Absit Omen RPG

   "I've not been bitten?" Hugh asked as he began absorbing the situation. "I've not been poisoned. I've been attacked by ... a hedge or something?"

"Or something," Athena nodded and wrinkled her nose like she did with the kids.

   "Is it serious?" Hugh asked sitting up straighter. "Taking my blood? How much? Don't I need it?"

"You've got plenty, Mr. Bonsey, why so stingy?" Athena asked. "Healer Hollingbury's not a vampire. Just a kindly, geeky, healer. I trust him."

 Hugh reached up to scratch his scalp in consideration, but served only to half-smother himself with the large cushy mitt.

   "Yea, well, so long as you don't take too much."

"'at's the spirit," Athena said and slid her stool over to a low cabinet where she got out the kit for Hollingbury.

After a bit and at the bedside of one Mr Hugh Bonsey who'd been made to wear large oven mitts.

"Mr. Bonsey, I've got good news and bad news," said Healer Marrowbone approaching the bedside of her mystery patient. She tidied up her rolled sleeves and sat down on a stool so she wasn't towering over him.

    "I can take these ruddy mittens off? It itches rather much," Hugh asked, then demonstrated how effective the mitts were at allowing him any satisfying itching at all. He scrabbled enthusiastically at his bound up leg, but there was no relief. They had all the abrasiveness as a puffskein orgy. He huffed.

"Mr. Bonsey, you know how happy I'd be to amputate, so by all means keep on with yer scratching," Athena said with a dangerous smile. She'd already threatened to solve Mr. Bonsey's problem the 'sharp' way. Hugh frowned, crossed his arms, and sat back against the pillows.

The doors to the ward opened and Athena nodded to the approaching healer.

"This is Healer Hollingbury," Athena said, getting to the point. "And if you're seeing him, that means you've not got bitten by anything. That's the good news."

Athena twisted the rings on her fingers, watching Arc Hollingbury work through it out loud. She'd done the right thing coming to find him directly rather than routing the patient through the paperwork. They'd go through all the thorough motions of course, all necessary to make sure the patient got the best treatment, but sometimes you had to come at the process from a different angle.

"Little tricky to separate from his hangover, but yea, bloke feels like proper shite, he does," Athena said.

She continued,  "we didn't check for fever, but gave him some soothing potions to calm down his gut, nothing too potent since we don't know what he's got."

She tapped her foot in the air for a moment then bit her lip. "So you'll have a look?"

If Arc Hollingbury was being at all haughty about his request for certainty, Athena didn't pick up on any of it.[1] He was the consummate professional and there were none that lived who was capable of knocking Athena down her ladder anyway.

With a deep breath, Athena drummed her fingers on the table. "My expert opinion is this fellow belongs on the third floor, I'm certain of that. Certain enough to consult the Shrubbery Squad. Nothing in our bestiaries explains everything or else we'd never sink so low."

It was all said with a wink.

"We didn't want to try and mend the lacerations until we'd pulled out whatever's cursed him. Our poultice for the usual critters turned up naught. When we try to remove the extra hair it only grows back. I figure before we make him anymore of a lab rat than we've already done him I'd get a second opinion."

Arc was careful and Athena appreciated that. You had to be that with poisons.

1.	Athena is a Legilimens, but only when it comes to emotions.

"Ghost cat," Marrowbone said flashing Hollingbury a crazed look.

The patient had been quite insistent. He felt something holding tight to his leg, that it felt like the claws were sunk in and not letting go. When one of the nurses mentioned the spectral possibility it had sort of caught on. They hadn't shared the joke theory with the patient of course, but it just tickled Athena to no end.

But Hollingbury was on the case, asking all the questions that an experienced Healer like he was ought to be asking. Athena considered them, clearly having a good time with it. Wasn't as if the patient was in mortal peril. Haunted trousers was all.

"That's the thing - he doesn't remember any cat because the sorry sot was properly ganted. Been round the pub late into the night and stumbled home. When he woke up with the state of his leg, he thought he might pop round to see us."

"No one said unsolvable," Athena said and took a file from under her arm to toss onto the table between them. She leaned back and crossed one leg over her knee. Hollingbury was right, though, there weren't many new stories under the stars, not at the ancient St. Mungo's. Someone was going to have seen something before, and if none yet living had, the archivists knew the score. But the archivists were a dismal, boring, crusty lot and Athena preferred collaboration with the actually thriving living like the sweet and vital Arcturus Hollingbury.

She sensed a flash of anxiety from the other Healer, but paid it no mind. She had that affect on some people, but it served her well.

