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."

"No," he agrees, "I can't. I've tried the spell for it, I'm terrible at it.

But you can."

"...how."

"The Mouth," Mordred says, "is power. It's neutralized by its opposite-- self-abnegation. You close it by someone who has, for a very long time, chosen not to pursue their goals, or to engage with the things that bring them meaning, willingly making themselves a sacrifice.

I can't do it. I've spent my life doing things. But you can."

"Why would I want to?"

"I guess I don't know that you do. But you seem pretty miserable, as it is, and you don't exactly have a lot of other ways out. And it would be-- a lot of good done for the world, if it were closed."

"I don't care about doing good for the world! Why would I care about that?"

"I didn't care about that even-- before."

Okay that's fair. It's kind of a mystery why Peter Lukas cares about any of the things he cares about but also that's not the thing that Mordred should point out right now.

"So not for that reason. But do you care about impacting the world? About doing anything with your life other than running in circles?"

Zoe decides to take a wild stab at things and hope she doesn't throw off Mordred's thing here.

"If you did it, you'd have succeeded in doing something no one else has before. You'd be the only one."

Peter's eyes widen.

"...no one?"

"Some people have managed little ones. Nothing like this."