The rest of the tour was smooth, she was paid for her exchanges and minor small repairs that she can achieve. She isn't the greatest at these smaller bits but she can make them work smoother with a little oil and surface repairs. They left this small hidden collection of uniforms to an off a side street, that is right around the corner from the imperial war museum itself.
The main centre of London chimes, bringing the surroundings into melting wax. She exits safety this peace zone and felt her body activating into time alterations. Her own darkness coats, caping over and burst as she current outfit is geared as a survivor of a wasted area.
Under her feet is flattened building, rubble and burning chemicals. She studies the sort of company that is around her, and noticed a device on her left arm, stitched into her skin. She recounted her years with these clawed hands; hands that played with Clothus for experimenting. She felt them around, she isn't alone on rubble mound. This team are hired to kill her or expect her to lead them to something, pretending to be on her side. She knew instantly from how it is Curiosity openly among and giving dagger staring. She checked the signals and knows already of how this will play. She had even prepared with a jar of the dust that makes undertaker gateways.
"The stability around here is fragile." She voiced, hearing her lacking humanity and the chill that burns. Undertakers don't care for such emotions lacing, but it did make Curiosity take a double take. Knowing that signalled she wasn't the same as a moment before. Someone whom already accomplished their goal. He makes a signal to others and they all slowed. Spacing away from her.
"Just how far to the edge of existence are you trying to achieve removing me from the picture. I simply asked because we had this conversation many a time." She pointedly twirls about the glitching horizon of endless empty rubble that doesn't match to the true London layout in any universe, "This is all that remains of the saint Paul's cathedral after nuclear war, not a direct hit but the rubble of boarder firing." Softly dancing in almost a taunting body language, "Great slabs of stones they hand carved, laid fast and upheld past two or three world wars. Great stone that came by sailing ships. Over the channel in what was enemies." She softly spoke to a whisper, "You need to go back now. Walk any farther. you risk your names and history. Those will be erased in tomes you knew." She posed open palms and surrender, "You have escorted me out of existence. You have met your goal."
They lifted weapons. She sighed. She takes a hand full is of the dust from the jar, sourced exactly for this circumstances, and in thrown scattered under their feet. They sank half through. All of them scrambling to not be in the assumed trap. But as one slipped, it sent a thought to another. There partner matching ring barrier made a patting of the floor and they all stop resisting. The gates closed as they are spent. Left salt puddles. She turned her back as there isn't anything to out of her sense.
She isn't dismissing those she still holding her shadows grasp or ignoring the suit buried in the rubble at her feet. She checked for any distance disturbance, and lowered down to move large stone slabs. She claw hooked the injured soul trapped in the Hazmat suit. She sees in his laces back treading his limbs, and lifted the whole puppet from the crushed remains. She pulls with shadows cloth collecting the souls of others too, no matter who and what they are. She savages the best bits, pick pockets the dead. She jars the spare ones. They seem important for now.
"Trickster." Grumbled at her shoulders like a sack of dead weight. She smirks and softly more attentively pats his head, "Freak." She goes back to moving slabs of what was grand stone walls. She is actually looking for something of an entry into the zone. A time rift. She knew its there somewhere.
"You are a back stabbing..." she blinked in the sheer sudden shift. She might have took to long picking the rubble as likely the hour changed. She wouldn't have heard the bell but it will always toll. She watched the melting warp blend sharp into focus. Her clothing, stance and the now missing Hazmat suit man from her shoulders. She stood as if she was everyone's number one enemy.
This is indeed inside the cathedral in all the splendour. Ceilings so high it makes you dizzy. The pews stretching 1.5 miles. The smell of dust, books and stone paint. Gold tombs along some walls. Tourist boards. A back area for lighting candles that been snuffed out in the hour changed. The central alter with side stair well podium looking down the prayers. The windows of the Christians belief, the apostles following the Jesus. She could eye roll of the tale but she can't ignore the artists whom painted each individual stained shard and medieval brassing that holds the fragile glass together.
There a sort of religious gathering today in the crowd below her, and she took the podium mic, notes fanned out her front. Her gaze met with undertakers coming out of the wood works and detaining all these cult members. In among confused Christians whom have no part. That spat from before is from the father she believed in her - meaning during this lifetime of carefully collected learning to be the perfect pawn. This soul path she took to learn the inside of Dreamers cult and their rules. The look on of confused souls that she sheltered, then felt her not the same as a second ago. The stain glass windows shone vividly pierces across many worried, dismay and angry faces. Even undertakers are being quite emotional for a bunch of string clay bodies.
