It's not been long since they got crossed over from leaving the fast food place. They entered a burger king drive through and left from a busted McDonald's drive through. She has stood watching the sky of the weather while those two are scrap paper seeking in the shops. Those two men were picking about the business shops, its only really been one hour this far. There isn't much luck with finding any devices that connect to any Internet. There isn't any newspapers of significant. Still those two try, they took notice of other abnormalities. Things she vaguely said about, like the car engine not working due to a technology difference. One of them had noticed his phone died the instant it seen light here. The undertaker of the two tries sigil prompts but it has a crashed error message a few times before it turned solid and dropped as crystal onto the floor. Both lowered in the marvel of how something invisible became real.
"How are we going to get back?" The sensible or just very hungry as a human speaks up. Shaken out of the staring at the crystal pane.
"Depends... how far away is your house?" They frown unsure had to do with whatever meant getting back to the living realm they knew and one of them gives a pointer for which way they knew to go.
"We would have just followed the south Atlantic avenue. It be about 2 hour drive. We need to reach passed the Royal Floridian resort Condo. Then continue further past that but if you pass Neptune's approach; you will have passed our safe house. 349. Across from the church." She nods about that being enough instructions.
"If you sit down, and close your eyes. I will get us there." The two men look at each other with questioning it, "I am both a Seer and a Fallown. It just easier for me to walk us there without wasting time." They doubt all the more, "You are not going to last in the light here."
She pointed to their skin that has made contact to the air. It didn't matter if they were human or undertaker; both were bubbling from the energy exposure. Surfaces blistered and seems brushed by unseen bleaching or acid chemicals. The energy of magic was toxic for them, presenting as an allergic reaction. It was for the best but they argued the whole thing. Expecting her to speak every part of the plan to magic them there. Wondering how being Fallown meant anything.
But with her silence and the pain of their bodies not adapting to this realm. Tiredness set in. Soon like flies these two men lay the floor flopped. That exactly how she found the corpse of the other car here.
Speaking of, it was in the back of the first store she entered alone. Her mask sent further in while her human side was blocked the two arguing men following her. That other car here that she been eyeing this whole while here. She knew it was the owner from the corpse's pockets; key's, wallet, dead phone and gun in holster on belt. She has shadow packed with respect this found dead man. She has began mentally making some excuse of his body being found once she has some appreciate place.
In the meantime of things that mattered now, she has these two still alive men placed in their car which safe in her storage. They can sleep off the toxic energy safely in the locked car. All their possessions packed in the boot as before. Boot packed up of the papers, evidence and boxes. For their sake, she stopped time those two in the car - so the duration of being in her pocket isn't expending on them while she can help them recover with actively converting that energy out of them. She took out the foil wrap bag of contaminated eight meals. She could ate them without problems. That can't be said about them. I will just reorder the whole thing before I move off. Not hard to go back into the burger king for me. Right? I do it a lot.
From her mask side to her human side, her shadow wisps and then folds to bring a motorbike which has a working mage magic engine. She had it replacing the long missed quad bike from beach side. This motor was taken from this car lot plaza. She thought about that quad bike she had stole off beach before. She lost it to that demon school or mage tower; likely both.
I would seem to had no issue taking the quad bike of dead magic energy, it had a key left in. My mask found a motorbike along the back car park row with its key in the engine. Previous owner's helmet provided too, hung from the handle and full of sand caught by the drafted winds and months of being left weathered. It looks like all these cars were abandoned abruptly and flat of all energy. As if the storm is the cause of the energy draining. Paint on all these cars has had lack of care. Every car has the key accessible for whatever reasons. But she can find other options yet likes the bike and knows how to magic charge this tech.
Before she does leave, the car that belonged to the back of store corpse. She broke the back window and stole any goodies from inside, looking plausible for this realm. She knew to take the licence plates. Muddled the engine to hide it's abnormalities of this world. It's a junk car now, a car used to repair the others in desperate condition. She could alter it as it was now to adapt to local tech, but she leaves it as she has enough machines in her storage.
