Aesch craned his head back to gape in silence at the passengers, seemingly at an abrupt loss for words. In that moment of silence as he stared at them, the world came undone.

A fine line wove its way across the breadth of the world where the sky met the land, and all of the works of mankind fell away as darkness spilled forth, stretching across the land like a veil, each mangled and contorted structure in the near distance slowly losing all depth and falling into a featureless morass of angry pitch. Twelve fine lines of jet split their way across the apex of the sky, enclosing the whole of the universe in a cage of ink. The triangular patches of the dawncast sky grew brittle, an iridescent radiance shearing through their fragile veneer and erupting in an ultraviolet cascade of light that shone an empyrean blaze. The light quickly grew beyond what mere human vision could espy, and vanished from all living memory, leaving naught but the cold and alien sun alone in the void casting a frigid light. 

The man who choked on his own mettle and his coterie changed in the new light before those who were fated to die. Aesch was briefly wracked by perturbations across the whole of his body, his flesh bulging and surging in every direction like a broiling cyst. The wheelchair he was ensconced in shuddered violently, emitting a constant clattering noise of fine silver platters falling to the ground. The tubing and the I.V. drip connected to the man elongated and were reduced to fine silver wires that rearranged themselves, animating in the air without any motive force to guide them, Aech's blood coursing along them like surging worms.

Radiance bloomed around his form - the cold light of the sun banishing the morass of hideous black cast across the ground and air, as though now detail was cast by that which obstructed the sun as shade. In that small halo of detail, those fated to die saw as Aesch underwent a most curious transformation - he levitated in the air, his skin splitting across his back and the coils of his pretense unwinding from his body in a stream of burgundy vitriol, the mass pooling across the ground to form a puddle of his mortal foibles in the visage of his shadow. It was many times larger than the man himself, its two-dimensional features brimming with barely-contained power that rippled in surges and waves. The visceral shadow bore a crown, and in the center of its naval was an iridescent star that shone in wet and gleaming colors mixed of bile, phlegm, and marrow. The twisting, animated cords of silver that had been woven from the man's tubing strung themselves to the shadow's form by its arms, legs, and head - connecting to the emptied husk that now drifted in the air before those fated to die. The husk itself deteriorated as the shadow waxed in strength, the whole of its lower body withering and then putrefying before dissolving to ashes, followed by most of its chest, leaving only the husks's collar, shoulders, arms, and head intact. Extending down from the feeble facade was a warped and fractured mass of sinew and bone supporting a slowly-beating heart, the arteries and capillaries severed - kept suspended only by a webbing of silvery metal that grew from it like a weed, keeping it connected to the rest of the body even as spines and spires of metal cut greedily into the cardiac muscle. Aesch's face grew in size, its mouth increasing in volume until it took up a good half of his face, his eyes and brow horribly shrunken and flattened just above it. From within the darkness of his maw, a single centipede wriggled forth, wings sprouting from its back with a small pop and a spray of tar, coursing outwards until it reached nearly a meter in length. It wavered from side to side in the air wildly.

The coterie of the man who choked on his own mettle fared somewhat more favorable fates, merely being diminished in essence and depth - flattening and imploding into tree-like towers of thin, cylindrical lines joined together in a vaguely humanoid shape. Reduced to little more than coordinate impressions of personages against the true void of the world. 

The passengers remained unchanged - at least, as to their own minds and impressions of themselves. Whether their forms had twisted from each others' relative perspectives was to be seen. The one who accompanied them, who felt no loss, had barely changed at all - naught but his eyes, which now shone a brilliant golden-orange hue with an explosive captivation, obscuring the rest of his now effectively featureless face with their shine.

[quote=@WiseDragonGirl]"Seeing how well you though everything through I'm sure you'll have some additional medical supplies for me." Andy said. "I would have packed more if I had known I had to do some heroic stuff today." His eyes moved from the wheelchair to Fortune and rested on Ariett. "Other than that I'm ready to go. Are you people ready too?"[/quote][quote=@Holmishire]"I have some first aid materials in my pack," Ariett started, addressing Andy before taking on a more bitter tone. "Though my impression is that any injured we'll find inside will need far more than that." She then stepped over to stand by the doctor, but looked back at the pavise knight as if for guidance. "I'm ready to move on."[/quote]
[@WiseDragonGirl][@Holmishire]
"Don't look at me, Ms. You're the one with the visitor pass." The one who felt no loss said in response, holding his left hand up in a placating gesture. "I know that we're supposed to head for the burnt-out wing though - the one right over there, with the billowing smoke and such. If Mr. Aesch has no more imperatives and if none of you all have any more questions, we should probably get moving..." He pointed vaguely in the indicated direction - somewhere behind the man who choked on his own mettle, where there was naught but angry, hideous darkness as the world fell away from the tenuous shores of reality cast by those assembled.

The winged centipede extending from the depths of the mouth of the man who choked on his own mettle wriggled excitedly in response, wringing its many legs together in order to create the many-layered, seething semblance of Aesch's voice.

"How do you intend to bind questions without answers, if truth dost bleed? Nobility has proven worthless, only heroism can shield you."

The ectomorph felt their backpack suddenly gain several stones of weight and partly dislodge itself as several unseen but felt objects appeared within its interior. If the ectomorph is the first to check and examines the contents in the first stable branch, they discover several compact, specialized field-triage kits - including bottles of spray-solvent akin to what the one who felt no loss had provided to one of those who were fated to die earlier. If the ectomorph is not the first to check and examine the contents in the first stable branch, they instead discover the shrunken heads of the boy who was an egregore, the child who drowned others in open space, the boy who both lived and died, and the servitor whose death was not foretold.

[quote=@Cruallassar]"Sir, are there any other hostiles currently inside the university besides Dr. Leona, and can you guarantee the security of the perimeter?"[/quote]
[@Cruallassar]
"They will only ask you three questions. It might seem like they might ask more, but they will only ask three. Then you will die." The wriggling centipede echoed helpfully.