Former shell

When a human is taken from the living realm and brought to the undertaker realm. They begin to covert to adapt to the realm around them. The undertaker realm is a sterile world of no micro-organics and stale air pockets. All are turned into dolls or clay-skin husks. This conversion is painless and they are often deep sleeping for anything between a century or a decade of coffin sleep. 'Still as a grave' is a term they coin for those unable to awaken from husk conversion. These unmoveable husks are taken to be stored in a quiet area of the realm. Those that awaken lose the humanity they once assumed and slowly reawaken those living habit memories. Normally...

The undertaker watcher that left her had planned to maybe move her when she stayed in a conversion dormant state. Clearly he is not back yet from wherever he may have gone. She suspects with how quickly she awakened, her soul and body have done this process already before. Able to start processing how her body worked and seems to retain her memories vividly of everything. Unlike a normal husk, she can remove her face. The creaked porcelain mask that she wears is her shadow. In speeding her recovery from conversion, her skin is the shadow she always half was. So she is not a normal husk like the guidebook states. It does cross her mind that if he finds her like this, he might harm her. That she didn't seem like a normal husk. She can't stick around at this spot forever.

The guidebook is from before the fall of undertakers, talking of the many training departments she should be speaking to and writing exams before qualifying as a licensed undertaker. The realm map is different to what she walks.

She doesn't need to be smart to see fate the be fell many that resisted the empire. The many broken painting doorways. Scorched silhouettes of where undertakers fell from grace or where forcefully sent down. The occasional laying about hands or the sheer pile of them stacked randomly intervenes of busted broken frames.

As reads, famed as the realm shortcuts and part of the illusion that makes undertaker realm seem larger than it is. These paintings were the only one-way access to most of the department sections. Acting as doorways.

Her walk about the empty corridors of bust furniture, lost objects and broken torn cloth from once-hung paint frames. This place was ravaged for no survivors. Gladly there is the equipment still around that she can make do with. Materials of clothes or parts of clothing she can sew a new dress for herself. She feels naked as she is.

He seems the only guy around here and he doesn't walk around the full lengths of this place. So much sorrow. The ceilings of every corridor are crested with purple fluorescent crystal. It only starts to glow around her lit candle. Faded out when she moves away, only shading the surroundings of a soft lavender filter.

She softly circled back around to the medical camp bed she was on originally. She didn't find any way to a portal out. This undertaker realm is likely sealed entirely from the living world and most other realms. This camping room is full of many medical kits that are half used... no blood. But given he is an undertaker, there wouldn't be blood or body fluids. He does however have the good habit of having surgical fluids around, all brands and all time eras. Even a bottle of demon whisky is left corked in the corner as some sort of emergency.

Sheer boredom does wonders to her mind, finding herself organising all this stuff in neat boxes and chronological expiration dates. She does not use anything she found from the corridors among his stuff, he doesn't travel or use the corridor stuff purposely.

Given that paintings were shortcuts, the large metal mirror here could be a gate or shortcut. It makes the logical sense why he doesn't block it or cover it like some of the corridors his forced to walk through. There is a blank canvas that is untouched that he must have used to enter the living realm. She doesn't know how to use it and nothing in the guidebook states it. Adding an interesting note, none of the corridors he uses has the purple crystal. It's the only area that don't have this crystal.

She managed to fix a few of the paintings in the purple crystal corridor, able to get them to take her through. She was able to explore a library of trainee textbooks alone. She found the sparring hall, which contained large char piles of more right hands. A lot of right hands. She started sorting all the other right hands in there. Making it the place to keep these body parts safer. She found many of the husk coffins were raided through, right hands laying around of all that remained. All these husk occupants were gone and treated as if they were the same as the others. A painting she went in and left was the same deal of murdered people. She certainly felt as if she had a stomach, she is vomiting at all this by now. It's clear to see... this was once a safe place for those that could not rise and aren't valid to fall.

A former shell of what a great place and hard-working people that served a loyal monarch.

She eventually settles in a repaired painting that she is forced to out of the crystal corridor. She cleaned it up and sets it like a bedroom of her own. She hung it along the corridor he would use to travel to the blank canvas. She covered it up in the same sheet method he does for the other portraits. Just to be sure, she moves out a very broken frame to make the number of frames unchangeable to his immediate awareness. She cleaned up all the areas she can, swept all the floors and wiped down some of the nice furniture she repaired for the corridor. He totally will notice the changes and know she sort of disappeared. She settles with the sort of just waiting for him or thinking of some other method of leaving from here.

The problem she has with this small realm is no sense of time scale. She has done all this stuff but she has not been here long at all. There isn't a clock and none of the candles she lit everything for a light source has melted. The realm is so dark and she has been scared of tripping on some random severed hand or broken furniture. Only the non-crystal corridor has passive candle change. Maybe the purple prevents time or something. She wouldn't put it past an afterlife realm to more weird gimmicks. This seems something like that.

Gladly all this expiratory and attempt to open more canvas shortcuts. It passes the time and she will equips with tools. She had several fake hide spots. Illusions she can rest them on.

She made that dress and was finally more confident at further painting diving. Crawling wreckage of departments. The former glory was easy to see and all the more painful to witness. More right hands but no full bodies.

