Encounterlogs
Autumns Odd Encounter Sr Jack
In the haunting and desolate Arkwright Cemetery under a tempest of unnatural red lightning, Autumn, a woman born of demonic presence, stood ready to confront an insidious force attempting to breach the divide between the human world and Hell. As lightning struck with violent precision, an otherworldly voice acknowledged her demonic lineage and sought to forge a dark alliance, beckoning her to embrace the infernal power on offer. Unyielding, Autumn instead demanded the entity's intent and purpose. Despite the pressure and sudden lash of frigid winds, she commenced an incantation, her bracelet's runes erupting with an orange trace, illuminating her defiance. With the source of infernal energy unveiled—an Inigo family gravestone—Autumn completed a warding circle, rebuffing the entity's advances and severing its connection to the earthly realm. Her resolution firm, she proclaimed her intention to one day rule Hell, not through conquest but upon the cessation of Earth's apocalypse, appreciating the world's unsung splendors.
Meanwhile, in the Purity House of the White Oak Institute, Caelum, a fraternity brother, lounged idly until he was startled by a pervasive, fear-inducing fog rolling in, which severed the house's connection to the outside world and materialized a nightmarish creature on the staircase. As the creature descended, a shadowy mirage of elongated limbs and obscured angles, Caelum's fright mounted. Beau, another fraternity brother, entered the scene, immediately succumbing to the fog's terror, scratching at the sight of the horror before falling into a desperate plea for escape. In a moment of panic and dark consideration, Caelum callously used an injured brother as a decoy to buy time. As Beau clung to him for salvation, both stared into the doppelganger creature—Caelum's own visage—frozen in a tormented, sickening realization as the fog's horrors threatened to consume them.
(Autumn's odd encounter(SRJack):SRJack)
[Tue Dec 19 2023]
At Arkwright Cemetery
It is morning, about 27F(-2C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. It's snowing.
Walking around the cemetery while avoiding red lightning, Autumn arrives at the spot where the source is. "So this must be where energy from Hell is," she says, looking at the lightning-strikes at the ground. Revealing her panja bracelet, she prepares herself as she looks out for any lightning that could strike right near her.
The eerie silence of the abandoned Arkwright Cemetery is shattered by the howling wind, which seems to carry whispers of the forgotten souls resting beneath the overgrown and neglected tombstones. The air is heavy with an ominous tension, as if the earth itself is holding its breath. Above, the sky is a tumultuous canvas of swirling dark clouds, illuminated intermittently by the sinister dance of red lightning that leaps from cloud to cloud. This macabre light show casts ghastly shadows over the gravestones, as the storm centers over the graveyard, the wind intensifies, bending the gnarled trees to its will.
As Autumn approaches, the area with its constant and repeated lightning strikes, the howl of the wind seems to be joined by some other keening howl: perhaps it is a trick of the air, but ghostly voices seem to add to the chorus of lightning and storm.
Raising her hand that dons her bracelet, Autumn whispers something under her breath as the bracelet's runes begin to glow orange. "Spirits," she speaks, holding her hand out towards the source and channeling her magic. "This kind of energy is highly demonic. It does not belong in this world. It belongs to homeland, in Hell."
There is definitely something out there: Autumn can feel the power coursing through the graveyard, and there is a prick of elemental energy that seems to respond to her invocation. Lightning strikes, a sudden crash, as twin-tailed bolts of lightning strike first to the left and then to the right of the woman, sending her hair standing on end: like cymbals punctuating some band.
Immediately, there is the smell of ozone in the air, followed by the strong sense of brimstone... as if there is some gateway here, some opening by which infernal powers are trying to reach out.
Autumn flinches as the bolts strike right near her, and she sniffs at the smell that is familiar to her. Looking down, she starts to search around, careful of not getting struck by lightning. "There must be something else around here," she murmurs to herself.
That sense of presence: and then a shot of lightning again, but this time there is an after-image lingering in the air, some vaguely humanoid voice. As thunder crashes, there's a word: "You... are... kin..." The wind howls in Autumn's direction.
"Yes," Autumn nods her head, looking up at the air. "I was born in demonic presense, making my blood one of demons." Taking a guarding stance, she asks, "Please tell me why you are here?"
The wind wails: it whips around Autumn, catching at her clothes. She can feel the cold of it cut through her sweater, almost blowing her back, as a sudden heat sets in. Something: that presence, that sense of presence, is trying to reach out, to make some low connection with the woman's mind.
Autumn shivers from the cold, before she raises her hand with her palm out towards the air. Her bracelet's runes glow brighter as her hair sways along with the wind. She stares outwards and begins to chant under her breath in a different language.