But she can use these parts to repair her new motorbike or the blue ford pick up that she inherited from her grandpa. In an alterative life, she stayed in America with her grandpa then moving to England with Mom. She got his house and lived a normal enough life. She became the red mask in the society known as the red hands of that timeline. She served military and medical emergency. Like most those lives was one of three outcomes; she died a strange unexplained death, she died to the hands of a demon that chases her for her soul or she crossed over without pain of death. Its the typical streamline her many differing lives courses. My many short lives keep coming back to make a new mark again. This'dead' world has several of my past lives about it. I feel it in my soul.
"Ugh." She drifted out those thoughts and moved froward to the counter.
"Can I order three bacon cheese burger meals, two royal chicken meals, two chicken nugget share box, three sides of mozzarella sticks and a large coke to go?" She asked the Burger King worker. They looked from the door she entered and the disbelief that she's human. But still he filled the order as asked.
"The meals all have drinks." slowing the taping of the screen.
"All waters or bottled soda. Whichever you have to much of." She replies. The male casher is back to fast tapping this into the till system. She posed her phone over the card reader when he looked up about paying. He startled in shock of seeing a phone looking like flat mirror and being able to pay contactless, "Don't bother asking. It's a tester device. Who knows, maybe flip phones will be outdated?" She then nervously realized what she did and hide the phone. He sees the payment went through with an active bank account. He turned and shouted the order through to the back and all hands on deck for a second biggest order of the day. Little did they know it was just the reorder of the last one. Got to give this team credit of just getting on and no complaints. I hear them actively communicating each stages of the burger stack ups and speed of passing down the line.
"Order 99" the casher passing a tray over to someone collecting their order. She had to move aside out of the way. Plenty of confused seeking where any nearby adults are at. Although there isn't any reasoning for them to concern about the girl. As the order pass through, she stands back.
"Here is your seven drinks and your big cup coke." in one brown bag and slide of lid covered filled cup, "The seven meals but we bagged them separately in there." a second bag, "You need help getting this to your car?"
"Nah, I got it. Thanks mate." She puts the drinks one to shadow storage and the other into better sealed foil bag before zipping it tightly and carry it out. She waved causally out from there, out the busted door that she entered from. Spooking the counter guy to take this case to the security team. Put as another customer thinking this place was a Mc D's again. Their cursed door is getting a lot of strange people in. Making the location haunted.
She tucked away all the goodies well before the radiation hits it, she had the time to then raided the busted plaza strip now she can do so alone. Once she was satisfied of scraps, onto that motorbike. She was zooming it with flying it over the many left strained cars down the beach stripe. Evading the magic distortion that was flicking with paused time too, making her taking this exact precaution of evading mainland. She pushed the motorbike to its limit when she used the Neptune pass to turn herself back on land. Florida is uniquely one of the only driving beaches in the world, since the metal sand prevents cars sinking unlike normal sand. Although, it doesnt save a car from tide come in or storm floods. She glad to be in stopped of a moment because the safe crossing they wanted her to use was onto some rich guys driveway. It was about to be closed by the passing storm magic toxicity. She unfroze time just barely as she crossed over. The Bike tossed to her storage.
"Hey!" Right as she steps over. She was on the road with a car swerving evading her, "Ugh, not another one. Out of the road!" the guy shouting was holding his water can over a plant and was on the front yard of this manor sea side house. She paced it up faster and took a sharp snap of the house having five car garages, one those being wide open. She grappled her cloak Clothus skin and runs fast to the shade, "Hey!" She tossed it with releasing the lawyers car without a dent. She feel to her knees with her Clothus cloak folding back to shadow and back over her. She dimly noted there was a lot of shouting and emergence of plenty from the house. She doesn't feel as though she made it to the floor when she lost conciseness.
"This is another one those times where it feels like you're returning some embarrassing favour back." A cold hand sweeping her head. Right then this hand felt her chest, feeling her heart and with pressure. She remembered to be breathing, startling awake with gasping hard, "Guten tug, kleines Geheimnis."
She was pulled up right to sit correctly from the sofa. She had clock on about a lot things about this manor that was strange. The white or creams... no colours. Even everyone wearing stuff was dull muted. Pastel at best. She couldn't help how someone switched the tv off at her side, as it was for a moment all in German. Then there was one her creatures at her legs, it lifted head and opened seven sets of eyes.
