Well. That got done, finally. Just under 5000 words, and more or less fueled by amused spite. Nobody tells me that I can’t justify a story idea, thank you very much. I’m Moe goram Lane.
‘Course, it’s gonna need a little editing tomorrow or Friday.
The silence that comes forth now is as heavy as the darkness around you, and as hungrily anticipatory. You do not feel fear, for silence and darkness both take no heed or your mere human presence; they wait for something more worthy of their attention, and have the patience that comes with inevitability and power. But it becomes oppressive, all the same. So you imagine a deep sea diver must feel, in his bell beneath the waves; and you are curious to see if the pressure will grow until noses bleed and eyeballs burst. That kind of pain is unfamiliar to you, but the mere imagining of it seems to energize your limbs and thoughts.
But that intriguing sensation does not come. At first you think that some weak-willed sort among the Fellows — even the greatest of the Golden Emperor’s human servants are, after all, merely human — is making their mannikin move out of nervousness, or boredom; but no, the frenzied gyrations of the giant puppet are a sudden and unwelcome surprise to its handlers. With delight you realize that it is not a puppet at all! There is a man under that laquer and wood and burlap, and he is now breaking free of his bonds!
What a clever way to get the best performance out of a marionette. The Fellows must be commended on their creativity, if not their ability to constrain their unwilling servant. The Fellows’ collective skill at fisticuffs is nothing to praise, either: the spiked boards embedded in the puppet’s limbs serve quite well as cudgels, and as the Fellows go down like bleeding tenpins as the puppet turns to flee.
I will say reading in the 2nd person is an adjustment, though befitting your RPG narrative roots. You’ll never get a rejection letter from us! (okay, it’s *your* goshdarned website, but still. 😉 )
Writing it in second person present throughout was a royal pain in the ass, but this is a Mythos story and I was going for kind of not quite right.