As Autumn chants, the sense of presence in her mind seems to increase: but as she calls on some power, there is a flare before her eyes: fire, dancing, like some incendiary wall to keep her mind free of the presence.
There's a crash of lighting, right in front of Autumn, and the winds wail: "LET ME IN!" the storm roars at her. "Do you not want power? Alliance with the legions of Hell!?" it demands of her, but it might strike the young woman that whatever it is offering, it cannot give her without her lowering those defenses she has put up.
Perhaps that's no surprise: Milton said the gates of Hell are locked from the inside.
"I am content with what I have and I can improve it without sacrifice!" Autumn calls out towards the storm. "And I have no need for alliance with legions right now. I already have allies here on Earth!" Her chants then grow harsher and her hand draws a circle in the air.
As Autumn draws that circle, it begins to crackle with lightning. Whatever is up here in the sky does not like what she is doing, and there is a sense of ozone in the air. A bolt strikes down again, and as it does it uncovers a gravestone: D. Inigo, the stone says. This part of the graveyard seems to be home to that particularly infernal family.
Still: if she can push forward, finish drawing her warding circle, she thinks she may be able to cut off this breach between worlds.
"This world is not yours to invade," Autumn speaks, her circle glowing the same orange as her runes. "I am the Lynx of Autumn, hailing from Hell itself. Yes, I am kin, but this world is said to be ending and I prefer liberation over conquest!" There is fury in her eyes and she channels her magic and rage as the circle glows brighter.
As Autumn calls upon her rage, she begins to slowly close the circle: step by step, foot by foot. "WE WILL NOT FORGET!" howls the wind at her. "YOU ARE MARKED, AUTUMN LYNX!"
Silence: as Autumn is able to close circle, the howling voice in the wind seems to cut off.
"One day, I will rule Hell once Earth's end can be stopped," Autumn says as she closes the circle. "There's so many mysteries and sweets that this world has to offer." She then looks up at the sky and adds, "Yes, it does look dark with clouds, but no more lightning strikes, right?"
Lightning, still: but the sense of Hell's presence is receding as Autumn can feel the magic begin to fade.
(A strange fog rolls into Haven, causing those caught within it to experience their deepest fears. Your target and their allies must find a way to disperse the fog before it causes widespread panic or worse.)
Caelum lounges quietly on the sofa that he's placed himself as if he owns it, with his legs kicked up and crossed at the ankles on the table. One one hand, he swipes through his phone- face after face after face scrolled through without so much as a spared glance at any details, meanwhile his other hand is stuffed in the stocking he's taken up from his door handle, and feeding himself the bits of hard candy laid within. It seem quite an uneventful tuesday afternoon.
All throughout Haven, though, the mists are rising: and here is no different. The change is sudden, disturbing, really, as it seems as if one moment the living room is empty, and the second it is filled with some eerie, white mist that makes even the door to the rest of the fraternity house obscure.
Caelum scrunches up his face after tossing a hard christmas candy into his mouth from the handful pile he holds in his hand. The toffee taste, apparently not to his liking, has him look away from his phone- and there he notices. It's not entirely clear, there is a fog about, and he its thick enough that his phone illuminates a ray of subtle screen light before his face. He clicks it off, and glances around cluelessly - with sea-green eyes widening ever so slowly as the lounge seems not at all as what it was before when obscured in the unnatural mist that by all reason should not be here..
It's as if the mist muffles sound, and when Caelum glances back at his phone, it suddenly shows 'NO SIGNAL.' There's something in the pit of his stomach, rising, and with it comes a low and unsettled fear. Is that a shape in the mist? Something lurching towards the young man from the direction of the stairs in the fraternity?
Caelum freezes like a doe stuck in headlight. That sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the shifting in the mist - it's not at all foreign, somehow familiar in a way like a repetitive nightmare is. That easy expression of casual procrastination fades near instantly to a chalk white muted tune. The useless phone is let go of - all the while he draws his legs away from the table and down on the ground. That accursed sound of his heartbeat thumping in his ears propels him to sink down on his knees, hide between the table and the couch, with only the faintest view of the hallway and the stairs beyond it - if the mist at all would allow him to see anything more than a few feet away.
Even out the windows, the mist obscures the ordinary view into the courtyard lawn of the White Oak Institute: but it's hard not to draw Caelum's attention deeper inside Sigma House. No, there's definite movement deeper in the mist, now, and then Caelum can hear something like a snarl, cutting through the mist. It's animal, angry, and then it's matched by a rising, panicked scream.