"The patient presented with scratches and cuts up her leg," Athena began to summarize the case. "Looked like a solid case of Black Cat Flu. Looked like claws marks, sprouting fur here and there, the lot. But then things got weird."

Athena seemed delighted to say so. She nodded at the file for Hollingbury to have a look.

As if anticipating the need, someone nearby vacated a chair for the top healer and passed it over to her. Athena winked and thanked the donor, and got settled across from Arcturus Hollingbury.

"Alright, Holls?" she said. "Just the gent I wanted to see."

She was wearing black and white under her open healer's robe. Her sleeves were rolled up as usual revealing intricate tattoos - insects, anatomical reference, flora local to the North of England. She sat back and crossed one leg over the other. The only refreshment she carried was a very large hot coffee. She had a drink, hissed at the temperature and set down the cup.

Arcturus Hollingbury was known across the hospital as being a steady and talented healer with Plant and Poison. A bit kin they were, his floor and hers. When wix and nature ran afoul each other, they were there to remove fang and thorn, among other things.

"Got a question for ye," she said. "Got a case. Up for something a bit odd?"

Athena calibrated the camera. Turned some shiny knobs, tested the viewfinder, flipped a couple of tiny switches.

The tale of Mateo Amhearst. She shook her head quite amazed. "Incredible. Would make a grand Wireless program."

"Me? That's a stretch. But then at a party with the lights low and all of us getting happily, willfully impaired, who's to know?"

The toweringly tall healer, crouched down and lifted the camera to her face. The flash went off and the camera make a loud clicking noise and a high pitched whine. A photograph turned out, as pale as a sheet. Athena turned a knob and did it again.

"But really, what would I do with one?" she asked rising. "Should one come strolling in, what, bloke's got a harpy lac that needs stitching up? Probably send him off to a tailor. I'm lost if no one's bleeding. I'll admit it."

Athena knew saying such things was off-putting and she'd already squeemed out Cepheus. She shook the still processing photographs a little before handing them over with a smile.

"There you are. Howl if there's anything else."

"Lead we had dried up…"

Athena cracked a wide smile. He looked like he hadn't meant to, but she appreciated the word play. What was this grim danse without a bit of poetry. It was a shame Cepheus Gamp was about as doubtful of his task as she'd been at hers. A whole lot of uncertainty between them, and then this poor stiff on the table whose family will have only bad Christmases from here on out. She took a breath to perish the thought - she'd done her work by him, best she could.

"Oooh, what's 'at, missing person?" she asked as she began to carry out Cepheus's requests. "Sure they liked that, but how do you mean?"

Athena had a pair of curving calipers with her things and began taking measurements of the bites. They overlapped each other, one shallow, one fully deep. She took down the space between the wounds, the diameter of the holes, distance from the jaw bone, distance from the collar bane, just about any two points she could connect. At St. Mungo's they didn't collect this kind of data on bites not unless the patient filed a report with the Ministry, so they wouldn't have any data to compare it to. Actual involuntary, non-fatal vampire attacks were actually quite rare.

Next she'd snag a photograph with the coroner's camera.

"Bit anti-climactic, that," Athena said wrinkling her nose and looked over at Cepheus who acted like he'd never done this before. "Sorry," she offered.

The little bone shard now looked like like teeny tiny overdone breakfast sausage hovering sadly in the air, abused and spent like the doomed body from whence he came.

"I don't know," she said crossing her arms, apparently comfortable in her ignorance. "I was hoping for something grand, you know? Even a wee finger you get a bit of fireworks, bit of a jolt, right? Not even a wiggle. We've just cooked the poor bugger crispy. "

Athena thought for a moment more then shook her head with finality. "No, we should've got something. I'm seventy-seven percent sure this chap's not got a magical bone in his body. Start looking for muggles is my  magical opinion.

Then she gave the body's knee a pat. "But we won't hold it against you, Mr. Leaky, was it?"

She leaned started to pack up her things. "Think you'll catch the biter?"

Her question was more sober in tone than her macabre examination.

“Though I guess our friend wouldn’t necessary have that post mortem.”

"Auras," Athena supplied.  Cepheus looked closer to fainting than he had earlier. "Fades quickly after check-out, according to what I've read. And I'm not sure it's unique to our folk."

“So, how does one know from the blood?” He asked, “Or marrow, I guess in this case?”

The truth was, she didn't rightfully, not with certainty. The hope was that a magical person's blood was magic itself and could be coaxed to life, if only for a moment. "All I've got is a wild guess, but I'll need your assist, Healer Gamp."