Ugh, spoke too soon. The private bedrooms of pairs. Many broken bodies or those that couldn't get out of their Husks to damaged to be functional. Personal possessions left behind. She leaves these places alone, after that first one. She had no business looking at the other private bedrooms. So many private rooms down this corridor, the sheet vast amounts of them were burnt or ripped up. So many locked in the realms that were their bedrooms. None alive maybe. She doesn't have the strength to brave more of these. It is better to respect these as each a grave. Clean around or at least make it neat. A offering a each doorway that is a bedroom. She always has a place of respect for those that held on to duty to their purpose over many other things. If a demon is to be a demon, she can't argue that they were wrong to. It how she felt for all these folks, killed for just being what they are and thier Duty.

She got quite far into the many spread of crystal corridor. Lost in the maze. She noticed that her candles in the non crystal corridor have long gone out and melted into the furniture. There no sign of the watcher that brought her and there been no one else either. But that doesn't mean his the only guy that uses this walk way. She still will find a way out from any these crystal corridor places if she tries. She just has this gut feeling... she can't ignore that she has kept living instinctive notions.

She focuses totally at cleaning away the pain this place bares, respect of those that can't come back and importantly was for a way back to the land of the living. She doesn't even care what time period she will appear back from. Just to get back in a system and flow is what matters. Not being trapped in this stale realm. She just knows there has to be somewhere out of here.

It seems there was something she did trigger on accident. She came acrossed an area of open room that isn't crusted in crystal on the ceiling. This place is a bottle end too. Given the desk... this seems the monarch private room. The shelving here is alive, thunders of books open and close. Yet she sees that its the books themselves and no spirit or person stood there. She approached in fear, low crouched and softly steps. She gladly well clothed now and gear of all sorts she found from the floor as she journeyed here. She wisely isn't wearing her face and covers with a cloth veil to not scare anyone that see she is faceless.

"Nothing!" She doved under the desk for cover and some form of a being growls, "Why can I not read this section? I am book keeper! Why? What in this universe have I been kept from? What in the darkest shadow have I never turned or bright light shone so thin?" The chair at the desk side it slammed to the far wall and she lowered more. Hidden as shadow gives here.

"Ungrateful little soul. Blind soul. A fool." The books whispers a breezy whistle of words flowing from all corners of this room.

"I am the killer of all the known and unknown gods! I own this universe! What prevents me from owning you? What poor little thing has this universe more afraid of me? Show me! Bring this to me."

"The hunter becomes the hunted." The books all fall in loud clattered across all the shelves. All of them lift and burned. All these names and the screams of souls. She sees it was this being doing. See that they were casting a flow of energy. She can help but see its path of flow. Just sheer ignorance, she wafted the flow of energy to disruption. The books stopped burning. This weird guy in crystal looks confused of his hands, looking at why they stopped casting. They turned their palms to themselves. She looks at the disrupted energy before her... just curious really. She gently puts the cloud flow back together and suddenly the weird man's hands burn his body. He closed them and panics of his own flesh bubbling like it is. He so absorbed about his own health thar he exits from a metal mirror. She makes sure his long gone before getting out from under the desk. She doesn't want that guy back here. So she pryed the mirror off the wall and smashed it across the floor. She scatters it all directions so it still isn't a passable way with it smashed in situate.

"Devourer of the things that eat existence." She stands with knowing that she can't fool these books to ignore her. She however feels uncomfortable that is what they choose to call her soul. But it explains a lot and nothing at all. Why she so werid at least. She returns to the desk of looking through the draws, paper and ink. It will do... She offered it to the books. The books devour this lovely kindness. She has more to give and it takes that too. Papers from her storage. She gives whatever she as no use for. It doesn't matter what it used to be. It stops when she offered her art books. Clearly her drawing seem to matter to these enchanted books.

"You are to kind. Even to us. Even after the pain we treated. Leave the way you came child of a reborn soul. Return to the other side of frozen crystal time. All this kindness will be paid back another time. You have healed these names. This will not be forgotten." She hugs her draws and bows. She takes a last few things from the desk like rings and a dagger. A sealed letter. A hand. But she knows not to place this hand to the sparring hall like the others. She walks through the crystal corridor, looking back at books that moved in strange ways. Lifted back to the shelves and slowly arranging themselves to what they were. She makes it back to the other side of this crystal corridors. Back to the corridor to be expecting anyone to just show up.

Carefully she hide among scattered furniture in the crystal corridor. Having seen the passed burnt guy walk by. He was throwing a fit to the watcher forced in bowed following behind. The one in charge hissed of expecting medical treatment for such mess. Blames the realm being a mess and it being this guy's fault.

The watcher knowing that things are actually to clean then he left them and that she is no where to be seen in the medical camp. He mutely follows the orders, dares not mention about having brought a human out of living time here. The god killer snarls and bickers at every chance. Leaves through the metal mirror in the wall. She still to afraid to show herself. Knowing now that the god killer that harmed the enchanted books is this watchers boss. Afraid that this watcher was going to torture her. She does wonder how this watcher has not fallen grace or why he even serves the god killer. Even so, she isn't brave enough yet. Maybe there be others to use this realm. She can only just hope to wait for more beings. Play careful in enemy territory.