After returning home from the forest, the Goose noticed Dr Milichenko on a political round table on the BBC and subsequently looked him up online and watched a number of his videos of YouTube. Dr Milichenko possessed remarkable eloquence even when speaking in English, and his biting rejoinders never failed to render the person with whom he was sparring speechless, and for those reasons, along with his meteoric rise to international fame, the Goose came to suspect that Fyodor Milichenko had made contact with The Snake, an assessment The Goat agreed with.

Fyodor Milichenko had, with his prolific media appearances, become the de facto leader and spokesman of the REJOIN campaign, and if he had been adopted by the snake like the Goose suspected he had been then it meant that the Raven had ambitions that were global in scale, making it imperative that Robert and the Goose found the remaining guardians and added their energy to the blue egg. So far the Leviathan was the only other guardian whose location the Goose was relatively certain of. There were other guardians, like the snake, that were going to be hard to find because their influence didn't manifest physically, and others they wouldn't need to find because they would find their way to them. The Wolf was the guardian of earth and death and was the goat's spiritual counterpart. Robert asked the Goose to explain to him the nature of the connection between the Wolf and the Goat and the Goose explained to him that when things die they are absorbed by the earth and provide the nutrients for new life to emerge, hence the Goat and the Wolf's relationship as spiritual counterparts.

The Goose could feel that the Wolf had become cognizant of the goat's awakening and would be with them soon. The Wolf had the power to skip between dimensions, which is how it came to appear in Robert's living room one morning as if out of thin air. The Wolf was considerably larger than a normal Wolf and was black with red eyes and a white stripe running down its back. After recovering from the shock caused by the Wolf's sudden appearance, Robert retrieved the egg from upstairs and awakened the Wolf, which, after being awakened, took on the appearance of a regular wolf with grey fur and brown eyes.

A few days after the arrival of the Wolf, days that Jessie spent doting on the Wolf with the same love and affection that she gave to the goat, the Oracle paid another visit to Robert's house to inform them of further developments in the Raven's circle that she had become apprised of. She told them that she had been looking into some interesting financial transactions, specifically involving Prism Capital, that led her to believe that the Raven had made contact with the pig a long time ago, and she agreed with the Goose's belief that Dr Fyodor Milichenko was in some way affiliated with the snake. She also had some interesting news to share with them about The Church of the Golden Goose.

"I'm wondering what you make of John Lafferty and the Church of the Golden Goose and the way their opinions of you have changed over the course of the last few weeks?"

"I know nothing about that," the Goose answered.

"I was stunned when I first found out about it myself; here, look."

The Oracle withdrew her phone from her bag, brought up The Church of the Golden Goose's YouTube channel and hit play on one of their most recent videos. In the video John Lafferty is giving a lecture in which he's discussing new writings that the church had discovered that point to the Goose being feared as an agent of destruction and to the existence of a second divine bird, a Raven, that possessed all the strength that the Goose possessed and perhaps even more. The writings in question were found in ancient Aztec structures in Central America that depict the Goose requesting humans be sacrificed in its name before it intercedes to protect them from a great flood, and that, before the slaughter was to begin, the Raven appeared with news that there would be no flood. The lecture was accompanied by a slideshow of authentic looking images of hieroglyphs depicting the story than John Lafferty had just recounted.

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"That is not true!" The Goose said angrily, "The rat had filled those people's heads with talk of impending doom and the need for human sacrifice and it was up to me and the Wolf to stop them, which we were able to do but only momentarily, the rat had been so thorough about convincing them of the need for human sacrifice that they started doing it anyway, and there was nothing that we could do to stop them."

"I sense the Raven's influence at work here," the oracle said.

"It wouldn't be the first time that someone has been seduced away from me by the Raven."

"Given how devoted Dr. Lafferty was to you the Raven must have offered him something really big to turn him."

"You're right, and I think it's important that we find out what the Raven offered him."

"You're not permitted to make contact with people that have entered the Raven's sphere."

"Which is why we'll get the information some other way."

"There's something else that we need to discuss."

The oracle went on to share with them her theory about the Raven wanting to start a war between Russia and Ukraine. The REJOIN referendum, according to the oracle, was being used as the chief mechanism for orchestrating the war, with Russia and pro-Russian bodies mounting an aggressive and sophisticated misinformation campaign to influence Ukrainian voters.

"We need the owl, we need to find the owl soon," the Goose said.

"What's the owl?" Jessie asked.

"The owl is the Guardian of knowledge," the Goose answered, "if it's a war of misinformation that we're dealing with then we need the Guardian of knowledge to help us fight that war."

"Where can we find it?" Robert asked.

"We have no idea," answered the Goose, "nobody's seen the owl since the library of Alexandria was burned to ground; it was there when the library was sacked and burned and it hasn't been seen since."

"How is the owl going to help? You can't disinfect people's minds just by telling the truth," Jessie said.

"As the Guardian of knowledge the owl possesses information that can't be obtained through conventional means of investigation," the oracle said, "that information could prove very powerful if revealed at the right moment."

"You mean like what Solomon does," Jessie said.

"King Solomon?" Robert asked.

"No, the blogger, he goes by the handle Solomon, he's always leaking high value information on his website, he's the one who blew the whistle on those fake bank charges at Wells Fargo and the chemicals used in fracking."

"Sounds promising, now we just have to figure out how to find him," the Goose said.

"Don't you have a connection with all of these animals that we can use to find them?" Jessie asked the Goose.

"That would make things far too easy, it's called a pilgrimage for a reason," the Goose responded.

"For now I think we should focus on the Raven and what its overall objectives are with it taking an interest in both US and Ukrainian politics," the Oracle suggested before leaving.

"I know the oracle said that you're not allowed to make contact with John Lafferty, but what if I spoke with him," Robert suggested to the Goose when they were having lunch in the kitchen after the oracle had left.

"I suppose there wouldn't be anything wrong with that, of course you'd have to avoid any mention of our relationship."

"That shouldn't be a problem, but shouldn't we expect him to be similarly guarded about his relationship with the Raven?"

"The feeling that I got from watching his latest public appearances is that he's struggling with a great amount of conflict, if you push the right buttons we should be able to get some answers from him."