[It truly is an unsettling thought, one that seems to affect even a wildcard like Set. That expression of his before he averts his gaze to recover himself is somewhat surprising, and Vander knows to give him that moment he needs without further scrutiny. So he busies himself with pulling a morsel off one of the kebabs, chewing thoughtfully as Set begins thinking through the important question out loud.

Why. It really is the key to this whole thing, and perhaps the one question they know so little of how to answer. There were clues about what Aetós is up to, both given freely and inferred from what people have stumbled upon. (Or gone through.) But if they could figure out why they were going to all this trouble to find an answer to such a typically out of reach question…]

My first assumption is that it’s a power grab. [So, weaponizing the souls fits that.] Nothing about their approach to this, at least from what I saw first-hand, made it seem like there were personal stakes. Calm and clinical.

[Could be that Aetós is just good at compartmentalizing, especially if they’ve been at this as long as they implied. But it still feels off.]

But if that’s true, that leads to the question of what they would need such power for.

[To make a move against either or both Zenith and Meridian personally? To use it as a stepping-stone to reach the Oracles’ power, as nebulous as that seems to be?]