Empty worlds

Curiosity was at ease with the realm around him, he knew the directions and at times was directing the Lord of omens to areas that mattered. The undertake she met and knew was here, it was like all the distance and time apart meant nothing. Here of all places too. Back to the old boarding school room she spent most of her last human life. She reflected at how she remembers this moment from a younger perspective, rather her young mind had this dream of watching a different looking Curiosity struggle with changes. Language barrier that avoid her knowing what he said then. She knows what is about to happen and she can not change the outcomes, there wasn't to room or time spare for that. At least this time she can understand him this time.

"I should not have interfered with your life, as you were a key soul within this universe. Your manners of conduct and the condition of your soul had detrimental impacts." He paced while holding her mask while saying these things, for sure the shadow he cast would be the doorway for the Enders to enter this realm from. Any second will be tendrils or a gaint hand to sweep and capture them all, "I am going to return you here. Leave you here." He pulls to place her mask on the school desk she did her homework on all the time. He could not barely let go without being clasped in vise grip from darkness clouding in. So many hands shaped and reached. Like some horror film in poor computer editing, he is grappled and folded in by the many open palms. He reacted as any living do, freaking out and screaming. Primal fear to scramble about and fight the group. Her mask is indeed left behind but the Lord of omens took chances and dove itself to follow his follower. The darkness of many hands fades.

"The styx of this universe is still active then." She slowly reforms, sitting on the three legged narrled chair. She pats the table at counting. A large hand that doesn't belong to this realm. It blindly reaches about. The hand withdraw and a painted patterned rainbow peers in, contradictory to the abyss of darkness as skin. The flesh was so textured like a potatoes sack, the wavery weaves shuffled. The narrow of the eye focus on her. She was palm down to the desk at the third tap. She tilts its way to look back in waiting to say something. She no sure what to say.

"Where did he go?" She turns to the fallen art around her and the sketching books. She lifted one, dusting it off. She unfolds a page she draw of this dream. She presented it.

"The River of the universe took Curiosity." She drops it now and that be the end of her dream for her past. She stares at the echo ripple of time and gently, "He will come back to you. He will have better resolve within himself." She pats her chest. Indeed she has the necklace and there is no ring, "I suspect he is being filtered and set correctly to the laws. He lost his Clothus taint. He will be a normal soul when his returned."

"It will then will have gone to you." The eye is gone and she it the one the hand grabs for. However, there seems a universe law at play even if this realm is broken. She was smoke and it took Curiosity instead. A sinner chain pulled out from her and dragged him out from where he went. A bundle of feathers and blood hugging to protect a bird. Taken and the seeps away darkness. She is indeed left behind.

The assumption must be that there was nothing left here but the two that ran away. Another assumption was that she was the one that they have a hold of. The gate of damned closing tight to prevent bleed through of any realm mixing. She raises her hands and the realm around turns back the times. Papers that were drawn on lifted and the warmth of atmosphere came back. The distant echo has an houlusenary mutter of students in the other rooms or random bangs they made. She looked through her sketches, the future predicted left by her younger mind. The dreams she had since coming to this school. She had many of them. Many were of the life before that, but as a ghost watching it.

"I should go back to the first life. The one I met Curiosity." She glints a thought, "Maybe I was the one showing him the boundaries." She ponders. She sinks a little at her seat, "But I can't do that. I don't even know how." She watch the illusion of time fade. Back to a dark unlite world with no air. It's dark. So dark. Alone.

Strolling what little there was. She couldn't even make a car drive. The air needed to combust in the engines was nonexistent. So she just walked blindly in the darkness. Stealing battery powered touches, phones and anything the lite with burning something. Her resources are finite. She walked carefully. She didn't want to look at the dead animals that were protected by the realm laws as they should have been. So many souls of plants and animals still trapped in a dead world. The spark of life is still here. No sun or air to nurture it. Pets. Farms. It was quiet sickening passing waterways of plenty floating things. There was no air even in water, like the law of air was stripped from here. Trees that help convert carbon dying from the lack of sun. Mouldy and stale. Poke a hole into the heart with just a finger.

She realized that she can't cross the oceans or what little there was of them. The fish stew will make a journey impossible. Gladly natural doorways to other realms are accessible. Like the church annex into the demon courts.

She wasn't prepared for that. The treatment of the living land spilt here. Demon corpses crawled along floors and desks. Souls left here like the animals of the living world. There is actual smell in the afterlife and it was worse them crossing the ocean of fish, mammal and weeds of plants. Invaded assumptions has shattered the universe this way and not many souls left to defy the law.

She wondered into areas she didn't before. All of the layers of hell were this way. Dark. Desolation. Littered with smelly corpses. She wondered if it was just her imagination but she steps across so many corpses. The smells from disturbing and feel under her. She shivered.

