Ellia rode through the evergreen forests of the Rigel estate in a carriage sent for Timbrelle. She, the driver and an armed guard of two knights bounced along the access road from Camp Winterwold to the Rigel Estate. The bulk of the men sent to retrieve Timbrelle had stayed behind at the training camp. Of the two that remained to escort the driver and herself, neither were able to sign. At least, not much more than to apologize for their poor manners. Despite their attempts at conversation, nothing felt quite so natural as the chats she’d shared with the Unmade Rigel earlier. Words didn’t come across clearly, meanings were jumbled and their polite smiles turned to polite discomfort. She was accustomed to missing a word here and there, but this level of miscommunication was something she thought she’d outgrown.

Talking to Timbrelle felt… nice. Even when the woman turned her head at the end of her sentences or Ellia happened to look away, she understood the idea of what she missed. It happened every time they spoke together but only became truly remarkable when Ellia had caught Timbrelle whining during the hike. She hadn’t been watching Timbrelle’s mouth and still absorbed the content of her words. It should only be possible if her voice was somehow magically projected from her body. Though unlikely, the Miasma had blessed people in stranger ways before. Whether it was a divine gift or not, Ellia would have to make sure Timbrelle knew.

She made a mental note to write the woman a letter. Her soft smile at the thought lingered as they pressed on down the road.

Ellia’s deafness was “clean”. There was no muffled sound, no tinnitus, and no volume at which those facts changed. The only thing that allowed her to hear again was magic. Some aristocrats had the money for hearing aids but the new technology was prohibitively expensive. For the most part, her experiences hearing since the attack were during organized events where music and announcements were amplified via magic. As a result of the large deaf population in Yost Proper, events of that nature were held often and patronized abundantly.

Ellia frowned at her leg. The tool with the pink stone they’d used to fuse her bones back together didn’t negate the need for a doctor. Her healing process under the care of house Rigel would be relatively swift but it still entailed two weeks of rest and no attending that weekend’s public musical.

The knight she signed with had explained that though her bones were knitted back together, the bond was fragile.

Perhaps it wasn’t all bad. She straightened in her chair a bit remembering how brave she’d been earlier. When the moment came, Ellia threw herself in harm’s way to save a new friend—an Unmade friend.

She patted the cold palms of her hands on suddenly flushed cheeks. Was this what healing felt like? Butterflies roiled within her stomach at the thought. When she’d first arrived at the estate in a refugee employment program, Ellia hadn’t been able to look the head maid in the eye, much less the butler or a Rigel. It was ok to call this progress, right?

Outside, the carriage passed over a particularly heinous pothole and threw everyone into the air. The knights laughed with each other and looked to her expectantly. She’d missed their question and instead of repeating they said simply, “never mind”.

Adna leaned against the window. She should send that letter to Timbrelle soon. That girl needed to eat—for that reason alone it was a good thing that she left the estate. It wasn’t until Ellia brought the girl a cheese sandwich made by her own two hands that she finally ate at the estate. She didn’t know where the two women were being taken but it wasn’t back to the Rigel mansion. Wherever her friend was headed, Ellia hoped she’d be safer there. No monsters, no poison…

She laid a hand over her heart, wishing to halt the incessant thumping. Having a friend felt… weird… a good weird. If she didn’t count the two other maids on her team, whose relationships were conflicted at best and downright catty when worst came to worst, Timbrelle was her first friend.

Ellia was thrown into the air once again. This time she left her seat and tumbled in a mess of limbs with the knights, the carriage eventually coming to a stop a couple rotations away. The windows burst inward, coating them in crystalline sprinkles.

The knights rushed to gain their bearings, quickly exiting through the upside-down door. She groaned as she sat up, the hum of it vibrating her chest. They were already gone, so Ellia took a moment to breathe before ungracefully exiting the now defunct carriage.

The two knights and driver stood in a line before the horses, bloody and lifeless on the ground. She hobbled over and caught snippets of their conversation.

“—all at once. Poof. Dead.” The driver said as he shook his head faintly in shock. “—warning or nothing. We’re lucky to be alive. We rolled right over the top of—“

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“Doesn’t feel lucky.” The bigger knight spoke to himself.

“Using the flare is a good— should wait for backup.”

“—is it so damn quiet here?” The driver looked about, unsettled.

