May Event - All Too Familiar

[pumpkinhollow]

May Event - All Too Familiar

Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh

It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.

She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.

Elsie,

River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.

Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.

River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.

Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.

Fond regards,
A friend

Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.

It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!

It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.

Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.

When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.

The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.

Much newer.

Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.

Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!

In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.

Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.

Comments

father mulcahy | M*A*S*H

[lovethyneighb_or]

[[ starters below! ]]

the earth is sick and seems to breathe with pain [closed to gaeta]

[lovethyneighb_or]

He is in the Temple when the first shakes rock the Isle. Calling around, no one seems to know what is going on; so he stays. It is the job of a steward to keep their post in a sanctuary. People will be coming here hoping for guidance and information; and though neither he nor Degas knows anything now, the moment he does, he will know who needed to know from him.

It is the frightful dead who make it in before any parishioners do.

Mulcahy, to his regret, loses track of Degas quickly in their flight. He checks on the cemetery--a predictably bad decision, but he had to look. It is certainly one of the least safe spots to be, and he cannot even make it over to lock the gates. He should--he should get someone to help him try. He needs help.

On the way towards the library, something peels itself out of the path in front of him. Black clothes. White hair.

Mulcahy beholds a self with sheer, white-hot, seething, venomous hate twisting his face. It gnarls him; and in his throat is a gaping second mouth, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding, and Mulcahy sees, naked before him, a work of the dark.

(Mulcahy beholds a shrinking, pale, pathetic reflection, with panic twisting his face. It has withered him, and Mulcahy feels only disgust. A vicious, reflexive disgust, the same that one gets upon seeing vermin: I cannot stand this thing to live.

"You," Mulcahy gurgles through the blood.)

Mulcahy does not dodge the lunge, or climb out of the tackle; he does not avoid the hand around his throat or the nails digging into his skin over his jugulars. He lands a knee to the stomach; he wrestles, he does not box so much as pummel, and feels the blood fleck over him. It is not an elegant fight. Equally matched, it is not a quick one. There is no grace in this.

[not_a_traitor]

Word gets to the library quickly, mostly because of a few disheveled people running inside and demanding the staff bar the door as fast as they can. Gaeta doesn't panic. (Gaeta, thanks to his semi-regular visits to Pyotr these past couple months, doesn't feel much else, either.) He calmly instructs everyone to take further shelter in a back room, locks the doors, digs out the emergency radio, and goes to take stock of any supplies left over from the last time Greymare Library turned into a makeshift shelter.

Unfortunately, there isn't much. Tea, a handful of nonperishables, a couple lunches in the break room, half-empty first aid kits. Under the circumstances of his old life, he'd be fine with stretching that out for a week, but it might serve better strategically to stock up now, when the trouble's in its infancy, rather than wait until things are more dire both inside and outside.

No one's particularly inclined to leave except him. (Indifference can sort of look like bravery if you squint.) But he only gets ten paces onto the green before the sight draws him up short.

Mulcahy and Mulcahy, their blood a livid red against their pale skin and hair. A violence pantomimed at the opera, now even uglier in reality, the two locked in a heated, hated struggle that is both a vicious need to harm and an equally vicious need to survive. In the blur of violence, he can't tell them apart. Maybe they're both dead. (Maybe, somehow, they're both alive.)

Without fear to motivate him, he only frowns. Steps closer to get a better look. There must be a way to differentiate them. Is that a neck wound? Does one of them exhibit any symptoms of the Blight? He watches like he'd examine a blood sample under a microscope or study the chicken-scratch marginalia of an old book.

cw blood, wounds

[lovethyneighb_or]

He doesn't see Gaeta at first, because it's kind of hard to pay attention to anything that isn't the guy trying to strangle you. And it's nothing like one sees in films: there is no room to speak, to beg or persuade. There is no space between gasping for breath and the next strike.

So when he does, by chance, glance to see a figure over the shoulder of his opponent--sees a head of curly black hair, cries, "Gaeta?"--he pays the cost in a slug to the nose and another tackle to the ground. Mulcahy collects himself just in time to grab the hands that are trying to wrap themselves around his throat. The other man's open wound flutters and gasps open over his face, blood pouring down. Mulcahy turns away when it lands on his glasses.

[not_a_traitor]

Ah. It is a neck wound. Probably from the cult sacrifice. So the living Mulcahy is the one on his back.

Now what?

The only weapon he has -- if it can even be called that -- is his cane. Maybe he could try to draw the zombie away, but it's attacking Mulcahy with such singlemindedness that Gaeta doubts anything would work. Is it even worth trying?

(In his heart, the first seedlings beginning to regrow after Pyotr most recently ripped them out by the roots cry of course it's frakking worth it, what are you doing.)