She taking a while to find anything to say, she kept going to almost speak some words but closed again. This version of Curisoity isn't Mattu or Omens pretending to be. It's the Clothus soul of Raven - although technically speaking this is a past version of Mattu and Omens as one soul. When god titles merged as their followers with no middle man hosting god title.
"Leana!" She jolted shocked of hearing her mother as that woman walked around the sofa, "Why are you not at school?" She stared at how her mom's undertaker uniform reflected be she took over Grandfather's part of the red hand.
"Stop!" The lawyer hissed from the bed rooms, held by his partner, "Just wait a moment. She isn't normal. She isn't your version of your daughter. We have been through this." Eliza had now peered about Raven's colthing, befitting his god but not god status. She slowly traced his soul threads; she saved his life a few times already. She knows her knot work well. She ended at how his masked like a damned, but this clay is Clothus. She looked him in the eyes just to be sure. His reactions, how his mask expressed slower doubtful brow raise then a damned clay mask. She knew. So she looked to the lizard on her paralized legs. She has no feeling of those legs. There a bandage through her gut. She feels medicated, drugged into some calm.
"You're command to move Nocturm to the waking world has finished. We have taken the death order, life order and the cooperative members of the crest of crowns. We have a wealthy stance over several demon lands and the leading handle of the dark market on this side of the ocean." It tells her as she admires her many set of eyes monster. She had even then reached over taking hold of it and materialized it to all for seeing. It became sleek scales and patterned with white leopard prints along the back. She pets it to satisfaction and it burst into a mass of grey gas that vacuumed into her shadow storage.
"Excuse me Sis." Joseph leaned over the sofa to look at her - speaking in a death grim language, "Can I access the abyss recored?"
"No. Unless you want your soul devoured." She replies calm about that in American English, "Why do you want to? Do you have to? Do you need to?" Joseph takes a while of staring blankly. He looked to Raven for translation.
"He is on the mission to find the personification of death." Raven replies.
"If I recall rightly by the random I know about this moment of time, his away on leave being a father right now. He felt comfortable to take parental leave and left me to watch over the dangerous tomes and reapers." She eased back to looking at the turned off tv. She stares of the technology not being human based. She even sees a sigil prompt asking if she needed it back on. It had even made intelligent ask of if she wanted the travel channel like it was her preference before, "This still doesn't answer in what sane mind does my brother think of opening the soulless catalogue for." Raven had made several times nodding of this.
"Leana... you wouldn't happen to know how to access the black market?" He asked her and she makes a lazed fluster of hand posing about her trading rules. She even tongue clicked in being annoyed of being bothered by a no exchanges clause for now, "Oh, like what unholy matter of ceremony have you been through?"
"Oh Raven... you don't want to know." She hissed and he grappled her arm tight of that, "Easy man. I have no use of upsetting you. Beside, I look after your tome space. I do for almost everyone in here which brings me to my questioning of what broke reality in connecting this is. I know I am broken but this should only happen to me. This time slipping business is not for other souls to handle." He eased up with going pale.
"She keeps talking in English." her mother holding the wall in having her heart flicker in pain. She to be soon moved away by her vow ring person to go lay down for now. Raven pulled Eliza in hugging around her, as if preventing her from trying to leave.
"Look preist, we need her to give us back out office boards." he hugged her harder, "Seriously?"
"He is has always been clingy. Don't mind him." She jabs his arm joint and he lost use of that arm. She however used him to repose herself and removed a whole cord of black fraying necklaces chained into one. Each has a charms and old remains of vow rings. She holds his hands with both of them holding this know of cords, "Look, I have never let go either. I have ghosted you about just as much a creepy stalker as you of me. This tome I come from doesn't allow us to ever make fate path. It's the only timeline that we aren't an item." She tilts, "But I of course break the rules. I made Omens pissed with me plenty a time over you. I made good with the title eventually to save your soul... several times." She clasped the necklace, "You forgive me?" her voice wobbled.
