Araari nods gratefully at Zoë.

"I don't want him to die for that. I don't -- you shouldn't have to go through that all over again."

"He could talk to me-- just once--"

"I don't think he could," Mordred says, instead of any of the things he is thinking. "I'm sorry."

There is, it turns out, not in fact a single good thing in the world. He is going to curl up in a very small ball and never move again.

"Do you know where it is?" he asks Araari. "The mouth."

“On his body? No, it was before I joined the order, I don’t know the details as well as some of the others.” Araari hesitates. “If you went just the once, just to say goodbye—he probably wouldn’t die. It is not an amount of risk that would be worth it to me, if it was someone I loved. But.”

Araari why would you SAY THAT

"He wants to see me," Lev says, in the manner of someone clinging to a very psychologically important fact they are not at all sure is true.

Ayers is going to die and Lev's heart is going to shatter again and there's no way they can stop it

It is, he reminds himself, better that Lev know things and have true information. Even though Mordred is approximately one more thing happening away from forgetting all the reasons it is a bad idea to bite himself.

"I don't think that's a choice we can make for him," he says quietly. "He knows better than us the risks. All we can do is -- is --" he was going to say ask but who are they supposed to ask. If they ask Ayers that's still talking to Ayers.

"Could the nuns... give him a letter? Would that be alright?"

"Okay. But we have to wait. In case he wants to."

After some discussion, they conclude they have enough water for Lev and two other people to wait, if two people go back to Kolluli.

Oswald does NOT want to send Lev off to maybe watch Ayers die without being with him and also does NOT want to die in a highly ominous desert place -- and oh right he might die in a different highly ominous desert place if he goes back huh. There's his mind made up.

Mordred does not want to send Lev off to maybe watch Ayers die but is really not happy with the idea of travelling ten more days but someone who is dedicated to making sure nobody does anything stupid should be there but he does not have enough brain for this.

"...I'll go."

At least he'll have died watching his lover's heart shatter for the umpteenth time wait no this was meant to make himself feel better

Lev spends the evening alternately writing a letter and crying into Mordred's shoulder.

Mordred spends the evening writing a letter, being cried on, and then at some point runs out of willpower and -- doesn't draw blood but does leave some very impressive bite marks in his wrist. It's fine.

The next morning, Araari and Zoe and Magnificence depart for Kolluli.

Zoe is quietly kind of pissed that Anemone DIED all because the nuns wouldn't just say "oh, yes, he's right over there, but he has a health condition that means he can't have guests, we could deliver him a letter though if you would like".

[Romantic plot tumor begins here.]

On the last three nights you're sleeping at the Dallol dig site, from somewhere on the wind, Mordred, Lev, and Oswald hear a voice reciting alien words, unintelligible except for familiar names slipped in between eldritch syllables. “Los Angeles. Mordred Orkney. Zoe Aletheia. Walter Winston. Lacie Ferrier. Gale Dulac. Oswald Ferrier. Agravaine Orkney. Anemone Silverstring. Lev Aarons. Savannah. Echavarria. Morgan Marsh...”

Many of these he recognizes. He doesn't ask about the few pronounceable names that he doesn't, though he's somehow sure the others could identify them. He doesn't want to acknowledge it's happening. That might make it real.

Ahaha. Mordred hates that. (He visibly flinches at Gale and his brothers and Morgan's names. He's -- going to think about this later. He keeps putting off thinking about things but he's going to at some point he swears.)

"Uh. Am I hallucinating the ominous voice?"