"If I'm in charge of the cult in Malta, I can take over the cult throughout the world."

"Why do you want to be in charge of the cult throughout the world."

"So... I can be powerful and in charge of everyone?"

"A successful businessman."

"And what do you want to do with that power and success. Is there anything?"

"Be... successful?"

(Zoe thinks privately to herself that everyone says Nectar makes you smart but clearly it actually makes you very dumb.)

"So it sounds to me," Mordred says, and his fingernails are digging white crescent-moons into his hands, "like you don't actually have any goals. You're just-- climbing as high as you can, up a ladder that doesn't actually go anywhere."

Peter says 'tch.'

"You're never going to get anywhere in life with that attitude."

"You'll never get anywhere in life" doesn't seem like a polite, cheerful thing to say. It sounds almost... rude.

Oh god is this working is this terrible terrible idea working--

"Neither will you! And at least I'm not spending all my energy running in place, acquiring power that I don't use except to defend myself from the other people who want power!"

(Oswald is blocking out whatever complicated social black magic Mordred and Lukas are doing. The last thing he knows definitely happened was -- walking out of the catacombs, and breathing in.

Did the ritual fail? What was their plan if the ritual failed. Did they have a plan for that.

--Yes. Sort of. The other way to close a Mouth is somebody sacrificing themselves.

He is not clear how to remind anyone else of this with Peter Lukas in the room. He is willing to throw himself bodily into a Mouth if he has to but he would very much like not to.)

(Zoe does not remember the plan for if the ritual failed. She is not very good at keeping the plan in mind, even in the most favorable circumstances, which these are decidedly not.)

"I don't just use it to defend myself! I also use it to become a successful, wealthy, well-respected businessman."

"Isn't that what you Americans call the American Dream? What could be a more noble cause than that?"

"So, you use your power to give yourself the trappings of power," Mordred says, entirely unimpressed. "Do you even like business?"

"Yes! Of course. All men like business."

"It's the noblest of human aspirations."

"...so what I'm hearing is, you don't, you've just decided that you should."

Most people who actually like social interaction, Mordred thinks, don't talk like they swallowed a How To Succeed In Business textbook.

"When was the last time you did something that actually made you happy? Not something all men like, not something that's a noble human endeavor, something that you, Peter Lukas specifically, actually sincerely enjoy?"

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.