Caelum can only watch in abject terror - expecting what he has seen, what he has fled from in his nightmares again and again, night after night. His palms itch, while the dampness granted by the fog drips the perspiration collected on his features down the side of his face, down his chin in a single rivulet. Yet, when the scream erupts, he moves. He hadn't thought to look out the window to the courtyard - no, he probably couldn't even tell where it was - but when the snarl cuts through the mist, matching that of a panicked voice, he leaves his secluded hiding spot to stand up- One foot forward, the other planted back, with his leg host to a minute shiver. "Who's there? Are you alright?!"
As Caelum moves into the main area of Purity House, there's someone on the ground: he doesn't recognize him, but it is a him: it's a student, another fraternity brother, and he is curled up on the ground, sobbing. Even just standing above him, the mists are thick, but as Caelum questions, the boy on the ground rolls over, and his face shows the bloody wounds of slash marks across his features.
Up above, there is the sound of movement on the stairs, floorboards squeaking.
As soon as that sight befalls Caelum, he stops again- watching his unknown fraternity brother roll over. The slash marks making him nigh unseen has his eyes travel high with the following sound on the stairs, the movement -- Then he moves again, quickly and without realizing. "Shut the fuck up - stop crying." His hushed whisper is made in urgency, all while he attempts to collect the young man in his arms, pull him to his chest - then while looking up to keep an eye out at the movement, tries to drag the other to the lounge. At least, anywhere else that isn't here, close to the sounds. "Don't make a single sound." Of course, he doesn't seem to realize he's making noise himself.
It's hard not to sob, isn't it, when your face is in ruins?
Up on the stairs, thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Is that the sound of something slowly descending, shrouded in mist?
The incessant sound the other makes while crying seems to be enough to still Caelum 's attempts to drag him out. Resistance if there ever was one. Though the thumps following, each one echoing across the mist and the barely perceptable scenery of the fraternity. It makes him breathe fast - draw in heavy lungfuls of air - all while widened eyes remain glued to the staircase. His hand nears the face of the injured student - almost as if he intends to dig his fingers in, make him actually scream - and his hand shakes when he realises what he was about to do to create diversion.. By force of will, he manages to set the boy against the nearest furniture, somewhat out of the way, and stands up on his feet again. Hesitantly, he takes a step first, then another... Closer to the stairs, towards whatever is descending to get a better look.
Thump, thump, thump: Caelum can see the thing's hands, first, extended, like dark, reaching things. The fingers are too-long, and they seem to shapen into shadowed points. In the mist, he can't make out definition, just shapes, but they seem to be reaching out for the young man -- looming, impossibly long, as the figure on the stairs leans down towards Caelum.
The looming figure stills Caelum in his steps. His eyes, widened sea-green dark and bereft of light in terrorized fear of what is happening, slowly scale the hands. The claws reflect vividly in his eyes, then he follows the arm along, looking up the stairs. "No..." He finds himself whispering hoarsely, as if his voice doesn't have the will to grow. Fight or flight becomes an abstract concept, replaced by frozen fear.
Thump, the dark figure grows closer, some terrifying staccato on the stairs. It seems to loom, the dark figure in the mist with impossible proportions that seem inhuman. The eye can't quite trace them, as it as if Caelum's mind tries to connect the dots and reaches some terrible, non-Euclidean failure to make point A reach point B.
walking into the house, Beau glances around looking tired as he considers the place, rolling his eyes with a sigh as he drops his keys on a side table and starts to go through the house towards the living room. He peers out a window and calls, "Hey... anyone there? like there's weird fog out today... and this storm is crazy..."
Rising mists have turned the first floor of Purity House in a shadowed nightmare. Caelum is there, at the base of the stairs, standing over a fraternity brother with a bloodied face who is curled in a fetal position, sobbing. Those sounds appear to have attracted something else: there is a dark figure on the stairs with long, knife-like hands, and it is walking with slow, thumping steps down the stairs towards the center of the foyer.
Caelum shivers. It's a horrifying, nausiated vibration that wrings his body as if he's a damp rag. Another bead of sweat follows path of the old, dripping in the same rivulet down is chin. He swallows heavily because of the subjected inhuman properties besetting his sight. Yet the wavering of his attention because of it is enough for him to take a step back and wrench himself away, then another - until Beau wanders through the fog on the other end. His eyes, if they could widen even more, would - and he finds himself yelling; "Beau! Run!" Yet he himself seems incapable of doing more than retracing enough steps to stand between whatever creature that is, and the bloodied fraternity brother curled on the ground at his back.
