"We can't just stay here!" Rayph said.

"Please, not now." Jules groaned.

"What do you mean, not now?"

"Your pastime is getting your nose into other people's business," she explained. "When you die, your tombstone's gonna say, 'Died from sticking his nose into other people's business one too many times'."

Rayph frowned. "It's not sticking, it's detective-ing."

"That's not a word," Jules replied, in a huff.

"Not with that attitude, it isn't!" Rayph said.

She glared at the runt. "I'm going to remember this, and one day, you will, too." Jules shook her head and groaned. "Can't we just stay in this room and play Puzzle & Dinosaurs on our consoles until we die?" she suggested.

"Why not Nabla?" Rayph said. "That's a much better game."

Jules felt side-scrolling shooters like Nabla—Rayph's old favorite— were just too damn stressful.

"I'd rather have Mom take me to the ThreeRiver store," Jules quipped. "And I hate the ThreeRiver store."

"You don't need to remind me," Rayph said.

The Munine company's menagerie of mascots—Goodbye Shrew, Anxious Toad, TAKOCHAN., Peter Puffin, Your Harmony, Bearaclaw, and so many others—were beloved the world over as ambassadors of friendship, magic, goodwill, and the uniquely Munine aesthetic of kawaii— the joy of cuteness—and my daughter hated it to the core. It was so patronizing and belittling to her.

Rayph frowned again, this time out of genuine concern. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You're even grumpier than usual. Back when we were at the house and playing Orimon Carnivale, you were the one who couldn't focus on the game. And it's only gotten worse since then."

Jules rolled her eyes, sighing so intensely, she almost thought her back would give out in the process. She shook her head in dismay. "Oh, I don't know, maybe it's because of the plague and the Norms and the zombies and Dad and—…"

Jules shook her arms fretfully. She swallowed hard, fighting back tears, but then just decided to turn around.

She was not going to let the twerp see her cry.

"Before the zombies and Verune, I wanted to believe there was a rational explanation for all this, but now…" she shook her head, "now, I'm no longer sure."

"Well, that's why we should go and look around!" Rayph countered. He got up from the rug and pushed up his sleeves. "There might be something!"

Jules turned to face him. "Why do you have to get your hopes up?" she said. "Don't you know how much it hurts when those hopes fall and come apart?" She looked around the room. "I mean, look at this room! It's such a nice room. Why leave it? Why not just stay here and live out our last days in peace?"

And the room was nice—really, really nice.

Apparently, it had belonged to the late secretary of the equally late Lassedite: Lassedite Bishop, so there were some cracks on the ceiling around the central light fixture where the secretary had hung himself, but other than that—and the constant feelings of dread and doom hanging over you like the Angel's own judgment—everything was just excellent. It was very clean, and sumptuously furnished. Everything was a Second Empire original, and I had talked far too much at length about such things for Jules to ever forget to notice them on her own.

The dark, varnished wood of the room's shelves, cabinets, bookcases, and floor greatly enhanced the overall heavy, dark-red color palette. Even the rugs were rich and lush: green vines and pale yellow flowers patterned over a dark magenta background, patterned with. The fibers' touch was so soft and comforting that Jules had to fight the urge to leave her cross-legged position and lay down.

It was hard for her not to wonder what other historical snippets I might have had to say about the place, but that thought made Jules sad, and she was tired of being sad.

"Well… I'd rather do something," Rayph said.

"You'll get yourself killed at this rate," Jules said, "and me with you." She shook her head again. "What could you possibly hope to do?"

"Maybe we can get one of the wyrms to help us," he suggested.

Jules scoffed. "Keep dreaming."

Her brother nodded. "I will."

And then he walked toward the door.

"Wait," Jules hissed. "Rayph! Rayph!?"

She got up and went after him, but he darted out the door before she could catch him.

Jules' stomach dropped like it had just leapt to its death. "Oh, fuck me," she muttered.

Too afraid of the attention she might draw from yelling, Jules dashed over to the desk by one of the room's casement windows and picked one of the consoles next to her mother's purse before following her brother out the door. She hoped her mother would at least try to contact them via console before proceeding to panic.