He stare so deeply into her, feeling like she stole his words. But it was very depths of the soul that so many things were felt and passed. He was sick and then overwhelmed in happiness. He was in sorrow and yet in love. It was so much, that he blacked out on her. She huffed being used to it. Petting his head softly as he takes time to be soul active again. She can feel that his presence brushed through her layers, even in between her soul dust at times. Yet she felt this plenty before. This was the starting flicker of making a soul tie vow. Her soul had nothing to speak or change. Only he was feeling the answers he needed and soon the metal and cords became their matching tattoos up their right arms and gloving their whole right hands. He was soon alter of her soul being active of tome checking, startled in how vast the her library stretched. Reeling in being flustered by tome pages.
"You get used to the white noise. The thudding. The voices. It just becomes noise of the background." she vocalized as he lifted from her shoulder. She smiles welcoming him to the waking world, "Now I have ate before getting here but I bet you lot are starving. The lawyer bought burger King for everyone." She used her Clothus form from shadow to raise the foil lined zip bag with the order inside to the nearest person.
"Fast Food from the version of time America won world war four." She blinks a few times with feeling displaced with history, wording from the undertaker of the lawyer pair.
"Leana, what is the soulless catalogue?" Joseph asking since this was brought up. It had taken time to translate or figure out from Ravens reactions.
"The list of things that can act among soul realms without a soul inside it. Every soulless listed has a reason of existing and how it came to be. The most common issues of soulless are that they break death law. As no body should be active without a soul, and really that law isn't broken. There has never been a soulless that hasn't been a souled being once. Soulless are a side affect or an outcome of bad things. Sometimes a natural part of a realm of the afterlife but has no business among the human realms." She takes pause, "I wrote that in the death order textbook, sheesh. You need to study up on your grim status laws."
"His the death crown." Raven voiced.
"And his this clueless about how the tomes work and what not to do?" she voiced as a concern.
"Mister Fedora here is kindly teaching him up." Posed about the Mafia Death god stood back from all of the room.
"Wassup man!" she finger guns to the death god, "Did you need more steel or exchanges of sand?" the death god slowly lifted from being empty, "Yikes. loosing that personality trait has hit you hard. But your still the same though. You fancy tea instead? I have a flask." He tilted bewildered of her calm, "Oh, is this time event where I avoided all spirit people?" She ponders, "I did a lot of versions of things." She huffed.
"Court papers!" exclaimed at her.
"I might have been stick fingers, sorry. I just got to soul condtion checking and back fact checking the dirt on some people." She tilted with having Raven help her up. He carried her up to his shoulder and she uses both hands to shadow raise the room. Everyone huddled to the centre of the room as the peel back of clothus skins peels away. Five standing pin boards with colour coding threads attaching across. She softly taps for Raven to put her by the most improtant board that mattered.
It is the pyrmind digram mapping of the four major soul families that have a part in all this mess. From how she family tree the Glader and Darkwoods. The pyrmind of the Seers. The boxed flow chart of the Fallown. She also has a removed branches notations.
"Back checked?" Raven pondered.
"Well ok, I may have been a triple agent for a few lifetimes. Back stabbing everyone at some point. I lost track of myself. I don't even remeber if you going to be my enemy and murder me this time or we are cool." He takes her down to sit on a wheel chair, "The lack of guts tells me plenty. I think I am meant to be dead." The fedora death god nods at her, "Oh, I am not trying to cheat you man. Did we exchange or something?" he nods of this, "We are cool until then?" he nods certain, "Right. So for now what matters is that you get wrapped around what took 19 lifetimes to accomplish." She nods, "I am Trixie Trickster, the owner of Nocturm and the... ugh." she tilted with checking sigil. She blinked at the prompt with not sure of translating that. She softly dismissed it, "Keeper of the Index."
"That is not what the panel says." Raven hissed.
"Yeah but lets not explain things they don't want to hear. I am a weak human girl that was enslaved to Clothus for a life. That's all they care about and will never trust me." Raven lowered and is petting her head. She didn't realize the black tear the left her eye. It thuds her lap and turned into grit black sand. She has no feeling of its streaking her face, so this crystal streak of black imprinted her face. Mafia Death having looked at her for being so open hearted to this whole room.
