[Though Liem obviously doesn’t know what Chaldea is, he assumes that the specifics aren’t too important for this conversation. From context, he’ll assume Chaldea is something with goals similar to Meridian’s, which seems to be Tezcatlipoca’s implication. In any case, the more relevant thing in Liem’s view would be the way the god talks about the fate of his world, and the insight he had—has?—into such things.

If Quetzalcoatl bore similarities to Abadar and Shelyn, then perhaps Tezcatlipoca is more like Pharasma—the first of the gods, oldest, with domains tied to life and death and fate. Though, like Abadar, Pharasma too is a neutral deity, and evidently Tezcatlipoca is not. Either way, the prospect of Tezcatlipoca being all-seeing only feeds Liem’s nervousness, which has been at a low simmer, along with his irritation, almost since the moment he sat down and started speaking with the god.]

There were places I visited during the Oracle Trial that I would have said shouldn’t exist, [he acknowledges.] But a glimpse of one place is not really enough for a mortal to pass such judgments. And when I spoke to Lady Yima about it much earlier, she expressed doubt that she could pull a god’s soul from the timestream, to bring to the new world.

[Both Set and Quetzalcoatl had expressed that the version of them pulled to Kenos did not encompass all that they were… so how could a fraction of a god expect to preside over a world made from scraps?]

If Oblivion can be sealed or cast out, defeated in some way and its meals snatched from its jaws, I think it should be.