ph_logs | May Event - All Too Familiar

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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.

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Even like this, Mulcahy is not cruel, only murderous; this is why the corpse does not grind his heel into Gaeta’s wrist. Instead he snatches up the cane and raises it over his head.

He drives it into the living Mulcahy, aiming for his neck, but gets redirected to the shoulder; he tanks the blow and moves in at the same time to make a body shot, driving his fist into the corpse’s stomach. He doesn’t lose balance, but he’s sure as hell winded; the cane clatters to the ground again. Gaeta will have another short distance to travel while the two Mulcahies lock horns.

The pain disorients him as badly as the actual blow to the head, and for a moment he can't tell how far away the cane is or how many of them are on the ground -- but somehow, somehow, Gaeta's hand closes on it.

Come on, he orders himself. Focusing as hard as he can, he swings for the zombie's kneecap.

This time, it impacts with a satisfying crunch. (And if Gaeta's stomach lurches a little at the blurred sight of a Mulcahy taking the hit, well. Easy to blame it on the head injury.)

It impacts with a nauseating crunch. The thing about the zombies is that they are not shambling monsters; all of their selfhood is real. The pain is all real. The corpse drops, sputtering a wet, guttural, pained choking sound, blood surging from the neck wound, hands clawing into the dirt. The look on his face is agony.

Mulcahy clings to his nerves just barely. He places his hands on either side of the corpse’s face. “Don’t do this,” he’s murmuring, and it’s hard to say who he’s speaking to—his double, his love, or himself.

This one is already dead, he tells himself. God forgive me even still.

The corpse’s head begins to be turned; he grasps at Mulcahy’s wrists. His grip is white-knuckled, fingernails digging in so ferociously that they draw blood—they struggle, locked together, but Mulcahy is managing to hold him still.

Someone has to do it. Mulcahy is in the best position to snap the corpse's neck. Another cold calculation, if only he ignores the way the dead Mulcahy struggles; how the living Mulcahy struggles, too, for another reason altogether. And it is so, so very easy to ignore them both with nearly all emotion dug out of his heart.

But.

If Gaeta can help bring the end about faster, it will be better for all of them.

He sways up to his knees. Brings down the cane again -- a glancing blow to the zombie's head, but maybe enough to loosen its grip. Maybe, if they're very lucky, enough to provide the momentum Mulcahy needs to break its neck.

It is not easy to break a man’s neck.

One hand is knocked loose, and in one swift motion, a thick snap rings out, and the corpse falls limp.

Mulcahy drops it. He crosses himself; there’s no time for full rites or to wonder about the technicalities of whether this body had a soul, but he does whisper a few words for forgiveness under his breath. For them both.

Blood splatters his own face, stains his glasses and leaks slowly from his nose, but his focus is all on Gaeta. He hurries to his side, wincing through his own injuries.

“Are you alright?” he asks, gently cupping Gaeta’s face in his hand as he looks him over. “Can you stand?”

Edited 2025-05-29 00:26 (UTC)

"I think so."

There is no similar concern at the blood on Mulcahy's face; just the dull, faintly curious detachment of before. He tries to move his head a little and winces. "Frak. Concussed, probably. I should be fine."

Carefully, he shifts his grip on his cane and pushes himself to standing. His prosthetic leg drags before Gaeta gets its foot set properly against the cobblestones. "We have some first aid kits at the library. You should come with me."

Something’s off. Gaeta doesn’t look like this when he’s hurt. What just happened—he’s not a combatant, with this amount of struggle and blood Mulcahy would’ve expected Gaeta to be a little more shaken, more insistent. Is it the concussion?

“Okay,” he says softly, carefully. He stands up with Gaeta, supporting him until he gets his feet under him properly.

As they’re walking, “Thank… thank you. For coming. How did you know I was there?” He’s pretty sure they aren’t quite close enough to the library for the sound of fighting to carry.

"I didn't," admits Gaeta, low. He moves stiffly, and every step with his bad leg seems to take deliberate focus to make sure it lands right. "I was out looking for supplies. We have a group sheltering in the library. But... I saw you."

His brow knits a little in consideration.

"It's been a while."

“Ah, I see.”

And there’s nothing wrong with just being in the right place at the right time, but there is a part of Mulcahy trained to whisper doubt given any inch of suspicion. It was right for a long time, after all. And the thing that bothers him here is not the fact that Gaeta did not come for him in this specific case; it is that, for almost two months, and even now, despite admitting his love for him, Gaeta did not come for him at all.

