"The thing they want to do is share information, which I agreed to because they obviously know more about what's going on than we do and if they're willing to tell us what they know that's a big deal actually."

"You are planning on giving the cult information?" Araari is also not particularly interested in helping the cult!

"I don't actually have a plan, I'm going along with the lies they suggest so that we don't all die, if I had to come up with one all on my own right now it would be to tell them things I'm pretty sure they already know but there's a million ways that can go wrong so I don't want to actually implement it without talking to everyone else first."

"I am certain that if I tried to speak to them I would end up saying something incredibly stupid and getting us all killed and dooming the world to be eaten by slavering hellbeasts or something, I just. I don't know, we promised the nuns we were definitely not working with the cult and now you're saying the thing to do is to work with the cult but only for pretend, and... I don't know if you even can just pretend, what if even just being around them too much we... end up like Lacie."

"I --" God. He is so tired. "-- I am really tired and really scared and I have been keeping six metaphorical balls in the air for months and I am metaphorically bad at juggling, and I don't want us all to die because if we all die nobody keeps doing this and the world maybe ends, and the one thing I'm good at is lying to get people to tell me the things I want to know."

"If we do not have a plan yet, and Zoe does not like this one, and Oswald is not good at lying, and I am not going to tell the cult I am working with them whether it is a lie or not, perhaps the thing to do is come up with a different plan. I am--glad that nobody died at the dinner party."

"Yeah. I'm proposing an idea and informing you guys of what the lies we've already told are, to be clear, not insisting on any particular thing for us as a group to do."

"I'm glad to know what we're up against. I have no idea what options other than lying to them and working with them we have. Just go to Dallol on our own and hope they don't catch onto us until we can leave the country?"

Every plan she can think of has so many ways it will obviously go wrong and she wishes Anemone were here to come up with a plan that made sense and felt right but she's not and she's not going to be. Zoe is trying to focus on the task at hand but her thoughts keep veering into grief and anger at how wrong the world is.

"I'm improving," Oswald mutters, to himself, because he does not want to argue about it. Louder: "I trust this plan coming from Mordred more than I would from someone else who had been pushing for cooperation all along, honestly."

"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."