"Right, where was I?" She clears her voice to tone change, "All these hours prepare to speak of death, gloom and negativity. World ending." She shuffled the paperwork and then casted magic to burn it instantly. She did a party trick, it wasn't the real notes. Those are in her shadow storage, locked in a safe. The smouldering ash that flustered at their faces sent the room on edge. It is her partner that shuddered in shock, cut out of her minds thoughts. Feeling that he is the one that is inwardly looked into. This period of Curiosity that used her perfectly as a pawn to raise her as second leadership of the Cultist.
"You! What have you done?" Her father stammers in reaching for paper ashes, "The book pages." She blinked slowly, felt the internal touch check and back straight again, "You will bring the eater to us."
She leans her head back in process of what that meant, the look of fear. The undertakers seem also in fear, alert with looking around for evil to appear. The detained are kneeling in bind locks, not to be ate by the coming monster. The way all raised weapons in panic.
What threat?
She heard something of a clock hand nearing a last tick. Not the chime of the main clock, this is different. Her shadow sent else where, looking up to a clock face of no numbers. Her shadow when off to finish the imperial war museum requests from the hidden ones. Her shadow of damned mask stood not alone, staring at the clock. It is her shadow actively independence, that stepped forward. In that step, came many more damned out from the hidden crevices of the war displays. So many here that assumed she was a damned with a wish to be ashes in the light. A gaggle of hissing snares.
One says 'no damned can move the object back'. Another laughs, crying as it assumed she moved it forwards past the midnight hour. Most others doesn't think she has the ability touch the relic without being turned to ashes. Plenty lower ones are ready to clean the ashes off the floor from human sight. She held the hand of the clock still.
The collective gasp.
Stuck on the moment of midnight.
The doomsday clock of the Imperial war museum. A clock that counts down to the end, stuck on the last moment to strike midnight. The church and the imperial war museum stare in gasp, holding their breath for when the clock will go past the point of no return. The shadows smile and snap fingers, singing confused tones. She consider her strengths and why she the one doing all this.
This exact moment of ruin in her hands. She softly close her eyes thinking about her many shattered soul paths she lived and that this was the moment her soul is back together. At her own willpower, by her nightmares claw... she pulled the ticking hand back. Back an hour. She senses the melting, shifting and manipulations it takes for her to achieve moving unwritten futures. An ability every soul has, and doesn't often believe in.
"That seems far enough." She spoke both forms at the same time, echoes on both sides laced each other. Her shadow moved back from the clock while her eyes open upon the dismay, the her stood on the podium as speaker. She noticed a little slip of her inhumanity, having to fix back her face a little. Preventing the void she seems to them being visible. Her shadow takes a damned slip way back to her main human body. She was whole as her mask flex back properly, turned away for moment of privacy.
"So no dead souls to collect?" One of the lower faces of death stood at a wall pondering.
"There will be. No one cheats death." She softly spoke across and sent every last being to reflect upon her meaning and plenty of the undertakers looking towards the death god she spoken to, posing her left hand in expressing her fickle way, "There meant to be like collapsing walls and scary stuff. Right?" This death god takes the record for checking and shook of no names. She thinks deeply of what sequence of events are likely tampered by undertakers.
"If the tome keepers preventing the decay of pages, stops the missing of names. There isn't a need to end their time so soon then." She voices trying to work out, "Preventing the harm of the tome means no need to repair the pages. No need to collect materials to repair them." She wafted a few times over, "Preventing world war 3, for now." She nods softly, "But I don't cheat death of his collection. I am a loyal believer of a soul of duty."
She takes out the collected jar from the hour changed. She got down slow and leisurely in her other hand digging for the other part needed. She passes the scroll of missing names. She openly walked over to this death avatar, empty space to the humans that can not see the grim reaper, dropped these items to his bone hands. Death with abnormalities of memory took a long while of processing this. He does accept this strange trade. Choosing to accept this is some result of his madness within London's limits.
"Lost recorded names." She said nodding, "They always were, just lost from counting a few times."
He accepted those pages suddenly attaching into his tome, showing pages he has yet to fill. He provided a document of exchange. Proof of a minor title provided good on her word. She sees a whole shift of undertakers and damned putting the dead on seats, making the crime scene that human police will investigate. She goes back to the podium, she sees a drug candles being the causes of mass hallucinogenic panic. And what best but to give these people a monster to fear out of their minds. She smiles to herself while taking the steps back up.