She lifted her wand and held the tip close to the sample and nodded for Cepheus to do the same. "We re-attach loads of limbs. The hard bits are getting the blood flowing again, but getting the wand arm to work as well. Bit of lightning does the trick. One wand at each end: far end sends a jolt and the other end, well, it should do something."

What exactly happened seemed to vary. The results always reminded Athena of when kids tried their first wands. Snap, crackle, pop. What was this poor dead marrow sample but a detached arm?

"I'll throw, you catch. Bit closer for me. Ready?" She didn't sound exactly confident in the method, but it was worth a try.

Athena glanced up, perhaps a little to interested in seeing how the nice man reacted to her methods. She found the crunch satisfying; it meant she'd found bone buried deep inside the thick leg on the first try. She had earned her namesake.

"That's the question, innit?" Athena said. Then with a mighty yank she withdrew the instrument. Pinched at the end of the awl was what looked like a blood-red worm standing at attention. At the Healer's spell, it hovered in the air gently rotating.

"Hello, baby..." she said, cocking her head. "Good enough to eat, aren't you?"

Then to Cepheus she said. "Looks like we got lucky. Even if our friend didn't. Of all the magical advancements of all the years, of everything we know... where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?"

She shrugged. "My gold's on blood."

For all of Athena's experience, she very rarely worked with the dead. She got them just before the end with the goal of delaying it.

Cepheus Gamp wasn't well known to Athena Marrowbone (they were always a few degrees separated by punctured patients and vampires and paperwork) so she didn't know if he was always this way, clever, kind, and adroit with the small talk.

"I'm third of five, me," Athena said. "And it's no holiday if da's not putting us to work. Dug a ditch one Boxing Day, hand to heart. If it wasn't for what that sweet old man can do with a cranberry..."

A comment not worth punctuating with a wink, but she did it anyway. She stepped away from their patient to retrieve a case from her bag. It looked long enough to be a wand box, but it wasn't.

"The best place to look for any lingering magical mustard is in the blood, or such is the current best guess. Shame our friend hasn't got much left. Luckily we have me, and I know where to look."

Inside the case was a golden healing instrument nearly as long as her forearm. It looked like a large awl with two large hoops for her fingers, and a sort of lever or plunger like a syringe. Looking at it, one had the distinct worry it was meant for the eye or nose.

"Helps he's freshly departed..." she said. The man's body began to lower and Athena came around to his left side. She turned up the cover, and looking a little giddy to be doing it, Saint Sawbones plunged the device deep into the deceased's thigh. It made exactly the sound one would expect.

25 December 2011
Morning
The Ministry of Magic morgue


Athena Marrowbone would like to be able to say the choice between a party and working on a holiday would be an easy one, but when the assignment was a post-vampire bite mystery-victim enchanted autopsy the expected tides turned. Start without me, she'd owled, won't be long. He's already dead, poor fellow.

The body of the poor fellow in question - middle aged, fashionably shaved head, well-built, attention paid to his fingernails - was levitating gently above the stone table, and respectfully draped. He was empty of all blood and disrobed of all personals and clues. The question wasn't in how he died. The only purple and pink left in his skin was bruising at the neck around four dry punctures. The question was to his identity. If the victim had anything personally identifying on him, it was gone by the time his death was discovered. No cash, no identification cards. And the piece of the wand that was found with him couldn't be assumed to be his.

"It's harder than you think, Gamp," Athena said walking in a wide arc. Her bright eyes and long wand were trained on their subject, but she glanced back at the head of Beings to make sure she had him.

"Especially with the more cosmopolitan of us. We're all the same at the end, you reckon? Magic or lacking, we all come into the world naked and crying and hope not to leave in the same fashion."

Athena, laughed. "A thought for the coming new year. Sorry, I'm lousy at Christmas."

She didn't seem sorry at all.

1.	25 Dec 2011 - Dry Christmas

     'Everything just runs right through me'

Athena didn't know him from Sam but she immediately believed him. There were either too many or too few or the wrong sort looking out for this little wizard. She had the sudden and distinct worry for anyone that pushed him to far. Maybe that was his innocent way that always belied a fighter below, or it could have been his steady stamina coming at her as part of their exercise.

The lesson was over earlier than Athena had thought, not by the clock but by her general habit to go until she couldn't any more. This would be a fun new thing: mediation. The rest of the day stretched before her.

"I've no doubt on that," she said with a broad smile. "Be mad to. Brimming."

Athena took her feet and put on her hat again. She tucked a blonde curl up inside, then tapped the table lightly with her knuckles. "Reckon we nknow how to find each other. Tarra, Virgil. See thee on the other side."

Fin