"Lex."

"Run," Lex says. "Get out of here."

His eyes are wide, and he's shaking like a leaf. He raises one trembling hand to the crystal on a chain around his neck.

An iridescent, shimmering field pops into existence along his skin, and Lex takes a step toward the monster.

The occasional cracks of light from the fight farther ahead continue to be their only way to see, but that's enough to show how little the maw-mouth is moving. Some of its eyes, stolen from many victims, blink. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, gliding and flowing within the mass of the creature, into it and out of it, as the enormous ooze continues to try to slip out of the vent.

No one really knows what happens to the people who are eaten by a maw-mouth. Which is a cute way of saying that no one wants to acknowledge what probably happens. Directing a communications spell to maw-mouth victims receives a response, although usually just incoherent screaming, especially the older victims. The centuries-old victims. All of the people this monster of monsters has eaten over its existence, and even all of the mals it has eaten, probably still there, still conscious, still suffering and being tortured.

It blinks with some of its eyes, and breathes heavily with some of its mouths, and doesn't try to stop Lex—but it doesn't attack him either. If it tries to eat him, it will have to digest him, and that is just not worth it. What is worth it, however, is sliding along towards the other end of this aisle, going away from the four mals fighting in the library proper (four mals that were probably fleeing from it) and towards the first-year dorms. Stretching itself along the first-year hallway just before lunch, sticking its long slimy tentacles under each door for a meal of dozens, maybe hundreds of children. Grabbing Lex would be wasteful; much better to go for the feast.

Lex snarls.

"No," he says, and he goes from taking individual steps to running. It's only a few seconds before he slams into the maw-mouth at a dead sprint.

"No!" Edmund says, for very different reasons.

There are ways to kill a maw-mouth. Not many; maybe not any other than the one. You get in, with a good and strong enough shield, and you walk all the way to its core, and you unmake it from there. That's only happened thrice, ever, as far as anyone knows, and every time it's been done by a circle of wizards, and with heavy casualties. The most a single wizard can do is distract it, keep it still for a moment to keep it away from whatever it's going after. Not even established enclaves try anything else; if a maw-mouth shows up at your door, you hunker down, close up entrances, and try to throw enough other mals at it that it's satisfied with a meal and moves on to hunt somewhere else.

When Lex collides with it, it changes its mind. Might as well, mightn't it? It stretches a tentacle shape out of its otherwise shapeless mass, and wraps it around Lex's waist, and pulls him in.

It feels horrible.

Even through the shield, it feels like a big sweaty stranger just hugged him whole, too tight and too close. The mouths around him start whispering umintelligible non-words, in every direction, and he is well and trapped. You can't cut a maw-mouth, you can't burn a maw-mouth, you can't freeze a maw-mouth. There's always more of it. There's more of it, and it's everywhere, and the only thing Lex's shield does for him is prevent him from being immediately digested.

So, here's the thing.

Lex knows that what he's doing is objectively stupid.

He knows that a maw-mouth is basically invulnerable except for its core. He knows that he'll have to travel through an infinity of folded space to get there, that he'll want to die the whole time. That he can't imagine how horrible it is.

He doesn't have to imagine anymore. It's horrible. It's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

He swims through an endless mass of flesh. Energy seeps into his shield, a constant stream, as it keeps him from a fate far worse than death. The flesh shapes itself chaotically, a protean sea of organs, tongues, stranger and worse things. Blood flows around him.

And he hits something. Something solid.

And -

here's the thing.

Lex knows that maw-mouths are the worst thing that has ever existed. But... that's not quite true.

Lex knows that he's worse.

You can't cut a maw-mouth. You can't burn a maw-mouth. You can't freeze a maw-mouth.

Lex doesn't have to do any of it. What he has to do is grip his Radiant Mind crystal, and reach into his stash, his carefully accumulated mana from three years of working and learning and saving, saving at every opportunity and every turn, and -

one of the simplest major spells in the world, La Main de la Mort, is also one of the deadliest. You say à la mort, and you flick your wrist, and what is before you dies. But you have to have a certain attitude. You must do it carelessly. Not fearfully. Not furiously. Carelessly.

