A Marionette's Tale: Book 3

Chapter Two

The days seemed to move quickly as we continued to move camps, every now and again Chanda and I would return to the ledge she had showed me to think and talk about the little things that she missed. For us all it was a memory game, I remembered nothing despite everyone's best efforts to help but I didn't mind not having my memories. Nightmarione had been discovered by the others because I absentmindedly spoke to myself like the idiot I was but they took to her kindly, to my surprise we moved a lot more than usual which confused me until I learned someone in the group had spotted mutated versions of them roaming the forests and they were hot on our trail. Once or twice I had seen them myself but it was always a glimpse of melted fur and torn endoskeletons, from what I found out we weren't normal animatronics but ones that could feel pain and could bleed just like humans could. With a yawn I sat up and stretched, the sun hadn't risen yet which confused me slightly as I was never usually the first one awake. Standing up I left the tent and looked around, I stood there for a few moments before the sound of leaves and twigs crunching beneath some sort of weight made me tense up. I was about to move when a hand covered my mouth and held me still, I could tell it was Springtrap just from the faint rotting smell he gave off.

"Stay quiet, they are close and movement from what I've learnt only triggers a hunt," he growled into my ear, I nodded and he pulled his hand away from my mouth as we stood still. The sounds of soft growling and heavy breathing filled the almost silent air, it wasn't until moments later that I noticed a pair of yellow eyes watching us. I nudged Springtrap slightly and did a slight gesture to the eyes and he turned his head slowly to look, after a few moments the creature stalked from the bushes and I got a full view of it. It looked like James's wolf form only melted and torn, it's snarling grew only slightly louder as it crept closer possibly to scare us.

"What do we do," I hissed under my breath, Springtrap looked as startled as I was.

"Do nothing for the moment, the others are sound asleep so as long as nothing makes a loud noise we should be fine," he growled back, the twisted wolf eventually stopped mere meters away as it stared at us recording everything it saw in its memory. I felt Nightmarione growing anxious and in turn it made me anxious, Springtrap glanced sideways at me before focusing back on the twisted creature. After a while it grew bored and left without even the blink of an eye, once we made sure it was long gone did we dare let out sighs or relief.

"Remind me to never sleep on the ground again," I chuckled softly, he chuckled as we began to wake the others.

"What's going on?" Shadow Freddy grumbled as he sat up with a stretch, I looked around and gestured for him to follow me which he did. Once we had all gathered in the middle of camp we watched Springtrap put out the fire, we couldn't risk those twisted creatures following the smell of smoke straight back to us.

"One of those twisted creatures was here, we have to move and we have to move now, they have our location planted in their minds and no doubt they are going to feed this information to the two guys we really don't need coming here," Springtrap explained, everyone began murmuring amongst themselves when a broken and glitchy howl sounded in the distance causing everyone to grow alert. Without another word we began to pack up what we needed and left the rest behind to save time, I felt my soul run cold in my chest at the thought of my friends getting hurt.

"Hey Marionette come with me, I know a place we can lead the twisted things and their masters, from what I know they want me and since you are similar to me they might want you too," Chanda suggested softly, I nodded and hoped she was right. After informing the others of our plan they reluctantly agreed to it as we split off, as expected the sound of growling followed us instead of the others.

"You better be right Chanda," I whispered softly, she gave me a hopeful smile as we began to move faster. The faster we went the faster those following us went, I was beginning to grow doubtful until we came to a rather disgusting smelling cave.

"The twisted ones follow sounds, smells and sights, if they can't smell us, hear us or find us how can they follow us," Chanda chuckled, I gave her a confused look.

"A cave makes things echo doesn't it?" I questioned, she nodded with a prideful smile.

"That's why I chose the cave, our sounds will bounce about and confused the twisted ones, now hurry up before they get us," she hissed softly, we hurried into the cave and began to make our way down one of the caverns. The further we went the worse it stunk of rusted metal and rotted bodies of long dead miners, eventually we came to a nice hiding place where we hid behind some boulders to see if we were followed. Snarling soon filled the tunnel and I noticed a soft glowing which grew brighter as one of the twisted ones made its way down the dark and disgustingly stinky tunnel, I felt myself holding my breath in hopes it didn't find us. Despite the darkness the eyes of the twisted creature lit the cavern pretty decently, after a few minutes of trying to find our scent it turned and left in a rather confusing hurry. When we both caught on we realised how idiotic this idea turned out to be, we were cornered and the only way out was past the ones hunting us down. I looked at Chanda who had realised her mistake of choosing this tunnel of all tunnels, despite its amount of hiding places it was a dead end and a good place to corner scared prey.