Chapter 13: 12 Split curtains
"The original layout of why the rooms shrunk was the secret fort passages. Forts here, loss use, and so. This place was later a hotel, then a mansion in modernizing." She looked at the massive hole the undertaker caused by removing the decorative paneling beside the bathroom. It must have been backlogged history he found on this place as many undertakers had hands in trying to tear down the Seer family. She knew it had been a civil war between Tricksters and natural agents of other realms. She had suspected that at some point, he will show his true intent of making her a pawn chess piece. In the alternative timescape of this universe, he already would have cheated and lied using her up to this point. She still hangs on that he hasn't changed. He just wasn't making the intent so obvious to anyone, only he knows himself. He is still taking actions the same chooses as he would to butter her. He not spooning any sweet lies.
"This doesn't mean I trust you or you undertakers as a whole." She gets up and packed up a bag. She poured the drugged food under beg sheets and made a mock of her sleeping there with pillows. The only thing missing was her favorite toy that would help her nerve. But she doubts he knows her that well. The undertaker would know but not her bio maker. A small bag on shoulders. She got through the hole and closed the panel carefully behind. fitting it back perfectly. Only air pressure would ruin it for her.
"But this isn't about trust. I know you living humans care about escaping bad things to survive. You wouldn't draw maps if you weren't trying to escape." He is right and gave her his only hand, which is his left. She softly takes her left hand to it. Together they crawl these corpse passages. He doesn't see without the spectrum of human light source, so he took lead. She walked in memorizing the mapping. They came to a clearing junction that full of demons with chains. These were the disobeying or livestock the Tricksters were trading. Row upon row of demons. No dignity of being clothed, no respect but they could still be loyal to earn favor. On equal measure ready for backstabbing if it's in for themselves.
"Stay here. I will make the distraction. If you do leave this spot, meet up at the kichtens." He holds her hand tight for her to sort of even promise it.
"I am not leaving you behind, if that'd your worry." She softly mutters. Its good enough from a child. He lets her go and bolts it the longest route. She knows they had to slip from the black sand barrier set by someone else. She will break these barriers for crossing them anyways, but she didn't tell him. The tunnel of demons began to scheme things and soon chanting among the ones with loyalty starts. The disloyal can only knock out so many.
"Wow..." A dead spirit Trickster using this tunneling as by pass comes upon these chanting, "Just what is this all about?" Gladly her mask in disguise is with them. Appropriately wearing the family low grunt uniform and as blank face as everyone else this ranking. Posed in showing it thought about this.
"Do you reckon one them was released out the chains by the undertaker that came with that sacrifice?" The fake male voice adds to the illusion. Now the agent shares pose, "Look!" Back thumb of some empty spots. Confirms escape.
"I will inform the team." The poor fella turns his back and fall face forwards. The mask plucked them and added them to the chain wall.
"Oh no you're a spy!" Sarcastic drips deep in the tone. The turn of all these demons, "Who else here is against us?" Very deep snarl that turned demons in chains against each other. Spilling all sorts of beans to off the others around them. She killed the big mouthed ones who preached for the family. She acted as if to kill the ones who spoke secrets to easy. Once the loose lips were slaughtered There was pacing of inspected each one for which was against her the most, the real alliances she needed. Those that kept mouths shut but also were against the family. It was this point that she made it clear she was against the family, salting and holy water on the loyal acting ones who bow for her as a Trickster. It left five demons.
"Why did you do that? Aren't you a Trickster?"
