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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"Didn't want to hog the dance floor, but if you insist!"

As if she could or would say no. By now, Carolina has some of her measure in fighting - her tendencies for evasion if she doesn't have a shield to block with, the high mobility, and always looking for an opening, and she brings that to fight the undead as well. But magic flows from her freely in a way that shows the whole picture now. Bolts of fire going towards the pair on her own side, who screech in slow motion - hilarious, she'll be reenacting that later.
It could end there, but she's tempted to show off in kind, and so right now, she takes the fire. Doesn't question why it's moving with her so easily today, only revels in a partner that takes her and synchronizes to her breath and heart. It spins, grows, engulfs dead flesh and chars it to a blackened crisp, weaving over and under upon itself into a net the zombies cannot run from. Draped over, wrapped around. and she pulls ties taut. Bound in twofold way, then, caught by the fiery weft and seared until they drop, still burning like logs of flesh that slowly reveal charred bones. A too familiar scent, after travelling through cursed lands, but today it is more than welcome.

Focus. Don't let the others slip out of your grasp, or they'll be back to full speed.

"By all means," she delays her acceptance of this special gift— flesh to be beaten, wrung, scored; victims to magic inertia— to nod Fever into their pas de deux. A pair of zombies flank her left side, making swings and missing, staggering over stones. She parries, dips, plays evasive, head fixed in Fever's direction like a ballerina spotting her turns. Her attention relents to nothing.

That is, until juvenile excitement wins over and she bursts on fast-foot to accept her gift.

No knife, no guns. She'll savor this.

She's on the first corpse in an instant, bear-hugging arms around its hollowed chest to slam it backward onto the ground. Dead vertebra shift and pop. It throws itself onto hands and knees and gets up— good. Carolina pirouette, fashions momentum and drives her heel into its gut. Something squelches. An organ, maybe, or pocket of gristle. Again, it rises. Starts a lunge and is met by an explosion of force— heel and sole colliding hard to snap the fragile neck. It drops.

Carolina rolls her neck, a proud beast.

"Had a ballet recital like this once. My cavalier called me a bitch at rehearsal, so I kicked him during the performance." She grins wryly over her shoulder, "On accident."

"Oh, of course. From the little I know, it's quite a demanding practice."

Her eyes still keep a glow - holding the spell in place for now, keeping the dead bodies slower. But her concentration has always had to endure watching events that she'd rather give her full attention, and she stays steady. They're both showing off, she knows, and she likes the give and take, performing and witnessing, audience and star. That one won't be rising again - disappointing. Carolina deserves better opponents.

"A tiny mistake - who could blame you, in the heat of the moment? He should have moved out of the way."

She hopes it bruised deep.

"It is," She contends. Lands right-hook to collapsed cheekbone, sends the second zombie staggering, though not yet finished. Not a chance. "It becomes like speaking. Learn the language and you can say anything without ever opening your mouth. I always liked that. Deferring language to the body."

Quad muscles flex, frenzied, down into ankles, into feet, propelling her forward to land one, two, three kicks in quick succession. A rhythm. A sentence.

"He could never stick a landing. All his words fell out from under him. That night, he knew exactly what I'd meant."

Fuck you.

And she hadn't even needed to curse.

A laugh, one of genuine amusement and encouragement. Good job. If he was going to call his partner a bitch, then he deserved whatever she brought, whatever she told him in front of the crowd, and it'd be up to him to have to recover.

"Are you talking to me, then, every time you throw my ass down in the dirt?"

Unspoken, and layered behind it: and what were you saying the day that we met?

"Always."

Isn't it obvious?

"Sometimes I'm thanking you for throwing gasoline where I want fire. Sometimes, when I've got your cheek in the dirt, it's to ask whether you think I'm playing games. People need to be pushed. It's what invents our drive. Sometimes that's all it is; you drive me."

The zombie channels its slackened weight into a swing of its arm. Carolina catches it, bends elbow joint backward until it pops.

She isn't obtuse to the latter question, not required to be spoken aloud, like so many others. Carolina considers leaving it unanswered, but doing so feels like defeat.

She catches the zombie's throat between her forearm and bicep, positioned at its back. Gaze set over its shoulder with Fever clear in her line of sight. It struggles, beats closed fists against her shoulders as she forces the remnants of life from its throat.

