(That is not, actually, true. There is an enormous calcified Mouth in Ethiopia. But Mordred isn't going to mention that right now. Or, uh, ever.)

He looks at the Mouth. At the investigators. Back at the Mouth.

"Will you tell people, if I do? That I was the greatest success of them all?"

"I did something no one else in the cult has ever done?"

"Yes. We will."

"Absolutely. I'll tell everyone. Peter Lukas did something no one else could."

He pauses. There is a flash of a real, genuine emotion on his face.

It makes it obvious how every other expression any of them had seen on his face was a fake.

He shakes his head. He runs. He jumps.

The Mouth screams. No, it says, no, you can't. Remember everything I promised-- everything we planned-- remember your father.

"My father," Peter says, "is going to be proud of me."

And he's inside and the Mouth twists in the wall and screams again and then in a single blink it freezes, stone.

Like it had been a sculpture all along.

Zoe sinks to her knees and stares up at where Peter once was.

"We-- didn't discuss it, per se," Oswald says. "Zoe didn't spend a month practicing the techniques. Mordred did, but he's -- I don't know how to put it. He is not particularly good at putting down his goals. I... think I could, I know how, it's just... giving up all of yourself for somebody else, giving up your life for that, and you have to... do it yourself, for it to be self-sacrifice."

It feels very terrible to admit that he doesn't want to die. Or that he's hoping somebody else will do it for him. It's -- not just cowardly, it contradicts the very thing they're trying to aim for, it's close to the most selfish he's ever felt. He's just scared. "And that is a somewhat difficult decision to make on the fly."

--Though apparently SOMEONE was capable of it what the FUCK

Well that is certainly an event that happened and Montgomery has emotions about it probably.

Oswald has had fucking ENOUGH of MOUTHS and NECTAR FLOOR and BEING UNDERGROUND and he is going to get THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

There is a more poignant approach to this about how he is claustrophobic and terrified of being trapped and trauma around the circumstances of the last mouth and he nearly DROWNED

Mordred stares at the Mouth.

It worked. His stupid, terrible, bullshit plan worked. They're going to go home. All of them. And Montgomery is going to have time, and space, and freedom to grieve, and--

And a man is dead who could have been free. He died having done something with his life for the first time, but he's dead. And he could have, instead, been free, if Mordred hadn't convinced him to die.

It takes him a few moments before he reaches up and touches his face and realizes oh, I'm crying.

Zoe sees Oswald bolting and Mordred crumbling and rushes over to Mordred and puts her arms around him. Then she steps back and pulls him by the arm after Oswald and says to Montgomery "Okay, time for us to go!"

Montgomery was the one who knew an escape route that was not the tunnels, right?

Montgomery had kind of been intending to walk out the front door to be honest.

"...yeah. Thank you Zoe. Time for us to go."

Words cannot express how relieved Mordred is to be walking out the front door instead of trying a new untested escape route.

Presumably they put the plane somewhere sensible and easy to get to. That sounds like a plan they made. Oswald cannot comment on this because he is not going to stop moving until his ears stop screaming and he can breathe again but they definitely discussed it beforehand like reasonable people so this is fine.

They sure did.

"Montgomery, you said you had a plan for getting you and Lela off of Malta, what was it--"

"I have a yacht and I can sail it. It will take a while before anyone notices I'm gone and by then I will be far away.

You three are welcome."

"Thank you, but we have a plane. And a destination in mind.

...is there some way I can contact you."

"No."

"I don't want to have anything to do with the cult."

"...I know. I-- wanted to ask you what Portia was like."

"...If you give me your phone number I can call you when we make land."

He does that.

While they were having a moment Oswald was walking. He is not going to stop until he has made it off the warehouse property, at which point he is going to take a deep breath of fresh, non-sewer, non-eldritch air. And then he is going to consider where they left the plane and if he can reasonably get there by walking.

They cannot reasonably get there by walking, it's in the airfield outside the city.