Araari is not really talking. Or thinking. Just kind of... Following Oswald around so she won’t be alone.

"...The new moon is still tonight, isn't it." He doesn't want to do anything about it. He wants to hide in the other hotel room with Lev and let the world end without him.

Might not even be this new moon. Might not even connect to the actual new moon. Who knows. It might not matter at all what he actually does.

Well, you can probably fit two people on the motorcycle if you're not a coward. "I think I can take one other person to the cliffs on the motorcycle, who wants to go ahead with me?"

If nobody has strong opinions she'll just pick Zoe on the grounds that she has a vague sense that an acrobat might be good at doing things related to cliffs.

Also Zoe actually saw the people who took him away, and stuff.

This seems like good logic and he's glad he didn't have to volunteer it and look like a coward.

Araari is just going to be saying prayers to herself in a mixture of Amharic and Ge’ez. She mixes ones for Mordred’s safety in with ones for the rest of his immortal soul and figures that God will know which ones are applicable. She is also very glad that she didn’t have to confront the fact that she wanted to say “not me please”.

Zoe packs her gun and her ropes and wears something good for moving in and looks grim.

She'll speed off in the direction of the cliffs with Zoe, then. She's not at all optimistic about saving him, but they should at least try to recover the remains.

The next thing Mordred knows, he's washed up on a warm, sandy white beach.

He opens his eyes and he can't see. Everything hurts -- his skull and his side where he hit the water and his limbs from the places where he didn't manage to avoid getting hit by underwater rocks and his eyes and his lungs and his throat.

The beach is quiet and warm.

He passed out in the ocean and didn't drown -- and he can't see -- not panicking is something of a lost cause but he's not dead how is he not dead.

The beach is quiet and warm and a pretty good place to panic if he's going to panic, which he is.

How is he not dead -- the cult here knows his face now if not his name -- but he's not dead how is he not dead -- the water's shallow here, he can hear the difference, he's not sure how he can hear the difference but he can and it's weirdly comforting -- his lungs still hurt, he coughs a few times and coughs salt water -- he's not dead. Somehow, he's not dead.

It takes a while for his vision to return and when it does he stands up (his limbs feel dead and everything hurts and he's soaking wet and covered in salt and sand but he's not dead) and brushes himself off, mostly ineffectually, and walks away from the beach. He's not totally sure where he is but, as far as directions to start walking in at random go, "away from the ocean" seems at least as good as any.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel room--

"...where's Mordred?"

".................Zoe and Anita are on that."

He does not have the most reassuring look on his face. In fact he most resembles a deer caught in headlights.

"............oh."

He is. Surprisingly calm, all things considered, given that everyone he cares about except Oswald is DEAD.

You get used to it, he guesses.

Oswald might be taking it worse than Lev actually. He is supposed to do something about the new moon but instead he is going to collapse next to the bed and cry.

Lev pats him.

"It... gets easier?" he attempts.

He has been not processing this for like two hours now and now he's doing all that at once.

"I know -- I don't know why -- it's just -- I can't stop--"

And then words more thoroughly fail him.

Araari is kind of still not processing this. “They drove him to the cliffs,” she tells Lev. “Two hours ago. He was tied up. That’s all we know. Now you know it too.” She sounds very detached. It’s remarkable, how vivid a picture such little information can paint.

Lev should NOT be having the feeling that he never even got to kiss Mordred. This is NOT the important part of this situation. But it is the part he is thinking about.

Whenever he loved other people who are DEAD he at least got to kiss them first.

Oswald has managed to get ahold of himself and quit crying on Lev about someone who is arguably much more Lev's friend than his. "Sorry," he says, in the hopes that this will convey whatever he needs to convey.

"It's fine. It happens."

Does he mean "Oswald crying" or does he mean "everyone Lev cares about dying"? Yes.

Meanwhile--

When Anita and Zoe arrive at the cliffs, they're deserted. They can see footprints the wind hasn't quite swept away-- four people came here and only three of them left.

Nononono.

Zoe looks down from the cliffs and along them.

They should probably take some pictures of the boot prints in case they need those later. And then check the cliffs and any way down to check the nearby water for bodies.

Zoe lets Anita take the pictures. She's going down to the water to look for Mordred.

Is there a path? There's probably no path. She fastens a rope to the sturdiest looking thing at the top of the cliff and to herself and starts to climb down.

"Um," says a very familiar voice, from behind them. "Hi?"

Zoe is very surprised to find Mordred above her.

So surprised, in fact, that she falls.