Blink. Blinkblink.

Laughter. "I don't think an adult has to worry about this kind of thing, Mordred."

"So, it's been since you were a child." He's digging his fingernails into his hands again, hoping past hope. "All this power, all this success, all this influence, and you haven't actually enjoyed anything since you were a child, is what you're telling me."

Blinkblinkblinkblink.

This was NOT in the script.

He tries to shift back onto firmer ground. "This chat was lovely but I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you now."

"Why? What would it get you?"

"Well, I'm a busy man. Can't waste time jabbering!"

"Although this conversation is lovely."

(Zoe hasn't done the self-abnegation rituals. Mordred really struggled with them and seems to be heading his own conversion movement. That leaves Donovan and himself.

He could do it if he had to, he thinks. He hopes. And Donovan... is at this point, a pinnacle of not having goals, actually.

And she's suicidal.)

No, don't worry about it, Mordred has a plan here. A terrible plan, to be clear, thought of in about thirty seconds while a cultist was pointing a gun at him and the mouth slavered. But a plan.

"Killing me won't help. It won't make you happy and it won't make your life worthwhile and it won't make your grabs for power anything more than furiously running in place."

Peter laughs. "Well, I'm not going to kill you. I don't know why it didn't take last time but that's certainly something for our scholars to... study."

"Killing the others won't help either. Neither will taking over the cult.

It won't make you happy. It won't give you actual goals. It won't mean you've contributed anything to the world. It'll just mean you're one rung higher on the ladder to nowhere."

Well, you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket! And he's not doing anything anyways, and he would like to know anything about what the fuck happened. So he could, if he wanted, walk over to Montgomery Donovan and ask.

Montgomery is kneeling on the ground, still shaking.

She hasn't really processed anything that's happening.

"Donovan," he says softly, "What... happened, while I was out?"

"The spell didn't work.

The Mouth isn't Nyarlathotep."

Meanwhile, Peter Lukas lines up his gun and aims carefully at Zoe.

Peter Lukas is a businessman who isn't at all used to using guns. And Zoe is an acrobat. She dodges easily.

"Huh." He looks up at it, inasmuch as he can look straight at it without losing his head. "Guess that really only leaves the original plan. ...Well, unless whatever Mor--"

There is a gunshot! He flinches.

Montgomery doesn't process the shot.

"Original plan?"

"The one we know works on Mouths. Well, smaller ones, but it seems to scale. Uh, we know you can calcify them. By denying yourself and not pursuing desires and serving others and -- uh, that general sort of thing. We practiced it some in Ethiopia. With smaller ones, you can do it with an object, if it's been -- purified -- by that sort of mindset and actions, or by willpower, sometimes. With the big ones it'd have to take -- something bigger. One of us sacrificing our own life to stop it."

"So who is planning to sacrifice their life?"

Meanwhile--

"Is that really what you want?" he asks Lukas. "To be trapped in a job you hate, never enjoying anything, manipulating webs of people who all want nothing more than to kill you and take your place, acquiring power and power and never doing anything with it except grabbing at more power?"

"Does it matter what I want?"

"I think it does."

"What would you want me to do?"

See, Oswald?

He had a plan.

"Close the Mouth. Make an actual impact, for once in your life."

"You can't close the Mouth."