Eldritch Guidance

Once the door was closed, Jafar waited a full minute before he gingerly walked around the corner and quietly approached. He placed his ear against the apartment door and tried to listen in to make sure there wasn\'t anyone standing beyond. He couldn’t hear anybody, so he gently pushed it open. As he did that, the latch on the door pushed out with an audible clicking sound and flung out a plastic card that was wedged in it.

Jafar froze. He waited with bated breath for any response to the noise that was made, but none came. He thought he was safe and continued to enter the apartment.

As quietly as possible, he closed the door behind him and then picked up the plastic card that fell out when he opened it. He saw it was Alan’s student ID and pocketed it.

Looking in front of him was a narrow hallway. At the end of it were three doors and on the right side before them was an opening to another room, where he could hear voices coming from. He quietly walked to the edge of the opening.

Now closer, Jafar could tell the voices belonged to his friends. He carefully looked around the corner and saw his friends and someone else sitting around a table in a kitchen area. He couldn’t see the person\'s face, only the back of his head, as he was facing towards Sere. For a brief moment, both Sere and his eyes met before she almost immediately looked away from him. Likely worried that the roommate would notice her staring at Jafar.

Jafar quickly moved past the kitchen and down the hallway. Managing to do so without being noticed. Nearly every step he took was almost completely silent. The spell that Alan had casted on him made him lighter, thus also made his footstep quieter.

Arriving at the end of the hallway, and seemingly undetected, he proceeded to slowly open one of the doors. The first door he opened led to a simple bathroom with a toilet and shower. There was nothing of interest, so Jafar moved on. The next room was a proper bedroom of a university student. There was a bed, desk to work at, a string instrument of some kind in the corner, a book shelf that had no books in it, and a bunch of trash and dirty clothing all over the place.

There wasn\'t any distinguishing feature that could identify if this bedroom was Cid’s, or his roommate. Jafar decided to look at the other bedroom before he started his search.

Upon opening the third door, he was met with a similar looking bedroom. It was darker in this room, but it had all the same furniture, minus the instrument. It was clean and didn\'t have trash all over like the other, but there was one glaring feature that made it stand out, the walls were completely covered with written notes and photos.

Feeling that this room was more suspicious looking than the other, he silently entered inside. Jafar approached the wall with paper hanging from it. The scribbling on the notes was completely illegible to him. Not being able to read the notes, he moved his focus to the pictures beside them. They were all of the same thing, photos of the university library. The pictures were cutouts from magazines and newspapers, all from different positions and angles.

“Why so many photos of the library?” He wondered to himself.

He then moved over to the bookshelf in the room. The shelf contained only text books for various different courses. Jafar quickly skimmed through some of the textbooks to make sure there wasn\'t anything hidden in them. He didn’t think he would find anything strange, but the contents of the books had been written over with the same unreadable writing as the notes on the wall.

“What? Why would anyone ruin their books like this?” he thought, confused.

University textbooks were not cheap, and the scribbling had made these books unreadable. It was unthinkable that someone would ruin them like this, instead of trying to resell to another fellow student.

However, besides the scribbling, Jafar found a textbook that had the name: Cid Cook, written in it. This was confirmation for him that this was likely Cid’s room, and that he wouldn\'t have to go scrounging in the other room after he was done here.

Jafar carefully put the books back onto the shelf and went over to the desk. More notes with the same weird writing were all laid neatly out on it. He would open one of the desk drawers and there would be even more hand written notes stored inside. He continued to rummage through, but didn’t find anything else.

Not being able to find any clues, he shifted his attention to the weird writing on the desk. Trying to see if he could make some sense of it.

“What is with all these weird writings? It’s not written in any language I\'ve ever seen. There is no symbol that looks… wait a minute. Is that a symbol for square root?” He thought as he realized something.

While scanning through the notes, he noticed the symbol: “√”. To Jafar it looked very clearly to be the symbol for square root. It was also repeated a few other times in the notes he was looking at. Suspecting that the writing actually had something to do with mathematics, he scanned through the writing again, and noticed that there were a bunch of different mathematical symbols throughout.

“This must be a math formula! Some of these symbols are definitely used in mathematics. However, it must be extremely complex, because I don\'t recognize most of these. But if that’s the case, what is it for?” He pondered.

As he was trying to piece together this mystery, he got chills down his back. It felt like someone, or something was watching him.

