ph_logs | May Event - All Too Familiar

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event

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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"You're in luck - I'm not too far off," she replies, and she already starts heading in the familiar direction. If Erik needs her assistance, it's got to be a nasty one, which by now she feels accustomed to dealing with. Hopefully, it'll be obvious when she nears where exactly they are.

"Thank you," is all she'll hear before the call drops because he needs both hands to wrangle himself.

No doubt she'll find him easily. The zombie he's currently engaged in a knock-out-drag-out fight with is a twisted and mutated version of himself, sporting feathers and talons and a beak where his mouth should be. That, and he is very, very loud when he screeches his frustration at not being able to land a blow to Erik's face.

By the time she comes on scene, she'll find Erik flat on his back beneath the beast, holding back his double by the beak with both hands as the monster attempts to force a killing blow.

"The eyes," he calls to her. "Go for his eyes. I'll hold him."

Drenched in zombie gore, she looks a sight when she appears, wild-eyed and breathing harder from the exertion. But it all fades when she sees the situation in front of her, sprinting until she's close enough to be in position.

The eyes. She can remember that.

Whatever in the hells happened to him to have him die in such a state is something she can interrogate him about later. Instead, she reaches for her lightning, knowing she'll need to fry him. But there's something different in it, when she brings it to being, something she can feel in the same way she knows that to keep casting won't harm her. A...refinement, so to speak - a way to draw her hands back, pull the lightning into something like darts, slim and crackling. An array, neatly divided into two, and all of them draw back with her hand. Tension on invisible bowstring. Aim. Steady.

"Perure!"

And they all fly directly at the Erik-creature's eyes. Each a projectile of pure lightning, coursing through to scorch him from the inside out.

The flash of it all hurts the true Erik's eyes to look at, so he closes them and turns his face away. That's fortunate, since moments later the bird-man's eyes sizzle and pop, sending a hot spray over his cheek. Then, with another loud sizzle and flash bright enough to leak through his eyelids, the screaming creature finally stops convulsing above him. His ruined eyes and face are quite the horror show. Erik is glad to wriggle out from beneath it.

"Thank you," he says, exhaustion evident. "He almost wore me down."

A glance back at that ruined corpse. "Was that a new trick?"

"Yes. My magic's been strangely potent these days - I'm not going to question a useful gift, however long this fluctuation seems to last."

Still though, she's drawing near, looking him over.

"Do you want me to get you to safety? That looked rough."

They don't have to leave, not yet. She can hold off whatever else comes - and he needs to catch his breath, to recover from all of that.

"It certainly was potent, and incredibly timely."

He holds still for her so she can look him over. There are a lot of bloody spots both on his skin and clothes, but there's barely any sign of the wounds; those are already closing up. If only the emotional ones could do so as quickly. He's about to lie and say he's fine, but... it was rough. Maybe he isn't so fine if he really thinks about it.

"I... could use some company on the way back to my home. If it's not too much trouble?"

"Not at all. I'm far from wrung out over this - I'll escort you back."

She needed to head back into town, anyway. The unfortunate part about this problem is that the undead tend to be mobile, but they go towards where people tend to be, which makes clearing out chunks easier than not.

"Are you sure your house is safe enough? We're holding the fort at a few places, so to speak, and it wouldn't be trouble to get you there." But there is comfort in home, in one's own space, and without a clear end to this, it might serve to just keep a firmly locked door.

He accepts that with a quiet "thank you" before falling into contemplative silence for a few beats, unable to meet her eyes. She's right, his home is more vulnerable than a safehouse.

But...

"I would rather have this particular"-clears throat--"breakdown in private."

"Understood. We'll brace the door and keep the light low."

Hopefully the undead would think it was empty, keep searching.

"...will you tell me what this is about, when we're inside?"

She doesn't understand, but she'd like to. To be there for him as he's offered to her.

He finds himself leaning harder into her now, even after the question is asked.