Out from the realms to the natural gate back to the land of the living. This is that cave she draw but it lacked all them marks and tributes. For then she had an idea, picking up the little in tools she can find nearby, made her own even. The sketch out is the easy part. Working out the depths and cutting to not chip. She began to carve it in sweat, blood, tears and even gore. Her hand melted as all flesh does, she worked through with ignoring it. Lays at her finished work folded in a weak bundle. Among the dishes and trays, among the offerings gifted to the Lord of omens. This shire was likely the only pleasant place left in this universe. Everywhere else is corpses that left to gore in puddles and moping stubborn souls that want no where else.

Truly a planet that is empty of all things life, no air and no sun. Even the fungi can't grow in the weak pitiful atmosphere. A coreless universe.

There isn't a flame of creation, not even a ember. This is what happens to the waste that was incompleted through a cycle. Now there wasn't even the worms of decaying dreams or god eater to salvage this 'garbage'. She felt that way for sure, thrown away tool. Maybe the malevolent rage of this universe will finally burst and give chance to something to change.

We can't exactly throw away sorrow and angry. There has to be a breaking point a moment for it all to snap. The guilt of chains that held up the layers of many realms of Hell are not fragile things. For some they have no meaning and are a wasted potential. Didn't undertakers weave such chains to have a realm at all?

What is gone, is gone. Yet we can carry the sad and happy things on the same chain. So if these chains of regret and remorse are here. The happiness for why they were made is still there too. We over shadow and over think this. Be swallow in the passing, forgetting why it seems so sad.

If only she can appreciate it all again. Even of it is in a dream that will never reach. To shine the happiness out of dark clouded fog.

"When you said that we were finding a soul of a fallen warrior. This place was not what I expected." The soundless movement, it was like they aren't even there at all. True to the word of the nature of such beings. They came to enslave souls. It was just always going to happen, to attached the vultures. The are skin of cloth and souls made of clay which is worn like masks. Cloth limb move and a sort of furious tapping sounds made on purpose. She doesnt need to see what they are. She can taste thier discontent a mile away.

"Let us see..." A book with access to some sigil. A compendium likely with content access across many chapters. It smells... old. It has the musk of the ancient library to it, even the ink smells made with mixing hard to find ingredients. This holder makes shuffled steps, they have touch in a living realm unlike the Clothus banned from such things.

More then that, there is folks with embodied holy attributes - the great fortunes that pillar 'good', 'heaven' and 'light'. Their presence has a scorching effect on darkness and negativity - some call it a cleansing purity aura. She was not afraid of something that was warm and soothing to the melted hands that she used to carve the stones here.

"I like the mirrors." Some young voice making notion of looking for traps or that they were impressed by the handy work, "One side is good fortune and the other misfortune. The runic celtic prayer towards a great god of omens. All like the great raven held this place hidden from the nightmares outside this cavern."

"Wait..." The youth was prevented from stepping into the hidden pattern of the floor. Paper lined in spray across the ground hiding the circle celtic knots. The reach of someone pure brushed a page and the rome page reacted as it has always by the holy attributes - to burn and smolder as ashes. Time laspes for the page, the ashes reformed as paper once again. Even this broken realm had some minor retaining laws about it. Equally a clothus pushed over a candle stand over the top of the page mass, but it never landed. Frozen at mid air and slowly softly moved back.

"So it's a trial or something. Some of the grumpy souls of this barren land have made such things." They attempt to circle around the mass of pages but they are impeded by misfortune things, like how there was real knives and weapons well balanced to fall if someone was to attempt that. Such things fall from thier place and are reset back as they were.

"I say this is a first." The bookworm among them, "Its a section... That isn't made yet." They share what they see to others.

"Well no. That section is always incomplete for a reason." Long drawn and depth of loathing. Sorrow in trickled taps in their throat, "That is the index of tomes. No one should even have access. Not even gods or Enders. I suspect this could be the side affect of proximity to someone who does."

"So thats why you can access the life tome when the godess of life is around." a realisation of how to bend rules. It's what Enders have to do regardless of consequences and are given permission to by tomes. Otherwise the books would have prevented Enders existing at all. Already a proven fact in other universes.

"That book title." Someone points out and in meer touch of reading it stirred the pages within the circle to fold and lift. The shaping of the protector of the tome they dared disturbed. The figure inspected the group, makes a soft glance to where she is and then drops as pages within the circle.

"Don't do that again." Fear rose in the mortals and the slaves. Clothus were twisted at sort of wanting to do that again, if only to get the name of that page being. The Ender of this group or rather a guy that was bored and so happened to have the title. It was accidental of them to had stepped on the only chain there was. Such a chain was not made in the way sinner chains are made. Refered as a damned chain, when a sin was erased by time complication and left unsettled without resolve. Not even undertakers can touch those and the dating nature would mean a god can't even see or detect it naturally. It's often a chain made by Enders that felt unsatisfactory of the work to murder all does. A phase that every Ender seems to be trailed by.

