Martin gave a sigh of frustration. Lixi had managed to make things even more complicated, but he supposed that there was no way she really could have survived Iron City without complicating things in one way or another. He couldn't dwell on the deal she had made, no matter how horrible this trek into the pits of Hell promised to be.

"Oookaaay," he said after a long, hard look at the empty space in front of him. "That's... kinda a big thing, but we gotta stay focused, right? One thing at a time. Who is this 'stranger' guy and how can he help us out?"
----
This narrowed it down a bit: a god that was represented as a snake and carried a flute. Somewhere down the line in her thought process she made a list, and amongst that list was the correct answer. There was the symbolism of the flute, being phallic, and the snake also being a symbol of masculinity, that she understood quite clearly that whatever snake god he was, it was a god of fertility.

Adja chewed on this thought for a moment. A symbol of power would have been, were she not mistaken, the means by which a god could control his followers. If Joel had this flute, then it would not have been a far stretch of the imagination to conclude that this was how he bent people to his will. The question was: where did he keep it? She tried to recall the night upon the roof, but never did she think to look for a flute.

What were the odds that he would use it against her when her three days were up? "I don't think she understands what she got herself into. If he doesn't have it in his possession, then she's going to have to search all the planes for it. All of them."