After she had come to, Anne spent a moment getting her bearings and taking in her surroundings. The house that Robert lived in had been his parents' house and the room that he slept in was the same room that he had slept in growing up, and nothing in it had changed since Anne had first been in it twenty years ago. The Dan Marino poster was still on the wall and the signed Lou Garrick baseball that he'd gotten from his father was still in its glass case on top of his chest of drawers; he was even still sleeping on the same bed. It wasn't just that Robert didn't like change, he was terrified of it and did everything in his power to fight against it. Laying on Robert's bed in his room and thinking about this, Anne felt a strong sense of longing. Robert had always been very sensitive and Anne had always felt very protective of him because of it. She missed that feeling that being with Robert had given her, of course that was because she missed Robert. When she had first seen Jessie, Anne had thought that she was Robert's much younger girlfriend and had been penetrated by a stab of pain at the thought of Robert being serious with someone else. Anne needed to resolve her feelings where Robert was concerned and she was going to do that now while she was here with them getting the full picture of what the story was with these talking animals. Aside from the Goose laughing and talking Anne could remember hardly anything of what had happened before she'd fainted. She had a vague memory of Robert referring to himself as the Waker but that was it. She got out of bed and went downstairs to join others, who were all sitting on the couch and watching Caddyshack together. Robert was sitting with a huge bowl of popcorn in his lap that he and Jessie were taking handfuls out of and feeding the animals with in addition to eating some of the popcorn themselves. Being together like this the five of them looked like a family, a family that she was intruding upon.

"Hey, you're awake," Robert turned and said to her after seeing her reflection in the television, "are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you hungry or thirsty or anything?"

"No, I'm fine. What happened to your hair?"

"Oh, I asked Jessie to give me a haircut and a shave; you were right, I was looking like a nutcase."

"You didn't ask me, I had to practically wrestle you to the ground and shave you against your will," Jessie protested.

"That's not how I remember it," Robert said jokingly.

"That's how I remember it," the Wolf said.

"Me too," the goat said.

"And me," the Goose said.

"Four against one, you lose," Jessie said.

Watching them, Anne could see that they had fun like this often and it made her happy to see Robert surrounded by such love.

"What did you guys have for dinner?" She asked them.

"We haven't eaten yet, we were waiting for you to wake up."

"What are you doing for dinner?"

"We'll just order some pizza."

That night the six of them sat at the table in Robert's dining room and Anne learned everything about what Robert had gone through with the Goose thus far. If she hadn't seen the talking animals for herself she never would have believed him, nobody would have, anybody would have thought, listening to him talking about Guardians and pilgrimages, that he had gone insane, especially with his hair looking like what it had been looking like. There were things about Robert's story that she couldn't understand, like why the Goose had chosen Robert in particular over literally every other person alive, and what this pilgrimage was meant to accomplish exactly, none of which the goose would go into specifics about.

"How is Robert supposed to deal with all of this on his own? He doesn't have the kind of power or influence to be able to stand up against world leaders and whole armies."

"He won't be alone, there are other Guardians that would have found their way to people that have the kind of power and influence that we need to mount a campaign against the Raven."

"How many of them have you found?"

"So far none, but we have some leads that we're running down and when the time is appropriate we'll make contact."

"What leads have you got?"

"A couple; there's a civilian in Russia, a CEO, who the lion appears to have chosen, the Raven no doubt knows about her and will have plans for making contact with her, if he hasn't made contact with her already. Right now though our focus is on finding the owl, the Guardian of knowledge, who Jessie believes might be connected in some way to a blogger who goes by the handle Solomon, and once we've located and awakened the owl it won't be long before we're able to ascertain the whereabouts of the rooster."

"You've never told me about the rooster before," Robert said.

"The rooster is the Guardian of enlightenment, it's the owl's spiritual counterpart. "

"How are you going to find this Solomon? Governments have been after him for years," Anne asked.

"He'll make himself visible soon enough."

"What makes you so sure that he will?"

"I've known his kind, he'll want credit for what he's done, they all do."

"And how does the rooster fit into all of this?"

"The rooster will appear to help Solomon and the owl wage an information war against the snake and the bull."

"I've never heard about this bull before either! Why have you been keeping all of this from me?" Robert asked.

"I didn't want you feeling overwhelmed, it's best if you learn about all of this along the way."

"How much do I still not know?"

"Very little, and it's mostly stuff that you'll never know because I have strict instructions to make sure that mortals never come into contact with that knowledge."

"You've got strict instructions from whom?"