"Any sentence I tried to string together fell apart and I hated you for it. I felt like that boy." Struggle, gurgle, crunch. Dead fists fall limp to its sides. "Incapable."

With the last zombie re-dead for the moment, the spell concludes, and the light that lingered near Fever's eyes ends. Still, she feels like she's flying high - able to keep going, pushing herself further. And she thinks she understands, a little, enough to fold it into her view for a moment. What was she saying when she was goading her, pressing her into that corner?

Probably something like I was told you needed a kick in the teeth, and I came to deliver. Nothing Carolina would have context for.

"You weren't incapable. But where I spoke, you shouted, and so, you didn't hear me."

And that was why they ended up as they did, lightning carving itself into Carolina's torso. It was the only way she was going to listen.

"I think you're onto something there."

The admittance doesn't come easily. It's heavy and cumbersome like the body at her feet; weight she'd prefer to step over and ignore, cross on from one event to the next without looking back. She's become belligerent in her rage. Consequence of death, or maybe an inevitable splintering. This is a realization Carolina agonizes over. One she can't fix into a sentence, but which comes as long, pointed stares at the scar across her torso most mornings.

She steps over the body and acknowledges the fault.

"How's my volume now?"

"Perfectly matching mine."

Which is why she keeps showing up, keeps accepting that while she'll never match Carolina's strength, she can match her stubbornness. Keeps engaging - sure, her father may have shown her the path, but it was her choice to walk it. It's her choice to keep approaching.

"Do you want to know what I heard?"

Before she can answer, though, she sees a duo of dead Yoricks stumbling their way, and falls back to Carolina. No help needed - her hands move before she even raises an eyebrow, and her eyes flash red, bright, a sheen over their original shade.

"Tormentum."

Six large darts, divided by the foes, all aimed at their head. The raw force cannot be avoided - each carries the strength of one of Carolina's punches, a crossbow bolt aimed between the eyes. They shudder and fall back, shot down by the concussive blasts.

Edited 2025-06-11 19:20 (UTC)

Carolina opens her mouth, question resting on the flat of her tongue and is interrupted by keening; by red eyes transfixed, luminescent glaze obscuring color as Fever invokes her sorcery. Tormentum. Torment.

The word is unnaturally dulcet, when she says it.

Brilliant light forms above head. Shapeless at first, then accuminating to six talon points. Carolina throws her head back to watch the armada tremble, draw backward as if taut against invisible bowstrings, then pierce their targets decisively.

The undead collapse.

It's a showy, violent, breathtaking display.

Carolina draws attention, gathers it up, hands it to her.

"Tell me."

Against a powerful opponent, this artillery would be merely arrows shot from atop a wall - irritating, but not so much as to slow. But against an ordinary foe, a soul who hadn't steeped their heart in combat, the ballista strikes true, and they fall. And Fever only turns enough to catch Carolina's eyes with her own, still ready for when more of the revived dead want to come and interrupt.

"Agony. A woman in a strange land, where nothing is like it was before - no connections, no one who already knows you, expected to include new natural laws into your thinking, where you're told you can start again when you didn't want to go back to the beginning. It frustrated you, and it pained you, that there was no cure for your position but time."

The little curve at the corner of her mouth only grows. Of course she knows. It's how she felt the first time the world shifted from underneath her feet.

"Stop me if I'm wrong, but...it'd make you feel better to win. To have the control back in your hands, you making all the decisions. You'd feel more centered."

Carolina draws herself inward. Solidifies to cold aloofness, a prey animal spotted between pushes, too thoroughly seen for its own comfort. She asked and Fever answered. She has no one to blame for this spotting but herself, and to turn away from it now is a cowardice Caroline cannot— will not— permit.

The brazen reminder of her situation stands like a formidable adversary before her. It beats its chest; delights in the fact it cannot be so easily taken down. What strides Carolina takes to kill it— to forcibly remove herself from the isle— are useless. She can't leave. Her time is no longer her own to spend.

There is no solution.

Fever's fishhook smile pierces her.

She steps a few haughty paces forward.

"What, you say I'm capable, and now you think I need to be handed wins like a kid? You think that'll make me feel better? How am I supposed to make actionable decisions in a place that undoes itself at the expense of everyone in it?"

