[b]Canada![/b]

Getting [i]in[/i] to the Temple was the easy part. You just had to disguise yourself as a student returning from an errand. From there, you were able to sneak up into the gladiator cells, which are ominously close to the Academy grounds. Leaving, however? Leaving is trickier. You had to bust through a blockade on the entrance. (The trick was looking through the ominous gate, past the janissaries leveling laser muskets at you and ordering you to stop, and focusing on the statue of Ishtar Resplendent beyond, and thinking: okay, I need to get over there [i]right now[/i].)

But now that you're out, on the streets of Caphtor Below, under the false stars twinkling, you're not out of the woods yet. They didn't just reinforce guards on the exits to the temple, but they've already got hunting packs patrolling the narrow, winding streets. You're being pursued, hemmed in on all sides, and pretty soon you'll end up surrounded and facing down a fight that you can't win, not after being beaten by Asterion; your body's complaining, and it's getting harder to take step after step down the street as you try to figure out how to shake them.

You duck down an alleyway and try to catch your breath.

"[i]ça va?[/i]"

Before you can so much as yelp in surprise, Marianne's pulling you through the wall and into a cramped apartment. The only light in the room's coming from a lantern sitting on the central table, and, yep, there's Anathet, too, sitting in the middle of a tablet fort, making glyphs bubble and melt from form to form as she swipes hurriedly through the one she's holding. You're the only ones here tonight. Thank goodness the Resistance came through. You'll have a little time to talk and review the mission here before the janissaries figure out you vanished out from under their noses and start doing door-to-door checks, at least half an hour or so.

Congratulations! You did it! Mission: success! Now, it's time to figure out if this was worthwhile at all.

***

[b]Marianne![/b]

Ah, dear sweet Étoile! She was so accommodating, was she not, setting up this little safe haven? A place where you may convene for a breath, while the cats yowl outside, and discuss what you have found. How did she go about it? What was the process of plucking strings in the web of the Resistance like for her?

(Speaking of her... you do not have much more time, no? Even if the cats were not about to start banging on doors, at their wits' end, dragging out innocents and accusing them of being [i]collaborateurs[/i], the Lady needs to wake to a clean room and a fresh, fortifying breakfast, and, oh, silly little Étoile has so much work to do! How does that make you feel, with your burning heart, with your new trophy proudly hanging from your belt?)

***

[b]Set![/b]

Or are you Anathet now? After all, both Canada and Marianne know your identity.

The tablet you're poring through is poetry, the commemorative epic that Annunaki dandies enjoy spending years ossifying into something so far up its own perfumed ass that it's technically an ouroboros. Managing to get one of these censored is legitimately impressive in some small way. But it's no surprise that [i]The Tiameid[/i] was crushed before it could ever be published. Even mostly finished, it's... enlightening. And ominous.

[i]Her vessel shattered, her rage uncontained...[/i]

If you unravel the flowery metaphors and unnecessary digressions, the picture that emerges is suggestive. The Annunaki are building another engine here, you know. The beating heart around which another city will coalesce. But this isn't the first engine that has been built on Earth.

[i]"Enki, honored craftsman, keeper of the mysteries / to you I call, armorer, generator, unbegotten but fecund..."[/i]

The last time they built one, something went wrong. The poet blames the animals of Earth, brutish and wickedly cunning, for willfully disobeying the perfect work orders that were delivered from on high, such that when TIAMAT was drawn down from the High Waste of LENG into the vessel shaped for her, it shattered into ten thousand quivering shards, and the wrathful spirit reached up to drag down Babylon from the very skies. The fall of the holy city would have shattered the unworthy planet below; another extinction event.

Only, that's not what happened.

[i]In such manner did the Protocol pierce the demoness's throat, descending through her, a burning logic which undid her sinews...[/i]

The rest of the poem is about the uprising of the Children of Tiamat, horrific monsters led by GLGMSH which...

Oh. Oh, that would do it. That would get this censored. What was the poet even thinking?

You can't say that one of the High Gods [i]died[/i]. Even if you're flowery, even if you talk about her spirit passing into the underworld until such time as it was drawn forth in glory and splendor, even if you assert that GLGMSH did so by the most wicked means and that her death-curse undid his very heart... you can't possibly let the people know that humanity [i]killed Ishtar[/i].

There's a hypothesis strongly supported: if the Ishtar that your marks tonight worship isn't the same Ishtar that invaded Earth in the first place, then it's much more likely that the High Gods are masks used by the highest-ranking Annunaki rather than anomalous superbeings. Or, at the very least, that they're not literally immortal deities, but that they can be replaced if one of them meets an untimely end. Which means that it wouldn't be enough to make some kamikaze run at taking one out, you'd have to take all five down at once.

But more importantly... if you freed Caphtor, she'd [i]die[/i]. The High Gods would take up the terrible logic of the Iblis Protocol (some sort of infohazard? an energy pattern that destabilizes Djinn specifically?) and they would kill her. Which means that if your plan has a hope of succeeding...

You're going to have to steal [i]the Iblis Protocol itself.[/i]