In Chapter 150 (Part 3), Jaydove gave Dabwick a letter that had been found in Barnabus‘ hand after he joined the party for their journey to the Mad Poet’s Oasis:
My friends,
That is what we are, yes? I think so. We are intertwined, in any event. The thing that intertwines us is an abomination beyond our ability to comprehend. And yet it is the thing that has defined the last two groups that have felt like pack to me.
Please forgive me for intruding on you in the Dreamlands. But this was an instance where it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. The truth of the matter is I cannot live with this thing in my head any longer. I cannot simply wait until the inevitable happens, until the fungus invades me and envelopes my brain. I have watched it happen to those I love before. I cannot allow it to happen to me. And I cannot watch it happen to you all.
I do not know what I will find when I catch up with you, I do not know what will happen, or what I will do. But based on what I have learned from you of what happened to you last time, I think the Mad Poet can take this affliction from me. And I believe, like with you, this will also take all my memories. All my past. All knowledge of who I am and have been.
And I think it is a fair trade.
I have no one to return to. I have no pack to rejoin. No one to look for. No one to avenge any more. And even if I did, my mind, the vessel of my being, of everything I am and can do and can create is corrupt and will eventually consume me with madness. I don’t hear music anymore.
Better to empty the vessel and start again.
And this way, perhaps, I can contribute to your cause after all.
Grip, it seems we never really talked. The corrupt constable with the soul of a sailor. You look at home on the water. I know you fear you are little more than a killer. But you have shielded your friends from harm and death and horror so many times. You endured pain so they did not have to. Does this not remind you of someone?
Dabwick, I have never seen more distance between one’s physical stature and the shadow of influence one casts on the world. I would fear your power if I doubted your heart. We are not of the others’ past, you and I. And their past is a furnace that drives them relentlessly, but it may consume them. They will need you. And maybe you are coming to need them, as well?
Vik of the many names and voices. Gull. Rony. Vik. I watched all three of you. You are hard to read, but you know this. You have such compassion in you, I can sense it. You are a killer. I can sense it. We are all of us multitudes, no? You and Grip have pasts you are both trying to run from and reckon with, I think. I see a spark in his eye when he is in the rigging. What spark will carry you when all this is done?
And Dora. There is not a word in any language I know for the bond we share. We are more than friends, we are more than family. We met with both of us in the throes of madness, having seen something we should not, and somehow we brought each other back. We were each other’s raft in the floodwaters of insanity. If you all had not found me next to that crevasse and that poor soul, I think I would have died there as a fox, never remembering who I am. I am sorry I am not strong enough to continue with you. And I am sorry I woke up next to you so very naked and unexpectedly.
Also, I have never forgotten the time Thema so callously dropped me in that courtyard. You can tell her to fuck off from me.
It is almost time for the last time.
Sweet dreams, mes amis.
First Reference: Chapter 150 (Part 3)
Other Notable References: Chapter 151, Act IV Interlude 1