Right now, Lex can't bring himself to care about anything. His blood is cold in his veins. His mind is blank. His heart is still.

Lex flicks his wrist. "A la mort," he drawls. The flesh around him putrefies instantly and horribly, rotting and shriveling, but the core stays whole.

So he does it again.

And he does it again.

And he casts his Coptic spell, his cleaning spell, his organic disintegrator. It burns at the rot, and it eats through a good amount of flesh too before sputtering out, choked.

He casts a little Old English number, one that peels someone's flesh away from their bones into the Void. There's no bones to be had here, but peel the spell does, peeling and shriveling at the reams and oceans and hillocks of meat.

And again, "A la mort."

"A la mort."

And -

Lex knows one spell that other people can use.

It's a variable-effect spell. In the hands of a freshman, it's a lighter. In the hands of a senior, it's a flamethrower.

Lex has never used it.

You can't burn a maw-mouth. But how hard have they tried?

"Ignis, veni."

Not that hard.

The pieces—the people inside it, the targets of his spells—all killed, one by one, removing all of the support of the maw-mouth, all of the bits it is made of. And the core?

It burns.

The maw-mouth breaks apart over his head, all at once, all that was keeping it together going as if only held in place by a membrane that popped under the strain. All of the flesh, the mouths, the eyes, all of it burns and then melts, turning into a puddle at his feet and disintegrating down the vent it just came from. It's been barely two steps from where he made first contact with the thing, in the space outside. He's surrounded by blood and bile and liquefying organs and pieces of people, and all of it is getting efficiently drained away down the slight slope built into the aisle for an occasion just as this.

When the vent starts to choke on the sheer quantity, the sprayers floating higher above them, almost always hidden out of sight (and not on the ceiling, for there is no ceiling) kick in automatically with loud grinding thump, and that is enough to deal with the task of draining away all of the evidence of a maw-mouth's worth of death.

Lex - stops the flames.

Drops the shield.

Gore sluices around his bare feet, and he finally allows himself to puke. The drain takes care of that too.

A hand touches his back, the stale water pouring down and flowing around it. "Μνήμη, γλυκιά, βαρετή. Μνήμη, ξεθωριάζει."

And -

he knows that he just did something. That something happened to him, the worst thing that's ever happened to him. He knows what it was. Swimming through the bowels of the maw-mouth. Killing and killing and killing. The kind of nightmare you don't wake up from.

But... it's not the kind of thing that matters. The memories are dull. Uninteresting. Like they happened ten years ago.

He turns to Edmund.

"Why," he croaks, his throat dry from chanting.

"Because you didn't need the chance to say you'd be fine and I should save my mana," Edmund says matter-of-factly. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"How much did you spend?"

"All of it."

"It'll be okay," Edmund says, and wraps his arms around him.

Which is when Scorpius shows back up, partly covered in soot and the leftovers of some mal or other.

...Lex also has leftovers of some mal or other. The floor is wet. There's—bits and remains of putrefying organs and blood and, and—

He rushes over to his boyfriends and hovers anxiously. "What happened?"

"There... was... a maw-mouth."

"What do you need? —what does he need? How can I—help—?"

Because of course Lex can kill a maw-mouth. And because of course the reason those four enormous maleficaria were back there at all was because of the maw-mouth.

"I dulled the memory. He's still got enough adrenaline running through him to kill a horse. You can help by picking him up and taking him back to the carrel."

Edmund's voice is wholly even, because if it weren't he'd be acknowledging things he doesn't have the mental space for right now.

He nods twice and—gently, okay, he can be gentle, and he can try to carry Lex down the aisles.

Lex's head lolls back like he doesn't have the strength to keep it upright. He's shivering, too.

Edmund follows. "I don't... I've done what I can as mental healing goes. My affinity's pretty specific."

"We can—figure it out. Just need some time." He falters and loses his footing, but manages to regain it against a bookshelf before he drops Lex. "I'm, uh, not at a hundred percent after the fight."

"He's at zero."