Andlátkyn; Vandr Sanses unin Alagaësia

Punishment of the Puppetmaster

(( :3 ))

A small group of veiled dwarves rode ponies through a tunnel, the vast door far in the distance as they traveled in somber silence, only the sound of hooves echoing throughout the vast tunnel.
That is, until the faint sound reached them.

A few sat up, glancing back the way it came from, the eerie layered note that lasted only a second reverberating around as they spotted a mote of darkness in front of the door before it disappeared.

At that, the leader of the group froze, eyes wide as he frantically searched for any sign of the dark spot again, only for all of them to stop their ponies at the sound of a distant infant's voice giggling.

A few of them spoke back and forth in their home tongue, before another cried out, pointing out a gleaming blue thread snaking along the ceiling towards them.

Their leader was the first to kick his steed into a gallop, dashing away from the strange thing as the others followed shortly after.

The strange string was left behind in the distance, a strange unearthly buzzing growing louder and louder around them as they sped along, hooves clattering on the cold stone frantically amidst the noise threatening to shake them apart.

On and on they rode, striving to escape the scream of noise chasing them, racing on and on as the ponies gasped, frothing with how hard they were being driven through the cold, empty, haunted tunnel.

Several hours passed before the sound finally began to fade, slowly letting up in around twenty minutes' time, leaving a painful ringing in their ears in its stead as they allowed the ponies to slow down and breathe, glancing back in fear and confusion.

Eventually they were trotting along, the time outside likely long past dusk as they refused to rest lest the unknown entity behind the horrible noise catch up to them.
So they kept riding, only stopping twice to give the ponies water, too unsettled by the event to risk letting it find them to eat anywhere but in the saddle.
Little did they know, the moment they heard that first note they were much too late.

It soon became apparent in the echoes of the tunnel, faint directionless buzzing fading in and out, more of those indescribable notes sounding here and there, never allowing the travelers to relax for long.

Approximately a day later, they began to spot eerie, flickering shadows at the edges, the strange notes growing more frequent as the black otherworldly shadow haunted them, urging them to speed up once more.

Sometime around what was likely noon, they began to hear faint chuckles from the sides, as if their spectare found their predicament amusing.
There was something haunting in the faint laughter, the mysterious notes overlapping it as it warped and sounded like more than one, broken in a way they couldn't comprehend. One of the dwarves began writing in a journal as they traveled, balancing the book on his steed's neck as he gripped the inkwell and feather.

Sometime after nightfall outside, a voice spoke, echoing from far away and having no discernable source. It was deep, warped in the same, bewildering way as the laughter as it mocked them in the human tongue.

"Do you know what puppets are?" It asked.
"Pulled by strings, but can you see them?"
"Can you see your own strings?"
"No. Puppets can't see their strings."
"We are all toys to a greater being."
"Why don't we play."

It must have been the early hours of the morning when all the noises stopped, the voice and spectare nowhere to be seen or heard. Instead of sighing in relief at it's absence, they felt ever more anxious, all feeling like the mouse before the cat pounced. There were only two directions they could go, and no way to hide.
They knew they were just being toyed with.