"Where was this, Magnificence? Was it under the warehouse?"

GOOD QUESTION. he doesn't actually know where the big mouth is.

it is UNDERGROUND. SOMEWHERE.

he doesn't really know how to say that though.

"...Was it a short way away or a long way away?" Concerning that Magnificence does not know where he saw this.

WHO CAN SAY.

"Okay. We don't know where this is. Might be below the warehouse, might not be, who knows where whatever tunnels lead. Is almost certainly the source of the Nectar in the area." He's trying to keep his voice level. "Maybe that's why they can afford to do all these experiments with Nectar instead of focusing on making sure it's supplied with sacrifices."

what is a SACRIFICE. that sounds CONCERNING.

this whole situation is very bad actually. oh no.

Pat pat. Please don't freak out, little monkey.

well the world is VERY BIG and VERY SCARY and recently trying to BITE HIM.

"It sounds like they may have... already supplied it pretty well, last February."

Magnificence can have hugs. And pets. And whatever he wants to eat.

"If he gets hurt during the day could we maybe teach him to go back to the other hotel room? Lev's been holing himself up in there, at least then we'd know how long he's been injured. --Last February is a long time. I wonder how much longer before they need another."

And this is the point at which Mordred returns.

"Hi," he says, and then sees the amount of blood on the sheets. "-- what happened."

“Magnificence was injured by a Mouth.”

"He's encountered two Mouths today! A small one on the ground which bit him and a massive one underground.

Anything interesting on your trip? Do we know what Inaaya knows?"

Right, okay, "So I have good news and I have weird news. The good news is that Inaaya is not the kind of psychic that means she knows exactly what we're up to," and he sums up what he learned about Inaaya's powers: that she can talk to dead people but it's hard, that she can lift objects but not much larger than a pebble, that she gets unreliable and/or unhelpful visions of the future and the distant present, that she can get information off of objects by touching them, that she read Mordred's mind and got a sense of his general personality but not that he isn't a cultist. 

"Still sounds like she has ways of getting information we might prefer she not have."

"She does, but she's much more limited than we were worried about."

“I am still interested in how she interacts with the warding stone. Perhaps if it seems worth it to see her again you can try to find out.

What is the weird news?”

"The weird news is that apparently I am not human and have managed to not notice up until now."

....That’s certainly a sentence!

It certainly is!!!

"...What are you instead, an alien? A werewolf? Some kind of... whatever Frankenstein is?

I mean, I'm not stupid, I know we've been dealing in nonhuman life, but you look really human."

"No idea! Something to do with the ocean but other than that she didn't recognize it either."

He does not actually manage to keep the hysterical edge out of his voice.

Profoundly valid. Araari is pretty sure that she would be way more hysterical than this if it were her. “Did she have any reason to lie?”

"...Selkie?"

He is like half joking but mostly because what else is he supposed to do. This is kind of freaky actually. His usual "ask questions until it's resolved" method is kinda difficult to implement.

"No reason to lie that I could tell -- I wondered too -- and I'm an inch taller than I was when we left for Ethiopia --"