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

"It's all right. You can give it more time. I... don't think we're going anywhere just yet." Not when their progress is frustratingly stalled. Damn devils.

His stomach churns at her answer. He wants to leave the benefit of doubt, but there's a quiet hardness that's settled into his expression now. "Did she know she was being charmed, CT?"

"No." She won't lie, much as it'd be in her favour to. "But it was just a temporary AOE spell. It lasted maybe twenty minutes and it wasn't true compulsion to answer, just... truth if she chose to answer. I didn't push her. I wasn't interested in that. I just— needed to know she wasn't lying to me. And she wasn't."

She's not entirely proud of it, but she needed to know and she struggled to imagine Carolina agreeing.

"...Gaeta suggested it. It's not his fault I followed through, but— he knew I wasn't going to be able to settle unless I was sure," because he knew how he'd feel if one of his old commanders turned up, "and we figured it had uses beyond this. I still have a few charges left, so theoretically I can use it during investigations."

Crichton closes his eyes and sucks a long, deep breath in through his nose. He's disappointed in both of them, CT and Gaeta, but he understands why they'd both feel the need to guarantee the truth. He can't be angry, when he knows what he knows, but it doesn't make him happy. Suggesting they use it during investigations puts a lead balloon in his belly. Would it be useful? Of course. But can he really justify using something like that on others? After the ways he's had his own mind messed with? No, not unless they have no other options.

Finally, he looks back up at her, "CT, I don't like that you did that. I get why, you know I do, but I can't approve of something like this. I'm not going to tell anyone, especially not her, but I don't think you should ever do that again. Feels like crossing a line we have no business crossing."

"I'm not thinking of using it on normal residents. But if there's a situation like the cult vision, or someone is caught out in an even more incriminating position then Elias... then in circumstances like those I don't think we can rule out using every tool we have at our disposal."

She doubts it would work consistently on demonic types, even Neil's protective charms can only do so much against infernal power, but if less powerful but no less potentially dangerous individuals show themselves...

They have to figure this place out eventually. And she's just a bogstandard human with no extra abilities to her name. It's hard to see a possible edge and not take it.

"...I'm not proud of using it on Carolina either. I've got no intention of using it flippantly or for something of such— personal interest again."

"I won't rule it out in those cases completely," he starts, haltingly. "If the person consents to it beforehand, that's one thing, but it can't become a standard procedure. If it does, I can't be a part of it." That's all the room he has to give on the matter. He's been on the other side of charms and devices like these too many times to ever feel right about it.

He is visibly straining not to end the conversation right here and go for a walk to clear his head, but she trusts him enough to tell him so he can't just do that. "But I do believe you, that you don't want to use it again like that. I'll trust that."

"It's not going to be standard procedure. I have four charges left. I promise they'll only be used in situations that I feel really need it." Once it's out, it's out. She won't ask Neil for another. Having limited uses keeps how she uses it more accountable.

She really isn't proud of it, just— "Everything around Carolina just makes me feel insane. I only went ahead with it after— after the stage show when I felt like an exposed nerve around her."

"I do understand. You know that, right?" He knows exactly what the constant fear and paranoia can do to a person. Intimately.

"Nothing gonna change between us, okay? I got your back."

"I know. There's just— nothing like that reaction from a friend for a reality check."

Maybe on some subconscious level it's why he's the first person she's directly admitted it to. She dodged around it with Valdis, who she frankly had no reason to doubt would judge her for the choice, and just hasn't brought it up at all with anyone else.

"Yeah, I get ya. Both glad and sorry I can be that guy for you, but I love you too much as a friend not to be straight with you. I'll always tell you what I'm really thinkin'"

"Good. Keep doing that." She sighs, thunks her forehead against the wooden boards. "I'm used to just— being a grunt on the ground, working around and out of sight of the system. I'm not used to being in this position. Where it's my worst whims that can become something— else. I don't know."

"I'll keep it real for you," he promises. "And I'm sure you'll do the same for me. Just know that the fact you're willing to listen and check in should tell you that you are cut out for this. You are, even if it's hard to believe some days. You're someone worth following, CT."

"I used to think that about Carolina, too." There was a time she respected Carolina enough to challenge her calls in the field and trust her to take those challenges to heart, believe in CT's expertise. And then bit by bit, Carolina stopped listening. Until she'd changed so much from the leader she'd started as that she was snapping at CT in the field. "I can't go the same way. I need to not go the same way."

"It's not going to happen. We won't let it, CT. Between me, Valdis, and everyone else, you'll have enough backup to guarantee it." Valdis, especially, since she can feel a lie. She didn't let Crichton slide and she won't let CT go that way, either. He has faith in that. "If it ever looks dicey, I'm going to remind you we had this talk."

"Well, at least I can believe you when you say it." Herself is one thing, but there are, at least, people she's begun to be able to trust to mean what they say more often than she doesn't. "...thanks."

"Any time," he says with extra emphasis. "Day or night."

CT smiles at him, then shoulders him affectionately and nods her head to the side. Things to get back to.

May Event - All Too Familiar

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good wrap?

wrap!