All things considered, running seems like a well-reasoned response: the horror on the stairs isn't shaped right. The arms are too long, the fingers too sharp, and it stoops, gangly. It's like it has the shadowed shape of a man, but the pieces don't add up. When Beau walks in, it looks up, and it meets the young man's gaze: whatever stares there is madness.
Beau turns at the voice, calling, "Huh. Cael--what the fuck?" He near squeaks, dropping his bag of regular clothes in favor of the gym ones he's wearing. "Oh holy holy shit... the fuck is this? That's a fucking bleeding dude..." he reflexively moves to run forward as if to help until Caelum is calling for him to run, making him skitter to a stop. "The fuck dude. what's wrong..." Then he spots it and he freezes, starting to shuffle back quickly. Then he looks into the face and his face drains slowly of color, his hands lifting to start clawing at his face, howling, "Fuck... make it stop... mnake it stop... holy fuck..." he he trips falling on his face as he tries to stop seeing whatever it is he's seeing.
Caelum seems about ready to scream out again towards Beau - but his fist rises instead. He puts it over his mouth, clenching tight as he bites. The hard expression only harsher by whatever is mocking them in its slow descent. When Beau falls, he moves - but it isn't towards him, it is towards the other young man. His hands seek them at once, one by the hair, the other past the face they're trying to clutch to still the bleeding - and he tries to dig his fingers into the wound with the obvious intent to make them scream, drag and throw them at the base of the stairs.
The bleeding young man screams, when someone digs his fingers into the wound. It's an earth-shattering noise of pain, as Caelum aggravates every painful wound the fraternity brother has. Sigma solidarity, right? It's not hard for Caelum to push him in the way of the thing, even as Beau can hear the sound of screaming in front of him as Caelum tries to sacrifice their third brother to save both of their skins.
The bleeding young man screams, when Caelum digs his fingers into the wound. It's an earth-shattering noise of pain, as Caelum aggravates every painful wound the fraternity brother has. Sigma solidarity, right? It's not hard for Caelum to push him in the way of the thing, even as Beau can hear the sound of screaming in front of him as Caelum tries to sacrifice their third brother to save both of their skins.
On the stairs, the Thing takes another step down, and it breathes in: Beau and Caelum can both hear its breath, some kind of disturbing rattle like a spraypaint can being shaken.
It's a long moment before he stops, though Beau's shaking, reaching out with bloody fingernails and tracks of long scratch marks over his pretty face, dragging down his face before he grips onto Caelum's leg. "Shit dude... shit, let me get outta here, oh fuck....c'mon help me out bro...." he's near whimpering, his poor human face certainly messed up now with shallow bleeding furrows. "We gotta get outta here..."
As soon as Caelum is done tossing the helpless, wounded fraternity brother in the path of their abject horror - he had intended to run. Beau appearing right there to grip onto him, however - makes things easier. He crouches down instantly to gather the young man in his arms as he had tried with the other. This time hopefully with more success as he tries to pull Beau up on his feet and drag along to flee- Yet he speaks nothing. His face is bled dry of every colour, frozen in a mixture of fury and fear.
The Thing is at the base of the stairs, now, and it crouches over the screaming fraternity brother. Its back is up and it squats, and it seems as if its his don't connect quite right, like they make points above his waist: as if it has some extra joints in its spine that give it a strange, canine appearance. With the creature closer, now, Beau and Caelum can begin to make out details, strange black planes like glass, but what's worse is that its face has some awful attractiveness.
You need to look the Thing in the eyes.
On the ground, the fraternity boy is screaming in abject, soul-ending terror.
Beau is getting ready to run, his arm slung around Caelum's shoulder, that is before he catches a look at the creature. It's like he needs to get a second look. He just needs to, slowly so he can glance over his shoulder. He regrets it, he breaks out in a sweat, his face drains of color and then he's whimpering. "D-d-dude... that things gonna fucking kill us... it's gonna fucking kill me... holy shit... holy shit..." The screams from their fallen brother makes him look like he's gonna be sick, then he's gripping onto Caelum so tight, that it makes him almost more of a problem than a help, his joints ridgid, his body shaking.
In his attempts to haul Beau on his feet and usher him out in their mutual terror - Caelum does a critical error. There is something compelling, something disturbing at the back of his mind that makes him steal a glance over his shoulder. Perhaps it is the screaming, perhaps worse - but with the creature in view, those muted sea-green eyes scale its body from its crouched position. Taking in the sight of it squatting over the fraternity brother - then his gaze meets The Thing in its eyes, or whatever it has for them...