"Every family has a black sheep that wants to watch their own folks burn. Call this a truce between me and you five. You want out and I want discord among the members." Her mask pulled the enslavement chain. She glares deep into their eyes as soon the chian turned rusted and dusty, "Have fun." They fall at the floor from being released, "They still have your names but they can use the enslave demon curse. Do as you will. You are demons after all." Masked crossed arms, "You own me nothing and I own you nothing. Simply a truce of screwing them around." Lifted shoulders, "Maybe I should have been a demon." These demons pick themselves up, a pair helped each other. They flee different tunnels. Her human side puts her mask on, the uniform over these clothes of living material. Through the mask she can see the darkness better and began taking a route to the next chaotic able sections. She hides her living body in a small vent air passage and her mask goes placing fake letters of false family orders among the real ones. She plucked the highest value ranking stamps off the real sets and stick them to her
fakes. Authentication of faking. She crawls the air vent for it to take her to the office. The undertaker and the demons she released have distracted plenty for her to kick the vent out. She was able to now raid the office for the wax, ink, materials and whatever stamps that accident left here. She steals letters from genuine replies by those fooled by the fake versions the Tricksters sent. She further stole examples of the forgery they created to fool unsuspecting demons and angels. Exposure just part of the operations the Seer family does to be so wealthy and blackmail humans in the living world with. The same schemes used in meddling in undertaker affairs and demon territories. She goes back through the air vent, putting it back behind her as she squeezed to the last location her mask was at. It stole books from the private family collection. Books wrote by demons and angels as guides of other worlds. It devoured this information to law alter the grimoire attached to her soul to be tuned better to local laws. As the turth was that she was not a normal tome keeper but rather the keeper of the magnus grimoire of this universe. A book of broke soul names and mixed laws of soul society. A book for meta beings then a human like her. But her shattered dust soul made her the proud owner of this mythical book. It is by default a secret section of the complete soul catalog tomes and its one of several not listed on the index core tome. Thus satisfying the paradoxical laws of her soul name removal in the index but still having universe attachments within the finished tome listing. It's a secret that only hidden spare souls within gods know. There is, of course, the ones they told but that far and few between.
She throws herself hidden once more as active members are capturing escaping and turn coats. Her mask went back to her bed room to see if anyone discovered she was gone. They took her food tray but didn't actually bother checking her. Her mask rearranges the pillows underneath for the observant type servants. It goes back through the hole panel but this time bolted it stable. She not going back there. There is nothing there. All those possessions are now in her pocket... even the TV. They don't even care if was gone or take notice of these things being gone.
"Hmmm... so undertakers are the only folks we haven't worked out to enslave. Your names don't work. You don't make deals like demons or have obligations like angels." A living human member with many servants holding down people.
"May the god's grant my souls wish!" A kitchen knife through the humans chest. The human doesn't even flinch or act as if wounded at all. He breathing indifferent. So it means that reality law had stopped the demon from making that stab real.
"May I make a suggestion?" Her mask acting as a family member, plays the male voice and walks from a dark corner as anyone does around here.
"Did you have a message to bring?" The human crossed arms. Dropped defensive with the acting. The mask approached and took hold of the knife. Removing it. There a soft play of small talk gestures but it was all the bluff of stabbing the knife back in. Because... she a living human too. By fact of sharing the same plain of existence, she makes that stab real. She also choose a much more sinister location, the back of the liver. The human fells to thier knees in a pool of blood.
"Oops. I forgot how fragile the living are." The sly lie made in making these servants now follow her orders, "You." She pointed at the first servant holding a demon ally, "Go clean this corpse off and you beside have the floor sprinkling before the lord arrives." They look at each other but the stoml foot. They let go of the demon traitor and drag the corpse away, "As for you four..." She waved her right hand and they turned into dust, "Neat." It snickers to itself, "Yes... I want to see who will back stab who." The spirit of the human she killed lifted in a deep frown, it went to attack but they got devoured by book pages. Such pages just sprayed from the mask being and then vacuumed back in. Mask stood indifferent, snickering of schemes.
"You!" The demon she freed just 5 hours ago from rusting the slave chains, "You can't break reality without consequences!"
"But I am living human. I am just another back stabbing Trickster. Although I didn't lie. I am indeed a black sheep. Wanting to watch their world fall underneath them. Love to see them living on the street, starving and collecting metal cans off the roads." A slight hint of her natural voice was caught in this but a little clear of the throat, "Am I simply just racking up my debt to fall to hell when I die. I will become a proud demon I dream of being." There a soft purr at the end of this. She cleared her voice again to make it male more and posed with hands at her back. Stood still and in staring at each confused gasp, "Well you going to keep standing around?" They scramble back up with the undertaker stepping cautiously closer. He looking at her mask strangely. She backed off from him as he was now to close.
