"They're also planning on going to -- maybe not all the places we have leads but a lot of them, Scotland and Malta and obviously also Bangkok. I don't think we're going to be able to avoid them while also making progress on finding out anything at all. Uh. What else happened. They think this isn't a site of Nyarlathotep but instead of someone called the Forgotten God, which Louise also called 'the fisher' in her letter to Savitree which I was not supposed to have read and one of our books says the Fisher is Gol-goroth. There's something metallic in the obelisk and weird psychic scratching coming from inside it, which is definitely reasonable and normal and not terrifying at all, and which they don't know we know about because again I got it from a letter I wasn't supposed to have read. Also apparently Inaaya is some kind of psychic."

"It's not that I think Mordred is secretly evil or something. I think if it were just him that plan might even work. But I can't lie to save my life and it's everyone's lives that would depend on us being able to lie. And the cult does things to people. --What's in Scotland? Or Malta? I remember there being a thing in... Hungary?"

"Branch of the Nectar business is in Malta, I don't know about Scotland."

"Did they tell you about the metallic thing or did you see it or? What does it mean for Inaaya to be psychic, did her brain scratch from the thing or something?"

"I have very vague guesses about what's in Scotland and none of them are based on anything particularly concrete but it's come up in two different unrelated ways so it goes on the list of leads. Hungary is the site of another monolith and they think it's to Gol-goroth."

"Okay. Do we know where they're going after they leave here? Or when they plan to do that?"

"I found out about the metallic thing from the letter I was not supposed to have read. Inaaya -- uh, how did she phrase it, Louise says she 'reports a “strange scuffling groping sensation” from this network which seems to be “reaching out for my mind as though my own thoughts touched upon it.”' And they're preparing to leave for Invermere, I don't know when."

"--Where did you learn about the monolith in Hungary? I learned of it this morning."

"If she's psychic does it even matter how good we are at lying? Couldn't she just read our minds?? What if she was reading your minds the entire time you were at dinner?"

"Araari, it's mentioned in two different books we stole from the cult in Los Angeles. Zoe, I have no idea, but empirically they offered us information we didn't already have and didn't kill us so I'm working on the assumption that she's more limited than that."

"God I hope so. Where is that warding stone? Maybe it helps against psychics too."

Lev gives it to Zoe. "There's a bit in Anemone's notes-- apparently the warding stone originally came from Dallol. Ayers stole it."

Araari mutters "white people" under her breath in Oromo at the mention of Ayers having stolen the warding stone.

Zoe pockets the stone and traces its grooves with her thumb.

"She didn't seem--" he frowns. "I don't think she knew anything I didn't tell her. About my actual job or my relationship to Samson or anything like that. Just that I wasn't telling her anything. I... might be wrong, I'm not -- oh, huh."

"Also. Um. This is going to sound extremely stupid and I want you all to know that I know it's extremely stupid but. Louise seems like she's motivated by academics rather than actually wanting the world to end, and Anchisa is just here because her aunt's here, and I don't know the others very well but from her letters Savitree seemed reasonable in a way that Trammel really didn't and -- I really want to try to convince them to not end the world."

"I do not think it is stupid. I think it is very noble. I am--unsure if it will succeed, but that is not always the only thing that matters."

"--I think I accidentally seduced Anchisa last night," Oswald blurts out and then immediately starts dying from. "Uh. You know. If that's useful information or anything."

Araari is just going to pretend she didn't hear that, honestly. "On the topic of the monolith... Perhaps you already know this, if you were aware of the monolith, but--this morning, I was able to read of the founding of the Church by St. Frumentius. He had an encounter in his youth with the monolith in Hungary; labors were failing to break it, so he prayed before it and cast holy water onto it. He had a vision in which he saw a terrible demon atop the monolith, and the next day he was found to be ill. When he was 16, he came here to Axum, to spread Christ's teachings; and when he saw the Obelisk of King Wazeba, he noted it to be the same alien shrine as the monolith in Pannonia. He fought three with the King Wabeza and his cult throughout his time here, with the help of King Ezana, who he helped put on the throne; and all three times, the cult was successfully suppressed. After the last, the Ezana stone was erected; it was originally a statue taken from the inner chambers, but inverted and buried, so that God's truth might be made visible and blasphemy hidden."

"If they're not... actually cultists yet, and are just working for the cult but don't, know or believe... then maybe... Araari, did the holy water break it? Or just give him a vision and make him sick?"

"The latter."

Good plan, let's all pretend not to have heard him! He is pretending it himself! He was actually looking at the site report from the documents Mordred took, let's discuss those. "Uh, it says something here about a symbol? Um, 'In addition to the inscription I described in my last (which appears to post-date the defacing), only two additional inscriptions have survived. These symbols, however, have raised one possibility of potential interest. Before abandoning my work here, I am going to spend some time researching at the Cathedral of Tsion Maryam to see if the Book of Aksum will confirm my suspicions.' Does that sound relevant to anything in what you read, Araari? It, uh, it doesn't really say anything about what the symbols are."

Zoe already knows what Oswald did last night.

"The book of Axum is what I read. If a symbol was mentioned in it, I did not make note of it."

"Do you know about the Cathedral of Tsion Maryam? Is that the one here or some other one?"