"But you should explain to everyone why you're avoiding everyone." Raven kneeling at her side, "You escaped even me. Although I am starting to detangle why... I want to hear it." Why is you soul so silent?
"Wait 19 lifetimes? And you weren't memory wiped between those lives?" the undertaker asking for sake of sanity.
"Not properly. How do you soul wipe a hand full of fine sand? Really this was partly why death feels bad for me. I have to soul transfere myself between bodies. I can reanimate several of my past corpses and access the tome records of that bodies identitifaction." the shudder of many stopped from picking their meals from the foil wrapped sealed bag, "I mean, I am born without memories as a newborn human each time. Have to pick up languages again but my learnt soul skills come back to me. I always become a Tome keeper. I always walk Sigil to survive at somepoint. I make deals with beings across the universe. I am great pals with the river styxs and his boat man. I am ready to take a request of any exotic corpse gathering for hade's halloween party. Best of all is one my favour tasks is from Omens or the ender. Fetch this sorry but from wherever he ends up dragged at the edge of time space." punching Ravens arm harshly, "You really make us three so worried about you."
"Change of topic." Among those at the table that she hasn't acknowledged yet. But she knows everyone here for something, "Explain how your able to use magic."
"You know the fundamental universal concept of what magic means, right?" She voiced soothing into the Mage language and snapping plenty to glare shocked of her fluency, "You are a direct blood of the royal court. You have the manuscripts of magic soul language." Kyle slides with clearly isn't so great as he was expected to be, "It doesnt matter if you seen the crumbling dust pile or not. You know what the base premise of what magic is law. Be it the language of elements or the knowledge of bending what is around you." he looks exactly how death does now, that pale blood left the face and vacant eyes, "Oh boy, either you figured it out or your figured out to fear me." she huffed, "Next person."
"The black market. How do you access it?" this pair has to be Hayto and Riddle. She hasn't seen them in a very long time, clearly they been in a lot of troubles. The fact both became humans, meant they got trapped on the living side.
"Maybe instead take fear of my ownership of Notrum. I don't say it because it seems a joke. Notrum is the world of monsters, the laws that govern them. I am the crowned undertaker of nightmare lands, the owner of the dark markets influences. So there being a black market for corpse trade here in Daytona is due to the lacking attending of my cliental. Everyone knows my greeting, and I suspect its the password too. You have to make peace with my dogs and cats... snakes, rats and spiders." she tilted, "geckos, chameleons." She frowned in thinking hard, "Fish and the bearded dragon." she shook out of stopping the list there, "they all are trade stall keepers, each playing a part of keeping the universe from breaking. Protecting the Oath of Cog rankers, god titles and so on."
"She has a lot of god slayers, god eaters and things that break the rules for being real." Raven nods at this fact, "So you owning the corpse trade to keep them fed makes sense." he tilted a few times, "It would have to be the Seers and other misusing it." she nods at that.
"Although I am not a saint. I have murdered plenty. I had however always stride in repenting the sins. Always being forgiven and always breaking the chains." he holding her shoulders again like his trying to out sin count her, "Oh please." She pat his hand, "Its not like you peice together broken souls from puzzle peices while they scream." he slips his hands away, "Or fish those fragments from the guts of your pet animals." She posed her left hand to the boards, "Murders... people missing. The curtain gap widen. This is all stuff I need done fixing before death comes back from raising his..." She tilted in feeling a tome, "oh. Only his 3rd child. Oh boy. His has the twins yet. How is his wife ok with all these kids? Then again, she is sister of the goddess of life. Maybe I shouldn't question it."
"Life has a sister?" death at the wall exclaimed and the his all frozen up, "The water life." he figured it out.
"Yeah, two halves. Some freak throw one half into water the the other half in flames. That was a lot of effort to put back together. I do not want to do that again." There a solemn feeling of pain in among everyone. Some even sickly of her influence.
She can read the room enough to know this was to much from her. Right then she had even took that pain for herself. They turned numb as she choked in ink crystal... it solidified her to the wheel chair. Raven carts her away from them, taking her to his room here. That is the only door in this manor this covered in runic perception barriers, god seals and ender scripts. She was soon bewitched as his doll, laid to sleep onto a coffin of materials. Many material not belonging to the living world.