Thinking big-picture. Missing the details.

And she is met by answering steps, narrowing the space between them.

"Not handed victory. Handed control. Whether you wrest it from someone's grasp or find it offered up to you, it would settle that thing in you that wants power. Aren't you soldiers all about discipline, anyway?"

She might be a fighter, an adversary, a combatant, but she's no soldier herself. Never will be. Carolina will never know why she shies from any authority, why she seeks no leadership.

"We are," she says, voice solid like stone. Coming from some deep place within her throat. The closer she steps (open ravine narrowed to a split in the earth where bodies cram themselves), the wider Carolina sprawls. All bulk and height coming up from the ground, topped by flame.

Discipline might as well be her middle name.

"You talk about it like you're sure it'll work. Like you're trying to sell me something." Control. The word buzzes at the back of her skull. Electrifies dead air to a swelling jitter. She feels it on her tongue like the taste of a battery.

"So, are you giving it to me, or should I be ready to wrestle?"

"Would you trust it, if it was just given to you? Or would it be more honest to know you made me hand it over?"

Shimmering blue, stained by blood as vivid as her eyes, all will and motion that refuses to settle. Unruly chaos, compared to the steel and well trained strength in front of her.

Just her fingertips on Carolina's chest, over where she knows the scar must be. Her scar.

"It doesn't have to be me. But it could be."

And before she can say anything else, she hears a death rattle, a pained and low groan coming from behind.

"...for fuck's sake."

Is that Crichton, when she turns around to see who it is? Yeah, those eyes, that height, and that ass are unmistakable. And he's got his neck torn open, so he's definitely dead as he's charging the pair of them.

For fuck's sake is right. It's the second time she's opened her mouth to speak, and the second time she's been interrupted by the undead. Their speared army crawlers were forgivable, but this? Crichton? It's like he's made a pact with Death, reanimated for the sole purpose of pissing her off. Look, he's even smiling.

Carolina sets her jaw. Ghost-touch of fingers against her chest, like they've never left.

"Careful," She says on instinct, Commanding Officer's tone etched into her vocal cords (and despite Fever being perfectly capable of taking him down herself). But Crichton is fast. Wide, on account of the ass. A clumsy force to be reckoned with. He barrels forward on long legs and throws his weight into Carolina. They scrabble for a beat, all claws and fist fulls of hair, until she's able to cinch him in a headlock.

"If I'm going to make you hand over anything, you have to be worth the effort. Come here. No magic. Use your hands. Get a couple good ones in, like I showed you."

A commander's voice, but Fever can't help the prickle in her mind. She doesn't need to be told, she can step back on her own, but she complies because there's nothing else she can do. Can't fling a spell and risk getting Carolina in the crossfire, and only the darts would be able to be as precise as she wants on such short notice.

But it turns out that she doesn't need to ready a second volley. Instead, the order is given, and Fever adds in an eyeroll - no magic? Seriously? When she just showed how powerful it can be? - but slowly comes over. Slowly, to show her distaste for the idea, before forming a fist in the way she'd been taught and taking swings.

She won't do the same amount of damage Carolina would - can't, when her frame is smaller and her training less - but there's force behind it. A drive, as Carolina put it. This thing isn't her friend, and how could it wear his face? Aim where it'd be softer on a living person, no need to break her bones if she could instead bruise and rupture internally. Solar plexus, kidneys, liver. And then his face, to make it even less like Crichton's own.

Smugness etches into tan, war-weathered features; Yep, no magic. Why call upon lousy weather when you've got all the strength you need in your fists? In tendons stretched taught, in muscle threads severed and rejoined, body burning fuel in a force explosive enough to knock a man unconscious. It's a wonder what correct posture and momentum can do. Fever's is... getting there.

Crichton's gut folds like a cushion against her fist. His knees buckle, stiffen, then buckle again. He does not fall. Not with his throat pinched between Carolina's forearm and bicep. She holds him the way a trainer holds the dummy bag steady for her pupil. Watches, rapt yet always scrutinizing, as fists fly.

There's grace to magic; so what? Watching Fever lob hooks and jabs into the man's nose, is as beautiful as any light show.

"Remember, hit with the first two knuckles. Not the whole hand. Unless you're keen on breaking it. How'll you shoot your lightening then?"