(Did he reconsider? Is he scared of him? Was he expecting Mulcahy to come first, despite his reclusiveness? Is it his fault?)

“… It has. I’m sorry for not reaching out earlier. I’ve been… rather cloistered, as of late.”

Edited 2025-05-29 01:33 (UTC)

"No, it's fine. I..."

Well, what is there to say? He went to work; he went home; he went to Pyotr, when the pressure in his chest became too much to bear, and Pyotr would bring his thoughts back to blessed silence. He hasn't felt the need to do much more than that. But as he thinks it through, counting back the weeks over the throbbing in his temples, he realizes it really has been a while. Months.

(Two whole months, gods. How could he? One of the seedlings trembles, and so too does Gaeta.)

"I didn't realize it'd been that long," he says with dull surprise. "I'm sorry. I was, ah. Keeping to myself too."

They reach the library's door. After a quick exchange with someone stationed on the other side, it creaks open to allow them entrance.

“… I understand.” And, well. He does.

The moment they enter, someone yelps with surprise at the sight of Mulcahy, which startles him in turn; he’d kind of forgotten about it, it’s hardly the first time he’s been covered in blood that both is and isn’t his. A wet washcloth is pushed into his hands.

It occurs to him that Gaeta made no motion to wipe his face like he did back at the opera, when Mulcahy hadn’t expected anyone to.

He wipes his face.

“… Have you been sleeping better, then?”

Once the option of sitting down in relative safety presents itself, Gaeta realizes he really, really needs to sit down. Half the tables and chairs have been turned into a makeshift barricade, and the other half are too far away. So instead, Gaeta elects to simply lean against the nearest wall and do a slow, careful slide down until he's seated on the floor.

Hm. Maybe the concussion isn't as bad as he thought. He's still dizzy, but it doesn't turn to outright nausea when he moves. That's good.

"Much better," he says, absently. He scratches at a spot of blood on his trousers. "Have you met Pyotr Stamatin?"

While he’s doing that, Mulcahy is calling on some dutiful-looking bystanders for anything like a cold compress. No one’s sure, and they say there probably isn’t, but one of them runs off to ask around and check.

Mulcahy takes his time sitting down; he’s old these days, and getting thrown to the cobblestones twice did him less than no favors.

“I don’t believe so. I may have seen him, though, if you describe him?”

"Mm. Tall," he says. "Dark hair about down to here -- "

He gestures just above one shoulder.

"Way too frakking skinny. He's an artist; lives in one of the apartments above me." Gaeta's hand drifts from the spot near his shoulder to curl in front of his neck, his thumb worrying over the scar.

(And there he pauses. If he says more, how will Mulcahy react?)

"His medium is... emotions, I suppose."

The thumbing over the scar is possibly the most of Gaeta’s usual animatedness that he’s seen.

“… What do you mean?”

Well, no backing out now.

"He's able to -- extract them, somehow. Into a physical substance. It's not permanent," he thinks to add, as if that might soften any potential blow. "But it's enough."

It takes a moment. Then Mulcahy suddenly looks… sad, mostly.

Of course. What a simple, natural thing. If Mulcahy knew of Pyotr before he’d seen what his work does to a person, he can’t say he wouldn’t have turned it down. He still might not. He remembers the temporary relief granted by Mortanne and Zivia, the lifting of his burdens and the tempering—but not removing—of his emotions. But. Oh, Gaeta. Look at him. Mulcahy doesn’t know how the power of a disheveled painter matches up to the work of the divine.

(His paranoid heart whispers, someone else did it better. No wonder he stopped coming.)

He places a hand softly on Gaeta’s shoulder. “Does it hurt?”

Gaeta starts to shake his head, and immediately stops, swallowing down another wince. That's still capable of kicking off a little nausea. Bad idea.

But though his heart can't respond very well to Mulcahy's touch, his body can. It's... nice. Comforting. A body can remember the two of them side by side on Mulcahy's couch, or Gaeta's, or in the green room of Efrain's pocket dimension. He leans into it with a quiet sigh of something almost like relief.

"It's uncomfortable," he says, "but not painful. Either way, it doesn't take very long. And then..." A slight shrug. "I can sleep. And exist."

