ph_logs | May Event - All Too Familiar

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I would like to hear you own up to it," he snaps. "Did it not prick your conscious at all, to chide me for keeping secrets when you were hiding this -- when you outright lied to me about the experience of death on this island? Or did you consider yourself justified, telling yourself it was 'for my own good?'"

He sneers. Throughout this little speech, he never raised his voice above the conversational level; but his eyes burn like two smoldering coals, and he glares like a man who has just scraped something disgusting off his boot.

"How many other lies have you told me?" he demands to know. "Don't expect me to believe this is all of it, I am too short on patience right now."

"It would not be my first experience as a hypocrite," he grumbles. But who on earth is going to side with Pyotr over an issue like this? Hm, he takes that back. He can think of a few.

"Fine, if you insist. Yes, I tricked you into thinking I was killing you when I only ever brought you to the cusp of death and left you there. But, before you accuse me of doing things for any greater good, know that it was my own selfish desire that motivated me, nothing so noble. I do not want to kill. It was as simple as that. I don't expect you to believe me, but that was a large enough lie all on its own. I did not feel the need to embellish with more."

"Is that supposed to make it better?" Pyotr sneers. It's an astonishing feeling, getting this worked up when he has no muscles to tense or heart to quicken. He has to concentrate not to let himself get distracted by an absence so marked, it's nearly a physical sensation in its own right.

Shaking it off, he demands, "If you knew that, then why mislead me? I had no power to compel you; you could have done anything to me, you could have left me lying there if it pleased you! So why pretend to grant my request while secretly holding back? What did you stand to gain?"

"You wanted the truth, Pyotr, that rarely makes anyone feel better."

He can no longer stand to listen to the noises of his beastly self rending flesh and chewing loudly. Even without a stomach, it makes him devastatingly queasy. So, he starts to walk, expecting Pyotr to follow if he wants to keep this argument going.

"How can I explain something I didn't understand myself. I don't know what compelled me. But... ever since I showed you my scars, I've started to have a suspicion. You and I share so many things alike. I could have done anything to you, but all I ever wanted to do was show you mercy. The kind of Mercy I wish I'd shown myself."

Pyotr lingers a moment longer, committing the beast to memory. He will be drawing this later, whether Erik likes it or not. Perhaps even especially if he likes it not.

Once his memory's been satisfied, Pyotr hurries after Erik, making a point of overtaking him so he can turn and glare at him more conveniently. "So you made a liar out of yourself and a fool out of me. Were you ever planning to tell me the truth? Or was it enough for you to inflict your 'mercy' on me while you had the chance?"

He glares right back. Pyotr can ask him that after admitting he was never going to tell him about the emotions he was missing?

"I'd hoped to wait until you no longer wished to ask it of me. Then I planned to reveal the truth, yes. This was never any great scheme against you, Pyotr. If I had planned any of this at all it would have gone better, I assure you." He wouldn't have gotten caught.

"I am sorry for lying to you. I cannot undo that now, but it will be the last time."

"Oh, it certainly will," Pyotr snaps back. "If you really think I'm going to trust you with anything ever again --" He stops, angrily tugging on his own hair. If there was something around here apart from Erik that he could kick, he'd have done so. And the jury's still out on kicking Erik.

"Do you even comprehend how mortifying this is for me? The fact that you didn't even intend it is...you've humiliated me, Erik! If my brother were here --"

Yes, there will certainly be hell to pay if Andrey ever finds out about this. He's killed men for selling Pyotr the wrong grade of paper, after all. Funny how that thought doesn't seem comforting in the slightest.

Erik's eyes flash with sudden shock then narrow into angry slits. "Oh don't be so childish!" he yells, throwing up his hands in disgust. "You humiliate yourself on a daily basis. How is that your key concern?"

As for that comment about his brother? Erik sneers at the thought. "Can't you do anything for yourself? Come now, punch me with your own fist you coward! I won't even try to stop you."

"At least then it's my choice!" is Pyotr's response, and he might have gone on much longer, expanding upon that theme, if Erik hadn't interrupted him with a suggestion so...so ludicrous, yes, so ludicrous! That it momentarily takes the wind from his sales.

"You want me to hit you?" he asks, shocked -- no, simply bewildered. And then, angrily: "Is my degradation not yet complete, now you want us to scrabble in the dirt like a pair of dogs? Don't be ridiculous, Erik," he spits. "Obviously I'm not going to hit you."

"Then why threaten me with your brother?" Erik demands. "He'd have hit me, yes? What's the difference?"

"He'd try to kill you," Pyotr says shortly, and then scoffs, clasping his hands before his chest. "And why shouldn't he? You've lied to me, you've molested me, you've made me angry. He's killed men before over far less. Admittedly your special abilities and the unique circumstances of the town might cause some delay, but..." He laughs bitterly, his shoulders drawing in. He's starting to shrink in on himself again.

"He'd find a way. Finding solutions to unusual problems is one of the few things he's good for."

"And you would let him," Erik answers quietly.

Are such things truly worthy of a death sentence? Perhaps they are in a brutal world full of self-conceit. His sister was always quick to violence at the lightest offense.

"You can consider me one less of your problems. You have your sweet death now. Enjoy it alone."

He turns to march away.

"I didn't say that," Pyotr mutters -- but it's too late. Erik's already began to stalk away...and Pyotr couldn't say why the sight inspires in him such fury, but he raises his voice, calling, "Erik! I said no such thing!"

But what is the use? He deflates again, muttering "Melodramatic ass," to himself as he also turns away.

He heard the first time, of course, but he kept walking. When Pyotr shouts to him, he stiffens his back and keeps going. But the muttering... he can't stand to ignore that.

"Me?" he spits, turning to glare, "You're calling me the melodramatic one? Can your hypocrisy sink any deeper?"

"How else am I to reach your level?" Pyotr snarls, whirling back around himself to glare at Erik more effectively. "You chide me for keeping secrets and then walk away when I tell you the truth? Make up your mind, Erik! Or perhaps I was right to keep my secrets from you after all?"

"Oh? By that logic, perhaps I was right to keep mine too? You were happier before you knew, weren't you?"

May Event - All Too Familiar

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got him! lol AND ANOTHER THING

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