Beau clutching on tightly on him, however rigid - is met with the same in return. Caelum is hardly in the process of fleeing then and there - drained of color the same, and the two fraternity brothers are holding onto each other stock frozen.
There it is: the Thing. It has a long, clawed hand on the screaming fraternity boy, slowly starting to push those black, knife-like fingertips into its chest, but it looks up at Beau and Caelum. Both recognize the face immediately. For Beau, he's been looking at it in terror, worried, but for Caelum the Thing's visage is all more familiar.
After all: every morning, Caelum sees his own face in the mirror.
Meanwhile, in the Purity House of the White Oak Institute, Caelum, a fraternity brother, lounged idly until he was startled by a pervasive, fear-inducing fog rolling in, which severed the house's connection to the outside world and materialized a nightmarish creature on the staircase. As the creature descended, a shadowy mirage of elongated limbs and obscured angles, Caelum's fright mounted. Beau, another fraternity brother, entered the scene, immediately succumbing to the fog's terror, scratching at the sight of the horror before falling into a desperate plea for escape. In a moment of panic and dark consideration, Caelum callously used an injured brother as a decoy to buy time. As Beau clung to him for salvation, both stared into the doppelganger creature—Caelum's own visage—frozen in a tormented, sickening realization as the fog's horrors threatened to consume them.
(Autumn's odd encounter(SRJack):SRJack)
[Tue Dec 19 2023]
At Arkwright Cemetery
It is morning, about 27F(-2C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. It's snowing.
Walking around the cemetery while avoiding red lightning, Autumn arrives at the spot where the source is. "So this must be where energy from Hell is," she says, looking at the lightning-strikes at the ground. Revealing her panja bracelet, she prepares herself as she looks out for any lightning that could strike right near her.
The eerie silence of the abandoned Arkwright Cemetery is shattered by the howling wind, which seems to carry whispers of the forgotten souls resting beneath the overgrown and neglected tombstones. The air is heavy with an ominous tension, as if the earth itself is holding its breath. Above, the sky is a tumultuous canvas of swirling dark clouds, illuminated intermittently by the sinister dance of red lightning that leaps from cloud to cloud. This macabre light show casts ghastly shadows over the gravestones, as the storm centers over the graveyard, the wind intensifies, bending the gnarled trees to its will.
As Autumn approaches, the area with its constant and repeated lightning strikes, the howl of the wind seems to be joined by some other keening howl: perhaps it is a trick of the air, but ghostly voices seem to add to the chorus of lightning and storm.
Raising her hand that dons her bracelet, Autumn whispers something under her breath as the bracelet's runes begin to glow orange. "Spirits," she speaks, holding her hand out towards the source and channeling her magic. "This kind of energy is highly demonic. It does not belong in this world. It belongs to homeland, in Hell."
There is definitely something out there: Autumn can feel the power coursing through the graveyard, and there is a prick of elemental energy that seems to respond to her invocation. Lightning strikes, a sudden crash, as twin-tailed bolts of lightning strike first to the left and then to the right of the woman, sending her hair standing on end: like cymbals punctuating some band.
Immediately, there is the smell of ozone in the air, followed by the strong sense of brimstone... as if there is some gateway here, some opening by which infernal powers are trying to reach out.
Autumn flinches as the bolts strike right near her, and she sniffs at the smell that is familiar to her. Looking down, she starts to search around, careful of not getting struck by lightning. "There must be something else around here," she murmurs to herself.
That sense of presence: and then a shot of lightning again, but this time there is an after-image lingering in the air, some vaguely humanoid voice. As thunder crashes, there's a word: "You... are... kin..." The wind howls in Autumn's direction.
"Yes," Autumn nods her head, looking up at the air. "I was born in demonic presense, making my blood one of demons." Taking a guarding stance, she asks, "Please tell me why you are here?"
The wind wails: it whips around Autumn, catching at her clothes. She can feel the cold of it cut through her sweater, almost blowing her back, as a sudden heat sets in. Something: that presence, that sense of presence, is trying to reach out, to make some low connection with the woman's mind.
Autumn shivers from the cold, before she raises her hand with her palm out towards the air. Her bracelet's runes glow brighter as her hair sways along with the wind. She stares outwards and begins to chant under her breath in a different language.
As Autumn chants, the sense of presence in her mind seems to increase: but as she calls on some power, there is a flare before her eyes: fire, dancing, like some incendiary wall to keep her mind free of the presence.
There's a crash of lighting, right in front of Autumn, and the winds wail: "LET ME IN!" the storm roars at her. "Do you not want power? Alliance with the legions of Hell!?" it demands of her, but it might strike the young woman that whatever it is offering, it cannot give her without her lowering those defenses she has put up.
