Blackwater Islands and by the sea, we're laying down our hopes

The name of the chaos god was repeated back to him. A request to know more; but what was there to say to a shadow that was new, or profound? They knew it all. They were an agent of the beast.

He was delirious but his mind filled with dark water shifting endlessly, and he thought he might choke, that it came dripping from his mouth when it opened. One hallucination of many.

The shadow was the grinning bear (@Shardik) who had chased him through a cave, for weeks. It was every bad dream, every murdered raven of Blackfeather; it was himself, somehow. It was nothingness.

Accident, he pled. Once when he was Titmouse, he had slaughtered so many of those holy birds of the blackwood and woken, surrounded by their corpses. He bemoaned that crime now as if it had just transpired, and burrowed his face against the silk of the Listener's coat.

C-curse, curseddd, he did it, he— but he was not lucid for long.