This man is either very impressive at bluffing or stark raving mad. Being a cultist does tend to indicate the latter, but Anevia's going to keep an open mind.

Camellia is torn between a desire to impress his situation on him and a desire to keep inwardly snickering as the man appears to completely ignore Lucette's attempts at intimidation.

This is honestly kind of embarrassing but Lucette's ego is not actually the priority here. 

"Where did they take the children?" 

"Huh? They had new children here? I don't know, I didn't see any." On account of being busy reading, which they're so rudely interrupting. "If they're not in the holding cells, then they might be in the ritual chamber already. Far end of the hall, right door, upstairs but the door might be locked if the ritual's starting."

"New children? This has happened before?"

"I think so? It's not really my area of study..."

Probably this guy is not literally a wizard because of the glaive, but man, wizard stereotypes. 

"Tell us about the ritual chamber." 

"Uh. It's round, fifty-five feet in diameter, eighty feet tall. There's a pentagram painted on the floor but it's not actually part of the ritual. Really, when these people say 'ritual' you shouldn't expect too much, it's not an actual magic ritual channeling through a spell-structure, it's more of a - magic poison infused with planar essence that acts on the imbiber's soul, but once the poison's been made anyone could administer it, right. In theory. The chamber's probably not actually important except for, like, symbolic resonance from repeated use."

"Magic poison?"

"This is all hearsay, you understand, I didn't even read about it and I definitely didn't get my hands on any of the poison that I could run through a proper alchemy workshop. I suppose it could be a magical disease instead, or a weird curse or something, but the other guys were calling it a poison and it seems to fit. It has to be magic because it affects the body, mind and soul, and it's like a poison and not a disease because they eat or drink it, and it can't spread to infect others... Well, not that I heard of, but if it could they wouldn't need Savamelekh to keep running the ritual himself. And it's not visible with detect magic like a curse would be."

"Oh! And there's a fascinating book over there, Pearce's Compendium of Demonic Flesh, about people who ate demons and what happened to them. Even if you make the demons nonpoisonous and nonacidic and so on, consuming them still has an effect because their bodies are partly made of Abyssal quintenssence, and when you take it in it affects your soul and through that your mind. And there's some similarity there, except that apparently the ritual actually uses Good-aligned outsider flesh, to make eating it metaphysically Evil and to open the way for the poison. That's the other interesting part besides the poison, even though it's still not really a ritual. And then the poison makes the Good quintessence act more like Evil, Abyssal quintessence on those who ate it."

Okay Lucette is going to start with one salient, useful point, and work through them methodically, instead of shaking this guy and demanding to know what's wrong with him. 

"How are the Good outsiders sourced?" 

"That's a great question! I'm not strong enough to call them. And no-one else here is either, I'd know."

"Who or what is Savamelekh?"

"A demon. I think he's the kind called a vrolikai but I've never seen another to compare, only read descriptions in Baur's Guide to Denizens of the Abyss second volume. And I think like half of that was a copyist's error, these Baphometans are disgustingly cavalier with the Truth."

A vrolikai?! That's one very small step beneath a balor in terms of fighting ability! She'll... walk around and whisper this in Lucette's ear, her dagger seems to be rather surplus to proceedings here.

Of course, there's no telling if he's wrong, or lying, or both. His completely indifference in the face of pointy death is really throwing off Anevia's people-reading skills!

Lucette is already aware of this actually but deeply valid of Anevia to want to make sure she knows! 

"When does Savamelekh show up?"

"What, like on a schedule? How should I know? You should ask Hosilla."

"I was thinking more under what circumstances." 

"...he teleports in? I don't think he needs, like, any particular circumstances to be able to do it." He's deeply confused by this line of questioning.

"To be able to, no. You said he's necessary for the rituals?"

He makes a so-so wiggle with his (still restrained) hand. "Like I said, hearsay. In this case hearsay of Savamelekh saying it, but that's no proof! Maybe he just enjoys doing it himself, and could be easily replaced with a proper ritual circle and seven alchemical mice. Maybe he's a control freak and doesn't want to share the knowledge, demons can be such bastards."

“…Okay, so, whether he has to or not, he does show up for this ritual, right? Do you know, or have hearsay, of him showing up for other reasons?”

"Oh, he's been around a lot lately, I don't think he conducts a ritual every time he comes here. I don't know what else he's doing. I've avoided talking to him, I'm not crazy! Like I said, you should ask Hosilla."

"...maybe he's doing followup observations and experiments on the ritual subjects," he adds after a bit of thought.