"I... don't know?"

(He is suddenly remembering Lev saying in a sense he was going to die at age 26. It was more metaphorical at the time.)

"That's still not... necessarily bad. I think."

"If the ritual has long-lasting magical effects... it may not be as disrupted as we hope."

"There have also been... mouths forming in walls, people with biting compulsions, voices... but nothing so obviously linked to the ritual itself as that."

"...also the ritual summoned a horrifying mouth beast and then afterward there were giant Mouths which secreted way more Nectar than the previous cult had ever had."

Ayers looks extremely concerned.

"Are you planning to fight it?"

"Yes. Of course we are."

He nods.

(The mouth looks... more colored than it was before. And almost moist.)

"I have thought... that there is a way that a Mouth could be destroyed."

Okay so there is torturing a man via extensive questioning and there is actually killing him and he thinks they're getting closer to the latter but-- "Go on?"

"The Rituals of Self-Denial allow you to neutralize a Mouth. If there were a larger Mouth... as I had seen on the Dallol dig... Perhaps one could perform the Rituals of Self-Denial until their own body could neutralize it. And throw themselves inside, and perish. It is, I think, how the Mouth in Dallol was calcified, thousands of years ago."

".....and if there were a smaller Mouth, something like a crucifix, over which someone had done rituals of self-denial for years --?"

"Perhaps."

"No, that's -- that worked. Back in L.A. A very Catholic man threw his crucifix into the mouth that had opened in the garden and it calcified."

"...Is that why you both have crucifixes."

"I mostly have a crucifix because my best friend is very Catholic and he worries about me. But yes, I was asking if that was why what happened in LA worked."

"He gave it to me." He rubs the back of his head self-consciously. "I thought, y'know, he must have figured something out. Or, he gave it to -- Mordred, technically? I think? But--"

"Technically he offered it to me and then gave it to Carrie who gave it to you but that's not really the point, I think."

"I suspect that is why it worked. --I. Must be a teacher. One last time."

What Does That Mean

"You should learn the Rituals of Self-Denial, so you can use them when you need to. To calcify a Minor Mouth, should you get one, or--" He does not finish the sentence.

Okay much less ominous than it could've been. "We're grateful for the help."

"I--" He hesitates. "To teach someone is to put yourself in a position of power over them. It is to pursue a goal."

Oh no. "We -- could ask the nuns, or, or apparently just being Catholic is good enough --"

He looks at Lev. He really does not want to unilaterally decide to fuck up Lev.

Multi-unilaterally? Ugh.

"I do not want to spend the next twenty years of my life eating lizards in the desert."