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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.
cw: more description of gore/injury/war wounds
Just.
Just not any with his own face.
"Oh god oh god oh god oh god -- " He really is saying it like a prayer, not an oath, keened so high it's a wonder anybody but the Radar leading the pack can hear him at all. He stumbles backward. Can't look away from the huge caved-in dent in its skull. When the Radar-zombie jerks its head toward them like a dog hearing a call, something goes crack in its neck as broken vertebrae grind against each other.
They have to move. (He's gotta hold it together.)
Radar bolts for the back door, and behind him, Radar gives chase.
no subject
The smell is nauseating. Worse, she thinks, than any post-battle display. (What she wouldn't give for the filter set inside her helmet, clearing rot from the air before it's had the chance to make her gag.) She clamps her jaw shut. Her eyes water a little. Keep it together. Make it through the door. Easy.
Radar bolts. So does Radar, and so does she. The trio of Yoricks scramble close behind. One scales the side of a stable, horses whinnying frantically, and hurls himself through the air onto Carolina's back. They collapse together. Radar and his pair of Yoricks trample past, make it through the door. No. Fuck no. Carolina snarls and thrashes. Flips Yorick onto his back with ease and drives her hunter's knife through his eye. He goes limp.
She's on her feet in seconds.
Out the door.
Click, aim, fire— the second Yorick drops.
no subject
It doesn't work. If the reanimated corpses have already overcome death, overcoming injuries that would incapacitate anything else is easy. Despite its broken legs, the zombie-Radar's moving at a near sprint as it lunges to seize the back of Radar's shirt.
They both go down into the dirt. The living Radar scrambles back, too terrified to make a sound, as the dead Radar bears down on him. Worse than the injuries, it's the hate twisting its face that makes Radar want to scream, if he could only get his voicebox working. He's never looked like that before. He didn't think he was capable of it. What could anybody ever do to him to make him hate them that much? Oh, god, please --
He hears massive, thudding footsteps from the direction of the gate as Johnny Boy abandons his post to charge toward them. But he's too far away, even all that magic powering him won't propel him to the barn fast enough, Radar's gonna die and it's gonna be something wearing his own face that kills him --
no subject
This isn't happening. Isn't going to happen. She vaults forward, past the third Yorick and pivots her body to fire a clear shot through his chest. Aim for center mass. Mind your position. Ribcage, blood and yellow-green tissue explode in a rotten corona from his spine. He drops, struggles. Not dead yet but significantly slowed. Dragging himself on broken nails through dirt in his pursuit. That's fine. Crawl all you want. I'll deal with you later.
She takes aim— curses. The shot's not clear. Any bullet she puts through Radar might tear through and enter his still-living counterpart. Then she'd have two problems on her hand. Three, actually, if that giant thing lumbering toward them is as protective as it's making itself out to be.
She abandons her gun, makes fast for Radar's attacker. Everything is so out of place she doesn't know what she's grabbing, only that she's got hands somewhere, wrenching fabric or maybe skin as she throws the entirety of her momentum backwards— and takes him with her.
no subject
Oh. There's Carolina, and there's him, whirling around with a snarl to try and grab her by the neck with shattered fingers. What's he doing? Stop, he can't say through his stuck throat. Please. Don't do this.
Closer to the barn, Johnny Boy seizes the third Yorick by one arm and hurls it against the wall like a ragdoll. It splatters apart, a bug on a windshield. Radar's gaze lands on one of its dismembered legs as it drops: contusions, abrasions all over, three -- no, four -- open fractures. It's easier when you just count up the injuries and don't think too hard about the person attached to them. That can happen later.
no subject
Radar's hands are on her before she can bat them away. Broken fingers lay claim to tied-up hair. Her throat keens against his palm as he attempts to crush her windpipe. There's nothing to the face save for blind rage and loose musculature; spit and lymph from the flapping jaws that wish so desperately to find her shoulder. Carolina plants her hand at its forehead and pushes with all her might to make distance— find her escape— only to feel her hand sinking. His forehead depresses.
Okay— you can use this.
One, two, three hard strikes to Radar's face. The hand on her neck remains. His anger, unending. The world around her totters, flickers— television screen on the brink of signal lost. She can't black out. Not now. Again, again, again— she sucker punches. His neck snaps backward. Blood and grime fans. Nasal cartilage crumples and shreds her knuckles and she doesn't stop— no, never.
But that hand keeps squeezing...
cw: dismemberment
Because it's no longer attached to Radar.
Johnny Boy, having finally reached the pair, closes his stone fingers around the dead Radar's ragged shirt collar and yanks backward. Its arm splits in two along one of its fractures as gangrenous flesh tears like damp paper. Just as swift, Johnny Boy catches Radar's neck in a headlock and twists.
The snapping sounds in its vertebrae, this time, sound a heck of a lot more final.
He lets the body fall and wordlessly turns to the living Radar. That Radar... well, he's not doing much. Just standing there, shivering ever so slightly, face bloodless and eyes focused on something too far away to see. Johnny Boy's great stone brow furrows in concern; he steps closer to put a hand -- so gentle now, when it held such violence earlier -- on Radar's shoulder.
no subject
Just like that, the hand falls away. Air floods her open mouth like water— torrents down her throat, esophagus; runs through veiny bronchus and bloats her from the inside out. Too little and too much. Her body aches with it. She thinks briefly of Maine. Wills the image away soon after.