"That's one of the things you're not allowed to know."

It had been a while since Robert and the Goose had gone to the forest to awaken the goat and Robert was growing concerned and frustrated by the lack of progress since. He couldn't see how they were ever going to get ahead of the Raven without getting more aggressive.

"You must trust the Goose," somebody whispered in Robert's ear, startling him so much that he fell out of his chair.

The oracle was back, appearing out of thin air. Anne and Jessie were as startled as Robert but they managed to stay in their seats.

"Why are you telling Robert that he needs to trust me?"

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"He thinks you're moving too slowly and that at this rate you'll never catch up to the Raven, although I must say, I don't entirely disagree with him."

"We go through this every time and these anxieties always prove to be unfounded, just like they will be this time, so, let's move on by having you tell us why you're here."

"The Raven's making its move for the lion; the snake's adoptee, Dr. Fyodor Milichenko, is going to make contact with the lion's adoptee, Ms. Sonya Kruschenko, and try and get her to join them."

"What are his chances of success?" The Goose asked.

"I'd say the likelihood is that he fails, but with the snake involved we can't take anything for granted."

"I spent some time looking into Ms. Kruschenko, she doesn't seem like the type that would be easily corrupted, but that's assuming that her political ambitions aren't greater than her sense of integrity."

"That's almost never the case," the oracle responded.

"Maybe in this case it is."

"I hope for your sake you're right."

"Where are they meeting?" Robert asked.

"There's going to be a conference in Moscow, The Growth and Opportunities Conference; Dr Milichenko is going to be there participating in a political roundtable; Sonya Kruschenko is one of the organizers of the event and she's going to be participating in a number of roundtables herself, that makes this conference the most likely meeting place for these two."

"Should we go to this conference and talk to Sonya and warn her about the Raven?" Robert asked.

"At present we've got nothing to offer her, so it's pointless us making contact with her," the Goose answered.

"Why is it important for us to have something to offer her?"

"The lion's adoptees are always very ambitious and aim for positions of power that will allow them to fully exert their strength; Dr Milichenko is most likely going to present her with an offer that the Raven's prepared for her, whether she takes it will depend on how attractive the offer is and how strong her ambition is."

"What if she accepts?"

"Then the Goose will have to find the dragon and make a deal with it," the oracle answered.

"There's a dragon?"

"Yes Robert, tales of dragons didn't come from ancient civilizations finding dinosaur fossils and not knowing what they were, those tales are based on the dragon."

"The dragon exists in a state of perpetual hibernation, awakening it requires special approval and is only to be done if we are confronted by the most extraordinary circumstances," the oracle added.

"Is the dragon dangerous?" Jessie asked.

"The dragon's power far surpasses that of any other Guardian. It has the power of all the other Guardians and is able to use any combinations of them it wants. It's far too dangerous to awaken, which is why it's been left to hibernate since the last time it was awakened."

"Who awakened it the last time?" Robert asked.

"The Raven; it tried to manipulate the dragon into doing it's will and the dragon got angry and went on a rampage. It descended into the ocean and used the water guardian's power to summon a gigantic tidal wave that sunk the city of Atlantis," the Goose said.

"So you see, the dragon is far too dangerous to be brought into play, which is why you can't afford to allow things to get to the point where you have to turn to the dragon as a final gambit," the oracle said to the Goose, "you should consider taking Robert's advice about being more proactive, even if it does mean going against your normal modus operandi."

"Call me crazy, but something about Sonya Kruschenko tells me that she wouldn't accept an offer to ascend to power that rendered her beholden, when she takes power it'll be on her own terms, that's how it normally is with the lion's adoptees and Sonya is one of the most strong-willed of them all, she reminds me of Catherine in that way."

"Can we go back to dragon please," Jessie said, "what happened with Atlantis?"

"The Raven created Atlantis to be its utopia populated by the best of humanity and wanted the dragon to destroy the rest of the world; the dragon didn't like that the Raven thought it could use it like that so it destroyed the Raven's utopia instead by sending it to the bottom of the ocean," the Goose said.

"Do I have your word that the situation won't become so desperate that we're forced to turn to the dragon?" The oracle asked the Goose.

"You have my word."

The oracle left as suddenly and mysteriously as she had arrived, leaving the others behind to contemplate what came next. It was no understatement to say that everything hinged on this meeting between Fyodor and Sonya, which, if it went according to plan for the Raven, could put the United States and Russia within its grasp, which would force the Goose into a desperate play with the dragon. The Goose understood Robert and the oracle's frustrations and in truth it wasn't without its own doubts, but the fact remained that only through revelation could they find the one true path that they were meant to take.