"We undertakers can't normally see masks of Seers and Fallowns." He went to reach but she dodged this.
"Well keep pretending that you don't see mine. Just I will keep ignoring that you are also an undertaker with a mask of his own." He backed off now for that was a fair deal, "I am sure you told your king and how you came about such a curse. I have never asked you for why or how. I don't even ask you to teach me the secrets of such mask wearing. I see so many souls who aren't the family but are just as masked and hurt..." She can't stop her holding habits of protecting her front, "But I recognize that I am a living human and they are just another entity of beings of the layers. It is for the best I do not stick my business where it doesn't belong."
He knows who she is now. He steps back closer to her, not to invade her personal space or look at her mask. Rather the boundaries of how close he trusts her. Standing at her side and looking at the others. He nods and they are doubtful.
"What is your soul status?" The demon she freed asked in joining force.
"I am a living human. I hide myself from you all. Afraid." She spoke as a human girl from her mask, drastically making strange expressions of each.
"I came with her. She why I am here and apparently why my right arm is broken."
"You fell into bathroom with your head backwards and that arm was twisting all the wrong angles." She repeats this, "What was I meant to do? Let you suffocate?" The shadow body hands posed with extanding claws inwards. They back away from that. She puts her claws away and hands at her back. Makes nervous foot steps for knowing she scared them.
"What next?"
"We should liberate the servants that are roaming around. This Trickster breaks chains." The turn of them looking at her.
"Claws. Breaking chains. Pages. What next?" The undertaker huffed, "Let me guess, you have god slayers in your pocket."
"A full working kitchen, a library of forbidden tomes and a cabinet of unfertal god slayer eggs... soulless stones I just love looking at." She corrected, "But that's the unlocked areas. I have a tool shed and more shelving sectors. Broken scrap yard."
"Your a good at lies, a true Trickster trait. Which member if the family are you or are you a dead fallown seeking revenge? I seen corpse possessions." They all freeze up and them go to some sort of acting. The ex-slaves pretending to have a hold of the undertaker and she fixed herself up as the one standing over this situation. Oozing confidence and self-righteous that rivals arrogance. Another living member comes through stopping in assessment of what they are looking at. It's the fool that made her and broke her name. In being so mad at him was a good emotion to pretend to be towards the undertaker.
"The rat out the black sand barrier."
"Yes... there was a hole in the sand when the little ones attempted to have a little ones going to have fun with the sacrifice. Following that, I accidentally came across all this because I was delivering mail." The pose left hand to emphasize that seething anger, "I was about to have them chains and report this to upper shelf." The code name for higher seats in the family.
"This is actually perfect. Take this one to follow me, and you might as well deliver mail to the arch general while you tell us the details." Arkward marching of following right behind him as he guides the way. Her living body secretly follows last behind and detoured into the kichtens. Eats fresh fruits and slips back in meeting them among the main house floor. She tucked herself into a lower cabinet with a hinge door across from the office they went into.
This arch general is actually an archangel of red wings. He wears warrior armour with the fashion of weapons disguised as accessories. Four belts, excessive rings and chunky bracelets. A particular chain of gold around his neck, being his God charms keeper. Those he swears loyalty of which gods. A bunch of minor gods and some evil ones. Hidden is that he held a blessing of a title true God, this charm was a theater mask. This can be interprets as many aspects. It's the leading icon of the Tricksters to have such masks, fake or real.
"Young Child, why do you wear a fake face over the real one?" Of course general archangel can see through her. Baffling her father to walk around to his grandfathers side and glaring in disgust towards her.
