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

Agent Connecticut / CT | OTA

[liesdontfindyou]

Please, please tell me what they look like [Constabulary]

As soon as CT's back in town and sure that Ripley is going to keep out of trouble, she makes for the station. It's as good a place as any to try and barricade to provide at least stretches of safety and it's where she keeps most of her resources. Gun, bullets, armoured bracers. And she's in charge, now, at least of the DSA, so it's her job.

So, she does what she can. Secures the exits, delegates duties where it makes sense to, checks in with whichever enforcers will pick up their stones, and starts a very rough board keeping track of what's happening.

She ducks in and out of the station throughout the crisis, whether to catch her breath and eat, drink, rest or to update what they know about the situation as word gets around that they need to kill as many of these zombies as possible.

This is going to be a long few days.

Did they seem afraid of you? [Around Town, cw: violence]

Out in the fray, CT plays it carefully.

Stealth has always been her weapon of choice and the more she can keep to the shadows, keep herself unnoticed, the better odds she has of catching one of the undead unawares before they can catch her. Knife in hand, she creeps around town and tries to pick off the most isolated of the walking dead with a blade through the neck or skull.

Sometimes, she shows off another trick up her sleeve: an illusory duplicate of herself draws the attention of a zombie and either she jumps it, or beckons someone it was threatening away to safety with her.

Most of the time, this is enough. Most of the time, it doesn't have to turn into a big fight.

(She isn't exactly seeking out faces she knows, but should she come across them... isn't it only right to make sure they're dealt with?)

Of course, she isn't always so lucky. Sometimes she misjudges and finds herself caught between a number of corpses, having to fight her way out the hard way. It's during one of these moments that she reaches for her sidearm and finds— nothing, nothing but an an empty holster. What the fuck—

In her distraction, one of the zombies lunges at her and she barely jumps back in time. "Shit—!"

They were kids that I once knew [Wildcard/Zombie]

Carolina deals with the CT that died after the cult investigation one day, but it rises again on others and can be found around town, throat slashed.

[ Also hit me if you have anything else specific in mind. ]

Constabulary

[ss_buttcrack]

She won't be alone there. Crichton takes his duty as her second in command seriously in a crisis. He's right beside her nailing boards to the windows and checking the ammunition stores.

"You know," he says with hammer still in hand, "this reminds me of hurricane season in Florida, only, I think I'd prefer the rain over this..."

A few beats, and then he adds, "By the way, I don't think I ever told you how my chat with Carolina went, did I?" His timing, as always, couldn't possibly be worse.

[liesdontfindyou]

CT pauses mid-motion as she's picking up another piece of boarding, blinking at him, before she shakes it off and follows through. "Your sense of timing is truly impeccable, Florida man."

She holds the wood up against the window. "No, you didn't. But I figured you escaped without being punched, if only because you didn't turn up to work with a black eye."

[ss_buttcrack]

Florida Man gives her a cheeky wink, before getting in there with his hammer to nail the board in.

"It was a near miss," he admits. "But only my shirt collar got roughed up in the end. Sadly, she wasn't interested in being friends, but I believe her when she says she'll give you space."

[liesdontfindyou]

"That sounds about right. I only really realised after I left you to your own devices just how much information I'd left you with that she... would probably rather I hadn't. Which I can't even explain without telling you the thing she wouldn't want me to tell you, so, you'll just have to trust me on that."

If Crichton hasn't figured out that the Director's dead wife was also Carolina's mother on his own, she's not going to tell him or speed up the process, in the interests of both Carolina's privacy and her own safety.

"She's been keeping her distance except when she can't avoid it. Or when I ask her to talk." She frowns. "I can't tell how much our last talk actually helped either of us."

[ss_buttcrack]

"She didn't like what I already knew; you're right about that. She didn't want to volunteer more so, for the sake of my head staying attached, I respect keeping her secret." He's had plenty of his own he'd rather not have shared, lord knows. Sadly, this place has a habit of spilling the beans like it or not. (This will inevitably get his curiosity turning on the subject, but if he figures it out on his own he can still say CT didn't tell him.)

"What else is there to do but talk about it?" he answers sympathetically. "You might just have to keep doing it. But, if you want to talk a little bit about how it went for you, I'm here to listen."

[liesdontfindyou]

"If I'd have known someone else would turn up..." maybe she'd have been more careful about what she shared. Carolina, more than any of the others, has so much of her personal life tangled in the program in ways CT had no idea she should have thought to account for. Thank god she thought better of ever putting the words 'she was his daughter' out there.