He looked around, but there was no one. Now feeling spooked, Jafar rushed through his search. He went through the closet, another drawer, and under the bed, but didn’t find anything of interest. Finally exhausting his search, he quickly tried to put everything back the way he found it. Once he felt that he mostly covered the signs of his presence, he grabbed one of the formulas at the bottom of the desk drawer.

Jafar thought that Cid wouldn’t notice the missing note, or would just believe it was misplaced.

He exited the room and approached the kitchen entrance again. Peeking inside, he saw that his friends were still talking to the roommate. He took this as an opportunity to make a b-line for the front door and quietly left.

Once finally outside of the apartment, he let out a long sigh of relief.

Jafar: “Ugh, that was kinda nerve racking,” he mumbled to himself.

He then reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper with the formula on it. He examined it again, but still couldn’t derive anything meaningful from it.

“What’s the deal with this?” he thought to himself as he quietly went to the area he was supposed to meet his friends.

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-Fifteen minutes ago within Cid’s apartment-

Robert: “Oh, right. I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Robert, I’m Cid’s roommate.”

Sere: “Hello, my name is Penny and this here is Kevin,” she said, introducing themselves with fake names.

Alan: “Um, hey,” he said, while trying to act distant.

Sere: “Don’t mind him, he went out drinking last night and is still recovering.”

Robert: “OK. I kinda could tell. Anyways, you said you’re Cid’s friends? I\'m surprised. I didn’t think he had any friends.”

Sere: “That\'s right, and like I said earlier, we came to check up on him.”

Robert: “Well, if you want to talk to him, you’re gonna have to go to the library. He spends almost all his time there.”

Sere: “Do you know why he’s spending so much time there?”

Robert: “Not really. He doesn\'t tell me anything.”

Sere: “Even though you\'re his roommate?”

Robert: “I mean, he didn’t even tell me he had friends. And about that, how long have you been friends with him?”

Sere: “Oh, um.” she said, trying to stall and think up a good lie.

Robert narrowed his eyes a little bit. Noticing that Sere was struggling a little bit with that simple question. Her behavior was making him grow slightly more suspicious.

Sere: “W-We’re childhood friends. We used to hang out all the time, but haven’t much since we all got into the university. Whenever any of us had free time, the other was busy with something else.”

Robert: “OK…” he said, unsure of what to make of Sere’s explanation. “You guys also said he’s been acting strange. How so for you guys?”

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Sere: “Um, he’s been acting distant. It\'s like he’s avoiding us.”

Robert: “That… sounds like what Cid is normally like.” he said, now becoming fully suspicious.

Sere had a smile on her face, but was internally panicking. She was worried that she overplayed her hand. She didn’t know much about Cid’s personal life and was trying to talk about him vaguely. She didn\'t know how much of an introvert Cid was, or how much he interacted with people usually.

Alan: “He’s been acting even more distant than normal. He would at least talk to us every once in a while, but he doesn\'t even do that now. Got mad when we ask why, and now he’s avoiding us.” he chimed in with another lie, trying to help Sere.

Robert: “Well, you guys are his friends. So maybe you talk to him more than me.” he said, with his suspicion being diffused.

Sere gave an internal sigh of relief. Thankful for Alan’s help.

Sere: “What about you? How has he been acting strange around you?”

Robert: “He’s been very… obsessive lately. How do I explain?” he said, while spending a little bit of time thinking about it. “He suddenly became very intent on things being a certain way, like extremely so.”

Sere: “What do you exactly mean by that?.”

As Sere asked that question her eyes wandered around the room a little. She eventually looked towards the kitchen opening to the hallway and saw Jafar peeking around the corner. Their eyes met for a brief moment. Then she immediately looked away, not wanting Robert to notice her staring at her friend.

Robert didn’t notice Jafar behind him, and kept talking.

Robert: “Well, it started when he cleaned up the apartment. I didn\'t think much about it, I even thanked him for doing it at the time. But then, he started moving things around in the apartment. He would put everything in odd and bizarre arrangements.”

Sere: “How bizarre are we talking?”

Robert then pointed towards the kitchen countertop. Both Alan and Sere looked over and saw a toaster that was unplugged and upside down, an electric glass tea kettle full of brown liquid with a bar of soap floating in it, and a knife block holder with the knives that were forcefully put in the wrong slot and sticking out awkwardly. It was things that neither of them noticed when they first walked in, but now that it was pointed out, it was glaring.

