Alecyn screamed as claws raked the air where she had been standing a moment before. The attack had come from behind her and had been silent. Everything here was quiet. Eevee had screeched and dashed for the cover of a fallen, broken statue. That was the only warning Alecyn had, but she reacted quickly. She felt her hair catching on the talons that had sought her flesh as she flung herself to the ground. Her shoulder and arm scraped painfully across rubble, her head bouncing off the flag-stoned ground. She looked back as she scrabbled towards the alcove Eevee had found, where a giant stone arm leaned against a wall, the lone remnant of a building.

The creature perched in an empty window of an abandoned building opposite her. It was two floors up. She had no idea how it had reached that height so quickly. It was shaped like a man, though it stood over six feet tall. Its head was dark and glistening. As it looked at her, Alecyn realized that what she had taken to be a face was, in fact, an exterior like that of human features. There was no sign of either nose or mouth, just dark eyes that glittered from armored sockets. Its arms were long and thin, ending in talons extending directly from the hands. Those talons scraped and clicked together as they regarded her. Its body covered in sliding, overlapping plates that reminded Alecyn of a beetle.

Alecyn shrank back into the alcove, though it would afford no protection against the reach of those arms. A scream rose in her chest, and she was stifled by fear, dying in her throat as a choked whimper. But the creature did not launch itself at her. Its head lifted and weaved, and then it opened. She could not see what lay beneath and was glad not to see whatever this creature concealed beneath such horror. Its chest heaved, spread its arms wide, claw fingers wide apart. The world quietened.

Eevee hissed, and Alecyn could barely make out the sound. Rubble tumbled from beneath Alecyn’s fumbling feet but made no sound. She could no longer hear her panicked breathing. With the sound went color. A mist was falling over her eyes, graying out the world. Her chest tightened as her vision narrowed into a tunnel, the creature at the end of it. It is killing me! Her lips and cheeks were starting to tingle; her fingers were growing numb on the stone she clung to. The creature was standing taller, its arms raised, as was its head. Its posture was of something drinking in a substance, filling it with euphoria. And the more it absorbed, the weaker Alecyn felt and the more silent the world became. She fumbled for the flute in her back pocket, but her stone fingers found nothing. She frantically looked about herself but saw no sign of the instrument. Please, God, no! I am... I am dying. Even the thought sounded muted in her head, like a voice from far away.

Then, the sound crashed back into her head. The creature was clawing at something in front of its face. Something had scaled the ruined walls. It leaped at the being that threatened her. It was Eevee. She spat and yowled, a sound of unadulterated hatred, clawing and biting. Suddenly, every sound was magnified, hammering at Alecyn’s head.

The creature flung the cat away from it. Eevee rebounded from a wall and then skittered through the rubble before landing on her feet before Alecyn. The creature roared, the sound like a thousand agonized screams. Alecyn dropped to her knees, clamping her hands over her ears. She could hear and feel again, but the noise wave from the creature was an assault. She expected blood on her hands when she took them from her ears. The creature dropped from the window frame, landing as deftly as Eevee, and began to advance on Alecyn, arms outstretched.

“Run!” an imperative voice in her head demanded. Eevee bunched her haunches and hurled her tiny body against the monster.

Another wave of noise, but this time, the creature fell back, its body hunching as though struck. More noise, and it staggered, dropping to one knee. Its armored head had closed, and it looked about, searching for its attacker. Alecyn stumbled from the alcove and took faltering steps, tripping over a shattered stone. A figure stood further down the street; an object clasped in its hands before its chest. It looked like a box, and one hand was turning a handle on the side. The sounds emanated from the box and were like those from the creature. They spoke of blood and pain. These sounds belonged in a stygian gloom. They were the accompaniment to torture.

Suddenly, the creature leaped. It reached the second-floor window landing with enough force to shatter the gaping stone frame, sending a shower of stone and brick dust falling. Then it was gone. Alecyn continued to take halting steps. The feeling was rushing back into her limbs with painful pins. Eevee was in front of her, backing towards her, staying between her and the figure, which now stood silent, the box still in its hands. Its face was obscured by a cowl, a cloak hanging on the ragged and dirty ground. Where was that flute? Alecyn looked around. She knew she had felt its reassuring presence in her back pocket just before she was attacked. It could not be far away. Please, God, do not let it be broken! Hysteria toyed with her. She was thinking of her old Irish flute, made by her great-grandfather back in Ireland, as a weapon capable of protecting her! It was unbelievable!

There! She saw it on the ground but would have to walk towards the figure with the box to reach it. It still had not moved, but she knew it was watching her.

If I try to reach the flute, I will be close enough that it will be able to reach me if it decides to run forward. Alecyn inched forward, head and shoulder throbbing.

“Who are you?” She called out, hoping to distract it from her sneaky movements. “What was that thing?”