Perhaps that's no surprise: Milton said the gates of Hell are locked from the inside.
"I am content with what I have and I can improve it without sacrifice!" Autumn calls out towards the storm. "And I have no need for alliance with legions right now. I already have allies here on Earth!" Her chants then grow harsher and her hand draws a circle in the air.
As Autumn draws that circle, it begins to crackle with lightning. Whatever is up here in the sky does not like what she is doing, and there is a sense of ozone in the air. A bolt strikes down again, and as it does it uncovers a gravestone: D. Inigo, the stone says. This part of the graveyard seems to be home to that particularly infernal family.
Still: if she can push forward, finish drawing her warding circle, she thinks she may be able to cut off this breach between worlds.
"This world is not yours to invade," Autumn speaks, her circle glowing the same orange as her runes. "I am the Lynx of Autumn, hailing from Hell itself. Yes, I am kin, but this world is said to be ending and I prefer liberation over conquest!" There is fury in her eyes and she channels her magic and rage as the circle glows brighter.
As Autumn calls upon her rage, she begins to slowly close the circle: step by step, foot by foot. "WE WILL NOT FORGET!" howls the wind at her. "YOU ARE MARKED, AUTUMN LYNX!"
Silence: as Autumn is able to close circle, the howling voice in the wind seems to cut off.
"One day, I will rule Hell once Earth's end can be stopped," Autumn says as she closes the circle. "There's so many mysteries and sweets that this world has to offer." She then looks up at the sky and adds, "Yes, it does look dark with clouds, but no more lightning strikes, right?"
Lightning, still: but the sense of Hell's presence is receding as Autumn can feel the magic begin to fade.
(A strange fog rolls into Haven, causing those caught within it to experience their deepest fears. Your target and their allies must find a way to disperse the fog before it causes widespread panic or worse.)
Caelum lounges quietly on the sofa that he's placed himself as if he owns it, with his legs kicked up and crossed at the ankles on the table. One one hand, he swipes through his phone- face after face after face scrolled through without so much as a spared glance at any details, meanwhile his other hand is stuffed in the stocking he's taken up from his door handle, and feeding himself the bits of hard candy laid within. It seem quite an uneventful tuesday afternoon.
All throughout Haven, though, the mists are rising: and here is no different. The change is sudden, disturbing, really, as it seems as if one moment the living room is empty, and the second it is filled with some eerie, white mist that makes even the door to the rest of the fraternity house obscure.
Caelum scrunches up his face after tossing a hard christmas candy into his mouth from the handful pile he holds in his hand. The toffee taste, apparently not to his liking, has him look away from his phone- and there he notices. It's not entirely clear, there is a fog about, and he its thick enough that his phone illuminates a ray of subtle screen light before his face. He clicks it off, and glances around cluelessly - with sea-green eyes widening ever so slowly as the lounge seems not at all as what it was before when obscured in the unnatural mist that by all reason should not be here..
It's as if the mist muffles sound, and when Caelum glances back at his phone, it suddenly shows 'NO SIGNAL.' There's something in the pit of his stomach, rising, and with it comes a low and unsettled fear. Is that a shape in the mist? Something lurching towards the young man from the direction of the stairs in the fraternity?
Caelum freezes like a doe stuck in headlight. That sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, the shifting in the mist - it's not at all foreign, somehow familiar in a way like a repetitive nightmare is. That easy expression of casual procrastination fades near instantly to a chalk white muted tune. The useless phone is let go of - all the while he draws his legs away from the table and down on the ground. That accursed sound of his heartbeat thumping in his ears propels him to sink down on his knees, hide between the table and the couch, with only the faintest view of the hallway and the stairs beyond it - if the mist at all would allow him to see anything more than a few feet away.
Even out the windows, the mist obscures the ordinary view into the courtyard lawn of the White Oak Institute: but it's hard not to draw Caelum's attention deeper inside Sigma House. No, there's definite movement deeper in the mist, now, and then Caelum can hear something like a snarl, cutting through the mist. It's animal, angry, and then it's matched by a rising, panicked scream.
Caelum can only watch in abject terror - expecting what he has seen, what he has fled from in his nightmares again and again, night after night. His palms itch, while the dampness granted by the fog drips the perspiration collected on his features down the side of his face, down his chin in a single rivulet. Yet, when the scream erupts, he moves. He hadn't thought to look out the window to the courtyard - no, he probably couldn't even tell where it was - but when the snarl cuts through the mist, matching that of a panicked voice, he leaves his secluded hiding spot to stand up- One foot forward, the other planted back, with his leg host to a minute shiver. "Who's there? Are you alright?!"