For a delicate moment, Mulcahy places his forehead on the back of the hand he’s put on Gaeta’s shoulder.

“Of course. I understand.” He raises his head again. “I’ve met Mortanne. The Lady of Death. We spoke, and when we did, I allowed her to lift my burdens for a time. It felt like I could breathe again all of a sudden; like… like I had been screaming for years, and could finally catch my breath.”

A pause.

“… What are you left with, after Pyotr… takes your emotions?”

He exhales, thinking. "Not much. It's not like taking morpha; everything was still there, back then, I could just tolerate it better. Physical reactions stay the same. And there's... clarity. I can think. Most of the time, I feel like I'm walking though a dark room, and I never know when I'll trip over something innocuous and hurt myself. Once the emotions are gone it's like someone turned on a light. I can navigate -- living, for a while."

He looks down at his hands. Rubs away a smear of blood.

Quieter, and still thoughtful, "I don't know if it feels like catching my breath, but it does feel like I'm capable of existing again. Like I used to before the Colonies fell."

“I see.”

He inverts the wet washcloth to its clean side. Carefully, he takes Gaeta’s hand, and wipes away at the blood.

“I’ll admit, I’m still not quite sure about how I feel about this. But. I’m… very glad, that you’ve found something that works for you.”

He just wishes he were a part of it.

Edited 2025-05-30 04:17 (UTC)

He looks up, searching Mulcahy's face. A flicker of -- something -- passes over his otherwise blank expression. Worry? Guilt? It's hard for even Gaeta to say.

"I'm not sure how sustainable it is, is the problem," he admits quietly. "When the emotions come back, they're... worse. Panic attacks for hours. Nightmares that're more vivid than usual. It was like that with the morpha sometimes, too. I think..." Another soft sigh. "I'd seek it out sometimes even when I didn't strictly need it for my leg. The pain wasn't only physical."

How easy it is to be forthright about that. The words slip out with so little hesitation, none of his usual quiet agonizing over how much to say. Shame is not even a seedling yet: Gaeta feels no need to hold his tongue for worry of someone turning their back on him. Or upsetting whoever he's talking to; spurring grief or pity just by virtue of his existence.

"Anyway," vaguely, "what does it say that I only feel like I can live if I'm not feeling anything at all?"

…

“Of course you can think when the emotions are gone, if that’s all that’s left. But you were not made with only half of you in mind.“

He reaches up with the cloth, gently blotting the blood from Gaeta’s face.

“When Mortanne gave my burdens back to me, I did not stagger under the weight; having caught my breath, I felt better suited to carry them again. But I’m not sure if I can be said to be truly living, either. Not well. I pantomime it, on my best days. But I… I’m trying.”

He wipes Gaeta’s forehead, thumb brushing over his hairline. “I don’t know the answer to your question. But. If neither of us know how to live, I think… well. I would like to figure it out with you. If. If you would have me.”

Gaeta draws a shaky breath. Another flicker; this one lasts a moment longer, before he closes his eyes and lets Mulcahy tend to him. There's a stinging in his eyes. Blood that was smeared into them by accident? No. No, it isn't that at all.

When he feels the washcloth lift away next, he wraps his hand around Mulcahy's fingers before they can move again. Gently, he lowers their hands. Clasps Mulcahy's between both of his.

If you'll have me. Of course I will, he wants to say, but how can he say it like a self-evident fact when he left Mulcahy alone for two months? Gods, he asked him to wait and then he didn't come back. Yet here the man is, waiting still, with the same soft patience that would wreck Gaeta's heart. And so often he has called Gaeta the stalwart one.

"Yes." Very soft. "I will." And another unsteady breath. "I do want that. I'm... I'm sorry I didn't come back."

How suddenly Gaeta is overcome when Mulcahy was convinced there was hardly anything left for him at all. Like a bottle drained dry, save for a few drops' worth that cannot be removed except for waiting for them to finally disappear.

Is it that Gaeta is not as empty as he claims, or is it--? Is it because even with those few dregs, so little can do so much? Does he still love him so much?

(When the emotions come back, they're worse. Are they worse, or are they more? Does the love rise too?)

"You know now. It's alright." He reaches up to gently kiss his forehead. A little blessing for the repentant. "When this mess is over, come on out to me. I want to see you, in whatever light your heart is cast in and whatever shadows that torment you. I did not come to love only half of you."

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rolled a 17 on the hit, FINALLY

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