Following the sound of her brother's bad idea, Jules turned to the left, away from the Great Nave. Not seeing him, she went around the corner. The sconces on the walls gleamed like candlelight, casting shadows onto the arched ceiling.

Damn his little legs.

He couldn't have gotten far.

But then, just like that, she found him, halfway down the hallway.

"Rayph!" she hissed. "Rayph!"

He turned to her. "I'm not going back," he said, "not until—"

"—Just hold on," she said. "I'm coming. I'm coming!" She walked up alongside him.

And Rayph smiled.

Seeing that, Jules muttered under her breath: "Note to self: if time permits, exact revenge."

"What?" Rayph asked.

"Nothing," Jules replied.

As they walked down the hall, Jules was mollified, somewhat, by the revelation that Rayph absolutely needed her help, like really, totally, majorly needed it.

Stopping in her tracks, she crossed her arms and tapped him on the shoulder. Rayph yelped softly as he turned around to face her.

"Rayph," she said, as patiently as her impatience would allow, "there's no point in snooping if you're going to do it so noisily that people can hear you coming from a mile away."

"But… my feet make noises when they touch the floor."

Jules rolled her eyes. "That's why you should go more slowly, and walk on the carpet whenever you can."

Rayph blinked.

"That's a good idea," he whispered.

Rayph followed his sister in movement and habit, quieting his footsteps alongside hers and slowing his advance. The slower pace made it easier for both of them to listen to and sort through the loose morass of sounds reverberating through the Melted Palace's halls. The distant voices of transforming wyrms in Great Nave warbled distortedly, like a funeral band trudging beneath the sea.

Fortunately, the noises the wyrms made as they slithered through the halls were easy enough to detect.

Jules held out her arm to stop Rayph as a wyrm slithered by somewhere up ahead. She held her breath until the sound faded into the background.

"That was close," Rayph muttered.

You can say that again, Jules thought.

"So," she asked, in a hushed voice, "did you just want to go out for a walk, or do you actually have a plan—someone or something to look for? A place to go?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"We…" For a moment, Rayph lowered his head, looking more serious than Jules could ever recall. "We need to get out of here," he said, barely above a whisper. He looked up at her. "It's not safe. I can feel it."

Jules nodded. "No shit. But how does what we're doing here help with that?"

Rayph stared down the grand hallway. "I keep thinking about what Dad told us about this place. All those special entrances and secret tunnels. There has to be something."

Jules sighed. "Rayph, this isn't some fantasy story. The secret tunnels haven't been secret for centuries! By now, they're probably filled with dead people…" She gulped as her mind ran wild. "…or worse."

"What's worse than dead people?" he asked.

"I'm not gonna answer that!" Jules hissed.

Out of nowhere, a faint scream cut through the Nave wyrms' dim, caliginous polyphony. Sharp, but faint.

A human scream.

"What was that?" Tingles ran down Jules' spine.

"I think it's this way!" Rayph said, pointing a finger.

Up ahead, the hall branched in a T-shaped junction, continuing straight ahead, but also moving off to the right. Then Rayph made things worse by going that way. Trying to stop him by grabbing him by the back of his shirt, Jules lunged forward, but her fingers just barely missed as he darted around the corner at the right, in the direction the sound had come from.

Neither of these were good things.

Jules wished she could scream in safety, but she couldn't, and so she settled for following her brother and getting him away from whatever danger had caused the scream, but almost as quickly as Jules set off, she skidded to a stop, her shoes' soles softly screeching on the hallway's marble floor.

She'd passed through… something, and the something had whisked across her skin like a curtain of spiderwebs, rustling her clothes, her hair, and her resolve with their delicate, almost imperceptible touch.

Stopping, she looked this way and that, certain that something was about to leap out and eat her.

But nothing did.

A couple of seconds later, her brain started working, and she realized what had happened: she'd stepped through a wall… of sound.

One moment, the only noises she could hear were the distant ones coming from the wyrms in the Nave, but the instant she passed through the invisible sound wall, the sonic landscape changed. The old sounds vanished, and new ones took their place. It was like one side was a glacier, and the other, a volcano. Even the air itself felt different, the direction of its flow changing from on one side of the sound wall to the other.

It was as if someone had put up a wall to block the flow of sound.