The figure swayed as she spoke, opening the lid of the box.

“Can you understand me?” she called louder. Eevee had darted ahead and stood over the flute, facing the figure with bristling hair. Alecyn wondered how her cat knew to protect the flute and then almost laughed aloud at considering something as a trifle in this bizarre place.

She had almost reached the flute when the figure raised a hand.

“Take it!” demanded the voice in her head. Alecyn snatched the flute, clutching it and raising it to her lips with the grim readiness of a shooter taking lethal aim.

“P...Pl... Please!” came a wavering, uncertain voice from within the hood. “I... mean you...no harm. Please do not run away.” It staggered over the words as though learning them as it spoke, gaining confidence as it went along. “It is dangerous here, and I... want to help.” The voice was strangely accented, and Alecyn had to concentrate to make out the words. “Who are you? And where am I? And what was that beast?!” She moved the flute closer to her lips, wondering if the woman, it had been a female voice, understood the gesture as a threat.

“I am Madeleine.” She still cradled the box, lid open, before her chest. Alecyn watched it warily.

“Put the box down, Madeleine.” If her flute could be a weapon, why not. a musical box?

“Close the lid and put down the box.”

“I cannot. I mean you no harm, lady.” Madeleine stepped forward but stopped when Alecyn placed the flute between her lips. “Please, I cannot. It is my voice.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is my voice. If I close the box, I cannot answer your questions.”

Stolen story; please report.

“You speak through that box?”

Madeleine’s hood nodded.

“Show me your face, Madeleine.”

“You would not like it. I am ugly.”

“I need to look you in the eyes to trust you. Do you want me to trust you? You saved me, Madeleine. You must have had a reason. It looks like the place where a single death would not be noticed.”

“Please, yes, please.” More steps forward and a hand outstretched. “Trust me. Your death would not go unnoticed. Your soul sings. That is what brought the Mute and will bring others. They will be sensing your voice and hunting you.”

“I do not understand any of that. Show me your face, Madeleine!”

Madeleine hesitated, then closed the box and hooked it to a rope belt tied about her waist. She pushed back the hood. Alecyn gasped and immediately went to the woman’s side. It was a nurse’s reaction to injury, impossible to repress and done before conscious thought. The woman’s mouth was stitched closed, sealed with thick, black suture. Her eyes were large, too large to be human, and her hair ran from the top of her head to the nape of her neck in a stiff, gray mane. Those eyes were also gray, and the pain in them was unmistakable.

“Dear lord, who did this to you?”

Madeleine reached for her belt and opened the box. “The Stealers. The servants of Lord Atramen. He rules here for the Great Silence. He did…” the voice emanated from the box.

“Why?”

“To take my voice, to change me. That is what Stealers do. That is why they are called the Stealers. They stole my voice to make me Silent, like them.”

Alecyn reached towards Madeleine’s ruined mouth and the other woman flinched.

“I am a nurse, Madeleine. It is okay. Let me look at you.” Alecyn’s stomach lurched at the thought, but her professional side was in control. I am still a nurse, whatever rabbit hole I have fallen through.

The stitches were crude but seemed to melt into the skin around the mouth, fused with the flesh. Tilting Madeleine’s head up to the side to catch the light, she realized that pale flesh was between those stitches. Alecyn could not see any opening between the other woman’s lips as though her mouth had sealed itself behind those stitches.

“I am so sorry, Madeleine. I thought I could help. Take out those stitches or something. But I don’t...I don’t see…”

Madeleine moved gently back out of Alecyn’s reach and raised her hood again.

“Do not fret, lady. I stole my voice back when I escaped—stole it back and more.” She raised the box. Now, we must get away from here before the Mutes come hunting. Will you tell your familiar I am a friend?”

For a moment, her words were a jumble of debris washing against the shores of Alecyn’s mind. She could not connect them and realized that the woman was talking about Eevee.

“She is not a familiar, Madeleine. Just my pet cat.” But to humor her. “Eevee, Madeleine is our friend. Understand? Fr-ie-nd.”

Eevee looked at Alecyn for a long moment of green-eyed disdain before casually curling up on a rock, tail brushing her nose.

Madeleine reached out and took Alecyn’s hand. “I know somewhere we will be safe. They will not find us.” She hurried back the way Alecyn had come, darting into what must once have been an alleyway, through a ruin, across a cobbled street, down steps, and under skeletal bridges.

“What is this place, Madeleine?”

“Argent. Was… It was destroyed by Atramen when the Veil came down. It is my home.”

The city was large, bigger than Lake Wales. Alecyn had been walking through the ruins for a while before the Mute had attacked her. Everything had been devastated. She could not help but imagine the ruins around her as they must once have been. This wide street that they crossed in a run. It must have been a busy thoroughfare once, packed with people shouting, laughing, jostling, arguing, hurrying, and sauntering. They were living their lives and never imagining what those lives would come to. It made her think of Hiroshima.