As Caelum moves into the main area of Purity House, there's someone on the ground: he doesn't recognize him, but it is a him: it's a student, another fraternity brother, and he is curled up on the ground, sobbing. Even just standing above him, the mists are thick, but as Caelum questions, the boy on the ground rolls over, and his face shows the bloody wounds of slash marks across his features.
Up above, there is the sound of movement on the stairs, floorboards squeaking.
As soon as that sight befalls Caelum, he stops again- watching his unknown fraternity brother roll over. The slash marks making him nigh unseen has his eyes travel high with the following sound on the stairs, the movement -- Then he moves again, quickly and without realizing. "Shut the fuck up - stop crying." His hushed whisper is made in urgency, all while he attempts to collect the young man in his arms, pull him to his chest - then while looking up to keep an eye out at the movement, tries to drag the other to the lounge. At least, anywhere else that isn't here, close to the sounds. "Don't make a single sound." Of course, he doesn't seem to realize he's making noise himself.
It's hard not to sob, isn't it, when your face is in ruins?
Up on the stairs, thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Is that the sound of something slowly descending, shrouded in mist?
The incessant sound the other makes while crying seems to be enough to still Caelum 's attempts to drag him out. Resistance if there ever was one. Though the thumps following, each one echoing across the mist and the barely perceptable scenery of the fraternity. It makes him breathe fast - draw in heavy lungfuls of air - all while widened eyes remain glued to the staircase. His hand nears the face of the injured student - almost as if he intends to dig his fingers in, make him actually scream - and his hand shakes when he realises what he was about to do to create diversion.. By force of will, he manages to set the boy against the nearest furniture, somewhat out of the way, and stands up on his feet again. Hesitantly, he takes a step first, then another... Closer to the stairs, towards whatever is descending to get a better look.
Thump, thump, thump: Caelum can see the thing's hands, first, extended, like dark, reaching things. The fingers are too-long, and they seem to shapen into shadowed points. In the mist, he can't make out definition, just shapes, but they seem to be reaching out for the young man -- looming, impossibly long, as the figure on the stairs leans down towards Caelum.
The looming figure stills Caelum in his steps. His eyes, widened sea-green dark and bereft of light in terrorized fear of what is happening, slowly scale the hands. The claws reflect vividly in his eyes, then he follows the arm along, looking up the stairs. "No..." He finds himself whispering hoarsely, as if his voice doesn't have the will to grow. Fight or flight becomes an abstract concept, replaced by frozen fear.
Thump, the dark figure grows closer, some terrifying staccato on the stairs. It seems to loom, the dark figure in the mist with impossible proportions that seem inhuman. The eye can't quite trace them, as it as if Caelum's mind tries to connect the dots and reaches some terrible, non-Euclidean failure to make point A reach point B.
walking into the house, Beau glances around looking tired as he considers the place, rolling his eyes with a sigh as he drops his keys on a side table and starts to go through the house towards the living room. He peers out a window and calls, "Hey... anyone there? like there's weird fog out today... and this storm is crazy..."
Rising mists have turned the first floor of Purity House in a shadowed nightmare. Caelum is there, at the base of the stairs, standing over a fraternity brother with a bloodied face who is curled in a fetal position, sobbing. Those sounds appear to have attracted something else: there is a dark figure on the stairs with long, knife-like hands, and it is walking with slow, thumping steps down the stairs towards the center of the foyer.
Caelum shivers. It's a horrifying, nausiated vibration that wrings his body as if he's a damp rag. Another bead of sweat follows path of the old, dripping in the same rivulet down is chin. He swallows heavily because of the subjected inhuman properties besetting his sight. Yet the wavering of his attention because of it is enough for him to take a step back and wrench himself away, then another - until Beau wanders through the fog on the other end. His eyes, if they could widen even more, would - and he finds himself yelling; "Beau! Run!" Yet he himself seems incapable of doing more than retracing enough steps to stand between whatever creature that is, and the bloodied fraternity brother curled on the ground at his back.
All things considered, running seems like a well-reasoned response: the horror on the stairs isn't shaped right. The arms are too long, the fingers too sharp, and it stoops, gangly. It's like it has the shadowed shape of a man, but the pieces don't add up. When Beau walks in, it looks up, and it meets the young man's gaze: whatever stares there is madness.