Ellia gave up trying to butt in with questions. Instead, she wandered around the horses with a limp that was markedly worse than before the accident. She rolled out her shoulders, reminding herself to ask the Rigel physician to check her chest. Perhaps she had pulled something or strained it in the carriage accident. Whatever the reason, her chest felt increasingly tight.

Ellia cocked her head to the side, distracted from her discomfort. The four horses had collapsed in the middle of the road, causing the carriage to roll directly over them and eventually land on its roof. The horses were stuck in a web of leather straps that once allowed them to pull the carriage. Despite the sickening sight, there was very little gore.

Bones had been broken in their legs; Ellia glanced over the sudden curves and wrinkles in their formerly straight limbs. Those looked like the type of injury they easily could have sustained in the crash… but noticeably absent were the four mortal wounds they sustained. Heart failure wasn’t uncommon with old or unhealthy horses but four deaths simultaneously could never be attributed to happenstance.

Ellia was about to close her meager investigation when she noticed a characteristic each horse shared. Halfway down their necks, a lump protruded from under the skin.

She couldn’t stifle a gasp. “Their necks have been snapped—all of them. Here and here are the most obvious examples. You can see it on every horse in the exact same spot.” She reported.

Once upon a time, Ellia had been a nomad with a horse of her own. It had died with the rest of her family when she fled the Unmade but the familiarity remained. While her expertise may have been lacking, she knew enough to be able to tell what killed their horses.

“We need to get out of here right this second. I think this is what follows Timbrelle—it’s following us.” Ellia turned around to the men only to find herself alone on the dirt road.

“He-hello?” She stuttered in surprise.

The light from the setting sun was growing weaker with every passing minute, a blanket of shadows filling the space between each tree until simple blackness stared out from the forest. A slow shiver crawled down her spine.

Something was wrong here. She could feel it. Had the men run away without her? …in those couple minutes she’d been distracted?

“Hey! Anyone there? You left me, you bastards!” She yelled.

Limping in a circle to scan the area, Ellia came to a stop. There, in the brush, the sole of a weathered boot poked out onto the road.

The blood, rapidly chilling in her veins turned to ice as a clear, though distant clicking broke into her mind. A sound she’d heard only that morning.

Though her brain commanded her to run, Ellia found the body in the undergrowth inexplicably pulling her in. It was as if a macabre fascination took hold, compelling her toward it to see who it could be. Her footsteps were slow and precise Step. Stop… Step. Stop…

Tears poured from Ellia’s eyes as she recognized the carriage driver’s clothes. A tremble began in her abdomen and travelled to every corner of her body. Whether it was the effect of her mounting fear or the result of her trying to wrest control of her body, she couldn’t tell. Probably both. Maybe neither; It was becoming difficult to distinguish just what was compulsion and what was truly her.

His cleanly broken arm took only a moment of her attention as the state of his face became clear. Across his cheeks and neck, smeared black handprints had burned the flesh beneath to ash.

To her horror, when she arrived at the body her foot stepped directly on his thigh. His eyes darted open, though his body remained motionless. Ellia took another unwilling step across his chest. She pinned her eyes closed when his ribs bowed under her weight. Her next step glanced off his cheek and led her further into the bushes. With him now behind, she realized that she hadn’t been drawn to the corpse but something that waited in the darkness beyond. As she searched for some sign of it, each step brought her closer to the sound of insects clicking, increasing its volume. When she finally saw it, the mottled grey hand of a corpse held a knight aloft by his neck. It dropped his body beside the smaller knight, both wearing a necklace of inky black soot. The thing turned its masked face to her with precision not based on sight, as its red and white mask had no opening to see through. From the edges of its mask, red triangles pointed toward the center. The negative space at the middle was white and looked like a sunburst with rays extending between the crimson triangles. The mask looked like the rest of the creature—dirtied by time and unholy black ash. It wore a robe of tattered cloth Ellia recognized to be a burial shroud.

It observed her approaching with its inhuman stillness.

When she arrived at the creature, she pivoted. With a sob, she turned her back to it, letting it slide across her periphery until the clicking came from directly behind her.

Ellia felt her chest burn for air, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.

At once, Ellia felt three points of searing pain directly over her spine. Before she could think to react, she felt it lay both hands on her, encircling the three points and branding its blackened handprints into her back.

The blinding pain gathered in her lungs and burst a single inexplicable word from her chest.

“Yes.”