Leaning 06: Meet the Cave (Frye)

Frye begins to consider his options.

Swears, hurt, too much cave. Editing? (evil laughter)

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.

Frye risked sitting up, found it worked great, and pushed himself into a crouch. The cave, invisible in the perfect darkness, spun around him. He couldn't see it, but he certainly felt the sloshing. He crouched a little lower and reemphasized the whole air goes in, air goes out thing.

The sloshing stopped and the static in his ears quieted. He listened to the cave. He couldn't see the shape of it around him but he could hear the echoes of his breath. The floor stayed mostly flat, he guessed, sloping a little upward. He tried a shuffling crawl, relieved that the dizziness didn't return. Flat, rocky, grooved, maybe volcanic? Frye smiled in the darkness. Phog would have much bigger words and maybe even some corrections, but the small grooves slashed at Frye's knees like the rocks they'd scrambled over when they'd lived in Hawaii.

The other end of the cave sounded like water. It had to be. Nothing in nature could be that flat except for still water. Frye sidled back down the slope until his fingers hit wet. He sat back to think and listen some more.

He could try swimming through it. He must have arrived that way, some kind of underwater entrance. He'd been flung away from the skell when it had been caught by the monster's fins. Unfortunately, something trailing behind the back of the creature had grabbed him, or tangled around his leg, or something. Maybe it had been a cable from the skell, turning Frye into an unholy ankle bracelet. He liked that idea. Whatever it had been, he'd been dragged down as the creature submerged. His last memory was the growing darkness of the water, almost as dark as this cave. Then his brain (and lungs, thankfully) had shut down.

He gave his legs a quick pat. He'd been so focused on the novelty of respiration, he hadn't thought to check for other injuries. He felt the hurt, a solid all-over bruising, but nothing that could compete for his attention with trying to come back to life. Now he took stock of his physical capabilities.

Not bad, but not great. Everything was moving okay, but he was exhausted. He must have been out for more than just the one hour he'd initially thought. He could probably swim, but for how long? How far? Against a current that had pushed him here? No thanks.

He started to crawl back up the cave floor. The air was wet as the first sip of warm beer, but it hadn't gone stale yet. The cave didn't sound large enough to hold enough air for a panting Interceptor. That meant that fresh air should be coming from somewhere. Frye would have to sniff it out.

It didn't take a super genius to figure it out. Frye crouched and crawled for a bit until the grooves filled with sand. The air was definitely fresh and not completely still. It wasn't so much a breeze as an exchange drifting in from a larger space.

He risked standing up, very slowly. Not slow enough. At half height he hit the top of the cave. He crouched back again, rubbing his head. Nopon sized, this thing was. "Fucking meh."

He couldn't believe he'd forgotten this trick. The way the sound died in one direction definitely told him there was an open area ahead. Still pitch black, but Frye was chill with darkness. "Pop!"

He moved toward where the sound was most open, a little to the left. The ground kept sloping, he kept shuffling, the darkness kept holding everything. Suddenly he stopped. All around him was a different kind of quiet.

Hitting the roof of the cave must have shaken something lose in his brain. He started fumbling in his pockets. There was just the off chance that the dunking hadn't stripped him of all of his gear.

In his defense, you wake up from a blackout without your shoes and jacket, you tend to assume your pockets have been emptied too. At least in Frye's experience.

a/n: As I was writing this, I ended this part with:
"so help me, if Frye finds a lighter, I have no idea what he'll see
No
idea"

Next up: I figured it out and it will involve a lot more cave.