Beau turns at the voice, calling, "Huh. Cael--what the fuck?" He near squeaks, dropping his bag of regular clothes in favor of the gym ones he's wearing. "Oh holy holy shit... the fuck is this? That's a fucking bleeding dude..." he reflexively moves to run forward as if to help until Caelum is calling for him to run, making him skitter to a stop. "The fuck dude. what's wrong..." Then he spots it and he freezes, starting to shuffle back quickly. Then he looks into the face and his face drains slowly of color, his hands lifting to start clawing at his face, howling, "Fuck... make it stop... mnake it stop... holy fuck..." he he trips falling on his face as he tries to stop seeing whatever it is he's seeing.
Caelum seems about ready to scream out again towards Beau - but his fist rises instead. He puts it over his mouth, clenching tight as he bites. The hard expression only harsher by whatever is mocking them in its slow descent. When Beau falls, he moves - but it isn't towards him, it is towards the other young man. His hands seek them at once, one by the hair, the other past the face they're trying to clutch to still the bleeding - and he tries to dig his fingers into the wound with the obvious intent to make them scream, drag and throw them at the base of the stairs.
The bleeding young man screams, when someone digs his fingers into the wound. It's an earth-shattering noise of pain, as Caelum aggravates every painful wound the fraternity brother has. Sigma solidarity, right? It's not hard for Caelum to push him in the way of the thing, even as Beau can hear the sound of screaming in front of him as Caelum tries to sacrifice their third brother to save both of their skins.
The bleeding young man screams, when Caelum digs his fingers into the wound. It's an earth-shattering noise of pain, as Caelum aggravates every painful wound the fraternity brother has. Sigma solidarity, right? It's not hard for Caelum to push him in the way of the thing, even as Beau can hear the sound of screaming in front of him as Caelum tries to sacrifice their third brother to save both of their skins.
On the stairs, the Thing takes another step down, and it breathes in: Beau and Caelum can both hear its breath, some kind of disturbing rattle like a spraypaint can being shaken.
It's a long moment before he stops, though Beau's shaking, reaching out with bloody fingernails and tracks of long scratch marks over his pretty face, dragging down his face before he grips onto Caelum's leg. "Shit dude... shit, let me get outta here, oh fuck....c'mon help me out bro...." he's near whimpering, his poor human face certainly messed up now with shallow bleeding furrows. "We gotta get outta here..."
As soon as Caelum is done tossing the helpless, wounded fraternity brother in the path of their abject horror - he had intended to run. Beau appearing right there to grip onto him, however - makes things easier. He crouches down instantly to gather the young man in his arms as he had tried with the other. This time hopefully with more success as he tries to pull Beau up on his feet and drag along to flee- Yet he speaks nothing. His face is bled dry of every colour, frozen in a mixture of fury and fear.
The Thing is at the base of the stairs, now, and it crouches over the screaming fraternity brother. Its back is up and it squats, and it seems as if its his don't connect quite right, like they make points above his waist: as if it has some extra joints in its spine that give it a strange, canine appearance. With the creature closer, now, Beau and Caelum can begin to make out details, strange black planes like glass, but what's worse is that its face has some awful attractiveness.
You need to look the Thing in the eyes.
On the ground, the fraternity boy is screaming in abject, soul-ending terror.
Beau is getting ready to run, his arm slung around Caelum's shoulder, that is before he catches a look at the creature. It's like he needs to get a second look. He just needs to, slowly so he can glance over his shoulder. He regrets it, he breaks out in a sweat, his face drains of color and then he's whimpering. "D-d-dude... that things gonna fucking kill us... it's gonna fucking kill me... holy shit... holy shit..." The screams from their fallen brother makes him look like he's gonna be sick, then he's gripping onto Caelum so tight, that it makes him almost more of a problem than a help, his joints ridgid, his body shaking.
In his attempts to haul Beau on his feet and usher him out in their mutual terror - Caelum does a critical error. There is something compelling, something disturbing at the back of his mind that makes him steal a glance over his shoulder. Perhaps it is the screaming, perhaps worse - but with the creature in view, those muted sea-green eyes scale its body from its crouched position. Taking in the sight of it squatting over the fraternity brother - then his gaze meets The Thing in its eyes, or whatever it has for them...
Beau clutching on tightly on him, however rigid - is met with the same in return. Caelum is hardly in the process of fleeing then and there - drained of color the same, and the two fraternity brothers are holding onto each other stock frozen.
There it is: the Thing. It has a long, clawed hand on the screaming fraternity boy, slowly starting to push those black, knife-like fingertips into its chest, but it looks up at Beau and Caelum. Both recognize the face immediately. For Beau, he's been looking at it in terror, worried, but for Caelum the Thing's visage is all more familiar.
After all: every morning, Caelum sees his own face in the mirror.