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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.
no subject
A spray of old blood and tissue, the familiar sound of a bullet through bone and flesh and the heavy thud of the body left behind hitting the ground like a sack of flour.
Something in her chest still lurches at the sight, illogical as it is when the real, living face is there so soon after, warm, life-calloused hands the kind of gentle she's still getting used to in some ways. Her own hands fly to carefully grasp the wrists, feel the pulse beneath the skin as much as she can hear it.
No wounds. Any scratches healed the moment the dead one's nails fell away. Not an unfounded concern, either way—she had a run-in with true werewolves, back on the ship, and though the bite she sustained couldn't infect her, it did leave her sick for days as the Hunt fought it off.
"...uh, yeah, m'fine," she gets out, finally, shaking off some haze she feels stupid for having to. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
Right. That doesn't feel exactly true. Even if it is technically true.
no subject
But eventually, the severity of the situation wins out. Her hands ease off of the curve of Daisy's neck, where they'd settled once they'd confirmed that there was no lasting damage, and only when they're untangled does she return the rifle to her hands. It's a reluctant step forward, leading them in, but a necessary one - even in the distance, there are crashes, screams. Nothing about the town as it is now grants any rest.
"You... didn't seem like you were going to kill it," Basira finally notes quietly, after a few moments of that familiar quiet fell between them, long enough that she could see for herself that there was nothing too close. She's careful not to use "her" for her undead doppelganger. She doesn't care to sit with the implications of actual personhood in that any more than Daisy does, she imagines. "Weren't worried you'd have to try to figure out which of us was the real one, were you?"
It's an attempt at a joke. It's too flat to manage coming across that way. She doesn't actually know if it it's still a joke by the time she manages to say it, herself.
no subject
"...No."
There's an odd quality of thoughtfulness to the single word. Unclear to which statement or question it's more of a response to and hesitant to at all provide clarity. Her eyes are off somewhere else, idly scanning their surroundings for imminent threats in a way that's not exactly focused, but isn't ineffective either. Deliberately distracting herself with it doesn't make her sense for reading a situation any less acute.
She rolls her shoulders. Flexes her hands. Jerks her head, vaguely, to indicate that Basira has the right idea and they shouldn't stay in one place.
"Just— caught me off guard."
no subject
She's got to take the eased nerves where she can get them. It isn't as if Daisy's offering much more right now. It'd be so easy to let it lie, to forget that it happened, but she's heard of more than this incident through the grapevine now. If anything happened like this, and she wasn't there to cut it short...
"...If something like that comes through again, wearing my face--- don't hesitate." It's not an order, but it's not exactly a suggestion, either. More than anything else, it's a bleak truth. Just a simple fact of what has to be done. "You'd want me to do the same."
That's true, of course, even if it's a horrible simplification of things. The bigger question is if Basira could, if what wore Daisy's face played the right chords, but "could" and "should" are two very different questions. The other one is one she doesn't care to try to answer if she doesn't have to.
no subject
Air through teeth. She's... not wrong, is the thing, of course. That's always been the problem, it's rare that Basira is, strictly speaking, wrong—misguided, maybe, or working on complete information, or working toward the wrong conclusion, but those are different things to simply 'wrong'. Especially when it comes to something like this.
"I-I know," she says, touched by uncharacteristic uncertainty. "You're right. You're— right." How does she sound less certain the more she affirms it? "Just... don't like it. Never— never laid a hand on you before. Like that."
A half-beat, then very quickly after, "And I know it's not you— those things aren't— they're not you. But. Ugh."
Sounds weaker the more she tries to justify it.
no subject
Basira would be a liar if she said she didn't understand.
A beat, and Basira turns back, only halfway, to reach for Daisy, lighting a hand over her upper arm. She doesn't know what to say for a moment, before, at last, she finally settles on, "I hear you. And I know you'll do what you can. If I can help it, I'll try to make sure you don't get caught in that spot too often."
no subject
Daisy catches her wrist, for a moment, quick and careful. "...thanks. I know— I know it's. Stupid. 'specially when..."
When she knows exactly what she asked Basira to do. What they both saw in that nightmare and what Daisy knows to be true of the future. It's hypocritical, in a way, to not be able to face something that isn't even actually Basira and not be able to pull the metaphorical trigger.
And yet.
"All these years. I've never hurt you. Like that. Even on the ship. With all it's— death games. Might've clung to that, a bit." Okay, more like a lot.
no subject
It's not a question. It never has been one. Even when something that was only Daisy at the core, monstrous, all teeth and rage and bloodlust, she never hurt her. Even when Basira couldn't say the same, in the name of keeping her word. Maybe something here could wear Daisy's face, use all that power against her, but she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it. And even if she were there, that wouldn't be Daisy.
"You ever run into another fake version of me, just... incapacitate. I can finish it. You'd do the same for me."
no subject
Daisy inhales, exhales. Nods once, uncertainly, then a second time more firmly, like she's hammering it into her own skull. "Right. Okay. I can do that."
Or, at least, she can make herself do that. Basira's right. It's only fair. And if she makes it a promise, she'll stick to it.
"Promise."
wrap? :]
She hates to get even that much out of Daisy, but if that's what it takes to keep her safe, it'll have to do. It's a small concession to make, in the grand scheme of things. At least, she hopes that's how Daisy feels about it, as well.
"C'mon. We'll get moving, see if we can't check in with the safehouses. Try to see if we can't take some of these other things down. Stay low."
And without that final confirmation, as she's always been prone to do, she readies her weapon again, and ducks around the corner. She doesn't need to check to make sure that Daisy's behind her; she knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that she will be.
wrap!
And she is. Without hesitation or delay. No matter anything else, Daisy's always got Basira's back.