"To hide my feelings." She spoke so honest that the archangel had to make the effort of looking upon her better, "They say I should get revenge or that I should serve justice in creative ways. But they all speak to short term. I am to play my own game at a longer time." She tilts sideways of having a peripheral scan of the room. Things sort of disappeared in touch of her shadows materials. Including a fancy scroll she just fed the Grimoire that laid upon the coffee table. It was cursed to be untouchable and now.... it's gone.
"Once you made them all homeless or had them sent to jail for the crimes you expose to human courts. What then? Do you think you be satisfied?" The archangel taking a ring and changed it into a dagger.
"I suspect maybe pity or regert for those I didn't have anything against. As they too will fall as the main vile things do." She straightens all neat and ready to receive that dagger. She will make it so it is aimed exactly where she can. one with it. Making the defenseless target be appealing. She lets the drop defensive look convincing that she arrgigont to trust the angel to not harm her a human.
"Don't do it!" The undertaker hissed directing to the angel, "You don't want to do that. You don't want to be another erased one." She frowns at how that could work against her, "Don't break the rules. She is just a human."
"If this was just a human girl, this knife wouldn't make her bleed." The dagger flies and stabs exactly square through her stomach. The sheer force of impact made her stumble backwards and it was quiet instantly for ink black liquid to drip from both sight of dagger and her mouth. She stays stood, hand on the dagger to hold it still. She breathed rigidly with a wave of trying to breath. To contorl her pain tolerance and focus.
"That isn't a normal person." The archangel stood, "Just what exactly are you little marionette?" He steps real close at her front.
"A survivalist." She whispered gentle and continues being gradually quieter. He Mayne fooled to lean closer as she listed more relatable things, "Artist. Restorationist. Bending of divinity." He isn't close enough for this dagger to work at his reflexes. She whimpers a little at some small talk of being in bad places. The sort of smell of corpses give and the sorrow wailing. He turns to her father and she jilted forward both her hands. She touched his clothing and armor. Whimpered as a child does begging for a hug. He turned shocked of her doing that and went to moved away.
"You will not leave me unscaved." Her claws dug through all his layers of defense, "A wound for a wound. May it fester in the same misery you brought upon all the other sacrifices." His wings molt of all his flight feathers, littering around them. As they touch the floor, the vibrant red is a grey cream colour. Some even burned upon making touch to the human floor and released a smell in the air. It's exactly as a corpse would smell from days of bloating. The metal corroded on the impact site and the lacerations of dug through flesh flop and fizzles. He has veins now, black lines that spreading up his neck and blue liquid from lips. He barely could stay up, falling in using a desk to lean on. She now puts those claws away, holding the dagger there.
"I have his keys!" The demons and undertaker were busy people in opportunity, "We have to take her to the hospital."
"But that isn't her living body." The undertaker corrects, "Rather that a wound on her spirit body that cant be healed in a human hospital." He approached her side carefully and a cold hand on her shoulder, "I don't know how you do it."
"I have a point to prove. I can't leave yet." She guided the way. They all follower her lead. Down to the basement. The moment she had these doors kicked open by her willpower, shattering the demigod barriers that kept this place safe. She collects back her living body, descending down ahead of all that follow. Many mesmerized or just assumes she was being sacrificed right this moment. The many book keepers looking up from the tome book and looked to the double imaged being before them. The back down to ignore this. Any and every book here slammed closed and blanked is pages. It acts of it self-preservation, bleeding the ink to prevent her reading or devouring these books. Forced every single keeper her to turn weapon against her. Lifted not in care if she was a living human or not. She now turned to the man.
"You can't sacrifice me because look at how they fear me." She walked acting slow and clumsy. Holding the dagger still in her stomach. She smashed down and over a desk of books. The books thud as it can to avoid her. The one single book she capture turned to start burning itself, to sacrifice itself in ability to protect her from eating the content. She throws it to a keeper that quickly stops such a thing in time. The binding smoldering but pages are safe. She posed in making this the point. Showing that they can't sacrifice her if the book refused her.