The meer moves of that chain had enacted it to grow then judge its weight upon all in the reach if its lengths. Snaking over everyone's shoulder and baring the sin burden upon them. Most don't see or feel it. It clatters through the Clothus that are immune to universe laws like that. For this Ender, its a chain, they had resolved already. It began to melt and dust - meaning the sin was no longer solid matter anymore within proximity. The dust made by the chain started to powder everywhere and reveal many collapsed efforts of Sigil passing thieves for the god offerings. The powder reveals the corpses of the damned and clothus that came here before and were... clearly devoured. The skulls lining the points of the circle were god eaters... they to ate by the creature of this cavern. Lastly the powder dusts every god artifact lining the shrines mural, including the bundle of softly waving cloth.

"And you said not to touch anything." A clothus tuts.

"I had so happened to had stepped on the chain that likely bounded this tome here." The Ender sits back and sort of just took out a snack, "I wonder how many Times this will be repeatable." He sits sort of waiting for that chain to reform like all the other objects did. They all stood back, taking shared action of waiting for the next move.

"Why was it not reversing? Touching pages makes them change and reverse back. The triggered traps. The moving of the ritual circle itself moves back. But not the chain of sin?"

"Unless it wasn't a chain for them to burden and rather it was a chain they choose to share burdens with." The book reader ponders the opened section, "What is the index itself is what this place is?" A bubbled thought, "The references of the chapters in the index are marked one the carven."

"What? So we literally walked into the stomach of some god eater? I mean, the corpses everywhere." Posed a tempered Clothus. In this darkness the cloth skin has shimmered colours and patterns that represents memories and the soul of the clothus itself. Even the sleeve it uses as pointing fingers was lined with the many servants in many forms that this master burden of. This Clothus had the Ender enslaved, literally. It must mean equally that she starts on the other clothus, yup. The other mortals here are slaves too. This was a typical law breaking party of clothus travelling to steal whatever souls they wanted. For this was plenty of evidence for her to feel no sense to appease them in any friendly manner. The ritual ring glosses in blacken ink, turning into a pond. The ink stays within the celtic knots on the pages of tomes. Blacken goo tendrils reach at taking the god eater heads on the each points, sinking them into the slow sinking ink.

"You lot are screwed." The Ender tuts, "Maybe I am too." He was unwillingly to make any further chatter even if the clothus was demanding and hurting the servant Ender to add to his meaning. The last bit of a god eater skull was barely visible. The powder that coated everything moves into the pool too. Adding to the ink pond, the volume doesn't look to had changed from the surfaces.

"Burn away all that is darkness and intent of harm." The ink was simply a glorified oil pit, now the wick was lite by holy casting. It is the brazier that shone away all the darkness, just as they made it. Flickering a moment that it was clear now that someone else sat bored too, among the god artifacts. The flame lost its gain, as there is no air to burn. A harden thick ink wax surface. The carven returns to gloom. Darkness clouded and reset everything back to nearly how it was when the group entered. But the corpses and skulls were invisible again. The sin damned chain was gone for good.

"What the..." The book access shows a new section now, somewhere they can't beleive themselves, "So there is five realms of Clothus after all." The reader ponders in feeling each name and the subcategories under the realm names, "Sounds like a gambler got so drunk they were playing messed up version of poker." The had even began reading the rules, just plenty enough to sudden close the book. The disbelief. To open it... clothus realms.

"Five... seven." They recounted as the tome was changing.

"Sorry... seven clothus realms?" The only human here that been struggling to breath in this world, barely crawled at the floor at constant gasping for air.

"Yup... there suddenly seven clothus realms. One is the lost civilians of the undertakers. The other is... a pocket realm." The access reader reading the new established laws by these new additions, "Wow, these undertakers are actually a split race from clothus and Damned souls. They have ghost law in living worlds. Pompous statements like the makers of fortune, krama and fate enactments." The deep frowns, "The executioners of Enders?"

"Sign me up." The Ender hops up and brushed away his crumbles. He walked blindly right up to surface of the tome pages and stands in the perfect alignment to evade traps.

"Get back here!" A clothus had its limb severed by the ceiling, a stalagmites drop. They knee in pain which was enated shared move to the Ender in the circle. Both at one knee. The Ender bows his head, baring his neck to die ready. The knife thrown from the alter of offering evaded the kneeling Ender and was planted through the neck of his owner. The soul of the clothus devoured by the metal blade, fading a corpse to be among the collection here. All the inventory and servants chained to this clothus was spralled over in mess every direction. It turly marks out that they were here, even if the laws of the universe can't enact on them. Now she had certainly of where everyone is, tendrils dot in soul collecting them. Names marked along the wall of the dead that lay here. Some corpses moved to the entry to ward away or attract such visitors.

She suspects that the Ender still alive in her ritual circle will likely do something to. bring back the dead.