"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?"

"I think that's the one we went to with the library. Louise was there."

"Okay, that makes sense. So she wants... the book Araari has? Wait, you literally just said that, sorry. I wonder what the possibility is about the symbols and what the book has to do with it. It didn't say anything about any inscriptions, right?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Can I see Magnificence's photo again?"

He looks at it, then at the piece of paper Magnificence stole.

Lev looks at it. "That's... Central American. Why is there a Central American symbol in an Ethiopian tomb? It's a symbol of the Children of the Night."

"...Did those come up in relation to monoliths or have I gotten various ominous group names confused?"

Mordred flips through his notes on the books. "One of the books we stole claims that the Children of the Night were in some way chosen by the God of the Black Stone -- and yeah Oswald's right the Black Stone is the name of the monolith in Hungary, and Louise said in her letter that she thinks the monolith in Hungary and the monolith here are the same kind of thing -- I have really got to organize my notes better. Or, my and Anemone's combined notes, I didn't actually read that book but we pooled...." and he's not going to think about that.

"Global network of large ominous stones, huh?"

"It seems so. St. Frumentius came to the same conclusion, at least."

"So is the God of the Black Stone the Forgotten God or the Liar?" Oswald asks the air. "Or another entity entirely?"

Anemone's notes have a thing about this! The 'Children of the Night' have come up in reference to the Black Stone of Hungary (which may or may not be related to the Black Stone discussed in The Fragments of Bal Sagoth), but also in connection with the stories of the Central American peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico, detailed in Children of the Night and Nahua Legends

There is also some speculation about the things that might be connected to the Black Stone. She first encountered the term in Ziggurats of the Pre-Helladic Period, the book that caused her to scream in front of Mordred on the plane.

From the notes on the Ziggurats book: It then becomes clear that the dimensional diatribes – which at first seem a secondary characteristic of the text, wedged between lengthy narrative descriptions of each site – are actually of the primary and utmost important to the author: And in unwinding the strange cycles of his numbers, one realizes that he is making the bold claim that all of these disparate works of stone draw their ultimate inspiration from the preternatural dimensions of the “Black Stone” which the author ultimately claims “thrusts into the heart of every building constructed by man; thrusts into the very subconscious of our modern edifices of pride and hubris".

The second mention was found in The Fragments of Bal Sagoth, which describes an ancient island which worshipped Gol-Goroth, a civilization which practiced human sacrifices, and which at its height was said to be greater than Rome. It was eventually taken over by red-skinned "savages", possibly after the gods had ceased favoring their ancient city. A quote is scrawled in the journal: "Let the skin of blood ride o’er the sun, for above the sky shall they journey upon the wings that bear them, carried as they shall be by the Sons of Gol-Goroth; their legacies forever shielded by the Daughters of the Black Stone."

She wrote that she had no idea what the connection between these things and the Black Stone of Hungary might have been, but she certainly suspected that there was one.

"They think it's the Forgotten God, same as this one, that's actually part of how they arrived at the conclusion that the obelisk here was to the Forgotten God rather than the Liar."

"I still have no idea what's meant about the sun or wings or shields but if Gol-Goroth and the Black Stone are the connection here, or like, gendered versions of each other or something, I'm not sure the rest of it matters to us."

"I'm assuming everything matters at this point but I have no idea what it means either."

He sighs. "So the Black Stone is connected to Gol-Goroth, and the obelisk is connected to the Black Stone, and Dagon is connected to the obelisk, and the prisoner of Dagon has its mouth shut here, and mouths are connected to the Liar... I think. There's a lot going on."

"Mouths could be connected to either, or both, we know there are mouths connected to the Liar but we don't know they aren't connected to Gol-Goroth... but yes there's a lot going on."