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ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
May Event - All Too Familiar
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.
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.
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.
no subject
Think— where's this thing's source of energy? Where lies the parasite? Not in the heart; the heart carries no blood, for there is no blood to be carried. In the head, then? The brain? Headshots aren't easy. Not without a firearm. She's presented with two options; straddle CT long enough to sink her hunters knife between her eyes, or grab your stupid gun.
Carolina ducks, the heel a mighty hair's width above her when she does.
You need to focus.
She springs into action, throwing out her arms to hook around CT's shins with the hopes of toppling her.
no subject
It works—CT falls, reflexes too dulled to get out of the way before her skull is cracking against the ground. Old blood erupts in a sickly spray at the impact. Even so, her knee jerks sharply toward Carolina's face on the way down, and she's scrabbling to pull herself free and away within moments. What might have been a concussion to the living is little but a minor inconvenience to the dead.
Kicking, scratching, jerking. Violence, violence, violence.
no subject
Soft skull crashes against earth. The eruption of blood has the scent-quality of soldiers left to cook in the sun, their bodies reduced to a festering, liquid homogeny. Except this one continues moving. Defies the laws of rot and rigor mortis. Bile rushes up her throat; unusual and therefore anger-inducing.
This corpse should be no different than the rest. Zombified, yes; familiar, yes; and in these ways, unlike any anonymous enemy she's had yet to come across— but a mindless enemy all the same.
Carolina chokes down stomach acid at the same time CT's knee collides with her face, which comes as an unlikely yet nevertheless appreciated wakeup call. Both the rot-softened knee and alive nasal cartilage crack against each other. Stars explode into view. Carolina's nose spurts blood down onto CT's face.
Despite this— and the clawing, and the jerking, and the animal snapping— Carolina plants hands firm on her shoulders. Lifts her up, then brings her skull down once more onto hard ground. Probably won't kill her, but might slow her down enough to finish the job.
She's apart from herself. Somewhere completely other, watching or not watching. Not thinking. Just moving.
no subject
The thing grabs at her arms and hands, nails and fingerpads digging into her flesh more for the sake of causing further harm than to try push them away. Every slam of her head into the ground is another sick crack, bone fragmenting beneath the lifeless skin, old, thick blood seeping into dark hair and turning it lightless and heavy as tar.
Empty eyes never stop staring up at her.
cw: gross nail stuff
Its nails wreak bloody havoc on the backs of her hands and down her forearms. Her skin comes away like wax.
A nail catches, digs like a splinter and rips away from its festering seat completely. She'll pluck it out later. For now, Carolina gnashes her teeth and struggles noisily to contain the corpse's wrath. Crosses one arm over CT's neck and searches for the hunter's knife at her belt.
Come on come on come on—
Don't look at the eyes.
no subject
Staring, staring, always staring, looking at nothing and yet looking into her. Dark brown muted by the dull clouding of death, warmth and spark entirely smothered beneath the white haze.
It keeps grabbing, clawing, scratching, not caring for the damage it does to her own gnarled hands. The pressure against its throat makes her sputter, more dark spray of blood from between its teeth and leaking against the arm itself where it presses to the old wound. Neck craning awkwardly down, it tries to sink teeth into the meat of the limb.
no subject
Teeth are the face's most dangerous luxury, and the corpse of CT intends to put them to good use. Dead neck folds over onto itself, top set of teeth pressing into skin. It makes noises that no human-shaped thing should be capable of. Wet, seething growls followed by red spittle. The slashed throat is slick beneath her forearm. It depresses, sloughs off old blood. Carolina slides and fights to readjust her grip while searching her belt.
Don't look don't think just move. There's nothing left of her. Nothing left inside.
She squeezes her eyes shut. A stupid thing to do mid-battle, but she can't help it. Entertain the mouth. She does. Slides forearm from throat to chin and puts all her might into keeping the thing still. In her opposite hand, blade at the ready.
no subject
The jaw clamps harder, straining its own decomposed ligaments and gums to apply as much force as possible. It doesn't care whose blood is in it's mouth, can't taste anything but rot and death, just needs to kill. Pinned down like this, struggling incessantly and yet near-uselessly, it will keep fighting until it's stopped, until you make it stop.
(Isn't that familiar?)
no subject
She's breathing hard now. Doesn't realized until her throat goes dry and the air inside her lungs is all putrid. The dark, thoughtless soldier's space in her mind shrinks and shrinks until it's little more than a black dot at the center of a much larger picture. Connie's eyes, glazed and staring; her teeth rooted in the firm, muscled flesh of her forearm; blood caked in grass and in hair, both old and new, fetid tang and metal collating; wounds and growls and brain turned mindless drone smashed against—
Make it stop. Please, God, make it stop.
Fingers close firmly around leather and wood and in one swift gesture Carolina stabs into the ravaged flesh at its throat. Blood sprays in a black arch. She stabs again, blade-tip breaching the soft skull at CT's temple and sinking in, in, fighting past membrane and porous bone to hit whatever's left of the brain.
Again, crying out with the effort. Again, shredding. Again.
no subject
It fights until the brain is shredded. Until there's nothing left to drive it forward at all. Sags, finally, its jaw releasing the pressure on Carolina's arm and its own limbs falling limp. Less than a shell, now, just... nothing. A corpse of a corpse.
cw: emeto mention / wrap!
CT slumps, a rag-doll. Life twice removed. So covered in blood, both her own and Carolina's, that she can scarcely make out her features. They aren't at all comparable to the person she knows, despite being her. And for all her trying, Carolina cannot create an imagine of Connie alive. Forever marred by rot and old, black blood. By a hanging jaw and broken nails, her own tissue lodged beneath them.
She's never thrown up during combat. Never. She prides herself on this fact, like some sign of inner-strength which, in reality, equates to nothing.
Carolina feels weak as she clambers off CT's corpse to wretch into the grass. She sits heavily. Shakes out her hands once, twice, to dispel the rancid energy there; the ghost-action of stabbing still tingling in her fingers.
Her hunter's knife is lodged in CT's skull, and will remain there. She can't bring herself to reach for it. And in a similar vein, can't bring herself to look way.
What takes over is an empty, stunned shock that demands she stay seated.
Soldier's speak of shell-shock and every other manner of petrification, and not once did she understand. She was always adverse to the idea. Thought it ridiculous that, in a time of action, a trained soldier should feel himself still instead of abiding by his instincts, what he's learned to survive. they sit while their fellow soldier crawls dumbly on his belly. They sit, oblivious to the gunfire above head.
She sits.