Rayph stood at her side, equally gobsmacked—and not just by the sound barrier.

Up ahead, the T branch had let out onto the second floor of an atrium. The wall was directly behind her and her brother, halfway between the atrium and the T branch. But as bad as the Nave had been, this place was far, far worse. There were screams bouncing off the ceiling, and they made Jules' blood run cold.

The rectangular atrium was small by the Melted Palace's standards, though to anyone else, it was as big as two good-sized living rooms. The atrium had two stories, with a walk-around galleria on the upper floor giving an impressive view of the black and white checkered pattern of the marble on the lower floor. A statue of the Holy Angel stood in the middle of the room, bearing the Sword aloft. One of the Melted Palace's side entrances was at the far end of the chamber: a set of double doors opened wide. But most of all, what Jules saw were the feasting changelings down below, and the people they were having for lunch.

"No! Stop!" The victim yelled, as powerless to escape as the several people floating mid-air, bound in place.

Jules recognized the voice as the one they'd heard out in the hall. "Sto—"

—Their skull splattered with a sickening crunch. Jules had to clench her jaws shut to keep herself from screaming.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jules saw Rayph opening his mouth. She nipped it in the bud, putting her hand on his face mask's translucent fabric.

"Quiet," she said, in a trembling breath. She could barely hear her own words.

There had to be half a dozen changelings down in the atrium. Several of the Last Church's human goons stood by the entrance, dragging people inside.

Jules gasped.

Not zombies. People. Living, breathing people. Yeah, a few looked really sick, but, others…

No! What the fuck did it matter? The changelings were equal-opportunity eaters!

Even now, they were changing before Jules' eyes.

One of the more developed changelings was coiled near the Angel statue, human above the waist, big and snakey below. He extended his body, overlooking the other changelings, scrutinizing them. He brought his forepart over to the changeling who had bitten through the screaming man's head.

"Slow down!"

"Why?" the eater asked.

"You're being sloppy, that's why." He spared a reverent glance toward the statue. "Sloppy miracles shame the Angels' grace. You need more practice. You should be able to muffle your food's sounds. I could hear that scream, and I shouldn't have, because if I can hear it," he pointed a claw down a corridor, "then the unworthy can hear it, and know what judgment awaits them."

Oh shit, Jules thought.

He was training them.

The newbie flicked his hand at the half-wyrm. His neck cracked and popped as it lengthened, freshly eaten biomass crawling under his skin.

"Yeah yeah," he said, "judgment smudgement."

The elder wyrm sneered in disapproval. "This is no laughing matter. We're the last bastion of moral order in the world. It's our duty to make sure none of the damned ever make it to paradise."

"Well, you're marking the big sound barrier, right, to keep from scaring the newbies? Doesn't that cover it?"

"It's the principle of the thing!" the half-wyrm replied. "Not only that, I can't keep the barrier up forever; I'm starving. I want to go eat, and I can't do that if you can't pick up the slack!" He licked his lips, glancing over the others with a look of derision on his face. "If you all hurried up and did your exercises properly, I'd be able to get my share and keep going."

The flippant changeling snorted at his superior. "Hey, bub, you're not the only one who's hungry here. I've been waiting forever. I'd have one of the zombies, but they're all reserved for the newbies. We're stuck eating them before they get ripe. They don't even taste that great!"

The half-wyrm unfurled his coiled body. "They're ripe enough. If they weren't sinners, they wouldn't have gotten sick. That much is obvious."

"Honestly, I don't give a shit," the changeling replied. "I came here for a meal, and I'm still waiting to get mine." He crossed his arms. "I don't get why we have to do this off to the side."

"Some divine beasts aren't comfortable with eating them before Hell claims them. We have to introduce it slowly."

"Yeah, well, that's stupid," the changeling said.

Jules' heart dropped into her stomach.

"Jules…" Rayph muttered.

"It…" Jules shuddered. "It looks like you were right about wanting to leave," she whispered. She clenched her fists. "On the count of three," she said, "we're walking out of here."

Rayph nodded.

Jules mouthed the countdown in silence and then slowly—slowly—crept away, with Rayph on her tail, only to stop in her tracks.

