“You sure do scream a lot,” remarks Alleluia.

He lifts his right hand that was running along the pipe and flicks the shell of the metal tube with his middle finger. The sound of the strike echoes down along the length of it.

He had promised her that he would go back, but honestly the second that he had gotten up after his mourning had finished and then looked at the jagged hole which he had crawled out of, he simply shrugged and started walking the other way. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to crawl back through that. But luckily enough, there was another pipe here that he discovered as he was leaving, just out here in this next corridor. Or is this the same pipe that led to the other room? He isn’t sure, but what matters is that she can hear him. So he kept his promise. Sort of. Though honestly, he probably would have just left otherwise.

“Ah!” calls her voice in surprise as the sound reaches her, wherever she is. “Please don’t do that,” she pleads quietly a moment later. “It’s very loud.”

He sighs, looking away from the pipe which runs along near his head. His eyes wander around the ancient corridor that he finds himself in. This certainly looks a lot more like a dungeon than the cave before did. The floor is an old brickwork and there are torches that line the walls, but they are all long since extinguished and covered in a thick layer of grime and dust.

“So, is there anyone else down here?” he asks.

“No, it’s just me,” says Alleluia a moment later. “Everyone else is dead.”

“Oh,” responds the man plainly, looking at the pipe again. At least she got straight to the point, he appreciates that. “So, how are you still alive?” he asks, peeking around a corner as the hallway diverges into two paths. One goes left, the other goes right. He blinks, looking back at the pipe. “Wait. Did you kill everyone? You’re not some kind of sealed-away demon pretending to be normal or something, are you?”

The distant machinery that he has heard so often, now reaches his ears again. “No! I didn’t and I’m not!” protests the voice, sounding almost insulted at his insinuation. He looks to the wall on his left, staring at a series of scratches in it where someone had carved several nonsensical words. He tilts his head, reading them quietly to himself. “It’s in the water,” he mutters, not sure what that means.

“I dunno… maybe it’s for the best if I don’t let you out of wherever you are,” he suggests, only half-jokingly. “This seems pretty suspicious. Are you sure that you’re stuck? Or did someone lock you away down here on purpose?”

“I’m stuck!” snaps Alleluia.

“How did you get stuck?” he asks, looking to the left where there is a broken and shattered fountain, long since dried up. Maybe whoever wrote this message was talking about that? A warning about a trap of some kind, maybe? It would be for the best to stay away from it then.

“Everyone died and the door won’t open,” she says in a huff. “Why are YOU stuck down here?” mutters the voice indignantly, growing distant as if its owner were walking away from her end of the pipe in a huff. He supposes that’s a good point.

“Okay, okay, sheesh. If I find your stupid door, I’ll open it.”

“Do you promise…?” asks the voice in a soft tone.

“No,” he replies with absolute dryness, as he gets back up, opting to take the right-hand path, if not to avoid the fountain but then also because that’s the way the pipe seems to be running along anyways. A loud growl echoes out around him and the man stops, thinking he’s just intruded on some monster’s den. But as his fingers graze his rumbling stomach, he realizes that it’s just coming from him again.

“Ah… I’m so hungry,” he sighs, trudging forward. There has to be something to eat around here somewhere. Anything. Some old roots, some dried, ancient meat. He’ll even take more bugs at this point. Do worms count as bugs? He looks around the darkened corridor. “Hey, do worms count as bugs?”

“…What?” asks Alleluia a little later.

“Worms, you know?” he asks. “Are they bugs?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” asks the woman before a series of gears wind up again behind her voice.

“Ah, never mind,” he says, lifting a hand to the pipe to wave it off out of reflex, only stopping himself mid-motion, as he realizes again that that would be pointle-

He stops in his tracks, freezing as he stares up at the ceiling just above his head, at the corner where the wall and the ceiling meet each other. His eyes are locked on to the spider, about the size of his fist that hangs there, sitting comfortably in its web. His stomach lets out a loud growl again, as his wide eyes stare at the juicy morsel that hangs above him. Without thinking about it, his hands shoot up into the air and he jumps in an attempt to grab it. His fingers come nowhere near the web.

There is a new growl. Louder. Longer. Deeper. He’s so hungry. It hurts. Clawing against the wall, pressing his body against it, he jumps again, trying to reach the spider as wet saliva drips out of the corners of his mouth. As it drips down the front of his body that he smears along the wall. He wants it. All he can think about is the spider. How crunchy it is. How juicy it is. He doesn’t know why, but he bets it tastes spicy, without actually being spicy. Just a little, you know?

He jumps again, his bare feet slapping against the stones over and over as he tries to grab it, but his small fingers never quite reach the web, let alone the tiny creature that sits there, still entirely undisturbed and judging by its listlessness, unimpressed.

