(The mawmouth - wobbles, a bit, like it's noticing or deciding something, and more eyes and mouths drift to the side facing the three juniors.)

(Chengsu is muttering a spell to send a message to Xunyu, one of the earrings will pick it up and hopefully she's still alive to hear it.)

"Then- shield me."

"I only have knives." And then, gaze jittering to the side: "Chengsu - ?"

And like a clear burst down the aisle, they hear Xunyu's voice calling out commands - and then choking off suddenly as Chengsu's message-spell goes off -

And then a scream. 

"Chengsu!"

"Hell of a favor." Her voice is only a little shaky. She grabs up both girls' hands. "Don't let go." (Shanghai's big on shield spells. The Domina has heavily encouraged development in that area.)

"Run, you little idiot!" El shouts at the cowering freshman.

And then she charges.

Luthien falls into step with her -

And the mawmouth meets them. It moves impossibly fast for what it is - and it envelops them like death, like ropey fingers grasping them and pulling them into a rolling sea of viscera -

Luthien is casting before it finishes enveloping them, a staccato à la mort! rolling off her tongue like thunder, death flowing from and into the jagged teeth of her deadliest knife - the first she ever made, before she understood what the school's been trying to shape her and El into - 

The viscera of the mawmouth closes around them, and it's not horror she feels. 

It's hunger. 

All she has to do is keep the shield up. All she has to do is keep the shield up. Nothing else matters, not the dark, not the slime, not the moans, not the faces.

The two scariest witches in the Scholomance will either kill this thing or they'll all get eaten and the mawmouth will sit here and digest and either way everyone else and Xunyu will be safe. All Chengsu has to do is keep the shield up.

Until they cut off her power sharer, she'll keep the shield up.

El was never one to cower from death. If this is death, she's going in swinging and breaking teeth.

Everything outside their shield is going to melt, by any and all means she has at her disposal. Every overpowered killing spell, every method of destruction and death and mayhem the Scholomance has thrown at her, she will use. She's not going to let Lu die here.

And, not particularly far away - 

Xunyu screams Chengsu's name again, voice breaking, and turns towards the incantations aisle. 

She's now ignoring the powerful mals swarming the reading room, but it's rapidly not mattering - the mals are panicking, running from the same aisle she's turning towards, totally ignoring any students in their way. 

"Xunyu, what - " her older sister calls, feeling the sudden jolt as the mana accessible through her power sharer goes into freefall - whoever's pulling on it nearby -

"Mawmouth," she screams, and it's similar enough in Mandarin and English -

- And echoed by the thin, terrified scream of a much younger girl -

"Chengsu is - "

- And the frozen students begin to realize that they, too, should panic. 

Mawmouth?!?

"We have to-" Run? Help? Evacuate? "-help!"

Is she insane? Nope, everyone from New York is getting the hell out. They'll help evacuate their own. That's about it. 

- But not everyone is running. There's a junior girl, indie but hangs out with London a lot, who's mostly kinda coordinating something resembling an evacuation in good order, and who's trying to keep the mals and the stampede from hurting students -

And there's Shinta, who'd taken cover in a small sheltered corner and flinches when she hears Chengsu's name, and leaves cover when it's clear there's a mawmouth and starts helping Liesel -

(She knows who her allies were here to meet. Her only thought, right now, is that she needs to start carrying her machine gun with her. She hadn't, today. It's in her room.)

And there's Shanghai, the three children of their Domina and their other enclave members who are still hesitating to be the first to run. 

There's a girl Daniella's spoken to, flirted with, and who looks like her world is ending, and like she's strongly considering fighting a mawmouth.

There's her older sister, holding her back but not yet dragging her away, saying, "She's gone, don't waste her sacrifice - we need to get out, she's going to drain the power sharer empty at this rate - "