Yet again, she took all of her strength not to yelp in surprise, and she hated that, though not as much as the living shit-stain that had just crossed their path: Mr. John Henrichy.

She mouthed in silence. "What the fuck…"

It looked like he'd been eavesdropping on the wyrms and cultists below, crouching down low to avoid detection. His face was pale, and he coughed softly.

Jules pinched her mask's nosepiece, tightening its hold.

John flicked his hand. "Get out of here," he said, mouthing the words.

Jules pointed at him, and then at the entryway leading back to the T-shaped intersection. "You first," she mouthed.

Rayph just stared.

John stuck out his hands and shook them, as if trying to strangle someone.

Huffing in aggravation, Jules looked over her shoulder back at Rayph, and motioned him to follow her. She was not about to let this smarmy, cryptofascist piece of shit tell her and her brother what to do.

Going back through the sound wall was only slightly less disconcerting than the first time through. Knowing it was coming didn't make it feel any less strange.

Mr. Henrichy came out a moment later, following behind them, walking in a squat, hissing, "What the fuck are you doing?" He coughed.

Jules crossed her arms. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

"I'm a journalist, kid, I don't need to justify where I'm going or where I've been."

Jules scoffed at that.

The TV persona's face tensed in anger. "In case you haven't noticed," he said, pointing a trembling finger at the sound atrium behind them, "they're eating people in there!"

"Uh… yeah, we noticed," Jules said. She smirked. "What I'm more interested in knowing, though, is why you seem to be so surprised about it," she added, not afraid to look smug. Also, it was easier for her to look smug than admit her abject terror. And it definitely distracted from how she was fighting to keep her knees from shaking.

John pressed his thumb against his chest, compressing the fabric of his luxury blazer. "I signed up for this shit because it was supposed to keep me alive, and in Verune's good graces!"

"W-Well, don't get them angry, then," Rayph said.

"Can it, kid!" John snapped. "You don't get it."

Jules crossed her arms. It was a great way to seem superior to John while also holding herself to keep herself from crying. "T-Try us," she said.

Mr. Henrichy's eyebrows flattened like two dead caterpillars. "You wanna know what I was doing? Fine. There were still some priests locked up in their rooms when we arrived, and I'd heard rumors that some of them had gone missing. So, one thing led to another, and, what do ya know, I discovered that what's going on out front is a literal front."

"What do you mean?" Jules asked.

"Verune…" he shook his head, "he has some sort of effect on the Norms."

"Wyrms," Rayph said, pointedly. "Or sneople."

"It doesn't fucking matter, you little shits!" John clenched his fists and shook his arms. "What does matter is that while the wyrms in the Nave are eating zombies, everywhere else, they're eating anyone they don't like."

She put her arms at her hips, making her elbows as pointy as she could manage. "Dude, they're a cult, dude," she said, "what did you expect? They've got their savior, they worship him, and people suffer and die as a result."

In that moment, Jules made it her personal mission to at least live long enough to see John Henrichy get gobbled up by a wyrm. Bonus points if it was Margaret or Verune who did the deed.

"Don't you see?" John continued. "If they're just eating whoever, it means what Verune was saying was a load of shit!"

Jules blinked in mock astonishment. "You don't say?" she said, oozing sardonicism by the metric ton. "Why, it's almost like the people in power—or money, not that there's a difference—are knowingly pulling stuff out of their ass just to keep the rest of us in line."

John's eyes bugged out of his skull.

"Why you—"

"—What are you gonna do about it?" Jules asked. "About the wyrms, I mean," she added, with a smile.

"They'll eat us if we try to leave," he replied.

Rayph warbled nervously. "Really?"

"Believe whatever you want," John replied. "I saw it with my own two eyes. These monsters can immobilize you with their powers. They can lift you off the ground!"

Jules gulped. "I know," she said, quietly.

"You do?" John snapped. "Then why the fuck are you still here?"

Maybe it was just because the fungus was starting to melt through Mr. Henrichy's upper respiratory tract, but his hoarse, whispering voice was really starting to grate on her.

"You don't need to tell us twice," she replied, storming off. "C'mon Rayph," she whispered.

He followed.

As soon as they were around the corner and out of sight, Jules let go of the breath she'd been secretly holding.

"Shit…" she muttered.

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