4808/Lips Wide Shut

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Lips Wide Shut
Date of Scene: 20 January 2021
Location: Washington Square Park
Synopsis: Kasios discovers a man's death is awfully surreal.
Cast of Characters: Meggan Puceanu, Kasios




Meggan Puceanu has posed:
A continuation of "Silence of the Class": https://heroesassemble.mushhaven.com/scene/scene.php?id=4795

A professor comes forth from the Steinhardt East Building at New York University, mumbling to himself and dropping an iPad soaked in coffee. His distress causes great concern among the student body, but the chanting in Latin troubles Kasios enough to provoke him to act. A stabbing and some bloodshed later, things are clearly not all right...

Kasios has posed:
Kasios keeps the Professor's airway open and he props him on a knee. "He was attempting to say the Seven names of Ruin. He was chanting them, repeatedly, despite all the pain he was causing himself. It was like a hungry need and desire for him. Though I fear that we are too late."

He hears the words 'don't say' in the distance, so he does not repeat the name again. "Best you do not repeat the name which I have told you." He informs her sooner.

Who the hell speaks fluent latin?

He looks towards the reflection in the pool of blood though.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan teeters where she is, back to a cement wall retaining a landscaping bed. Her body rocks a little forward and back, arms curled around herself for a few moments yet. Her troubled eyes remain riveted on Professor Brandt, the stiff man awash in blood from his shoulder, eyes, nose, and mouth. More trickles out one ear.

"I have no intention to," she forces out past the lump in her throat, her eyes still alarmingly wide.

Brandt would be choking on his own bitten tongue, the reddish phlegm running down his chin and flecking his lips an immediate issue. The blade formerly jammed through his shoulder just makes for an impressive bloody mess staining his coat, and accounts for the rapidly paling skin. Kasios manages to work fingers in; not pleasant, for the man chokes on his own blood and mucus and gore. Short, sharp breaths get a little more leeway, but the bouts of seizures and blood loss create a dangerous situation. He is past speaking, shrunken into shock. Who indeed speaks fluent Latin? The faculty card clipped inside his coat pocket in the front might give that away, or a student staring from the window and shrieking to call the ambulance, Mr. Brandt's on the ground.

Blood on the ground, steaming in a cool, awful mirror. That elongated body isn't to human proportions. Much too big in the torso, gangling arms bulging, long, with look like two hinges. It helps there are four, and those gnarled, curling hands end in serrated nails shining with a metal sheen: light, dark, blackened. Hard to say what they are, but just seeing the hooked, cruel talons might be enough to induce a shudder. Pustules and nodules cover the body; the skin is red in blood, but a patchwork of smooth, hard sections and those awful nodules. Barbed points jut out where joints are, on the shoulders, up the neck. The head isn't entirely human, only vaguely like it. A helm-like shape, more than likely, a maw of awful, grinning teeth. Dark, gleaming eyes under the pointed brow-ridge. It has a vaguely Greco-Roman feel, if bisected by a horror conjured up from the depths of a bog.

Kasios has posed:
Kasios looks upon the figure for a moment, his eyes narrowing at what God or dark entity could be behind this. It wears cruel armor, though he wonders if this is one of the Children of Ares, perhaps Deimos or Phobos, but the figure seems unknown to him by this appearance without a clearer picture. He growls a moment, before grabbing his knife again and impaling it into the bloody pool, or attempting to, with an accurate throw.

He keeps a hand out to Meggan as if to keep her back, but his attention is on Brandt. "Someone call 911!" He calls out, unknowing if someone is in the process of actually doing it.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Oen of the children of horror, a creation stretched and magnified through the wisps of blood and speckled pattern. What it does might be more concerning, moving through the viscous mirrors and swiping those ephemeral claws at nothing. The shape doesn't connect with anything.

But Brandt spasms again, arching in grey agony. Weaker than before, weakly indeed. The knife flung into the pool leaves the blade bloodied, and hissing, smoking around the edges.

