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

[abhorrently]

"...And how long have these sessions been going on? All it would take is one person mentioning being a ghost to blow that open."

She's trying to not get on his case, but this is Erik's own fuckup. And a rather glaring one if this has gone on for months.

[lordoftheozarks]

"Months," he answers with a defeated sigh. "I'm amazed it took that long. Yes, I know, it means I had plenty of time to think of how to come clean, and I didn't. I know how wrong and stupid I was. If I could tell you completely what compelled me to do it, I would. I wasn't trying to hurt him."

[abhorrently]

Listening to him, something in her chest stings. Twists itself up, while her memory unfolds into eyes that pierced her through and said you lied. And she knows,

"...I can't say I haven't done the same to someone I care about. Sometimes it's never the 'right time' to tell the truth. It just...comes out. Like an infection needing to drain."

A burst abscess, all blood and pressure and rot. And all one could do was clean up the mess and hope recovery was possible.

"For what it's worth, he probably needed the rest more than a death."

[lordoftheozarks]

"This came out once he truly had died for the first time. He confronted me while still a ghost." Erik was dead too, but he fails to mention this part as he ventures on, voice heavy with shame. "We said things to each other that... I cannot speak for him, but I have some regrets. Not because I didn't mean them, but because it took me until I said them to realize how far I'd let this go."

[abhorrently]

"I won't ask you to repeat them, if they're truly painful, but if you think they'd help with context..."

She gestures outward with her free hand. She wants to help, but moving in half the information limits her scope on the advice she can offer.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I'll do my best to explain." It was less about the words spoken, and more about the revelation they brought. He's had a long time to dwell on them, now.

"In the heat of the moment, he lamented that his brother was not there, for if he were, he would surely have tried to kill me. I told him he ought to strike me with his own fist rather than let his brother do the dirty work. I realized, then, that I was continuing a cycle that started with my sister. I was her fixer, too. When she made a mess, I was the one to clean it up. I enabled her for decades the same way Andrey has enabled Pyotr to refuse all responsibility for himself. I wanted him to believe I could teach him to be different, but that was simply a lie I told myself to assuage my own guilty past."

[abhorrently]

She stays quiet for a long moment, nodding and taking all that in.

"So what do you want to do about it now? Do you want to pull away from him? Do you want to draw some new boundaries? Do you just want to coddle him less?"

Because it's entirely possible to do that and not lose a relationship with him. But at the same time, if Erik needs to make a clean break? Then it might be necessary to simply cut him off. Regardless, Fever, in that awkward place between friends, can't give too much advice one way or another without feeling like she's choosing a side.

[lordoftheozarks]

"I don't know what I want," he doesn't hide the frustration under that. "I care about him still, but I don't know if he will ever forgive what I've done. Since that day, I've been careful not to cross paths with him." Ducking out back doors, transforming into a bird to conceal his retreat, these are the ways he's been avoiding the issue like the coward he is.

"I don't want to keep going as we were. I'm afraid it will lead me back down a path I've tried to veer away from for so long. I never meant to become his keeper."

[abhorrently]

"Then it's easier than you're able to see, isn't it? You don't want it to be the same - you want things to change. You don't want to be his keeper - you want him to be his own man. You want to be free of such a role."

She shrugs her shoulders. It's easy from an outside role. Impossibly difficult from an internal one, she knows. But no one can have this conversation but them. And frankly, the stakes aren't high enough to personally meddle this time. Fever knows a little better than to move in before it reaches the level of active murder or complete futility. Not her place, not something either of them might ask for, particularly when Pyotr needs to be on his own feet.

"Just...talk to him, Erik. Somewhere that's not either of your houses. Give him the chance to surprise you, as people tend to do."

There's the chance for something new to be woven out of the existing threads.

[lordoftheozarks]

"That's part of the problem, Fever. He doesn't sound like he wants to be his own man to me. And that isn't something I can make him do. I'm afraid to let myself have false hope."

[abhorrently]

"Then all the more reason to sit him down and draw that line, if for no other reason than you to know whether your hope is doomed or not."

The tea, still warm, is something she sips to give her hand something to do.

"If he wants to cling onto others and live a parasitic life, then as you said, you can't make him be otherwise. But you don't know. You're assuming again. Which might be part of the problem."

[lordoftheozarks]

He shows his teeth out of pure embarrassment, because she's right. He is assuming again. What is it about Pyotr that makes him lose all sense?

"If he will agree to talking, then I will try. I... do miss his company."

Ostensibly, Pyotr was a client, but the things they shared felt somewhat more than professional at times. They're going to have a lot to discuss.

[abhorrently]

"Then it's worth giving it a shot."

Her thumb strokes his skin, her leaning a little more into him so he can feel the weight and presence of her there.

"The worst he can say is no. And if that happens, you call me, and I'll sit with you again like this, and we'll figure out what to do next."

[lordoftheozarks]

"Thank you. That's very kind. I know he is your friend, as well; I do not want to change that in any way." It's a relief to know that Fever will still be here on the other side of this, come what may. It gives him the courage to finally try.

"I think I really needed this conversation."

[abhorrently]

"You're always welcome to talk to me. I mean it - even if it's the middle of the night."

It's not like she's unused to being roused for things. Death threats, fights, Chills getting his head stuck somewhere in the apartment. A friend's call is better.

"And don't worry. I've had to manage being friends with those who utterly despise each other. In comparison, this is rather simple. I'm not going to stop hanging out with him or modeling for him since you've said this - in fact, it'll give me a bit of an opportunity to see if he really is trying to be his own person."

[lordoftheozarks]

"I trust you that you do," he says. "I'll try to remind myself often."

He can have real friends here, friends he can confide in with no fear of being stabbed in the back with that very same information. The habit of keeping things to himself is a hard one to break, but this is proof it can be done.

"I'm sorry you've had to do that. I know it's not a pleasant experience, so I'll avoid putting you in such a position again. Either way, I'm glad you will still be a support to him because he sorely needs one. If it cannot be me, that will be all right."

[abhorrently]

"I think we all need to remember, at times, that we're not where we were. It changes many things that might otherwise be unthinkable."

How the words don't scorch her, she doesn't know. Part of her is still on Toril, dragging her past behind her, a heavy cloak of corpseflesh and spilt blood. But she's trying to ignore it.

"Just...try to reach out to him, when you feel up to it. Don't let it sit too long."

good place to start winding down?

[lordoftheozarks]

"Yes, we would all do well to remember," he says with a hint of emphasis on 'all,' but that's the extent of it. Now isn't the time to address that elephant in the room.

"I will, Fever. I'll try not to let it go too much longer."