"I don't know. Because I'm, um, not very good at magic?

You could look in our library."

"Lela and Tereza get 'special treatment' three times a week."

"Tereza said she'd come in and repeat the... strange words... very often, yeah."

"You probably wouldn't keep it up for no reason."

“Taking them away from the spell seems at least worth trying.”

"Well, if we can think how to do it."

"--Uh. There is probably something I should tell you?"

He looks like he is about to die.

"Yes?"

“Please do.”

"So, um. When I joined the Knights of Malta I kind of, um. Faked my CV?

Because I was like 'the occult, that's not real, it doesn't matter if I actually know anything about it' and um. There were some surprises."

"Such as?

I mean, presumably the occult being real."

"The fact that there is an ancient evil who has been striving to destroy humanity for thousands of years? And I had signed up to fight it? And not to go 'hm, yes, the Lesser Key of Solomon' with, err, bored rich people."

"Yeah, we know."

"So you joined under the impression that this wasn't true, and also you're the only Knight left who is trying to fight all this instead of performing various, uh, works of charity? How did you... end up in that position?"

"Uh, well, everyone else died, and I am good at, um, dodging. And running away.

He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day?" he says hopefully.

"I'm sorry, I think I'm confused about what you need to tell us?"

"That I, uh, do not... really... know... what I am talking about?"

HE IS GOING TO DIE.

"I mean, that is obviously false.

Or, at least, you know as much or more than we do about what's going on with the cult in Malta, regardless of whether you have a degree in witchcraft."

"I, um, spent ten years pretending to speak Latin until they, uh, assigned me to tea duty."

"So?"

That was enough saying things that made him want to die for today!!!

"I'm sorry, I don't want to disrespect your struggles, it just seems like you're doing fairly passable detective work here."

"How long have you been doing this, then? And how long ago did the others... die?"

"Eight years. They, uh.

So Dame Alice Kilrea-- I don't know if you know who she is? Big name in Nyarlathotep-fighting-- anyway, she fought the Crawling Chaos in Africa for years? And she found in her studies of the Necronomicon that if a Mask of Nyarlathotep is, err, incarnated, it's as mortal as any other, uh, incarnate. Obviously much harder to kill because it's, um, magic. And just in general much-- tougher? So all the Knights of Malta found the next, err, summoning of the Crawling Chaos by, um, the primitive savages of Africa--"

Eyeroll.