After the oracle left they finished off the pizzas and discussed sleeping arrangements. Anne was going to spend the night and while there was a third bedroom there was no bed in it, so it was decided that Anne would take Robert's room and Robert would sleep in the living room on the pull-out couch. Anne decided to stay and spend the night in the hope that she would have an opportunity later to talk with Robert alone about all of these strange events and the possible danger that he was in. She cleaned up the dining table with Jessie and after the two of them did the dishes while in the living room Robert was putting linen on the couch. Jessie was tired and went upstairs as soon as they were done with the dishes, giving Anne the opportunity that she wanted to speak with Robert alone, not knowing that Jessie had received instructions from the Goose to come upstairs as soon as was possible. She joined the Goose, the goat and the Wolf atop the stairs where they were planning on spying on Robert and Anne to see if they immediately reconciled.

As he did every night before he went to bed Robert turned on the news to look for any stories that might give them some clues as to the movements of the Guardians. The lead story that night, as it was every night, was about the continued extraordinary success of Jim Balmer's campaign despite the increasingly off-putting rhetoric from his campaign. The controversial story today was about one of Jim Balmer's campaign aides who earlier had said that the abolition of slavery was something that perhaps needed to be reassessed given that Jim Balmer's stated aim was to firmly establish the United States as a Christian nation and there were many passages in the Bible that not only endorsed but encouraged slavery. The extraordinary thing about the story was that the aide had not been fired and the campaign had not issued an apology and yet Jim Balmer's poll numbers had not suffered in the slightest.

Jim Balmer was being increasingly viewed as the inevitable next president of the United States and the national discourse had shifted to a discussion about what a Balmer presidency meant for the American people, in particular women, people of color and homosexuals. To many Jim Balmer represented fear of a descent into a Handmaid's Tale-like Christian authoritarianism, while the best that the Democrats could offer was to tell people not to believe Jim Balmer's lie about the diseased crops being an act of divine retribution and to trust that the brilliant minds that the US had to call upon would identify the problem and fix it. The leading candidate in the Democratic primary was Wisconsin senator Tom Groff, who, in a head to head general election match-up with Jim Balmer, trailed him by eighteen points. Senator Groff was, by most measures, a fantastic candidate. He was good looking, articulate, well educated and had a long list of bipartisan legislative accomplishments from his time in both state and federal government. If he was running in any other election cycle against a candidate like Jim Balmer then he would have been the overwhelming favorite for the White House, but these were political circumstances unlike any other, and Robert had to admit that the tapestry of events weaved by the Raven was nothing short of sheer genius.

"The Raven's helping him?" Anne asked Robert when she entered the living room and saw Jim Balmer on the TV screen.

"Yup. The election's seven months away, I don't know how we're going to stop this."

"The Goose said that the rat is responsible for the farm failures; what is the rat?"

"The rat delights in chaos, which is what they're hoping to produce with all of this."

"Why? What is the point of all of this?"

"According to the Goose their goal is to tear everything down so that it can be rebuilt according to their ideals, which are very severe and exclusionary."

"I still don't understand what the Goose's plan is exactly for stopping them."

"I don't know what it is either, the Goose keeps telling me to trust that it does have a plan that will come together when the time is right."

"And what is your role in all of this? Why did the Goose pick you?"

"As far as I can tell my only job is to hold out the egg for these animals to touch it and be awakened it, my role in all of this is nothing like Jim Balmer or Fyodor Milichenko's."

"This is all so crazy."

"I know, I thought when I started shitting those golden eggs that I'd hit the jackpot, I didn't know that it meant I was going to be pulled into all of this."

"Aren't you scared? I mean, you're having to go up against all of these powerful forces and you're just...you."

"I'm not scared, it frustrates me how much the Goose keeps me in the dark but I trust it, that hasn't changed and I don't think it ever will."

The answer that Robert gave was exactly the answer that Anne would have expected him to give. Although it had caused some problems for him in the past, he was still loyal to a fault and if asked for help he would do all that he could for you without for a moment feeling as if an imposition had been placed upon him, that had been the case when her father was sick and Robert agreed to move him in with them and paid for a nurse to take care of him. Spending this time with him, more time than she normally spent when she checked in on him, Anne was being reminded of all of the qualities that Robert possessed that made her love him so much. She could no longer deny that she wanted to be with him and the moment was perfect for her to let him know that, which she would have done if someone hadn't rung the doorbell just then.