Crichton splutters globs of old blood from his nose and throat.

"See? He agrees."

"With great difficulty," she returns, already knowing the answer. How many times had she ended up taking a wrong blow in battle and needed to cast through pain? It's doable, but it's not fun.

Yet she knows that's not what Carolina means, and tightens up her posture to be more accurate, better form. It's different than casting, where every nerve sings and shines, all that light. This demands presence, forces herself to anchor into her own skin to be part of it or else fall away. Hit him again. Again. If he was yourself, you wouldn't even need to be told.

Put him back down in the ground. Hit him again.

Again, again, again until he's got two black eyes. Until his cheeks and lips swell to twice the size, face a blood blister nearing capacity. Another strike and she thinks he'll burst. Send blood in a fanning spray across her lips and face; caught like dew in her lashes. Crichton has no breath to catch. He doesn't struggle through blood and broken nasal cartilage. What sounds leave him are drawn up as a result of force; of liquid capillary action.

Were she at a different place in her life, she would have looked at Fever disconcertedly. Had never been the type of soldier who took pride in killing. Favored incapacitation when feasible, killed quickly when necessary. Maybe she was naive, then. Maybe she was just an idiot.

Carolina's mouth twists upwards. Specks of red dot her face.

She unlocks her elbow and lets Crichton— who doesn't look at all like himself; instead, like a bloodsucking insect post-eruption— fold over.

"About that control. I’ll take it myself, thank you. I don’t like handouts."

Her fists are dripping his blood, wet, heated with her own exertion. Carolina is beautiful like this, through the haze that still lightly descends like mist off the sea in the early morning. It's right to do this. It's something she can do. It's what she will do. And the corpse no longer looks like Crichton does.

A moment to catch her breath. Not from exhaustion, but to swallow and channel everything she feels downwards, into her hands, into her feet, controlling the flow of the river in her.

"Thought you might say something like that."

Murmured in a low voice, as blood-bright eyes fix on green and then break away.

Blood smears in the crook of her arm, byproduct to Crichton's laceration. A spread of oil across a smooth surface. A stain. She drags her palm through the coating in an attempt to rid herself of it and finds she's made matters worse. From elbow nook to palm to fingers and suddenly she's accosted by blood. Oh, well. It doesn't matter. Fever's the same. They'll survive.

"You did ask," She says, an unhelpful reminder.

Now there's blood on her rifle, too. She adjusts it over her back, scans the bodies littered across the grass, disinterested. Ready to move from one thing to the next. Moving, moving, always moving. You're going to quit now? Right as you're getting started? No, never.

It doesn't have to be me. But it could be.

Her tongue darts across her lip, tastes blood, recoils a little.

"Some party. We should move out, find higher ground."

Edited 2025-06-15 05:33 (UTC)

"Why, to find bigger pockets of them?"

They just had to keep going. Had to simply kill until it was enough, until it was done. Death in droves, without a greater solution than that. And oh, how her heart sings to be given such a simple task. Perfectly tailored to her. Until her skin is dyed red, until she can't get the stains out of the underrobe, until her hair has color again and the scent lingers under her nails and the heart in her chest beats in time to the drums in her head.

(And yet, it's not beyond her that this is manageable. Pleasant, even, instead of feeling like a watered-down substitute for her lifeblood. There's control. There's a choice.)

"Yes. Unless you have more important things to do."

The adrenaline rush hasn't dissipated yet, and she doesn't want it to. Couldn't possibly bring herself to retire weapon and walk away. To where? There's nowhere you need to be but here. Whatever breath you need to take can be found walking. Don't you dare stop. This is war. You can take a goddamn break once you've earned it.

She feels fantastic.

She needs this. Choice. Control. Give it to me. Let me take it.

Carolina sets off at a brisk pace. "Come on."

She could tell Carolina no. Dig her heels in here, make a mock battle after the first, hold up to making her hand it over. But not now, not when lives are truly at stake and the worst of their risen number need to be culled before midday if possible. No, Fever will save it for another day - training, perhaps, when an attitude won't be a threat. It'll be more fun that way.

Besides. This way leads to more undead to slay.

"You're in luck, my schedule's clear."

She wouldn't dream of falling behind.

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May Event - All Too Familiar

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