Inside she found a small chamber, with a further door from that. There were no windows, and there was very little belongings. Only a rough blanket, a pile of fabric that was likely clothes and a basket with dried foods. Her eyes scanned around until she saw movement. And when she focused Stare saw that it was only a mouse, in the basket. It squeaked with surprise on seeing her, grabbed what it could in its mouth and ran swiftly away, disappearing through a hole in the other door. Through it came soft, natural light.
Stare blinked, then nodded. Pressing onwards past this dank sleeping place she went to go take the door handle. Though it was dimly lit here she could plainly see the latch. Lifting it up she prepared herself, took in a breath and -
Opened to the outside world.
The room Nevin was in was very dark, with no lights inside. All that came into the room was light from the ritual chamber. This room looked like a small sleeping chamber - in one corner was a pile of blankets, heaped up on top of a small wooden cot. They looked like they hadn't been used in a while though. The only other thing of interest was the low wooden desk shoved in one corner of the room, with a mat beneath it to sit only.
On top of the desk was a pile of notes, loosely bound together. Nevin made his way over, eyes piercing the gloom and watching for any threats. When he saw none, he knelt by the desk and started looking through the papers. They were the scrawl on scribbles of a man gone mad - talking of how a strange worm had bitten him, and after that he had begun to hear voices. Anyone else would have thought the writer utterly mad -
But Nevin knew that the poor man had been infested by one of the thread worms. As the voices got stronger, the man had likely been losing more and more of himself as the thread things replaced his body, using his meat and blood to fuel the creation of more of their ilk. Aside from charting a depressing fall into a fate worse than death, the pages did mention an urge to hunt things, more and more powerful creatures.
The final pages, stained with blood, were half. Incoherent, illegible. Nevin was able to figure out a direction - and a mention of a bull, or a snake, that the man had been hunting before - before the voices got too strong and he lost himself. Nevin stood up and moved away from the desk, staring sadly toward the bed. Whoever the man had been, he didn't deserve this fate.
The alchemist left the study, and saw no sign of his friend. He frowned and went to check the other room - and found the door to the outside, with Stare standing in the threshold. He cleared his throat.