“The spider. The spider~!” drools the thing that he is as it jumps, as it stares. It is entirely lost in its vision of the small critter dangling above it, unable to see the red smear that his body leaves on the wall, caused by the rubbing of his naked gestalt against the coarse stones over and over. The pain of his sanded skin, which burns as loose granulate rubs into it, the sense of his hearing, which picks up the sounds of something moving to his right, as well as his thoughts, which are trying to pull themselves back together, everything is lost as it becomes buried beneath the oppressive presence of the deep-hunger.

It’s all that he has left. He’s empty. His hands reach for the spider again as he jumps. Empty. Hungry.

He misses, landing back down on his feet. The steps to his side become louder. He jumps again. He’ll get it this time, he’s sure, he can feel it in his bones!

He doesn’t. He jumps again. This time for sur- !

He isn’t really sure why, but the world is turning over sideways all of a sudden and he’s flying through the air, tumbling along with it. Something hurts in his gut. The sharp pain overrides the agony of his hunger, if only for a second. The wind is knocked out of him, as he crashes down onto his back. He kicks, pushing himself back up as he scrambles to sit back upright. The spider. The spider!

The spider watches as the strange, gaunt monster descends down upon him. It’s giant mouth wraps around the base of his neck. He hears a crunch, as something snaps his collar bone, as jagged, yellow teeth sink into his flesh. He kicks, trying to push whatever it is off of himself, but his legs slip past it on both sides at the same time as his hand shoots forward and reaches for the distant spider. The monster pushes against his hips to pin him down, He screams, not because it hurts, but because his food is further away than ever now.

His voice becomes silent though as he hears the wet sound. The wet sound coming just below. It’s squelching. He looks down and sees the long, thin arm pressed through the exterior of his gut, digging around his insides. Something is digging into his stomach. He can feel its claws against the inside of the skin on his back.

There is another crunch, as the monster bites down harder, breaking his shoulder-blade. It hurts. He’s so hungry. Why does his stomach hurt so much? His eyes follow the length of the thin, long, hairy arm up its meager upper body to where he can see a rib-cage of a starving animal.

His stomach growls and the creature stops, pulling its bloodied maw off of his neck to look down at the vibration of his rumbling gut. Wet, red strings of meat dangle out of its teeth and tie them to each other.

His eyes go wide, his legs wrap around its back as he lunges up and bites down on its neck, just as the creature returns to do the same to him. The two of them, interwoven, roll around the stone floors, screaming. Screaming. He isn’t sure if the screams are his, or if they’re from the creature, or if it just isn’t the sounds of his stomach that he’s misinterpreting. But it’s all so loud. He bites down deeper, harder, feeling the warm ooze of its body gush into his mouth, as his teeth sink past a tuft of fur and dig into old meat.

All the while, it eats him, ripping off pieces of his body and he does the same in turn, biting and gnawing and swallowing and filling his throat and lungs and stomach with blood and flesh, as the two give their bodies to another.

{Eat the Wicked} Wendigo Meat (Mixed) ~600g Calories: 1178 *Protein: 154,2 g Fat: 124,8 g Carbs: 0 g Fiber: 0 g Sugars: 0 g Water: 53%

He gains the upper hand, now sitting on top of it. Holding a hand to its bloodied neck, he presses his face down into its gut, not sure which of the entrails are his and which are its as he keeps on chewing, gnawing, biting his way in. Growing weaker, it continues to tear off pieces of him, pieces of his arms, of his legs, of his entire body that just keeps regenerating.

Why is he so hungry?

He bites down harder, acid covers his mouth and tongue and it burns his face. Bile covers his lips and eyes and he presses in deeper, eating into the creature, eating the pieces of himself that it has eaten out from its stomach.

Not much later, only one of them continues eating, the other having become the prey.

“It’s so good!” he cries in delight, tearing into the monster, nibbling on the tiny bones, biting into the larger ones to break them and to suck out the old, grimy marrow that filled them. His body regenerates, the pain that he felt is entirely gone. Not that he even really perceived anything other than the deep-hunger which is now satiated. His belly, closed back shut, is full and warm and sloshes with a hot liquid inside of it, the essence of the creature’s life.

He… he…

He looks all around himself, at the section of corridor that is painted red and black with blood and smears from their mixed entrails which are still entwined with each other’s, like a tangled rope. It hurts so much.

He hears Alleluia calling for him again, but his attention drifts elsewhere, towards the strange, wispy thing that he sees floating above his head. Towards the bulging cloud that seems to throb and writhe as if in agony.

He swallows. His eyes grow wide and fixate on the floating thing, as he lifts a shaking, mangled hand and touches it.

[Sin Level 6: Wendigo]

His eyes roll back into his head and he falls down on top of the corpse, as his mind fades, drifting to a sleep-like state. The vapor flows into his body, the spirit of the creature whose flesh is his, now also becomes part of their communion.

As his last light leaves his gaze, he sees the spider skittering across the floor.