A splitting headache crawled at the back of Cale's mind. Fatigue settling just as prominently.
The fatigue made Cale realize that he was far closer to death than he had anticipated. The weight in his eyes quadrupled when attempting at opening them at first. As if telling him to just sleep.
But Cale rejected the offer, afraid of being attacked. Cale opened his eyes once again after many trial and errors.
The rocky surface of the ceiling flew into his view, its jagged patterns just as unnatural as its shaking. Cale stared with eyes emptier than a skeleton's eye sockets.
It took a long time before he could muster any strength to get up.
"..."
His mouth opened at the two items blinking at the corner of his eye.
The Demon Exterminator and the Idiyele's cloak sat squarely next to each other. Packaged nicely for Cale.
With a sigh deeper than it should've been, he crawled to put the cloak back on.
Cale had a hard time finding his faults this time. He believed that he had done everything possible in order to survive, that his decisions seemed to be the best at that moment, but it didn't push down the sense that he could've definitely done this or that better.
"...?"
He narrowed his eyes at his surroundings, finding his vision to have been significantly improved by miles off from when he first came here.
'I can see in the dark way better after that storiem.'
Thinking back on that storiem or whatever it was called. Cale still didn't know if he had actually cleared it or not, he hadn't seen Feigling or its mother at all since the start.
"Did I actually 'clear' it?"
Muttering words that echoed more than they should in the cave. Cale planted his foot on the ground, putting on the cloak of Idiyele and fixing it cleanly on his shoulders.
Finished furnishing with the cloak, he took his cold gun and walked further away from the spot. Breathing in the cold and stagnant air as droplets of water fell from around him.
Maneuvering across with stiff movements. A faint static sound permeated deeper into the cave, making Cale's head slowly shifted toward it.
The wind, stale as it blew made Cale's skin twitch under the constant prickling.
Cale stopped, his face full of pondering question marks, mouth hanging slightly ajar.
'Should I?'
He felt pretty good at the moment, so he didn't dismiss the idea of embarking on a short side mission.
Surviving was the goal anyway, and he doubted that outside was any safer than inside.
His attention flickered to his gun and the deeper crevices of the large cave, where a wall of dark pressed in not far away from him, revealing Cale's range of just how much he could now see in the dark in eerie detail.
Quickly he moved to the sound of the ominous static, steps pounding on the damp and uneven surface.
'Moss?'
Moss infested the rocky ground, clinging desperately at the inanimate.
Hiding within the thick moss was an old radio box, made of amber wood, antennas quivering at the sight of Cale.
There, a voice within the drowning sounds of static became audible to his ears.
—Youngling! I finally found you!
An old voice addressed him and his more formal attire. More clear, nicer, and pleasing to hear than last time.
'How the-'
Before Cale could voice his confusion, a slip of paper fell on top of his head. Jolting him on the spot.
He ruffled through his hair to catch it, holding the nicely folded paper between his fingers, now out of every piece of paper he came across, this one was the most clean slip of paper his hands had the fortune to hold.
No other paper was as pure white as this one. Of course, the moment he opened the slip of paper, the purity of the paper had to be stained by ink.
Eyes winced at the terrible handwriting.
'Are these hieroglyphics?'
Pain in his eyes became evident the more he forced himself to make out the sentences with terrible sentence structuring, forcing Cale to restructure the whole entire thing from scratch in his mind.
「Chatter Box: Radio 」
| He talks when you feel lonely, comments and gives advice on your life choices and chatters to you like how a friend would! No matter where you put him, he always finds a way to find you! He gets sad when you get hurt and gets even sadder when you ignore him, he doesn't like it in the least bit....Many disappearances are said to be caused by him. There is nothing that truly says it was....But there is nothing saying it wasn't him that did it.... |
"...."
Cale stared with a blank expression resting on his face. Gaze alternating from the paper to the Radio.
'Why the hell?'
The small piece of paper fell to the uneven ground as Cale brought his hands to his face in dire need of massaging.
"This has got to be the most unnecessary thing I have ever gotten for Christmas...."
He could've gotten a grenade launcher to just blow his problems away, a machine gun or a fighter jet to escape, but no, he was stuck talking to an old man with dementia and quite possibly a schizophrenic one at that.
Not that he held anything specific against the elderly.....But there was a time and place for anything, a radio box was certainly not the item needed in his collection.
—What might be the matter fella?
"No, it's nothing."
Cale's voice muffled through his palms filled with creeping cold. The static grew more pronounced in his mind.
Sighing once, he hooked his cold fingers under the handle and hoisted the radio up on his shoulder.
Being given a supernatural item, he should at least have it, either for the sake of having it in case it's needed or because chatting with some old man might give some solace to his turmoil driven mind.
Cale's movements echoed loudly within the wide expanse of the cave, steps recoiling on hard stone.
"Do you remember me?"
Cale asked, bringing the radio box to eye level. It didn't take long before the old voice inside the chatter box answered his question with a flowery tone.
—Why yes I do! How could I not when you dashingly escaped from the clutches of that demon.
"...."
'Dashingly....It felt more scuffed than that though.'
Not taking the compliments at face value. Cale asked another question to the entity housing the radio box. Steps slow and deliberately careful.
"Then who are you? What's your name?"
At the question presented, the chatter box took longer to answer, almost as if pondering what words to use to answer Cale.
Soon enough, it answered, just not the answer Cale hoped.
—Ha hA HA!!!
He burst into laughter, making Cale frown further at the radio box, his gaze now shifting into a glare.
"....."
—Kuk Eh!
After many dragging minutes of chuckling, the exit illuminated harshly on Cale. His steps crunched on the broken stone as he ignored the laughter that now slowed to a halt.
The land, covered by snow that stretched on miles with cold air that crawled to the very edges of the skin, greeted Cale for his triumphant return.
The old voice finally answered Cale his question as his steps slowed, done with the continuous dodging.
—I haven't the slightest idea for my identity youngling. I am just as clueless as you in that regard.
"....I see."
Cale's eyes lowered to the pool of smeared blood tainting at the surface of pure white. His foot then took a massive crunch at the snow, the sound drowned out completely from the ongoing blizzard.