May Event - All Too Familiar

[pumpkinhollow]

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.

Comments

[hate_gettin_older]

(Say please, he almost says, and bites it back hard.)

"What the fuck would I tell anyone? Saw you kill an undead bird monster is all, who's gonna care?"

[lordoftheozarks]

"I will. That wasn't just any undead monster and you know it."

Looking at that little prick's face make him want to smash something. He's almost sorry he finished his grisly double so quickly.

[hate_gettin_older]

That face screws up in sour frustration. Yes, of course he knows who that undead bird monster was, but now he has to know it. Now he has to be responsible for knowing it, which means he has to either be a kind of cruel that doesn't sit well in his stomach, or offer a favor to this bloodsucking Front bastard.

"And what the fuck's that got to do with me?"

[lordoftheozarks]

He can practically feel the back of his eyeballs cooking with anger as he narrows his gaze on Edgar.

"Are we really going to keep pretending nothing happened?"

[hate_gettin_older]

Alarm passes across Edgar's face, then deep suspicion.

"You got something to say about that, fuckin say it."

[lordoftheozarks]

"Fine. I will. But it's not a statement so much as a question."

A question he didn't really want to ask in anger like this, but it might be the only way.

"What I want to know is... do I owe you an apology for it?"

[hate_gettin_older]

For a second he just stares, caught completely off balance.

That stare might look like anger, or shock, or the blank confusion it really is.

[lordoftheozarks]

That reaction is just as frustratingly unreadable to him as always.

"Well," he presses on into the silence, "For whatever it is worth to you now, I have no regrets. I'm sorry if that isn't the case for you."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Far as I'm concerned," says Edgar, in a tone almost completely flat, "you got in my face, wouldn't leave it, and got what you asked for. You want to apologize for being an annoying prick, be my guest, that's the only thing you did to me."

There: if Erik's paying close attention, there's some unease beneath the flatness, roughening it a little.

[lordoftheozarks]

He notices. And, suddenly, his insides twist with the realization.

"I am sorry that I pushed you. But that's not the part that truly upsets you, is it? Please, don't try to lie..."

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar bristles as visibly as an angry cat.

"All right, first, I'm not fuckin upset, got it? Second, why the hell would I tell you anything about it? And third ..."

He trails off, flounders for a moment, and finishes roughly, "shut up."

[lordoftheozarks]

The urge to roll his eyes is unbearably strong but, by some miracle, he resists. This one won't be winning any awards on the debate team, that much is apparent.

"First, you both sound and are acting upset," he points out coolly. "Second, I struggle to imagine who else are you going to tell? And third: no, I will not just shut up. You are someone Max cares deeply for. If we are both going to stay in Max's life, long-term, we have to at least be able to talk to one another, let alone look each other in the eyes."

[hate_gettin_older]

"We are not fuckin talking about this out in the open --"

His voice rises harshly, cuts off, resumes in a much lower tone. "Already making too much noise, you want another of those to sneak up on us?" Even quieter, there's venom in his voice when he says those, and contempt in the jerk of his head toward the downed corpse.

[lordoftheozarks]

"There won't be another like that one." His voice is lower to match Edgar's. "But I take your point. Where do you suggest we go?"

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar seethes silently for a moment, then says "There's a shed," and turns to start walking toward it. Erik can follow or not, as he likes.

[lordoftheozarks]

How sordid he thinks to himself, but bites his own tongue so he won't say it. He simply follows along as he is silently bidden.

[hate_gettin_older]

The shed's a few yards from the back of the barn; the interior is dim, and small enough that there isn't a lot of room to stand far apart.

Edgar puts his back to a tall shelving unit, crosses his arms over his chest, fixes his gaze a few feet to Erik's left.

[lordoftheozarks]

Erik can see perfectly despite the lack of light, so he's careful to hold himself away so he won't brush up against Edgar if he can help it.

"Do you feel that what you did was wrong?"

[hate_gettin_older]

None of your fuckin business is what he wants to say, except of course it is Erik's business, how could it not be, and that makes it worse.

"No," he says, and that's too simple for how he does feel, so he tries again. "But I don't like it."

[lordoftheozarks]

The petty part of him thinks you really seemed to like it, but that is not a productive thought for the conversation. 

"I'm glad you don't think it was wrong. You couldn't have hurt me there, you know that?" The consent was implicit despite the war they waged in that nightclub; magic would have prevented real harm.

"What part do you not like? Please, I would like to understand."

[hate_gettin_older]

He shrugs, roughly, less to communicate uncertainty and more as though he's trying to shake something off his shoulders.

"I don't do that."

[lordoftheozarks]

His voice is nearly monotone as he asks, sharply, "Do what? I want to hear you say it."

[hate_gettin_older]

His arm flies out to point at Erik, forefinger stabbing at the air. "Do fuckin that," he snaps. "Want to hear you say it, christ almighty, what the hell was wrong with me."

[lordoftheozarks]

"You were enjoying dominating me, or so it seemed," Erik says with a mild shrug. "A word that comes to mind is... cathartic."

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar folds his arms again. "What's that mean, then."