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Corvo walked up to the shrine and felt the now-familiar chill seep into the world around him. He waited for the Outsider to appear, but spoke before the being could do much more than open his mouth.
“You’re a whale,” Corvo said flatly.
The Outsider shut his mouth, tilted his head to the side, and blinked at Corvo, once. It was the most surprised Corvo had ever seen him. He didn’t say anything, though, so Corvo continued.
“You’re a whale,” he said again. “I guess the best question is, why?”
Still no answer.
“Well, no, the best question is, ‘what the hell?’, but ‘why?’ works too.”
At that, the Outsider smiled. Now that Corvo was looking for it, there was something... bigger behind that small smirk. He shifted his weight at noticing it, and the Outsider caught the movement and showed his teeth. No point calling it a smile now.
“Because you can comprehend it,” the Outsider said casually. “Because there is no possible way for you to understand me if I’m not....” He gestured. “Like this.”
Corvo shrugged, accepting that.
“Did you come here simply to ask-?” the Outsider started to say, sounding both amused and curious, and that was a bad combination so Corvo cut him off with, “So, do you... speak whale? Is there a whale language, or something?”
Instantly, the humor vanished from the Outsider’s face and posture. He examined Corvo, in the same way he had when he’d first given Corvo his Mark, eyes glittering. It made Corvo realize, again, that his sclera were entirely black.
“Would you like to hear it?” the Outsider asked, softly and dangerously, and damn this was a bad idea. But then the Outsider was opening his mouth, and Corvo stumbled back from how impossibly huge it suddenly was, and sound poured forth.
Corvo drowned in it.
Water slammed into him, then immense pressure, enough to crack teeth and shatter skulls. The Mark burned on his hand, twisting fire through his veins, protecting him from true harm. He pressed his hands to his ears and screamed, though he couldn’t hear himself.
Still the sound came, cavernous and elegant and sleekly eldritch, the single note of a song Corvo could not and would not live to hear in its entirety. Something deep within it sang to him, to the Mark, called and resonated within his spine and chest and marrow, and he began to surrender his sanity to it, if only to withstand that song.
The sound ended, and the silence beat like a dead heart. Corvo shuddered in its absence, suddenly craving it and terrified of that fact.
The Outsider regarded him, hunched and shaking on the floor, and faded slowly without another word, pulling the Void back with him.
Corvo felt the song’s absence against his breastbone, felt it in the too-bright push of the world. He let sobs wrack him until the pull to join and exult in that power had faded to a dull, exhausted memory.
It was a very long moment, when he next saw the River, before he was able to turn away. It was a very close thing, the next time he saw the sea, that kept him from jumping in, and diving deep, and drawing breath to sing.