He moves closer, a little faster now, and sticks two fingers in his mouth to let off an earsplitting whistle. "Hey!" His other hand jogs his cane up to grasp it by the body instead of its handle, ready to swing.

[lovethyneighb_or]

The dead Mulcahy flinches hard enough for the one beneath him to throw aside the grip on his and topple his balance; the corpse lands on top of him with a thud and a deeply unfortunate splatter, but it's still enough for Mulcahy to get out from under. He pulls himself back to standing at the same time the other one does. Only one of them wears a look of stunning relief to see Gaeta. The other glowers. Both, by this point, are dripping in red.

"Gaeta--" he starts,

You don't have to be here, the other tries to growl, but half of it comes out as spluttering through the throat.

[not_a_traitor]

The gore gets the same dispassionate once-over. Impossible to tell if Mulcahy has sustained serious injury, with that much blood obscuring everything. No point concerning himself with it.

No point trying to make out what the zombie's trying to say, either.

Gaeta takes another step closer and swings his cane as hard as he can right for the split in the zombie's throat.

[lovethyneighb_or]

Gaeta's face. He hesitates. It isn't... moving like it should. Like a cold hand on his shoulder, the thought occurs to him: something is wrong.

He can't think about that right now. Mulcahy was and remains a boxing coach, even in his withered state. Gaeta's swing goes wide; the corpse dodges back out of the way and closes in again nearly as fast, reaching out to take Gaeta's cane and rip it from his grasp.

a lost wind whimpers in a mangled tree [closed to fever]

[lovethyneighb_or]

The mornings are quietest. If he's going to get supplies, he needs to do it now.

He rises before the sun is even up. He hurries, moving down the streets and over the cobblestones in only socks so as to eliminate his footsteps, a thin cloak pulled tight around him; he doubts it makes him especially hidden, but it does break up the human shape at least a little. He holds a basket in hand.

It is far, far, far from the first time he has darted along the shadows under threat of death. He only hopes it will be enough this time.

[abhorrently]

The dead do not need sleep. The rent in her neck renders her silent for the most part, flesh clawed apart, and so she hunts to grow the throng, to build the ranks, and to answer the call in her blood. The living must keep going for resources, will eventually be worn down. And so she hunts.

There are eyes that watch him. Fixed onto his shape, a leaden brand. Silently, they start to follow. Stalking, concealing, persistent. She knows what she will do with this one, who thinks to hide in darkness. Eventually, there will be a mistake.

[lovethyneighb_or]

He feels the gaze, somehow, someplace. He cannot not feel the gaze; there are days where he acts like it's there even though reason shows that there should be none at all. Days like this where there is an active hunt on, well.

But he does not know from where the threat will come, or from what. It's hard to avoid a predator whose capabilities you don't know. You don't avoid a hound the same way you avoid a hawk. So he does his best to hide while still moving, and prays it will be enough.

He slips into the house of someone holed up at Town Hall who had given him their keys, cloth wrapped around them to mute their sound. I have bread, they said, and bandages. Anything else you think will help, please, feel free to take them and bring them here. So he went.

[abhorrently]

He goes inside a house, and she waits, until some breaths have passed, to follow. Let him believe he is safe, when instead he has walked into his own trap. Slow, careful, quiet. It does not matter if she beholds his final screams under the sky or tucked away - only that he dies. Only that he dies, and decisive shall she be. An execution.

Still. She will not overdo it - only indulge a little. To ruin him too much will be to make him weaker for later.

(And something walks in the shadow of the dead one, chasing her trail. Not far behind, but not so quick.)

The door is left ajar so that the sound of it shutting won't alert him. For a moment, he might feel as though he is alone.

cw: injury, blood (visual)

[lovethyneighb_or]

To his credit, he is not some stumbling civilian. He moves light and swift, darting between cabinets, moving only just slow enough to not cause a great racket and fast enough to be wasting absolutely zero time between movements. This man knows crisis, and he wears its mantle well.

And he knows being watched, for he does stop to look around as well as up and down. The first time, there is nothing to be seen. He keeps moving. The second, the same.

And the third--

He startles, just barely, freezing partway to standing up.





"Fever?"

[abhorrently]

The dead thing in woman-shape has no warmth in her eyes. No spark of familiarity, no slight incline of the head as she has done since they crossed paths, no little glance of the sort that comes when one tends to the shrines and Temple in kind - duty and faith meeting in the middle. All that she sees is a target, not even worthy of being called a foe. There is nothing in her mind that paints him as anything more than living flesh to become dead to become renewed. 

Task, purpose, and so much detest for life that it would choke her if she still needed to breathe.
 
She lunges at him - a sudden thing that no longer cares for stealth and secrecy, and her hands are full of a searing light, grabbing at his head.

