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ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
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.
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.
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.
no subject
"Thanks! Think you could give me a lift up to a rooftop? I got the worst charliehorse and I can't outrun these damn things."
no subject
"Is that just a convenient excuse for the fact you can't climb?"
She fires off a couple extra balls of webbing to pin the zombie against the nearest surface—not foolproof but good enough for now. She knows they should be killing these things but it's a hard switch to just flip on a dime.
"Anyway, brace yourself!"
Two strings of web shoot out to grab him by the shoulders and pull him up to join her.
no subject
Okay, the real reason might be BECAUSE THIS IS FUN AS HELL, WHEEE! (You can't take the thrill junkie out of a flyboy completely.)
"Yee-haw!" he whoops excitedly as she yoinks him up, landing firm on his feet and remembering to bend the knees this time. "Thanks for the lift. By the way, which direction are you headed?"
no subject
The sheer energy of that yee-haw gets a burst of laughter out of her—"Are you trading in your spaceman credentials for cowboy boots? Wait, space cowboy is a thing. Nevermind."
How could she forget 'see you, space cowboy'. Missed joke opportunity, truly.
"I was heading back out toward the dorm to check on everyone, but I've been pretty all over swinging in to get people out."
no subject
"I'm going that general way, but stopping at the city hall. Got ammo restock in my pack," he does indeed have a backpack on. In reality, this was the real but less fun reason why climbing wasn't going to work.
"Can you watch my back on the way over? The fewer rounds I need to use myself, the more I'll have to distribute when I get there. We've got eyes on a herd of yoricks moving in on the place. They'll need the help."
no subject
"Huh. Y'know. I feel like we should call a group of Yoricks a soliloquy."
Yeah, yeah, she can hear the crowd booing from here—she stands by it though. Man, there must be a lot of that guy running around, he dies like every other day. They're gonna have to invent bubble wrap and wrap him in it if the barrier finally goes down.
"Yeah, I can watch your back. I'll try and keep 'em out of the way or line 'em up as appropriate. I uh— well I haven't added much to our kill total right now, I'll admit."
no subject
It's moments like these that he remembers that despite it all, he's still talking to a young adult, at best. Asking for that level of violence from her should be wrong, shouldn't it? He would have thought so, once.
"Hey, listen, you don't have to go that far. You can line them up for me and I'll take the shot, okay?"
no subject
Maybe because blood on her hands still just reminds her of Peter and Nimona. But clearing the air with both of them should have helped. Shouldn't it?
"—we'll see how the dice fall!"
no subject
If he ever did try to... do the tally, he's afraid that might be the last straw that breaks for him. It was in self-defense, most of it. Most. But it was still a life he took, over and over.
"I'd rather not put that on you, if we can help it. Not...yet."
no subject
"Yeah that 'yet' is pretty ominous, spaceman."
Easier to make the grim joke than immediately comment on the rest. She almost misses her next hop over a roof decoration.
"...most Spiders don't kill—on purpose. It's not the way we like to do things. But most Spiders with that rule end up killing someone at some point anyway, or— come close." Most recent example on the web was that kid from 1999999, almost killed a Goblin in grief fuelled rage. Common enough story. "My accident happened earlier than most."
At least she's calling it an accident.
no subject
"I'm sorry you already had to go through all that with Peter before you got any training or, I'm guessing, therapy. Spider or no, that's too much for one set of shoulders to carry alone."
no subject
It doesn't blindside her as much as it would have once, the daughter thing. Over the last few months it's become almost natural to slot into that role with him and Gerry alike, just a teenage girl being an affectionate nuisance to the adults looking out for her. Only a year ago she probably would've struggled against the idea, but ever since the visitors... well, things have changed.
Her body language softens, even if she struggles to immediately find the right words to respond to that, specifically.
"...the Society had a therapist but I refused to go to my sessions," she admits. The guy wasn't another Peter, thank god, but that didn't make her any more eager to attend and talk about things with him. She would've been a novelty, compared to his primary client base of Peters, and she did not want to be a novelty. "It's not just about Peter. In the Village—"
She tenses up again, huffs.
