[@ManoftheNorth][@Zelosse][@LetMeDoStuff][@13org][@LightningLynx89][@Eklispe][@The One][@olcharlieboi][@deathclawow][@Ceta de Cloyes]

Young mages have successfully eluded one mortal threat through the conveniently provided portal, but they weren't out of metaphorical woods yet. The escapees have barely managed to catch their breath when a new and unexpected threat emerged - one that was quite a bit more insidious, subtle, vicious and, in the long run, probably much more deadly than flying bullets and exploding shrapnel. Thankfully, by far not all of its current victims had senses acute enough to perceive and register the danger on any meaningful level - but those who could see it might have quickly wished they hadn't. For some fleeting moments, maybe three or at most five or six seconds that still whizzed past unnaturally quickly, Gavin, Mitsuki and Morgana were witnesses to a peculiar, unmistakably magical occurence:

Directly above them, maybe three or four meters in the air, сoiling, pulsating and imperceptibly shimmering on the nonexistent breeze, floated an iridiscent, starry mass, looking down at them through a mass of unblinking eyes that littered its strangely shaped surface, the whole eldritch ensemble looking quite like a cropped two-dimensional picture stapled onto the sky by an unskilled but enthusiastic photoshop user. One'd think that simply sighting such a surreal thing would be more than enough contact for a lifetime, but unfortunately, the eye cloud seemed to have a different opinion. Quicker than in a blink of an eye, the celestial blob descended upon the gathering of mages - or rather, it somehow transferred from hanging lazily in the air to completely enveloping the escapees without any intermediate steps. Three persons who had the capability to see it understood immediately that the cloud wasn't perceivable by any senses other than sight, which meant that it was obviously some sort of ethereal being or magical construct as opposed to simply something invisible, and that realization made looking at what followed much more nauseating.

The eyes inbetween the glittering stars faintly lit up as they assembled in small groups around the heads of everyone present, both mages and mundane mortals - but, as Gavin, Mitsuki and Morgana noted, paying the former much more attention - and then extended from their pupils thin, pitch black tendrils that looked like little, wriggling tears in the reality, not merely having no colour but consuming light from their surroundings. Obviously enough, those tendrils were supposed to [b]plunge[/b] into the eyes and ears of people present, which they immediately [b]did[/b], seemingly without dealing any discomfort to their oblivious victims, then rapidly bulging and anchoring themselves like blood ticks digging into skin of their host. Two sole exceptions among the whole crowd of people on the marketplace were O'Ryan and Eric - for some weird reason, the eyes did not even attempt to probe them. Instead, the star-cloud simply increased its volume in the space around their heads, dozens of small eyes lining up over their skulls and staring so very intently one'd think that they were trying to pierce the bone with sheer ferocity of their gazes.

Then, after no more than a few seconds - the whole process, startling as it was, took no more than several moments - the eyes and the tendrils withdrew back into their amorphous parent, which, in turn, shrinked into a tiny glittering dot which zoomed across the air and into the teeming masses of marketplace's many customers, after which the three scrutinous mages have sensed an almost audible ethereal "pop", signifying an end of a magical effect - as if someone simply flipped a switch and sorcery ceased to exist in the vicinity.

Of course, from the looks of it it was impossible to precisely explain what just took place, but, as one could safely assume, the cloud has just now... probed the skulls of all beings present in a massive part of the bazaar - Jon Bethelem, being somewhat versed in the matters needed for precise examination of such phenomena, could have probably attested to it, had he actively monitored the movements of sorcerous energies at the time. Without active scrutiny, however, he still managed to feel that a certain force of unclear nature gently, briefly pressed down on his mind - like a soft, delicate hand lightly squeezing a wet sponge soaked in water, immediately forcing it to leak liquid after only slight pressure before immediately withdrawing. The rest of the mages, and other people in the vicinity did not register the horror at all, oblivious to it and its effects or, at best simply realizing that they've just forgotten some very trivial and unmeaningful thing.

For the trio that saw the dreadful process take place, however, the implications were grave. Were they the primary target, or was it a natural occurence in these parts of Greece? Was this eldritch cloud malevolent or simply possessing of unknown yet harmless motives? What other sorts of horrors lurked nearby, invisible and imperceptible until the very moment they struck? The questions issued forth like a stream, yet answers were in no way obvious. In fact, chances were there were [i]no clues at all...[/i]