The low fog breathes through the forest, a low blanket of mist that hides the undergrowth and any paths walked through it. It was just one of the seemingly unnatural aspects of the Cursed Woods that lent itself to the Crawling Chaos.
A low rumble began to emanate from the earth beneath the wanderer. The fog behind Catherine started to snake around her path, reaching up like tendrils of mist to cage her. Behind the cage of mist there would be another, swirling around her like a ghostly kraken. The low rumble began to morph into a booming voice that resonated with the earth she stepped on.
"Who goes there?" It said, "This is my domain, the Voice of the Night's Heart! Return from whence you came, lest ye be laaaaaah-grbrlgrbrlrll-"
The voice seemed to become digitised, more high pitched before becoming a garbled mess and abruptly stopping. A light blue light beneath Catherine sparked, which might have seemed arcane if it weren't for the smoke and scent of hot battery acid that came from it.
Along with the spark came the dropping of the veil that had swarmed the woman. Behind it, standing in the open was the figure of a meek young man hunched over some kind of small black device with electronics poking out. He was swearing under his breath, seemingly unphased by Catherine's reaction to the ordeal. He shoved the device in his hoody's centre pocket and ran over to her gesturing for her to wait still, saying "Just, just..." and trading eye contact between her and where the blue spark had set off beneath her. "Just a sec." He said with a sheepish smile, then popped down to pick up a similar device to the one he held before that had laid beneath the fog. On closer inspection it appeared to be some kind of self contained speaker. Xavier blew on it to dissipate some of the burnt smoke, then twisted the top off to reveal a small assortment of wires and burnt electronics. He delicately went to touch one-
"Shit!"
He pulled back his finger in pain. Still hot, then. "Cheap Aschen half assed excuse of a motherboard..." Xavier started pulling it apart further, hardly glancing toward Catherine. There was some amount of acknowledgment in his eyes, however. Xavier certainly didn't perceive this person as a threat. He spoke quickly, intonation falling at the end of each sentence as if he were finished talking. "Six months for a faulty delivery. Should have expected as much." He pulled off a piece from the device. "Yep! Motherboard." He dangled the component in front of Catherine, satisfied a little too much with this menial deduction. "Completely fried. I'm going to send a complaint. I will get my refund."
Finally pausing for a decent moment, Xavier would take the time to read Catherine's behaviour and giving her the space to speak. Afterwards he would make an effort to explain himself. "I haven't seen you around before." He said. "I was hoping you were human. Set'em up for a scare and then go for the kill. A lot of the oldies like that sort of thing. I mean I totally agree, it's classic. No arguments there. You ever seen that movie where the vampire locks that idiot in the car and feasts on him as a horde of rats? I tried that with some geezer's antique four wheeler, but turns out exhaust pipes are hella hard to breathe in. Screw me for trying to do something cool, I guess. I was going to film it. That'd do fuck all, though, wouldn't it? Hah! You need directions or something? No one told me you were coming. No one tells me anything."
And he wonders why.