"K- Kevin broke me by making me admit how much I wanted to hurt people."
no subject
He takes a step closer to her on reflex when she admits what happened to her in the Village. Kevin. That son of a bitch. He almost wishes the asshole would show his face here so he could get a daily beating. How ironic.
"I'm sorry he did that to you. He told it to you wrong. You know that, don't you? Wanting to lash out and hurt people when you're hurt doesn't mean you really want to see people get hurt. If you only knew how many times in my life I've wanted to hurt someone, too, you'd know that isn't enough to make a person evil alone."
no subject
Her shoulders pinch in and she grips her opposite elbow. "I'm meant to help people. But there were so many times I thought about just leaving people, just— giving up. Quitting. Because I got so tired of saving everyone and then seeing them on the news talking about me like I was a villain too. So many times I wanted to— to stop pulling my punches, to show people how dangerous I would be if I wanted to be a villain. That's— that's not something a good person thinks."
It's more distant, these days. She's been away from home for so long, now; no one here sees her as a villain and she knows, by now, that these things are more... complicated. Everything that happened with Nimona, it taught her a lot. Talking to Peter, that helped too.
But then something calls for violence and it all comes back.
"...Gwen Stacy was never really meant to be Spider-Woman. Sometimes I still think that's why I'm so messed up and bad at it."
no subject
"You have so much power and so much responsibility to wield it well, and you did. You do. It burns like hell when you're out there doing your best and it's somehow still not enough for some people. You saved lives. You stopped tragedies. You stayed up fighting so they'd have the chance to sleep tight another night. You don't do it for the thanks, but it sure would be nice if they'd at least open their eyes and see the truth. Then they'd see what I see."
He puts a hand on her shoulder, "If you weren't meant for this role, if that means your whole life has been an uphill battle like none other, then doesn't that make the fact that you're still out there giving it your all more meaningful? Do you really believe your world would be a better, safer place if you'd never put on the mask?"
no subject
She draws a long, shaky breath. "...sometimes. Peter only tried to give himself powers because he'd figured me out. Maybe if he'd got bitten like the other Peters..."
Most of the normal Peters seem to handle things so much better. Sure, they screw up, they're only human, but they butt up against the boundaries of the pre-written story less. It's made for them in a way it's not made for people like her, or Hobie, or Miles, or Peni Margo Jess—
"Gwens are meant to be one of the things that happen to a Spider that makes them learn what failure feels like, how to— move on from that. And— other stuff, I don't know." Supposedly Peter fulfilled the same sort of role for her, but he also filled the Uncle Ben role, so it's... confusing, sometimes. And feels unfair. No one else is actually directly responsible for their Uncle Ben moment, not like she was. "I did what I could. I-I know I've saved more people than I've hurt, I know that. I tried to quit once and I couldn't because I knew people were getting hurt because I wasn't around, but— but I could've done better. If I was really the best for the job, I wouldn't have become so hated so fast."
no subject
"I don't think that's fair, because it is yours, Gwen. Whether it was supposed to go that way or not, it's your life now, and you don't deserve to feel like a bystander in it. So what if you're not a perfect fit? You said it yourself: you've helped more people than you ever hurt. You made your neighborhood a little more friendly, didn't you? At great personal cost to yourself. That makes you a hero. And maybe, just maybe, that's already enough."
no subject
"...sometimes I almost believe that. Wish I could sound as sure as you can, spacedad."
That's about all the concrete acknowledgement she can muster, right now, but she's not trying to back away and get back to the crisis at hand just yet.
no subject
"That's okay. I'm good, but I can't chase all the doubts away with words. Hang in there, spider, you'll get there. I have faith in you."
no subject
"At least some people do." Though it's easier, these days, to believe it might come than it ever felt like years ago. Strange how much less impossible everything feels when you're not fourteen anymore.
A beat. She steps to hug him.
good wrap?
When he couldn't believe in himself, they did. They never gave up on him. As she steps in for a hug, he squeezes her to his chest almost painfully tight, making a silent promise not to ever stop believing in her, so someone always will.
wrap!
Gwen just nods, holding the hug for a long, quiet moment, before clearing her throat and stepping back. "We should really get going."
Things to do. Fights to win. People to help. Lives to save. One thing at a time.