The cultist being held down from police, as undertakers will not be seen by normal people. Or are since this is British police, noticed yet not interfering with each other's work per say. A final signal of gestures by the churches hidden protector for the ok to scare all, she removes her face off at the last turn up to face the crowds one more time. All the humans start screaming, knowing the vapor drugs in the air is working. An entire team of normal humans come rushing through with gas masks and anti-terror kits. Everyone is being man handled, dragged away from the source and methodically pressured for answers. She puts her face back on, and let's herself come quiet, surrender open hands and let's them cuff her. She was kept away from everyone. Taken aside from the commotion.
"Well done, special agent." She smirks, in knowing a job well played. Out of the cuffs, given her uniform as one the British military officer service, "You were right to prevent the general public part of this event. You're years under cover with gathering cult attacks and this lead up to the biggest leaders capture." Hand pat to the shoulder, "You may never be named or hear public media of your honours." There's a linger on unspoken words as she changed into the unique secret service gear, "You have been geared to new higher levels. It comes with perks."
She gifted a mage kit. Arm bans with the alliancing and meanings. Spell craft pouches along a leather belt. A god followers uniform to cover over to hide the hidden armour and suited symbolic runes. A new face cover and adapted arm braces to the complexity that befits her tome title and her shadow status in Mage courts. Last touch up of some straps. There a nod share between her and this agent. They walk the long way around the cathedral side corridor, taking through a fire exit to join folks being arrested. She stands to the side of the coordinator, silent and watching. The coordinator barely acknowledged her for a while until someone else whispered asking who she was.
"Just in time. I don't trust the drugs used in this attack to not be simple." The coordinator shows her a data tablet about the inside and the trapped people. Seated positions. Had no clue she was one the arrested or was undercover not to long ago. The team member looked pale and confused of her ranking bands. Sliding about her belt then a doubtful dirty eye. This minor slips among the busy bodies.
"Blood cursing magic; what it has caused is fear with likely lasting reoccurring nightmares. The actual intent is yet to be understood. But an education guess, that it use was to convert the main local church leaders to the dreamers faith. A working theoretical."
She steps with staring into the main ancient carved door, the dragging heels of madness setting in those leaving. She raises her right hand over the place, a soft few postures. The vapor, harmful spells and materials was collected into her shadows deep pockets. The cathedral is back to its normal holy sanctuary status. Some of the witch marks are etched back on main pillars. She lowered her hand.
"That should do for now but there are more rats to hunt." She stands at the front of the cathedral, knowing the hour is coming. The edges of melting movie transitions.
"Excuse me." She looked up at the mass of half human flesh. She steps aside, the streets hardly changed. Just people with hybrid parts. Transmute plague. The cathedral is a spiritual centre for those seeking soul struggles. She stands hardly changed kit wise, only that her features aren't human. Blended in among a crowd of monsters. She stares blankly on these folks catching up to her at this spot.
"Leana, when did you get so fast moving?" Philip panting in his struggling body. Josh and Rose have smoothed better. She turns seeing this version of Matthew in a Hazmat suit. She stares inside, an undertaker. His no her friend, his doing that pretending to be civil notion. She focused with seeing what gods are still active. She freaked out the bird avatar riding the shoulder. She wafted a sigil pane up, checked and back closed.
"This is saint Paul's cathedral. Meeting here for a few minutes with..." she tilts checking and a plague doctor exits from the main doors, stopping short of her shadows grasp. The mock human shivers in her studies of them, "You partnered with the Unlondon system. Taught the nerve network to make puppets." She speaks matter of fact, "I will exchange if you give these folks entry-level and clearance into the maintenance." The plague doctor of leathers made a soft head tilt to express himself, "Corpses are good enough trade?"
The plague doctor mask breaks shape, opening the nose piece as the mouth. That mask is his face after all. The beak of herbs has that breathy living smell, peels a black drool. He wafted a hand that they needed to follow his way. Cooing or sometimes twisting his head in checking they follow, like a bird. He walks the cathedral back hidden corridors, use for the live in nuns and church men. Taking them towards a courtyard set up that this plague doctor has scramble up his own work station. The fencing is awkward, a funnelling sort of system.
"What about yourself?" The plague doctor creeps voice sends ice down plenty spines but she unfazed.
"I have my apartment." She low toned, "And the cursed collection of broken souls." The plague doctor shook confused, "The dolls." He clasped his hands closed. He seems to made his eyes bigger and wider - puppy style.