"Yes," he says, surprising himself with this. "I think I'd really... like to talk about it. With you."

She'll understand. She'll understand it better than almost anyone else. He wants her to know.

"All right."

She'll say no more about it until they get to his place. Fairly uneventful, if one can consider a few instances of sending zombies scattering with fire uneventful, but much less exciting than some days. It's when they're inside that she makes sure the door's locked, and makes no moves to turn on the light. Darkvision is a boon, sometimes.

He leaves her to lock the door as he crosses to the stove to strike a match and light the tidy pile of wood and newspaper waiting inside. Softly glowing embers paint his face orange in the dim light. The air smells of fresh mint as he prepares a strainer for his tea pot in the dark. Warm drink would help steady him--so he hopes.

Once all that fuss is done, and he has drinks for both of them in hand, he motions for her to join him at the table.

"That creature you saw was... me." His arms wrap around his chest reflexively, but he doesn't look away from her eyes now. He needs her to see. He knows she will. "That is what I will be if my Beast ever consumes my personality completely."

Coming to settle at the table, she looks at him - not cruelly, but considering. Letting the words breathe lets him know she's taking it seriously, understanding the full breadth of it, and why it was so crucial to kill that creature then. She sees him, and she comprehends.

"Your Beast," she says slowly, giving it the weight she thinks it has. "Is that your name for it?"

A Beast, a compulsion, an Urge. To name the thing gives it shape, makes it a comprehensible foe.

"That's the name vampires give it."

He manages to force his arms back down, to claps his hands on the table in a mirage of calm.

"When a human undergoes the process to become a vampire, a beast is born within them. The animalistic lust for blood is not just a metaphor. As the corpse lies in metamorphosis, the soul is taken to a... liminal space inside themselves. That is where the beast lurks. It chases. It attempts to overwhelm the soul, to change it into something monstrous. If the beast wins, then the fledgling that wakes is a feral wereanimal that must be decisively extinguished. If the soul prevails, they wake as a new vampire with their personality intact.

"But the beast is still close to the surface within them. That is why they need guidance and supervision. As we vampires age and acclimate, we gain tighter control of the beast, but it is always there. Always waiting. We all know that there could come a day when it overpowers our will and transforms us. My soul is most closely tied to my favored animal form, the red tailed hawk, thus that is what you saw and fought."

He'll see how her expression slowly shifts with the explanation, understanding on a level beyond just the process. It's not identical to the situation she had, but it rhymes in its own way. The bloodthirst that needs to be controlled, the beast that wants to dominate and override you. And without control, there is no hope.

The implications, with how the corpses rose from the dead, the numbers with familiar faces, are staggering. And she wonders, if he had not worn the creature down, struggling with it as he did, would she have been able to end it so well? Hopefully, she'll never know.

"...can I ask what happened?"

Because something did. That much is undeniable.

She sees now, he hopes, why he was so determined not to give up on her, no matter what he learned of her past. How could he judge her when he knows so intimately what this feels like? As hard as this is to speak, it's also a relief to be less alone in it.

"I believe it was before you arrived on the island. We were to take the train to the overlook for the winter festival. But the demons interfered. Our nightmares were brought to life. I was... forcibly changed. It drove me mad. I..." he looks away, and as he does, his skin somehow seems greener and more sickly.

"I ate a woman. I tore her arm off and swallowed it whole. Her name was Mary, and she was my friend. She was screaming in horror and pain the entire time, and it made the meat taste so sweet."

Inwardly, she's glad that the only time her nightmares were made manifest was after the ritual. Who knows what she would have done? Doubtlessly she would be carrying the memory the way he carries this.

Looking away, he might miss the subtle changes across her face - quietly horrified, but not able to condemn him. Not for this. Not for something he did when he truly was in the grip of such power, no longer able to bind himself to reason. And all of that said, not when she still does not know the full extent of what she did in the past, and how to weigh that against what demons might twist someone into doing.