A sigh. "I asked her as many questions as I could to clear up my picture of what happens, after I die. I— made sure I knew she was telling the truth." She does not elaborate on how. "So I at least know as much as she does, now, or close enough. But we just keep ending snapping at each other, hitting each other's buttons."

[ss_buttcrack]

"All you ever did was tell your story. Maybe she doesn't like what role she played in it but that's how the cookie crumbles." It wouldn't be fair for CT to have to keep it all bottled up on the off chance that someone might die and get sent here months or years later.

"I know how it is when you just can't seem to... get past something." Him and Arthur never could. "So, I guess, if you two don't have anything else to say to each other you could just leave it at that. If that's what you want."

His gaze becomes just a tiny bit sharper now, "How exactly did you make sure?" He may not like the answer but he's compelled to ask.

[liesdontfindyou]

"I don't even know if that's what I want. We— talked a bit about the possibility of finishing things out together, at home, but I don't know how going home works yet and..." It's complicated. Sigh. "She was as much of a victim of the program as I was. I know that, logically, it's just... harder to remember that when we're arguing."

Too easy to remember the pillar of cyan that kept coming at her in that final fight. Too easy to remember the CO who she could never truly trust.

Her teeth catch her cheek. "...I asked Neil to enchant something for me."

[ss_buttcrack]

"It's all right. You can give it more time. I... don't think we're going anywhere just yet." Not when their progress is frustratingly stalled. Damn devils.

His stomach churns at her answer. He wants to leave the benefit of doubt, but there's a quiet hardness that's settled into his expression now. "Did she know she was being charmed, CT?"

[liesdontfindyou]

"No." She won't lie, much as it'd be in her favour to. "But it was just a temporary AOE spell. It lasted maybe twenty minutes and it wasn't true compulsion to answer, just... truth if she chose to answer. I didn't push her. I wasn't interested in that. I just— needed to know she wasn't lying to me. And she wasn't."

She's not entirely proud of it, but she needed to know and she struggled to imagine Carolina agreeing.

"...Gaeta suggested it. It's not his fault I followed through, but— he knew I wasn't going to be able to settle unless I was sure," because he knew how he'd feel if one of his old commanders turned up, "and we figured it had uses beyond this. I still have a few charges left, so theoretically I can use it during investigations."

[ss_buttcrack]

Crichton closes his eyes and sucks a long, deep breath in through his nose. He's disappointed in both of them, CT and Gaeta, but he understands why they'd both feel the need to guarantee the truth. He can't be angry, when he knows what he knows, but it doesn't make him happy. Suggesting they use it during investigations puts a lead balloon in his belly. Would it be useful? Of course. But can he really justify using something like that on others? After the ways he's had his own mind messed with? No, not unless they have no other options.

Finally, he looks back up at her, "CT, I don't like that you did that. I get why, you know I do, but I can't approve of something like this. I'm not going to tell anyone, especially not her, but I don't think you should ever do that again. Feels like crossing a line we have no business crossing."

[liesdontfindyou]

"I'm not thinking of using it on normal residents. But if there's a situation like the cult vision, or someone is caught out in an even more incriminating position then Elias... then in circumstances like those I don't think we can rule out using every tool we have at our disposal."

She doubts it would work consistently on demonic types, even Neil's protective charms can only do so much against infernal power, but if less powerful but no less potentially dangerous individuals show themselves...

They have to figure this place out eventually. And she's just a bogstandard human with no extra abilities to her name. It's hard to see a possible edge and not take it.

"...I'm not proud of using it on Carolina either. I've got no intention of using it flippantly or for something of such— personal interest again."

Tomorrow, at the Constabulary

[2onostromo]

She times the passing from one day to the next to the approximate minute.

Ridiculous, she knows, but Ripley spurns the idea of wasting any more time than necessary. In twenty-four hours, she manages this: barricade front door using kitchen table and two chairs, close the curtains, feed Wigglesworth late lunch, dinner, and breakfast the following morning, eat a lackluster dinner, drink first cup off coffee, clean (an attempt is made), read (an attempt is made), abandon book to pace, play with Wigglesworth (he's uninterested, the bastard), drink second cup of coffee, do not sleep.

She attempts sleep. Wakes routinely and to old, bad dreams. Raking claws and rubbery skin, silver-toothed mouth tucked inside an elongated jaw. She hasn't dreamed of it in three weeks and four days. She jots this down in a journal at her bedside.

Bathed, dressed, armed with pickaxe and hammer, she makes for the door. Stops dead in her tracks (what an awful mother she is!), and peppers Wiggleworth's face in little kisses. "Don't do drugs. I'll be back soon."

The air outside is heady and rancid.

Ripley doesn't anticipate making it to the Constabulary without incident, and she's correct. Five undead lunge at her along the way, three of which she successfully avoids.

The fourth charges her at full speed, a tangle of limbs, loose jaw and half obliterated chest. The distance needed to reach her is a wide enough berth that she prepares herself well, axe in hand, momentum carried forward in a swing that sprays blood and sends the thing floundering onto its back.

She feels contaminated. Remembers, like a hot flash, her mother's monthly ravings about bloodborne pathogens and disease.

The fifth knocks her hard to the ground. Her axe goes flying.

Three hard bashes to the temple with her hammer does it in. It slumps on top of her, leaking, immovable dead weight she must wiggle out from under in order to escape.

For fuck's sake.

Ripley arrives like she's trudging home after a hard shift in the mines— axe dragging, shoulders slumping, and although she's smattered in blood, none of it is her own. There's that, at least.

She spots CT waiting for her outside.

By way of traditional greeting, "You're still alive."

[liesdontfindyou]

For one stomach-sinking moment, CT isn't sure that Ripley is. From a distance the dark splatters of blood seem to be almost all of her, a sight that make CT's insides lurch. It's only when she gets closer that she can see it's not her own, see the lack of wounds behind the red, the lack of tears in clothing. That, more than even her voice, is reassurance enough to remember to breathe.

"I did promise," she says, already beckoning Ripley to come inside. The windows are all boarded from within but the door has to remain accessible, barricaded with a desk and cabinet they can pull back and forth.

Her own clothes are dirtied from time spent out in the streets, a long day fighting and organising, but her skin is clean—the station comes with the luxury of water on-site. A good home base for the crisis in many ways.

"Are you okay?"

[2onostromo]

"Anyone can make a promise. It's whether they'll keep them I'm never sure about." Until proven otherwise, and Connie's done just that.

She leads Ripley into the station, and Ripley's body sags against her's for the duration of their walk. Desk and cabinet are cleared then pushed back into place. No light comes in through the windows, turning the space into a dim, timeless chasm. Some faces she recognizes, others she does not. Everyone looks tired.

Everyone is tired.

"Once I get this shit off my face, I will," She says, tone aiming for a joke and missing, too exhausted to pick it up and try again. Ripley props her axe against a desk, eager to get it away from her. She isn't a fighter, necessity or otherwise.

"You guys look like you're holding down well. Learn anything?"

[liesdontfindyou]

She can't disagree with that sentiment, so she doesn't.

"A few things. Each body rises again twenty-four hours later. Anyone who dies revives as standard but adds another zombie to the count." Things that they could have made an educated guess about, even early in the crisis, but that could only be confirmed by waiting to see. "And that all we can apparently do is keep killing them until someone called 'the High Priestess' can help."

Which isn't quite as encouraging as she'd like it to be. Hates that it's a case of having to wait it out until someone steps in to assist, hates that there's no solid number to work toward—not that she's sure how they'd ever be able to tell, even if there were.

She cups Ripley's jaw so she can look at her, really make sure that there's no wounds beneath the stains on her face, then breathes. "Come on. You can clean up in the washroom."

[2onostromo]

The information isn't what she had hoped, I Spy's game bringing them no closer to safety than yesterday. They stand in approximately the same position, fitted in a pair of glasses to fix the blur but which solves no other issue.

'High Priestess' scalds Ellen for reasons she can't place. The aggrandizing quality of the title, maybe. The way it reminds her of MUTHER, an entity so far removed yet intrinsically tangled in her crew's survival, who'd ultimately failed them. A cage-mother. An empty protector. She imagines the priestess speaking in its same electronic, matronly drone. Descending from the sky to offer unhelpful wisdom, and as charismatic as an automated voice messaging system, only to disappear between clouds.

"How generous. You think she's a fashionably late kind of girl?" Then, seriously, "It can't take long, right? We have plenty of fire power, even if we are outnumbered."

Ripley's chin goes limp, yielding to thumb and forefinger. Dull pressure of fingertips where mandible meets teeth. CT's sharp eyes and baby's face make a disjointed pair, she thinks.

"Okay."

She follows CT.

[liesdontfindyou]

"I hope so. Most of the undead aren't huge threats on their own, so they're easy enough to put down. We'll be getting most of our number that way."

She leads to the small, one-person washroom, just a sink, counter and toilet. Signs of previous use for just this purpose are scattered about—towels with dried stains, an abandoned dirty jacket. CT grabs one of the cleaner towels and runs the tap.

"The thing that worries me most is how much damage the strongest of us can do. Neil and Valdis alone..." She hasn't seen either in action much, but she knows they're dangerous when they want to be. "Or. No. That's a lie. The thing that worries me most is not knowing what triggered this."

