingly young age. It was a strange and unwelcome emotion to her. And she knew, in her maternal heart, that Dorian deserved no such mourning.

But she could not help herself. When she had time to think, she always thought back to him.

After everything. After all he had done. After two separate incidents of coming within a moment of murdering him, stayed only by her son’s presence. He had given his life for Corvo.

That was enough to remember him fondly for, except for that he had only done it for her spell.

Age, and motherhood, was perverting her. She once would have celebrated her foresight, and accounted herself vindicated for refusing to relent when pressed to by Trito. Her refusal to end the spell had saved Corvo’s life.

Yet would the demon ever have found Dorian in the City’s streets if not for her charm? And would he have betrayed them, had he not learned of her ensorcellment?

She did not know. And she could not help but wonder if there was some version of events that could have worked out at least so well as they really had, except without the need for any charm or spell. Rook had come to love her; he would never have betrayed her. No spell had been needed then. Had it been needed now?

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Yes. She convinced herself the answer was yes. The risk was too great. Had Dorian not proved his true character when he threatened Corvo’s life? She had done the right thing, muzzling someone so cruel. Not even in her most sadistic teenage years would Eris have ever considered holding a child hostage. Time proved her intuition of Dorian’s morality correct.

But Corvo had not been injured. And Dorian had repented. And he had given his life, the only thing anyone truly has, for her son.

She could not make sense of it. She did not know how to feel. She was furious, grateful, sorrowful, and, ultimately, happy that he had died, for if he was alive, it only would have complicated things further. But she grieved him anyway.

Not loudly. Not visibly. Never publicly. But in her own way.

She needed a distraction. She was not really one who enjoyed lethargy, nor play, and certainly not introspection. Work was more important.

She slid the shard of obsidian across the desk, then into her hand.

The AI core fit in her palm. She watched it beneath the candle’s light as she took another sip. It was faint, like a firefly on the horizon, yet she sensed the Essence within it when she focused. An arcane intelligence had slumbered within this shard of obsidian for millennia. The secrets it held could revolutionize the study of the Old Kingdom, if not also magic itself. No being in the world was truly immortal, and while an elf’s memory did not fade with time, the few elves who survived from that ancient time were inevitably those who detested magic. But this core was different. It was a magician, like Eris herself, and it would speak.

She traced her finger along its top. Another sip of wine, another tap, and a long gaze into its surface. Thinking about what she would find. She knew it would be dangerous. It would be able to use magic, to harm her with spells. Curiosity had been the source of too many of her troubles before. Curiosity was to blame for the Shadow Man’s escape from his prison. But she needed to know what this core contained. She could mitigate the risks. She would kill it, if it showed any signs of malevolence.

Her Spellward gauntlet was at her side.

She closed her eyes, and she funneled a spark of mana toward its sleeping Essence.

It shocked her. She flinched and dropped the core, letting it slip between her fingers. It landed on the desk with the sound of a dense stone impacting wood. The wine was placed aside, and she leaned forward; it took a moment, yet after no more than that single moment she felt the blaze beginning to build.

An intense heat, smoldering within the obsidian shard. Warmth, like an open fire, yet detectable only through her sixth sense—her Essence, and her attunement to mana.

The top of the shard ignited with green fire. Eris felt the flood of mana through the air, rushing past her immaterially, pouring into the innocuous device before her; then, suddenly, from the small surface of flame, a woman emerged.

She was translucent and svelte and stood no taller than the figurine of Corvo’s father. The unnatural flame molded itself into a human form, flickering everywhere, yet it was no longer fire then, but clearly a projection of magic.

The woman wobbled on her feet. Then she toppled over. She landed at the shard’s edge on her hands and knees.

Then, for a long time, she did nothing.

Eris climbed from her chair. She lowered on the ground, until her eyes were level with the AI core, and she stared into the projection.

At last the woman lifted her head. Her eyes, green as the rest of her, met Eris’.

“You must have many questions,” Eris said in Regal. “I will answer yours, if you answer mine.”

The woman said nothing for minutes. Then, straightening herself, a quiet voice issued from her mouth atop the shard:

“Deal.”