"How did you make them? They are better work then mine. Call it envy." She stares into the creature as he quickly glances back into her eyes and it backs down. He waves the group to follow in a larger archway, into the grave cobble courtyard. Its full of his set up. Savage tables, scalpels and racking of medical herbal cocktails. His taken the private locked access of the library to. The public toilet here. He has an audience of animal thinking converted, here to watch the plague man cut corpses. Watch corpses come alive. The plague doctor rummage his kits, has a box of micro chips up. Half are removed from ex-pets. There is a particular set hidden under that are purposed for unlondon entry.
"Arm." He poses needing someone brave, "Or she does it." Offering that she stabs them with the implants. One by one her crew are planted their seed and checked with a computer that is accessible of Unlondon's network. She made her own code checks, pays into the system and makes sure she has permission to welcome guests. She shadow provides the meat material, exchanges as she promised to keep. The minimal payment to keep her entry and 'unhostile' tags.
"Good business." The plague doctor nods at her at the last person chipped, "A shame I have to wait for these meats to return to me." The system of Unlondon sends those broken or dead to be converted as city puppets in his method. Be it the humans she just presented or even the potential of herself becoming a mindless network drone.
"How has the transmute plague been for you? Enjoy the contamination?" The plague doctor snarls in reply. Looking at his audience with frowning. She figured, "A protein is unzipping DNA structures and miss ladder. Splicing foreign DNA into the laddering. Resulting into these melted." She explains and he shakes no, "Uneducated you are. Unbelievable."
"That is not how DNA works!" He snaps, "You are the Uneducated one." She studies him deeply. He shakes in angry, "Thus far, you aren't wrong." He lowered his threat, "No cure?"
"Only controlling it... no reversing it yet. It is a matter of time to figure the traits and engineering it to stop."
The plague man lowered shoulders in partly defeat. Her group plastered themselves away from a mutant that came forwards, here to be aided by the plague doctor. The doctor readies his tools, back turned away. A unsteady trail in the voice as the beak closed.
"This wasn't natural." He sadly coo as she gently follows in keeping her party safe, "What makes this terrible thing and for what purposes?"
"To counter the mutations of cancers and diseases caused by fall out radioactive changed body cells." She replied in raining in 'a' truth and couldn't stop her lips spilling the next, "A cure to save any sort of life from total global radiation." posing another truth to the plague doctor, he perked up in a snap, "It was meant to be harmless cancer research." She holds Curiosity at not approaching the plague doctor again and both are frozen by her awareness of other versions of truth, "Who knows if the intent was biological war or to save us at this point." She forced Curiosity away, "Deal made doctor. You got extra because we were never here."
The plague doctor made a dismissive hand motion and no second later sawing bone off a mutant. He got on with barbarian task of butchering up the half human of their issues. The audience of blood watchers chant ready for the minute surgery. The crowd is growing while they leave the cathedral behind, back to the front holding their arms with that tinging.
"What is with the biometric chips?" Josh hissed, "That actually hurt. I wasn't able to feel pain before this."
The group walks the cathedral quietly until exiting it. As if the reserve the holy divinity needed the silence respected. Plenty of the group are grasping the normal among the changed looking humans. As if even of people having cat fur, dog muzzles and random extra mass growths held this sacred space with the same reverence. Just beings trying to achieve acceptance existence as everyone else.
"The no smile rule seems very universal now." She heard Jessica mutter.
"Unlondon has become very difficult. New security protocols and advanced technology detection. You can not have entry without it knowing. It will know everything. So you need the excuse to not be the next meat puppet." She pulled Curiosity fast, hugging him tightly to her. She knew instantly from the tension and discomfort. This isn't her current Curiosity / Matthew. This is a version of him that doesn't know her.
"You should go home." She sent this one away by candle. Forced him to hold one her banishing candles, and lit it before he could protest. She felt her shadow hands name check, finds his name in duty. She eased off.
"Leana, what are you?" Philip asked pointedly. Breath ragged as the group was trying to keep up with her walking pace. The blending of the time changes were seamlessly forged strong.
"A soul tome languages eater." She bluntly replies, "broken or ruined ones are tasty. I always have fond of the memories with enders." Blood drains of each of them, "I do a lot if graphing and repair souls. I am the solution to reversing god eaters poisoning. But my work has flaws, I need my partner to smooth the limits. I do the physical adjustment. He works the universe adjustment. Undertakers are pairs, after all."
