That was pretty well Tony's reaction when he heard the suggestion, but he wasn't one to reject a concept before he got the chance to improve on it and making it a practical theory. Why else would he allow interns to offer their designs to the company? They inevitably looked like the result of a sleepless, hallucinogen fueled night, but that didn't mean Tony couldn't work up the blueprints into something with some return value. It was the same with magic. They were all seeing the same symptoms, just like those interns were aiming to solve a problem, they just had a point of view that Tony hadn't considered and might unlock the right path. Just like here, it was their nutty, occult friend that suggested the source of this radiated from a single point, and it all started with the earthquake. That's when Tony called the geologist who approached them then.
"Look at this. We had been assuming that the shock was caused by strike slip faulting in the south, because there was no tectonic activity this far north. But look at this rupture!" He rushed back to the edge of the newly formed cliff, standing amongst a forest of ropes that had been set up and secured for this expedition and peering down into the darkness below. Tony raised his eyebrows at Sue, then rested his hand on her back again when he turned to watch what must have been their witch doctor and the vouduo specialist ambling towards them.
"He says this is a cleansing," the scholar informed them, looking less than comfortable with the conversation he just had. "The spirits are cooling the earth and the people, and it will spread."
"Great," Tony said before he could continue down that dangerously crazy path, and gestured to the crevasse that the geologist was still having some manic nerdgasm over. "And we're supposed to find something down there?"
"Samedi, and the gateway to Ville au Camp."
Tony licked his lips, then just looked to Sue with a question in his face. Now all that was left was to strap in and rappel their way down to the city of the spirits. Didn't seem so hard, did it?