"Who are..." 

"The subjects? You mean, what's common to them? That's a fascinating question. It's hard to generalize about mongrels at the best of times -"

"Who. Are. These. Mongrels", Lann spits into his ear from behind.

"Stop squeezing me so hard! I'm talking already! Squeezing restricts breathing which makes me talk less -"

"Describe the mongrels you saw," Lann orders.

Finally, a straightforward question! "A woman, owl-like purple feathers on her head and torso, little scar on her left cheek. A man, one curled horn in the middle of his forehead, very dark skin. Another man, left hand like a dog's paw, lizard tail, pale green. A kid, red skin with black spots, bad left eye. Indeterminate gender, foot-long squid tentacles growing from their chin and armpits, unclear function. Probably some others I didn't see up close enough to tell apart."

"I might know the horned man," Lann says tightly. "Hovlan. A hunter from another tribe. We'd cross paths sometimes in the tunnels, leave each other messages... He used to talk about wanting to try the Maze one day. I thought it was just - idle talk. Then he disappeared, a few months ago. We thought some monster got him."

Oh good, he didn't describe Wenduag and so she doesn't have to run to warn Savamelekh, she can get there in comfort with the rest of them.

"Well, it looks like that was correct. Just a different kind of monster and a different kind of got."

"As fascinating as this ritual might be to some of you, we still haven't learned anything useful for killing the rest of the cultists. Except that there's a scary demon at the top that we might not want to disturb." Seriously, when are they going to get to the fun part already?

"This is important, Camellia, we're here to save the children, not just burn out a den of cultists." 

"And you haven't learned where the children are. Unless they're with the vrolikai, do you want to go stab a vrolikai with me?"

"If they're already with the vrolikai then we can't rescue them until the vrolikai leaves, which means finding out what will have happened to them at that point." 

Camellia throws up her hand (the one with the rapier stays pointing at the prisoner). "Fine, fine, go on, ask him more about the ritual."

"Thank you. What does the ritual actually do to the victims."

"I told you already! It infuses them with Abyssal quintessence, empowered by a symbolic Evil act, and stays behind as a magic poison to enforce that!"

"On a more mundane level it seems to make them stupid and angry all the time. And reddish, for some reason. But I didn't interview any of them before the ritual so maybe they were already like that. And anyway, you really, really shouldn't trust me about this, because as I keep telling you it's not my area of expertise! Why don't you ask me about something I actually care about, like esoteric effects of blood on summoning circles - will you bloody stop squeezing!"

"Esoteric effects of blood on summoning circles are not, presently, relevant," she says coolly. "There are Neather children we intend to rescue, ideally before the ritual, so we are asking questions relevant to that."

"Then maybe you should hurry up and go stop the ritual instead of asking me stuff I don't know about! Have you people never heard of specialization?! Also, how would knowing the outcome of the ritual help you prevent it? You might be Terendelev's daughter but your research program is dumb."

"This isn't a research program, you wisdom-lacking twit, we're crusaders who are interrogating a cultist!"

"Oooh, yeah, now I see where you went wrong. I'm not a cultist, I'm an honest Nethysian. I just hang out with these guys because they let me into their library!"

...Lucette turns to look at Anevia. 

Obviously that wouldn't hold any water with the Prelate, but Lucette has never encountered anything like it before and would like. Advice. 

Does she mean advice on interrogating him, because Anevia is coming to think he's being honest and will just answer any question they ask if they word it right!

Or does she mean advice on what to do with him afterwards? On a moral basis of 'likely to hurt other people if set free' he does seem pretty likely, if only as an enabler, because the actual cultists presumably got something out of him in exchange, even if it was just research and spells cast.

On the other hand, maybe they can get him somewhere his knowledge would be useful while keeping him relatively harmless? If he's even a first-circle wizard he can pay for his own upkeep, and he might be happy to just sit and read all day, at least as long as they don't run out of new books. Normally she'd - damn it, normally she'd ask someone like Aravashnial and now she can't - but there are probably people who'd take charge of this guy without mistreating him. If, you know, the city and everyone in it weren't busy fighting for their lives. 

She'd offer him something like that in exchange for his cooperation, except he started cooperating before they got around to threatening him, but she's hardly going to leave him worse off for having done that.

"Well, we're clearing out the cultists, so it's our library now. If you want to keep your library privileges, you need to keep answering our questions, even if they seem irrelevant. Or suggest better questions to help us, like a proper research librarian."

That gets an alarmed look out of him for the first time. "I - yes, yes, ask me anything! My knowledge is at your disposal!"

Really it's just like what the Baphometans wanted; he was right to think demon cultists and Iomedaean cultists were equally valid paths to knowledge. And he's not about to lose his library privileges if he can possibly help it! He straightens his posture and gives a determined nod.

Oh good they probably don't have to kill him. 

"Are any of the books in here about the ritual?"

"No! Baphometans are terrible about documenting their work!!! In fact, out of all the books here, the ones written by Baphometans tend to be the mostly badly researched and argued, but they have a lot of other stuff that you couldn't find up above" - he deflates at Lucette's look. "There may be some that mention it. I haven't read everything here yet," which is in fact why he still is here, "but I've read the first page or two of every book to get an overview. There's an alchemist's almanac of Abyssal poisons, supposedly by Zacharius but I don't trust that so who knows if the contents are any more truthful. There's Baur et al on vrolikai, but I've read that and it doesn't have any rituals. 'The Self', supposedly a mongrel's investigation into his own nature, claims to be over seventy years old. Two different tomes of Baphometan religious musings, written by people who worked here in the maze so maybe they mention something. An anonymous treatise on the nature of souls and the magics that can lastingly affect them, I'm actually looking forward to reading that one. Brooke's tractate on quintessence and Bulhman on alchemical substitutes for Detect Evil, I assume you've read those already, might be a useful reference if you're trying to analyse someone who went through the ritual..."