"You pulled back the doomsday clock." Daniel figured.
"I am returning the lost accounted souls, thus erasing the paradox futures. Erasing futures that aren't possible. I work with the time limitations." She tilts feeling her soul name being checked back. She knew he would after she of him. She smirks tilted away in feeling his connected. She focused back with knowing the hours of time aren't stopping, "the lost souls accounted for the needed amount of active humanity to draw back humanity itself." She softly straightened up her overall outfit. She felt she was shrinking as it seems she needed to adjust before the hour chime. Her group also adapting. They all shuffled away from her in the right way of pattern. The melting warp blend. They are stood in line for a photo. A study group photo. She is her younger self, stood with Matthew as the lens of the camera closed. A haze of small changes made them do a retake.
"Ugh, try that again. 3. 2. 1." The snap of a third photo, "ok. That will do. Come on everyone, coach station isn't far."
"It was your fault." Some kid has a grudge about her, purposely shoved her past. She fells a little backwards, onto Matthew as he prevents further conflicts right now. She stays calm and empty.
"You don't have to bottle it all." Matthew voiced, "You don't have to accept being the end of people's poor chooses." Helping her stand up right. She scans his face in thinking over the thoughtful words. She felt the encouragement, care inside those words. Useless words, but she was glad to hear him say them.
"People don't change in the ways we hope they do." She softly spoke, "It will be long to late for apologies when they reflect. If they do." She bundles warmer in the cold she feels by her lack of faith in others. She steps following the class. Among the last students in the walking together. Matthew stares on with worried reflections on the mature voice in that small body. He takes a side listen with the bird on his shoulder.
"You're back." Arthur huffed taking her side, "Or rather your souls came back." He looked over carefully and back forwards, "Your merging the tomes. Do the other enders know that?"
"Yes. I figured out a way to string historical ending events to a continuous process. You are the start. Then Josh's tome. Then a mess. The last tomes are still being organized." He lowered thinking deeply, "Your grand son Philip and his servant have the mess portions. Your sons and the wife have the next parts after you. Endless loops that close and open again." She looking ahead in deep unfocused following a crowd. Arthur leans and acts not to be associated to her. It was perfect timing.
"Freak!" Some arrogance of a perk throw a half drank cup over her. A pack of idiots laughing at the mess. Matthew steps up to sort this but she made a light rumble. A very dead in eye look for each boy, dropping their jelly legs across London grime covered pavement. She eased the look since now the bugs are where they belong. She brushed off the lid and straw will on her, it landing on the lead boy. She blocks her slipping expression with softly in a sigh.
"What a child?" She tuts in a tongue click, "And a waste of soda." She steps past them, they to afraid of getting up near her.
"Maybe that is why you don't mess with a Trickster." Arthur voiced passing them and it is Matthew turn to get the lads off their buts. He scolds and has them pick up the remaining cup and parts. Giving a lecture about earning respect of others by treatment. To not litter and be wasteful of commodities they wouldn't have on the island.
"So who or what was the original, jack the riper?" Arthur putting a cautious change of topic.
"Depends on the tome and if those tomes are co-existence lapping spaces. It was a human once. Yet as the tomes are new started of different outcomes, so changed the identity. It soon became it is own monster, a nightmare being. A hidden one. Another urban myth that stuck around past the century that made him." She smirks and playful shoulder lift, "I don't know him personally. I heard of the many stories he is made from. A demon once claimed to bought his soul for arena hell pit fighting. He just is an average freakish soul." Arthur takes a long measure of her sense. Taking in the gravity of the dangerous implications this made.
"You talk like urban stories from the internet are real." He make a small lowered whisper at her ear. He walked on with pretending to not know her. She just smiles softly to herself, knowing her own experiences.
"This was the site that we had the 1st documented death, the one that made the newspaper. It was only with later work that folks figured out that she was the fourth. Surgically removed organs. Neat sew seams. Clearly someone with skill." The tour guide lifted printed laminated sheets of the site. Of the dead body. They went on to fully address the victims background, full names from the record and the chill details that captured Victorian time newspapers to take seriously of the crimes. She closed her eyes and instead tilted her ear towards the hidden here. The damned who are past unmoved on victims of crimes. She listens to the real story they knew. She was lagging behind due to not paying attention to the living human tour guide. Arthur noticing her ear into the ghosts then the human world. He looked to Matthew to see it. Matthew scowls not getting it. Both lads could at least keep an eye on her, keeping her moved with the party.