ph_logs | 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.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's all right," she says, as gently as she can. "You can tell me. What is it?"

"What if... father is mad at Elsie?"

She tried to bring her mother back before it was time; what if he won't forgive her?

"He shouldn't be," says Cassandra at once. "You thought you were helping, didn't you? You aren't the one he should be mad at. I'll tell him so, if he is."

"Wanted to help," she answers with another sniffle.

Then last last bit finally catches up to her and she stares at Cassandra in awe. "You would talk for Elise?"

"If you would want me to," she says with belated caution, "of course I would."

"No one ever... spoke for Elsie before." Not when she was just a small child who had no idea what her place in the world was.

"Elsie would want that a lot."

"Well, then," and her voice is brisk on the surface and warm underneath, "it's high time someone has. It may not be necessary, but if it is, I'll speak for you."

Elsie smiles at last, comforted that even if she gets in trouble for what she's done, she will have one defender standing between her and exile.

And, with actual good timing for once, Crichton finally appears on the scene.

"Hello there, ladies. I cam as quick as I could. Why don't you get me up to speed?"

Elsie tucks her chin against her chest shyly and says nothing. Cassandra may need to take point.

"Elsie was sent an anonymous letter," says Cassandra, brisk and businesslike, "which directed her to a book, telling her that a spell in it could help her with a longstanding trouble. Circumstances suggest the spell may actually be responsible for the risen dead. We no longer have the book in hand, but from Elsie's recall of what she read, it appears to have been in Eldritch writing."

She trusts Crichton to understand her tone as discouraging further inquiry into what Elsie believed herself to be doing.

Crichton picks up on her tone instantly and nods along to the description, while reading between the lines. If it were something he needed to know, she'd tell him, but the why isn't important to the what, and it's very clearly a sensitive topic.

"All right. I think I got that. Can you describe the book to me, Elsie? What did it look like?"

"A face," she says very softly.

Crichton grimaces before he can stop himself. "Thank you. That actually tells me everything I need to know."

"That means something to you?" asks Cassandra, and then in sudden misgiving, "Oh, no."

Elsie peeks up, too, anxious to know the answer.

"Only one book I ever heard of looked like that with the powers you describe. You thinking the same thing I am?" The Necronomicon.

"Yes," says Cassandra with distaste, "I'm afraid I am. Is it likely to be dangerous to say its name?"

"I actually think it might be. No way to know if you-know-who is listening."

Crichton addresses Elsie gently, noticing how each word seems to make her more distraught than the last. "Try not to blame yourself. You're not in trouble. I'm an enforcer with the constabulary, so I can say that with certainty, okay?"

"Okay," Elsie says reluctantly. Clearly it will take time for her to believe it.

"I think I ought to collect those papers as evidence. This calls for opening a real investigation to find the person that sent the letter. Likely the same person who now has the book. With your help, Elsie, we might be able to catch them and stop them for good."

"I think you're right." Cassandra nods at Crichton in both agreement and, more subtly, approval for the way he's handling Elsie.

She's hoping that last with your help will give the girl some hope, and not frighten her further. Trying not to be too obvious about it, she looks to Elsie to get some sense of how she's taking it.

Elsie seems fired up at the idea of being able to help catch whoever did this. She's sitting up straighter in her chair, and glancing at both their faces in short bursts.

"All right," Crichton says, trying to maintain his professional persona, "I'll take those right to the constabulary and get them filed. I'll fill out all the paperwork, so you ladies can here and stay safe. If anything else come ups, I'm just a stone call away."

He addresses Elsie more directly now, "Elsie, you did a good thing by bringing these to our attention. I just want to reiterate that you won't be in any trouble later, either. The blame for this is on whoever it was that sent that note to trick you."

Then, to Cassandra, he adds, "I think I'm about to be very busy but give me a call later either way so I know how you're doing?"

"I will," she promises him. "And will you let us know if you find out anything more? I'll be glad to hear if this has done some good."

And when Elsie's glance is back on her, she gives a brisk nod of approval.

"Absolutely, I will," he promises, making sure to look Elsie's way too so she knows he means both of them.

Between Cassandra's nod and Crichton's reassurance, Elsie finally lets out a long slow sigh that brings her shoulders back down from where they were tensed up around her ears. "Thank you," she says looking between them.

Her lip is quivering like she may start to cry again so Crichton takes that as his cue to depart and let them have some girl time. He nods and flashes one last warm smile before going on his way with this new evidence in hand.

Once it's just the two of them again, Elsie declares, "Elsie will go help too."

May Event - All Too Familiar

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject