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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"Ah..." A little helplessly, Pyotr takes stock of himself, finally admitting, "I appear to be in a tree, near the center of town. None of the creatures on the ground seem to be able to reach me, but I don't like my chances if one of those flying monsters show up."

Sheepishly, he asks, "I don't suppose you could...come get me?"

"I'm getting you, and then I'm taking you to Town Hall to be with the others. These beings aren't enough to break through our defenses - not when a number of us are dealing with the more dangerous threats. Just hang on - you'll see me soon enough."

She can't fight with the sending stone in hand, at least not effectively, but she's headed for the center of town. If he sees her first, she hopes he shouts, otherwise she's scanning the trees for him. Clearing a path.

"Yes, alright. I'll try not to get myself killed before then." At the very least he can manage to sit tight until he sees her, although the way the creatures are starting to cluster around the base of the tree is a little alarming...

How fortunate that he's an old hand at being pulled from sticky situations. And Fever is a far prettier sight than his scowling brother; he calls out to her immediately, waving her over without a care for whether she's the real Fever or a monster wearing her face.

...Hm. Perhaps he should have taken a moment to consider that before acting...

To his good fortune, it is her, in her blood splattered robes and all her elemental glory. Steadfast and determined, and cutting her way through the undead with confident fury - a torrent of magic missiles to rid the majority, and those that will not yield get set alight for their troubles. Scorching, searing flesh, paired with eviscerating dagger blows, and they are no more concern to her as she stands under the tree, looking up at him.

"You owe me answers, Pyotr. It's the price of your rescue."

But hopefully he knows she would have come regardless.

Yeah, that's definitely her.

"In the middle of the street?" he raises an eyebrow at her, a last pretense of dignity before he -- very clumsily -- scrambles out of the tree. "I'd hate to distract you from your fun," he adds, a little winded, once both feet are back on the ground.

"The undead are good fun, yes, but right now my priority is seeing you to safety."

She has to figure out a way to build up his physical endurance that he'll actually take to.

"You're more important than playing around with the dead, you know."

"I'm deeply touched." He really is too.

"So what did you want to know?" he wonders out loud as they move out, keeping close to Fever's back. No shame from him for counting on her to protect him; he has too much respect for her glorious strength. "What I've been up to, I suppose? How I wound up in a tree?" Surely she can already guess, in the broad strokes at least.

"How did you die?"

It's blunt, but that's perhaps the only reason for why her calls weren't answered. But it had also been a hope - death can be reversed, while the ferry is rarer. And no one had seen the ferry go in days, so she had to wait and hope.

Right to it then. Pyotr sighs.

"I thought...no, that's not true. One of these monsters looked like Erik in a state of undress. To amuse myself, I let it into my apartment." He looks away, avoiding Fever's eyes.

"Were you going to try and fuck the undead?"

Or have it fuck him. Same difference.

Pyotr groans.

"Yes, yes, I tried to have sexual congress with one of the undead. Although calling it that is a bit of a misnomer; isn't Erik always undead?"

"True, but I suppose I just don't think about him like that. He's too known to me. Fucking his angry corpse, then, if you'd like."

There's a complete absence of judgement here. More the amused manner of a friend hearing about whatever you did at the club last night.

"I'm sorry you ended up dying over it, though."

And Pyotr feels roughly the same level of embarrassed as a college student caught out on the balcony bare-ass naked after a bender, so they're even.

"Don't be," he groans, rubbing his forehead. The fact that he doesn't have a hangover feels cosmically unjust somehow; he wonders if they have anything to drink in whatever place Fever's taking him. "I knew what I was getting into."

"You're my friend, I'm going to be sorry that you died in almost every circumstance. Unless you were really, really stupid about it, like trying to take down one of the demons with no weapons."

She's keeping her eyes and ears out for more zombies, heading back the way she approached.

"Do we need to go anywhere before the safehouse, or can I beg you to stay put and not do that to yourself again?"

"No need to beg," is his answer. "I've had my fill of foolishness for now. What of you?" he suddenly eyes her more closely. "You look like you've raided a medical student's bespoke stimulants cabinet, and I'm one to know. Will you be alright?"

"That remains to be seen," she says, far too casually for the admission. "Somehow, my magic's been working at an extraordinary level, far more accessible than it ever has been - it's like it has no cost at all. I have no clue if this is temporary or not, but I feel fantastic, and I promise you the only things I've eaten or drank have been normal bread and water."

A pause.

"If this is temporary, I have no clue what shape I'll be in when this wears off. Usually my spells exhaust me to some degree, but if they aren't..."

Hm. That could be bad.

"Do I really look that terrible?"

"Terrible? Not yet. You look too good, is the problem. Like someone's galvanized you with an electrode. You're going to crash hard once this wears off, that's what worries me."

He puts a hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. "If you feel yourself starting to crash, go back to my flat. There's nothing wrong with the lock, I just didn't use it. And I haven't slept in the bed in days, so the sheets should still be clean."