It doesn't feel like just Aster or Eligos.

[2onostromo]

"They're probably out there right now, searching for themselves. I don't know Neil, but Valdis doesn't seem like the type to pawn off that responsibility to someone else." She shifts her feet. "If they die trying, though... The pile will keep getting bigger and bigger. They'd better know what they're doing."

The washroom is cramped and uninteresting. Blood-scent hangs in the air, byproduct of yet another byproduct; towels not yet collected to be washed. The least of their worries. Ripley pitches herself down onto the closed lid of the toilet and waits. She scans under her nails. Imagines (a thinly veiled horror in itself) the hoard of undead bacteria there. Never touch dead things. Even with sticks.

She hums an acknowledgment, tips her head, stares at scuffed tile. "Once things quiet down, you'll have your chance to take testimonies. Someone around here has to have some idea of what's going on. Heard or seen something— has context we don't. You think it could be sabotage?"

[liesdontfindyou]

"They do." She thinks they do. They're both highly capable people. They'll be doing whatever they can to deal with the problem.

Drowning the towel in the cool water, she tries not to think too hard about the alternative. Takes a breath and squeezes the worst excess from the material before she turns to Ripley, sat waiting, and gently moves her head by the chin so she can wipe the blood from her face.

"Sabotage is... I don't know if it's quite the right word, but I don't know what to call it. But with only two head demons left... maybe it could be Eligos, maybe. Using the faces of ourselves and our loved ones against us again fits him. In theory." In practice... she's not so sure. One of those itching feelings beneath her skin, like the most obvious solution isn't good enough to scratch it.

[2onostromo]

"I don't know. It all seems a little... sloppy for their standards, doesn't it? The nightmares, the theatre performances— they enjoy setting a stage. Stripping us of every advantage. Here, we have guns, homes to hide in, resources. Don't you think they'd take them away, if they could? And if they can, what's stopping them?"

It also begs the question; who else is there?

Ripley drapes her arms loosely around CT's knees, palms spread flat like something half-melted at her calves. If she could— that is to say, if CT weren't actively wiping blood from her face— she might have pressed her forehead to her chest.

Idly, the kind of thought shared without thinking first, "My mother would have a heart attack if she saw me like this."

[liesdontfindyou]

"Mm. That's true. Most of the time, at least. The plague was similar to this, but..." it still doesn't quite fit. This isn't purely Aster or Eligos and there's no chance in Hell they're working together right now, not given Aster's long-term plans. "No, they'd still do it differently. Which only really leaves one possibility."

And she's still not sure where it fits in with his plans. There's less of a pattern to observe, with that wildcard.

(She's not being vague on purpose. Bad habit.)

Gentle and practical at once, she continues to wipe away the blood. "Yeah?" She reaches back to wash and re-wet the towel, then returns to cleaning. "Got a thing about mess, fluids?"

[2onostromo]

“And that is…?” She elongates the s, quirking her brows for emphasis. Forefinger traces idly along muscle threads at the back of CT’s knee. “—Another work secret that I, a lowly civilian, don’t get to be privy to?”

She couldn’t possibly make a conjecture about the isle’s moving parts. Political histories steeped in magic, eldritch inclusions like pieces from dreams she cannot entirely recall.

“Mm-hm.” Eyes flutter closed, yielding to the cold that wipes gently across them. “It wasn’t dirt or mud— just people. Their germs, their blood, their diseases. She used to send me off with these pamphlets about airborne illnesses and how to avoid them; which surfaces on a ship are the dirtiest. For some reason that always felt pointed. Like she thought I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Ellen speaks the subject into existence without the typical sense of mourning; somewhere between matter-of-fact and fiercely fond.

“She was a geomorphologist for the Company before she got sick. She’s not actually dead. Or, maybe she is, I don’t know. I left while she was alive. Dad, too. They aren’t together, though he swears he’s still got a chance.”

[liesdontfindyou]

"Oh, no, I'm just—" she laughs at herself, a little. "Being me, I guess. I mean Nyarlathotep. The chaos god. He doesn't seem to directly interfere as often as the demons do, but he's around. Maybe he was getting bored."

Tired of sitting around just watching the soap opera play out, decided it was time to cause some drama directly for once. Last month was quieter than most, in the fallout of the opera and Efrain's demise.

She listens to Ripley's explanation quietly, whilst she meticulously works at erasing all signs of gore. "I suppose that job combined with getting sick herself would be the perfect breeding ground for some hang-ups. I used to hide my teenage smoking habit from Ma for similar reasons."

Miners and lung damage. She stopped when she realised just how right her Ma had been.

"They sound like the stubborn sort."