"Nonsense!" The archangel takes a book of his choosing and attempted approach he couldn't even make the pages flutter open. The closer he came to her the hotter the book began. Like a feral animal with no other chooses, the book attacked him and made him fall backwards. She now walks over him, the books scatter at loosing this justice.
"When you remove a name from the index, just do you realize what happens to the books this souk was the keeper of which chapters?" She lowered to eye level of the angel which wasn't much. She is a tiny defenseless human, "Simply removing a single letter from the index is to tear out pages of some section somewhere else." She stands straight and looks to man, "You removed my name. You removed letters uniquely existing the chapter naming of entire worlds. That's what makes being a keeper of tome sepical souls then the average ones. Some names are even more unique then gods." She shook, "Not that I am that spectacular. But I am just saying." She took out that dagger, throw it to missing this angels private spot, "You torn out entire realm of existence and all them souls that lived in it. You selfishly sold this to the clothus... whom tricked you. They know that index names are valuable to the core universe functional laws. You give them the accessibility to break rules. Now... now the god's are raving war in debt to wipe out humanity. Each day of living world time spent is centuries of festering schemes that gods devised to bring humanity to be wipped out. You gave them that." She turned to the book cases of shelving, "You trusted this moron that broke your rules? You would rather he continue to look after you?"
"Eliza, enough." Her father steps right in blocking her.
"I was removed from time itself. I spend so much of my soul to come back as a living human at this here and now. I accepted being discarded and left to the unknown. I made existence for myself that has more power then being a pathetic little broken human." Her shadow throws him over from touching her. He laid underneath a pile of books, "I came back here for one reason. This is the only moment of any given point allowance in human living realm that I can be here." She shoved her hands through her guts and pulled pages put from there. She throws these mass of pages at all directions of the room. Once she finished, she was back to thar horrific look she was when the clothus bullies her. Now she stopped holding her stomach, her entrails hung out of her. She watched the books shiver and the pages sink back into the tomes. All these missing soul names and places and existence made sense. All bit her. She still not recorded back into the index as before.
"I don't care what happens to this world or this universe. You severed tied to me. You throw me out." She points arguing at the books, "I quite from protecting your boundaries of existence, just as you did me. Send as many souls you like to beg and scream. But I will not come saving you all from what will happen next. You are on your own." She managed to stomp on a book that dared pathing toward her. But it not burning at her touch, "Until you find a reason to convince that this universe should matter to me. I have other better things to be doing." She stands strong and let the book free. It stays glued there, all these books stiff and just unresponsive, "You can't blame me for what you done. You throw me away, breaking the once barrier that prevents things. Now... You figure out what to do when even nightmare scream in terror and things disappear." She held this sour emotion for do long, "The return of all souls and pages you lost to the clothus severed the last obligations that keeps my soul bound in your laws. I am no longer human from this." The shell thar was her human life drops and powdered all directions, "May the mercy of an Ender bring you out of suffering." whatever left of what she is claws the veils of existence, through a hole for her to exit from time and space. She fills in that gap and then it began to seal. The undertaker being still holding to his promise is forced to take his own actions. He dives his hand through the last little small gap, pulling back whatever he can of her. He doesn't even know what he achieved. Holding something he can see but it so crumbling and fragile. All he can do is hold in hope.
"Let the soul go, undertaker." The god of death towered over him, "You can't allow the human appearance fool you. That creature is a tome eater."
"Then why, why does a tome eater return pages that been restored? It's the one thing my king has sent me to seek. Why would a monster from beyond existence bother taking into a human weak life? The being held wrath and powers above even true gods like you. Every part of those returned were authentic lyrics restored within existing and original laws. But it is an existence that doesn't have to be within laws." He sheild whatever he has with everything he got left of himself, "It kept its end of the promise we made." He is protecting her, "It's only right as an undertaker that I honor my vow."
Death can scythe the soul from him without breaking his soul. The law of this universe would never make the same mistake of shattering another soul ever again. But due to this, time can not move forward or backward. This was the only moment of undertakers law that such event happened. Tome, time and law of lands stopped frozen.