Something large and stone-pale moves across her mottled vision, toward Radar— reaching. Shit. Carolina scrambles to her feet—
To find he's placed a feather-light hand on the young man's shoulder.
Whatever it is, it must be an attendant.
Protected him, obviously— so relax.
Carolina steps carefully toward him, leveling Johnny Boy a look that speaks to her allyship. Hands raised. Slow, deliberate movements. A friend. Or... something like that.
Her hand finds Radar's upper arm.
"Hey. Let's find you somewhere to sit, okay?"
cw: emeto
There's a body on the ground. Traumatic amputation. Multiple closed fractures. Broken neck. Crush injuries on the... oh, he knows there's special words for front and back and each side of the head but he can never remember them. The doctors will once they get here. Where's his clipboard? He should start filling out the paperwork for the morgue truck while he's waiting.
The body's wearing a smashed pair of glasses he ought to get too in case the family wants them. Radar takes a couple steps closer, starts to bend down --
Oh.
Everything snaps back into focus, too bright, oversaturated like a picture with the colors all wrong. His breathing starts to go funny as he stares down at himself with his caved-in face and blood all over his shattered glasses. Not a body. Him. Him. Like his mom would see him if he came home in a coffin.
"Excuse me a minute, sirs," he says, just as calm and distant, before he walks a couple feet to the side, puts his hands on his knees, and promptly loses his lunch all over the dirt.
no subject
Radar wretches, and Carolina isn't surprised. What else is a person meant to do? How do you brush off the stench of your own maimed body; forget the slack features and wet, empty eyes you call your own? Radar wretches like he's attempting to eject his consciousness, and she's inclined to believe he has. Up and out. Bile first. Then consciousness. Then, clinging to body by frayed threads, the soul. Up and out and gone. Awareness abandoned. March back into house with no recollection of what was seen or felt or heard.
The air sours. She gives him a minute, alert at his side. Considers a hand on his shoulder— hovers in her indecision— retreats.
Fuck.
"Hey," quiet and non-startling. "There's a hay bale in the barn. Come on. I'll help you."
Get him away.
Get it away from him.
no subject
As he straightens up, Johnny Boy returns to his side. Radar puts a hand on the construct's arm to brace himself, taking deep breath after deep breath. "I'm sorry sir. Ma'am. I dunno what happened, I haven't done that in years. I'm okay."
But despite his protestations, Johnny Boy's already steering him gently toward the barn, and Radar isn't making any move to resist. Shockingly, no matter how many thousands of maimed and dead bodies you might've seen after working in a war hospital, the sight hits different when it's you.
no subject
Are you?
Carolina follows the procession, scanning left and right for signs of danger, unconvinced that one of the corpses— regardless of how totally they've been decimated— won't will itself to standing again. There's nothing. Exhaustion gathers in her peripheral vision and snakes inward. She blinks it away and together they file back into the barn.
The herd of animals turn their noses to the smell of blood and rot, sweat and lingering cortisol. Chickens scatter and kick wooden shrapnel under their feet. Danforth's bucket of feed rolls, emptied, where he's butted it with his nose. And poor Greta— she's stuck her head sideways through a gap in the gate and can't escape. She bleats loudly and jerks her neck.
"I've got it," she says, not knowing who it's for; Greta, Radar or the stone protector at his side.
Carolina nears the gate and drops onto one knee. Greta thrashes. She doesn't look pleased to see her. I know. Easy. Taking her by the horns, she turns the goat's head like lock-and-key— and out she pops.
no subject
He notices Greta too late; by the time he realizes what Carolina's gone to do, it's already done. Greta backs away from the gate, shaking her head from side to side like she's still trapped, but after a couple more sullen bleats and the chance to rub her horns against the barn's solid wooden wall, she starts to calm down. That's good. Maybe Radar ought to sit like Carolina suggested and try to calm down too.
No, he thinks. Not yet. He needs to keep moving. The push isn't over yet.
"I should round up the chickens," he mumbles. Johnny Boy shoots him a look, surprisingly expressive for a face made of stone. Radar swallows and relents: "You can get the chickens?"
Johnny Boy nods firmly, points to the nearest hay bale, and squeezes Radar's shoulder before he goes to do just that.
Ugh, his mouth still tastes awful. Radar makes himself sit down; wraps his arms around himself to keep warm. Just like a lot of bad shifts, as soon as he's not upright anymore he's not sure he'll be able to get back up again.
no subject
Slowly, the barn settles. The miasma thins, and uncertainly the world begins to right itself. Radar's handy stone giant ushers chickens into their pen, their little feet scrabbling. Greta bleats once, but otherwise trots quietly back and forth. The great black bull across the barn lashes his tail and makes slowly in Radar's direction, keen to check in on him. Stern-faced, Carolina takes up a broom and begins to sweep Danforth's spilled feed into a pile. Little tasks that put the world's end on pause.
Shouldn't have happened. You have to be faster.
"Who's your friend?" She asks, then nods toward the massive farm-hand. Better to have him talking than to let him sit in his shock, undistracted. She's searching for one too. Something— anything— to quiet that cruel-but-correct spit in her mind. Shouldn't have happened. "Never seen anything like him."