(Sitting quiet, still, while he walked around the gathering doing and saying what he liked, while she begged any nerve to so much as twitch.)

But still. She knows how even the slightest change feels like an absolute rejection, and how much he might even be searching for it. There is a painful relief, when however much you hate yourself, someone seems like they're agreeing with you. So Fever rises and drags her chair over, sitting next to him and setting a hand on his arm. Warm, the pulse of life still running through her, and most importantly present.

This is not enough to chase her away.

He trusted that she, of all people, wouldn't be the one to reject him for something like this. Still, the last little bit of anxiety finally quiets as she comes closer. He shuts his eyes and focuses on that bright warm spot of hope that is her touch to his cold skin.

His voice is thick with the tears he's trying so hard to hold back, "I am less afraid of death than I am of becoming that monster again." Yet, now he is forced to live knowing that the possibility will always exist. And there might be nothing he can do to stop it.

"Then make a promise to me that you won't."

It sounds almost childish. It can't be that simple, one might say, it's not that controllable. She knows. She knows the effort it takes to hold it back, the exhaustion and bitterness and the way you have to never waver. How you long for rest like the shipwrecked soul longs for home. She knows it still on her worst days - the phantom imprint of fingernails around her heart.

But sometimes, in the utter mess of it all, simple things are the only ones to cling to. Promise me that, at least, whispering in her mind when she's suffocating and can't find her way out, when she's not in her skin. Promises that keep her from being and doing worse, lifelines that give her a reason outside of herself to keep going. Keep fighting. Keep trying to live a better life.

"Promise me that you'll keep endeavoring to be yourself, not that creature. I'm not going to ask you to promise to reach out when you're struggling, but know that you can. Just...promise that much."

She's got her own accounts to settle in how much she keeps handling events herself, but they don't mean she won't show up for him.

His first instinct, indeed, is to cry out that he can't. He can't. It comes for them all, one day. Vampires are immortal but there's a reason why so few of them truly live forever. They all lose to the Beast eventually.

But that isn't really what she's saying. He realizes that once he's past the knee-jerk. This is a promise he can make. It's one he's already been keeping, informally, with himself. To struggle against his inner beast is to be a vampire.

"I promise. I'll never stop that endeavor. Not until the day I die." He can say that with confidence, because the day he stops holding back the beast is also the day that he dies.

"I'll reach out more, too. That's sound advice." Advice he would give others, so he'd better hold to it himself. "Thank you for the reminder, Fever. For everything."

"It's the least I can do, as your friend."

Her thumb strokes over his skin, trying to soothe him.

"Do you have an executioner, should the worst ever come to pass?"

It's not a question meant to be callous - the opposite, in fact, to show how seriously she's taking this. A contingency plan, when it comes to what destruction they can cause, is almost a requirement.

He takes no offense. He knows this is Fever showing her care, and takes it in exactly that spirit. People like them can't afford not to have a plan.

"I... believe Valdis would take care of that, should the need arise. She would sense it, I'm sure." Especially since she's touched his soul many times now.

"Though, these days I think Pyotr might volunteer to do the deed in her stead."

"Apart from him seeing it as a new way to kill himself, I can't see why he would. Unless your bond has deepened without me looking?"

Because yeah, he could be talking about a worsening of the relationship, but it could also be going into the level of devotion where murder gains a romantic tinge.

"The opposite," he answers miserably. "It's my fault. I told him I was taking his life during our sessions, but I never could. I lied to him, told him that deep sleep was the same as death, and he is rightly angry at me for it."

How ironic that it was his unwillingness to murder that ended it all.

"...And how long have these sessions been going on? All it would take is one person mentioning being a ghost to blow that open."

She's trying to not get on his case, but this is Erik's own fuckup. And a rather glaring one if this has gone on for months.

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gore/eye gore specifically

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cw: cannibalism/gore

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cw: flippancy towards suicide

cw: flippancy towards suicide

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