Robert: “He’s also moved a bunch of furniture around too. When I asked him why he was doing all this, he wouldn’t say. And, when I tried to put things back to normal he freaked out at me. Ever since then, I\'ve been confining myself to my room while he’s been doing all this weird stuff.”

Sere: “I’m sorry to hear that. It sounds like our friend has made your life difficult.”

Robert: “It’s fine. I pretty much finished my classes and was going to move out soon anyway. This just sped that plan up a little.”

Sere: “Do you have any idea what the cause of the sudden shift in his behavior is? Um, we wanna make sure Cid’s OK.”

Robert: “I have no idea. He only started behaving this way after he returned from that affinity test.”

Sere: “He did an elemental affinity test? He didn’t say anything about that with us,” she lied, hoping that Robert would expand on what he was saying.

Robert: “Yeah, he took one of those advanced affinity tests too.”

Advance affinity tests were for people that had something unusual about their elemental affinities. They sometimes can\'t use conventional elements very well because of an unidentified trait to the elemental they are attuned with. The advanced affinity tests were to help people understand what that trait was and how to correct for it, if possible.

Sere: “Did he tell you what the result of the test was?”

Robert: “Not really. I mean, if he didn’t tell you guys, he’s definitely not gonna tell me. I just know that the day he did that test was when he started to act weird.”

As he said that, Sere saw Jafar zoom on by in the hallway. Robert turned his head around and looked behind himself. Thankfully, Robert didn’t see Jafar go by.

Robert: “Sorry, I thought I heard something.” he said while turning his head back to Sere.

Sere: “Um, so you have no idea what’s going on with Cid. Do you at least have any suspicions?”

Robert: “Hmm, I think he just snapped. Something must have happened that day. Making him lose his mind from the stress of it all, or something like that. At least, that’s my guess, but I know one thing for sure. I don’t think he’s stable, and needs some serious help. Maybe some intervention from his friends or family, like what you guys are doing now.”

Alan and Sere looked at each other awkwardly. Pretending to be Cid’s friend to Robert was starting to make them feel weird and a little guilty about it.

Sere: “Yeah… that’s why we came to check up on him. To see if we could find out what\'s wrong with our friend and help him,” she said slightly awkwardly.

Robert: “I’m glad he has friends to help him.“

Sere: “Um, sorry to cut this short, but we gotta go soon.”

Robert: “Oh, already?”

Sere: “Yeah, we got, um. A… knitting lesson to attend,” she blurted out randomly.

Robert: “Wait, are both of you taking knitting lessons?” he said, while looking at Alan and surprised by the idea of someone like him sewing.

Alan: “Ah, yeah…” he said, sounding a little unsure.

Robert: “O-OK…”

Sere: “Um, before we go. Can you not tell Cid we talked to you?”

Robert: “Why?”

Sere: “Well, if he’s as unstable as you think, I\'m worried of him becoming extremely paranoid. He might perceive us talking to you as some sort of betrayal, and not talk to us. So, if you could just not mention us, at least until we have a proper intervention,” she said, feigning concern for Cid.

Robert: “Oh, OK. I won\'t say anything. He doesn\'t talk to me anyways.”

Sere: “Thank you.”

Both Alan and Sere picked themselves up and began to leave, with Robert guiding them out.

They quietly left the apartment and made their way through the hallway to the elevator. They only needed to wait a few moments before the elevator door opened and they stepped inside.

Once they were alone in the elevator Alan turned to Sere.

Alan: “Knitting lessons…really?” he said, in disbelief at the excuse she gave to Robert for them to leave.

Sere: “I panicked. I couldn\'t think of a good excuse for us to leave.”

Alan: “Sere, when people look at me, they don’t think I\'m into knitting. Only you, Jafar, and my family know that I knit.”

Sere: “Sorry, my mind just went blank and… wait. You knit?” she said, surprised.

Alan: “What do you mean I knit?” he said, feeling insulted. “I told you this before, I picked up the hobby awhile ago. I even knitted you a scarf last year for your birthday, remember.”

Sere: “I mean. I got really wasted that day, so I don\'t remember much of anything from my birthday last year.”

Alan: “And that’s why we didn’t bring you along drinking yesterday.” he said, in reference to Sere’s drinking habits.

Sere wanted to rebuke Alan’s comments, but revealing she forgot about her friend\'s knitting hobby made it hard to do so.

Alan: “Anyways, let’s meetup with Jafar and see if he got any evidence out of Cid’s room.” he said the elevator arrived at the main floor.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

Sere and Alan left the Shroom Pact dorm and made their way to the bench that they were sitting at earlier. There, Jafar was sitting and waiting for them to arrive.