Lightning, swift and piercing, bane to the nervous system. How it makes everyone stumble, hesitate. How a moment of being seized opens up so much possibility. 

[lovethyneighb_or]

And the Lord struck down the cities Sodom and Gomorrah with lightning and burning sulfur, and scorched out all that dwelled within them and all the things that spring from the earth.

A burst of light that leaves him blind, searing fire to scorch him through, ice melting straight to steam, a crystalline clarity as sharp as razors; a crashing in his eyes, his nose, his teeth, his chest, his wrists, his hips, his feet, all of it—everything he was and could be draining out from him, smothering under the ashes of his own ruin, he's crumbling, he's melting - -

the⠀⠀⠀LIGHTNING STRIKES,

And paralyzed, the contents of his basket scattering across the floor, seizing in bitter pain, incoherent,

he cannot move,
he cannot move,
he cannot m

i do not see the foul, corpse-cluttered plain [wildcard]

[lovethyneighb_or]

[[ got another idea? let's plot on discord or over on the plotting post! ]]

[priestessofthewilds]

As Mulcahy sneaks from safety to hunt for supplies, a paper bird alights on his basket.

[roll a d20]

[lovethyneighb_or]

... Oh!

Crouched, he blinks curiously at the small thing, leaning in. Whispered: "Well, hello, little bird."

[6.]

[priestessofthewilds]

The paper bird tips its head, then unfolds, falling into the basket as it reveals an image of someone who looks very much like Mulcahy in the garb of a priest. Text scrolls across the image.

The Hierophant

[Any supplies gathered by Mulcahy during this time will last longer and go further than expected, much like that story he may know about the fish and the bread.]

so long as we've fond and fearless fools

[tehilim127_1]

Since receiving her own paper bird, Zivia has found herself more than usually willing to take risks. Sure there are undead roaming the streets, but with her magic working again, she can take them most of the time -- and get away the rest of the time, surely. Her risks keep paying off, and maybe that's why her usual caution has been slipping.

And maybe also why, after Degas joined her at Town Hall and then realized he'd left his jacket at the Temple, Zivia encouraged him to sit tight while they worked out a plan to retrieve it -- and then on pure impulse headed out to get it herself.

It's an oddly quiet stretch of midafternoon as she approaches: a small compact figure with a bag over one shoulder, the only human-sized thing moving in the sunlight.

[goodweather]

All other things who know what's out there have had the good sense to take cover.

In fairness, there are a lot of things in the sky right now; a large noodly dragon, relentless colliding storms, a vision of hell, and all other manner of hateful, flighted dead. It isn't just Phil that the living have to look out for. But he is very, very much among them, and it is vanishingly few who will see him coming.

He flies high, and he flies silent. He does the right things; stays out of the sun, makes sure his shadow doesn't alert his quarry. He pursues patiently by sight and by sound. Minute and careful decisions that keep him on track.

So no one could blame Zivia if she did not notice the volant raptor coming at all until, perhaps, she spies his incoming dive in the reflections of the Temple's windows.

[tehilim127_1]

Whether it's his mistake or her good luck, she spots the dive in time to leap out of the way. The leap isn't graceful, but it's effective; when the undead raptor hits the ground, she isn't there anymore.

She's worked this miracle several times already since this started, and the gestures are second nature by now. One hand wraps around her silver pendant scroll, the other out before her -- "Yevoshu v'yiv'halu me'od, kol oivai, yashuvu, yevoshu raga!" -- and the undead will fall back in panicked retreat, or disintegrate entirely.

Except it doesn't.

[goodweather]

The raptor slams into the Temple feet-first. He’s too smart to think this wasn’t a possibility, and turns quickly on his feet towards Zivia with a hair-raising shriek, tracking the sound of her heart—and stutters, stumbles, as the spell washes through him. His feathers shudder, and he shakes.

And then he stills. Nothing happens.

Wide, bright yellow eyes find hers. His pupils contract, his feathers raise, his wings spread in a display of intimidation. All animal, all predator.

He steps toward her, talons like sickles clacking on the cobblestones.

[tehilim127_1]

Nothing happens.

Zivia takes an involuntary, pointless step back, her heart knocking at her ribs.

[goodweather]

The beast's muscles tense.

In the same moment his jaws widen, his pupils shrink again, he turns--he leaps into the air with a mighty flap, the gust kicking up every speck of dust and leaf in the area as--ft ft ft ft ft, a barrage of blades fly past where he had just been, having heard the new incoming threat long before Zivia could have hoped to.

The blades, having struck some poor house's walls, release their stiffness, curl up, and fall delicately to the ground. They're... leaves.

The beast shrieks in rage and dives for her again, desperate to snatch an easy target before it gets significantly harder. Rapidly approaching: the sound of hoofbeats.