“We must go, lady. The Mute will report back to the palace and send more of them to this part of the city. But I know a way out.”

“To where? I don’t even know what I am doing here, where here is, or what that creature was or…”

“Please, lady. They will come, and we must be gone or be taken. You will get no answers then. We will lose ourselves in the Embrace. Even Atramen cannot see far into the Wilds.”

Alecyn swallowed the questions that boiled within her at Madeleine’s every word. Her mind whirled with everything she did not understand. But the threat from that creature was unmistakable, and Madeleine had driven it away.

“Okay, Madeleine. Let’s go.”

The tortured mouth twitched into a brief smile and was hidden as Madeleine raised her cowl and led Alecyn amongst the ruins.

Alecyn became lost in a nightmare of aching muscles and a throat rasped from dust and dirt, free from the wrecked city they walked through. Her legs burned from crossing the uneven landscape, and her nerves were ragged. Several times, they had slumped, hardly daring to breathe, in hollows amongst the debris while Mutes passed by. Madeleine refused to answer questions as they moved, and eventually, Alecyn did not have the breath to walk and talk.

The sun was passing overhead when they finally stopped to rest in a house on the ridge of a hill. It was intact, narrow, and tall. Below it, the land fell away on a gentle slope down to a wide, gray river. Grass and trees covered the pitch. Across the river, another hill rose, also clad in grassland now run wild. But atop the hill was a palace. Its walls were smeared in painted inscriptions, crudely drawn, and strange compared to the elegant stonework. Towers rose within the walls at four points and a cluster of rooftops. Curved black horns stood atop the walls, and she saw figures moving between them.

“That was the palace of the Great Lord of Argent until the war came and the Veil. Now it is the house of Atramen, from where he rules his domain for the Great Silence.”

“Should we be this close if we are trying to escape?” Alecyn asked, gazing with dread at the towering walls.

“Mutes possess a low cunning but no real intelligence. They will think we will run as far away from them as possible. They will start searching by the Dawn Gate or the Moon Gate. They will not think that we will head closer to their master. Hopefully, he will not think to look for us here either.”

“Madeleine, do you know anything about...about...how did I get here? You think I am special, but I do not know how or why.” The journey across the city had given Alecyn plenty of time to consider which questions she needed to be answered first.

“You have power, lady. I do not know where you come from, but you are not from this place. If you were, you would be like me. No one moves within the Veil without Atramen knowing.”

“I woke up here, underground, in a stone chamber. Bits of my bedroom were around me as though it had been scooped up and…”

“You were caught in a gateway. It created a giant hole that consumed your dwelling and brought you here. You are the only human ever to come through one of the portals.”

“A giant hole. You mean like a sinkhole?”

“I do not know. I am not familiar with what that is. Here, it is known as a gateway.”

“And I have come through to...where?!” Alecyn was growing frustrated with her companion’s cryptic answers. Madeleine shifted as Alecyn raised her voice.

“This is Jonrah.”

“And how do I get home?

“You do not.”

Alecyn stared at Madeleine, not seeing her alien eyes or grotesque mouth. “There must be a way.”

“There is not. You were brought here to fulfill a prophecy and fight the Great Silence. That is why I am helping you escape, lady.”

Alecyn slammed the box shut and held it closed with both hands. “Listen to me. I know nothing about prophecy, battle, or Great Silence.

I am a nurse and an American, and I am returning to where I came from. If there is a war going on here, then it is your concern and none of mine. I never wanted adventure, even when I was a little girl. I just wanted to meet the right man, get married, have a family, and help as people.”

Madeleine struggled to free the box from Alecyn’s silencing grip. Madeleine was not looking at Alecyn anymore. Alecyn thought that if she had a destiny in this world, she could help more people here than she ever could back home. She shook her head.

“No!” a thought leaped from her lips loud enough to make Eevee jump. I want to go home!” Madeleine stumbled to the floor, the box tearing from Alecyn’s hands.

“Show me how to get back, Madeleine!” The flute felt warm in her pocket, and a sudden breeze stirred dust and ragged carpet flaps. Madeleine’s arms were raised as though to protect herself. Alecyn’s mouth closed with a click, remembering how the Mute had attacked her with sound. She reached for Madeleine and only then realized that the other woman’s eyes were no longer on her. Madeleine stared out of the window in dismay.

“They are coming!” came the voice from the box.

Alecyn looked and saw dark figures milling on top of the palace walls. More were scaling the walls downward. As she watched, she made out yet more, moving with inhuman speed down the hillside in their direction. Oh god, there are dozens of them! There was a blood-curdling cry from overhead—the triumphant shriek of a predator that has found its helpless prey. The sunlight was blocked as a huge shadow fell over them, and a gigantic, winged shape fell from the sky.