Jafar: “Did everything go OK?”

Sere: “Before that, did you know that Alan is into knitting?”

Jafar: “Um, yeah? He told us that last year. Even made me a scarf.”

Sere: “When did he tell us this?”

Jafar: “I think he told us on your birthday. When you opened his gift.”

Sere: “That’s why I don\'t remember any of this. It was on my birthday,” she said, as she realized the cause of her gap in memory.

Both Jafar and Alan rolled their eyes at Sere.

Jafar: “Oh, I have your student card by the way, and why did you stick in the door like that? You could have just left the door unlocked.” he asked, as he handed Alan’s card back to him.

Alan: “I didn’t know if it was one of those automatic doors that lock themselves after a while.” he said, as he pocketed his card.

Sere: “Anyways, did you find anything useful in his bedroom?”

Jafar: “Unfortunately, I didn\'t find any definitive clue. But, there definitely is something really weird going on with that guy. His entire room was covered with notes with this weird script,” he said as he pulled out the note he took from Cid’s room.

Alan took the note from Jafar and examined it. He was trying to derive any meaning from the strange scribbles. He was fluent in two languages, but It wasn\'t like any language he’s ever seen. After a few seconds, he gave up and passed the note onto Sere to look at.

Alan: “I have no idea what it’s written in. It is definitely not written in Gix, or even the unified language.”

Sere: “Yeah, this looks like gibberish to me,” she said while examining the note.

Jafar: “I actually don’t think it’s a language. I think it might be some sort of complex math formula.”

Alan: “You really think this is a math formula. But, I didn\'t see anything that looked like numbers on that.

Jafar: “Like I said, I think it might be a really complex formula, the kind that uses a bunch of weird and obscure symbols. There were definitely some regular mathematical symbols mixed in there.”

Alan: “And you said he had notes with these formulas everywhere.”

Jafar: “Yeah. They were on the walls, in drawers, his closet, he even scribbled this weird writing in his textbooks. Oh, and he also had a bunch of pictures of the university library on his wall too.”

Sere: “Interesting. The Shroom Pact students I spoke to and his roommate all said he was spending a lot of time at the library. Between that and the pictures in his room, the library must be of something of importance to him.”

Alan: “I don’t know how any of this helps us. We needed some evidence of his wrong doing, but we got nothing.”

Jafar: “Maybe not. I’ve heard of stories of mathematicians hiding secret notes in their formulas. There could be a secret message in these notes if we can decode it.”

Alan: “Do you think you could decode it?”

Jafar: “This is way too advanced for me. It would require an intense amount of research to decode.”

Alan: “Which means we’ll have to spend all our time back in the library researching again.” he said, dreading going through more study sessions with his friends.

Sere: “That’s… not a good idea. Cid is now spending a lot of time in the library. What happens if he comes across us trying to figure out his secret notes?”

Jafar: “It would also take a lot of time with no guarantee that this writing isn\'t just nonsense. But, I think I may have a solution for this. It will also be a lot quicker than trying to figure this out ourselves and we wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the library. I just need a little bit of time.”

Alan: “What did you have in mind?”

Jafar: “I know someone that might be able to decode this. Just trust me.”

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

Later that same day.

Cid wandered through the halls of the Shroom Pact dorms until he came face to face with his apartment door.

He went through the motion of pulling out his keys and unlocking the door.

Once inside his apartment, he walked over to the kitchen and looked around. There were things out of place. He assumed his roommate probably used the kitchen today and ruined the arrangement. With a sigh, he grabbed the chair in the kitchen and nudged them a few inches from where they were. Once he was happy with the placement, he headed off to his room.

Entering his bedroom, he immediately took a seat at the desk and started to go through the notes he left on it. After ten minutes of looking through the notes on the desk, he started to look over the notes in his drawer. One by one he read through them all.

Cid: “Hmm? I’m missing a note. That’s… strange. Wait a minute”

Cid pulled out the Book of Grand Design and another piece of blank paper. He would read the contents of the book while writing that strange script on the paper. A few minutes went by until he was done writing. He held up the script and examined it before his expression turned into a deeply annoyed scowl.

Cid: “There was someone in my room, likely male and possibly Ember Gear? But not who I think it was. Maybe a third party? Hmm, looks like something I’m going to have to deal with later after I am done with the others.” he said to himself as he went back to building his design.