Of course she can insist that she go back to her own - for one, Pyotr wasn't murdered there - but the offer feels like a gentleness she can't resist. If she's going to crash, at least one person will know where she is, in a place with a door that locks.

"The point of a bed is to use it," she says hypocritically, knowing her couch has seen a good portion of her unsettled rest at times. "Fine, I promise I will. But if I'm not crashing, when this is all over, I'll let you know that the threat's passed."

Which she can do, after she makes sure he's safe with the others and she's gone back out to fight. The dead finally start to fall and stay down, and word travels swift - they're gone. They're returned to the ground. The threat has finally passed.

Pyotr will get another sending stone call, brief.

"I think I'm going to head to your flat now. There's nothing else to be done on the streets but cleanup at this point."

What that means becomes clearer to her the closer she gets there, head pounding like an anvil, her body starting to weigh a ton. Everything she'd been ignoring, neglecting, letting settle for later is coming back in, and it's the second worst she's ever felt in her life. Possibly first, if it increases any more. This was the cost of everything, of flying so high for days, and feeling nothing but confidence in herself.

By the time Pyotr gets there, she's managed to get into the bathtub and turn on the shower, scrubbing away grime and her eyeliner, and she's...just sitting in it. Knees to her chest, trying to decide what to do next. The water blocks her hearing him come in, otherwise she'd have picked a knife and hoped it wasn't some kind of clever burglar come to call.

"You look like a half-drowned cat," Pyotr informs her, gently amused, before leaving again to fetch relatively clean towels and a blanket. When he returns, it's to kneel directly onto the tile floor next to the bathtub and turn the water off before beginning to gently dry her hair. "Are you hurt anywhere?" he asks her quietly.

"My head," she admits softly, eyes flicking up towards Pyotr. She makes no move to stop him from this, too exhausted to be anything other than grateful for his assistance. "It aches so badly I can't think. Can't. Can't focus."

She's not otherwise injured - the gown did help immensely in keeping her intact - but the headache is blurring the edges of her thoughts and the details of his face, making some things feel more acute to her senses.

"That's only to be expected, after how hard you worked to protect everyone," he tells her gently, although he does make a quick search of her scalp for open cuts and bruising as he dries her hair. "You did very well."

It's really not that different from putting Andrey to bed after one of his benders or a student riot. Not a role Pyotr's played in a long time, but he still remembers the steps. Wrapping another towel around Fever's shoulders, he takes her hand and helps her to her feet, instructing her to lean on him as much as she needs to.

"I'm putting you to bed," he decides out loud. "You'll need to eat eventually, but like this you'll only make yourself sick."

Fever ends up leaning at least half her weight on him, trusting that in her exhaustion he'll lead her to where she needs to go. Bed sounds fantastic, a chance to solidly sleep instead of having to fight or move or think - every system in her crying out for rest after being pushed so hard. But she did well, he says. She protected them, helped instead of harmed. That's enough for her.

"Don't think I'd even be awake to swallow." Food has to wait, until her limbs possess the capability of bringing anything to her mouth.

Sure, her own flat doesn't have a murder scene in it, nor smell of turpentine, but there is a friend here who has made it abundantly clear she can rely on him as much as she would offer out to him. That makes this place safer, better to rest her head in - and when she gets under the sheets, she finds she cares about very little beyond doing just that.

"Pyotr?" No louder than she's been this entire time, looking as drained as she feels. "...thank you."

Can she hear the surprise in his voice? Surely not, she's half asleep already. But he is surprised...and gratified. "You're welcome," he tells her quietly, as he helps her into the bed and tucks her in like a child. "Go to sleep, kotenok. I'll be here you when you wake up."

Sure enough, when Fever wakes several hours later Pyotr will be sprawled in the wooden chair next to the bed, deeply asleep with his legs stretched out and his neck resting uncomfortably against the chair's wooden back. He's still wearing the same clothes he had on when he put Fever to bed. Has he been sitting there all this time?

Practically as soon as he tucks her in, she falls asleep. There is nothing but trust that he'll still be there, gratitude for the kindness he's showing her, grateful for the rest. Deep, deep she sinks, unmoving and dreamless - in a place of safety, she would not hear even someone stumbling in. And her soul is allowed to recover in the exact way it needs, until she slowly rises up from sleep, floating upwards at an easy pace. Fever feels rested, and so when she looks over, the feeling she has is merely fondness.

Should have just crawled in next to her, really, but too late for him to do so now.

Getting up, she decides it's easier to ask forgiveness later, and pulls out one of his shirts - on her, it's long enough to be a dress. She's absolutely starving, so that'll have to get sorted, after drinking water and making sure Pyotr isn't on the verge of death himself. That couch is definitely going to need a replacement, in the end.

He'll find himself being woken with a hand on his arm and a glass of water extended to him. Fever still hasn't put on her makeup yet, so she looks a degree less intense than she usually does, trying to rouse him from lethargy.

"Perhaps by the time your back gives out on you, you'll have drawn up plans for a new creation to replace it."

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May Event - All Too Familiar

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