Emergency services have already been called. The security on campus is fastest to arrive, but it all happens so quickly that their flight takes time. Meggan tears her gaze away from the fallen professor, lifted to Kasios, and then the few onlookers gathered behind the doors the poor man emerged from what feels like a lifetime ago. She pushes back against the doors where they would enter, one lone blonde Englishwoman against four students or a teaching aide, the latter frantically gesturing and pointing with a look of total hysteria.

They still can't get out.

Sirens wail in the cold afternoon air, a distant strum building in strength that might be amplified by the tall buildings. Long before police get on the ground, the trio matching blue and yellow 'SECURITY' jackets are flying as quick as they can with a first aid kit, board stretcher, and bag marked with a red cross. It may be too late, but every stand is worth a shot.

Brandt's iPad lies forgotten.

The coffee leaked off it is already freezing.

Kasios has posed:
Oen.

A vile creature who feasts on pain and hubris. Kasios fears he's done all he can where Brandt is concerned, but he tries and at the end of the day, That's what matters. His attention shifts to his dagger.

He notices it sizzle and bleed, but perhaps stopping the ritual, or perceiving as such, was more than enough to stop this monster of ancient dread from assuming a form.

Just maybe. When security arrives, he happily hands over the body of Brandt, hoping beyond hope that they can help him.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Brandt slumps away if not supported. The security personnel drop to their knees, and offer a quick measured take on his heartbeat, breathing, vital signs spinning out of control.

Hope beyond hope, when no heartbeat is found. Hope beyond hope, when the vicissitudes are just too much. But they try. Feeding oxygen, noting the knife, the wounds, the man.

"What happened?" asks one of the security trio, a man with a shock of cropped blond hair. The others count the rhythm, CPR well underway. Chest compressions done right break bone. These will.

Police are on their way, threading through campus, a fast response time for a central location near Washington Square Park. But it's too long. Minutes count. That ambulance isn't here, and they can't know what they fight against.

Kasios' blade is wet, smelling of ashes and blood, stained around the edges to a darkened hue. It won't wash off. Unless the metal's magical, it carries the taint away. When he looks next, Kasios sees the leering grin in the blood. Then nothing. No sign of movement at all, just blood showing the sky, his own expression and likeness.

Kasios has posed:
Kasios keeps the fallen professor supported. Though he watches as the grinning figure slowly disappears in the blood as soon as others arrive. A trickster, it would appear, and a guaranteed malevolent force.

He looks to the officer. "A malevolent spiritual entity was controlling and causing this man harm. I had hoped to help shock him out of it with a non-lethal strike to the shoulder, but the control was too strong. he was translating something from the IPad and began bleeding profusely."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The man's life swirls away through holes left behind. "A... excuse me. You're who, again?" The medic would be worried, but these are questions he's compelled to ask Kasios. He looks around briefly. The cameras catch details at the entrances, but not all the details are behind. "You struck him, he seemed out of it. The impact did not change things. That right so far?" The other pair are working, buying time on borrowed credit. Borrowed credit that's not easy to claim, much less to find. Their hurried motions are not a battle for life but against a spectre of death laid low.

Meggan slides away from the door, dropped to the space beside it. The distraught aide, probably in his mid-twenties, boils out. "Professor! No, oh no, not like this. You have to stay with us!" His calls have a mourning despair, a heavy weight to them. He kicks aside ice, salt, the iPad to get there, only to be hauled back by the blonde girl holding his arm, whispering urgently. It's clear those words don't take the full edge off. "Let me see him! What's your damn problem! You barred us in, you wouldn't let me come out!"

One girl, barring a door, is about as unlikely as Kasios being the Pope. Still, the fatigued security guard trades off with the blond man who spoke to him initially. The transfer of oxygen and sealing of injuries continues apace.

"You said an iPad?" The huff-puff of exertion breaks up the words. The guard nods. "We'll need that for an investigation. And your name. Contact details. You're a witness and the faculty... that is, New York University. They'll possibly have questions."