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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: 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."
no subject
Which is part of why it takes him a few extra seconds to realize she did say something out loud. "Huh?" he says blankly, then -- "Oh. That's Johnny Boy. Serranai woke him up for me after, um. After Mr. Rambo left a couple weeks ago. So me and Edgar would still have someone lookin' out for us and the whole ranch."
A shadow falls across his feet. Radar looks up into the face of one very big, very concerned bull. A tiny smile twitches his mouth. "Aw. Hey Humphrey," he whispers, reaching to give him a scratch on the cheek. "I'm okay."
He is. He is. It's just a body out there, at the end of the day.