At last the door crunched open with a shuddering pop, sending a cloud of dust flying up into the air. Devlin's dingy apartment was utterly dark and smelled like must. Harper Moore stepped through the doorway quietly.

"Castor?" he called out into the emptiness.

A light was on in the study, and he approached cautiously, holding a small pinprick of light in his palm to illuminate the flat. It was funny, he thought, how different their living spaces were. Devlin seemed to have fewer possessions than was allowed by decency. Harper was sure that if Devlin hadn't inherited a few sticks of furniture from his late father, he probably wouldn't even have a bed. There was an inherent distaste for materialism evident here, as well as an aversion to dusting. The professor sneezed.

"Castor, are you here?" he asked again, rubbing his nose. The light was flickering. He pushed on the door and it swung open, revealing a spindly desk and chair that kept each other company in the otherwise empty room. A candle, nearly a puddle now, was still burning in its holder. Stacks of paper littered the desk, and a grey-blue stone lay on top of them.

He stepped closer and picked it up. It was Devlin's seerstone.

"...he came to the Infirmary, just over a month ago, in the dead of night..."

Something was very wrong here.

Glancing as though he could not help himself at the papers on the desk, Harper caught sight of what appeared to be convoluted mathematical equations at first blush. But he knew the formulae with which they worked, and it didn't match up. The scribbles were haphazard and nonsensical, like code or a dead language.

"...there was a wretched puncture in his abdomen..."

His stomach clenched as he looked behind him at the long coat hanging on the door. In the half-darkness it looked as thin and wraithlike as a ghost. He thought he could make out dark stain in the candlelight.

...he was dressed like a peasant. Not like a professor that needed a new suit, but like an actual human commoner...

Harper felt his instincts propel him out of the room before he could fully explain why. The feeling of get out, now! had never been stronger. Devlin was gone, and why, he couldn't say, but he was certain of one thing only - it would not be good to be caught here, not alone, not at night, not with those papers and that coat. He did not want to be anywhere near this apartment.

And that left him without his true friend, his only real confidant, the man he had grown closest to in the last ten years, the man he had always relied on to be cleverer than himself.

Harper narrowed his eyes and fled down the stairs at a breakneck pace. When he reached the night air, he slumped up against the wall of the building, feeling the rough brick scrape his neck. Lonely, lonely, lonely. She had called him lonely. It's not loneliness unless you're alone; then it's only reality. Anger swelled up inside him again. He cursed profusely and stomped the flowerbed into a pulp with his feet.

That was it, then. Nothing left but to do it.

With a shuddering sigh, he turned towards the student dormitories and set off, feeling the ache of fear in his chest.

(( OOC comments welcome! This thread is a followup to this: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3328 ))