Evening, on the stairwell.


"Arcturus!"

Robin Louvelle called out, spotting his colleague on the stairwell landing below. He was headed down from the Tearoom and it was his habit to take the stairs as a way of keeping himself active throughout the day. Ever since Storm's announcement last month[1] though, he's been happy to find himself in company on the otherwise quiet steps.

Not to say that Robin was scared. There just prevailed an eerie atmosphere about the place, something he couldn't put his finger on.

"Where are you headed to?" he asked as he joined Hollingbury with a winning, if tired, smile. "I was just about to check on the post-mortem of a patient, if you've got time for a second opinion."

Someone had come in with a nasty dragon burn earlier in the evening, and shortly expired after arrival. It was an inexplicable death that he couldn't really chalk up to the burn in itself.

"One of those cases." Robin explained as they continued down the stairs. "More than meets the eye and I'm thinking it isn't creature related, so I could use a spare set of eyes on the report."

He didn't usually visit the morgue at night but that was more to do with his shifts than a natural aversion.

1.	19th Feb - Theatre of the Magically Medical

His name being called made him turn, pausing mid-step in surprise. Not many used the stairs frequently; this Arc knew as someone who had spent a while traipsing up to the roof of St Mungo's to have a smoke here and there. While this act had decreased in regularity over the past five years thanks to careful moderation and help from Cepheus, he still indulged once in a while when things felt particularly distressing that day.

"Going back to my office, but I can afford to take a detour because you asked." He looked Robin up and down with some concern as they headed down while being briefed, making no effort to hide it. "This case is giving you some distress, hm? You look exhausted."

Arc was no stranger to the morgue, but he had to admit even the still, stagnant atmosphere as they entered was not quite the perfect setting to spend an evening. Wizarding medical advancements had made sure that magical morgues didn't smell as stale and clinical as muggle morgues did, but there was still a degree of an unsettling feeling that came with the dead regardless.

"What's the details you can share?" he asked, turning to Robin to keep his mind off of the place. "If you can share them, that is."

Arc could always be counted on to oblige a reasonable request, and Robin happily fell into step with the other wizard while they made their way down to the morgue.

"Distress?" he raised his eyebrows, breathing out in a horselike huff. "Not this case, no. Just the general energy going around since Storm told us about those bodies going missing."

It felt good to just say that out loud. Generally speaking he didn't like to feed an atmosphere of fear by talking it up too much but Hollingbury wasn't one to spook easy, in his opinion, and there wasn't anyone else around.

"Plus, you know..." Robin added with a crooked grin. "Werewolves getting kidnapped, boyfriend troubles. It'll pass, though."

He didn't get this far in life by dwelling on troubles to no end. But hearing from Arc that he looked exhausted felt like something of a wake-up call.

They made their way off the stairwell and out into the passageway, often quiet this time of evening when few patients came in and even fewer were wheeled towards the morgue.

Robin relayed the problem at hand in a few quick, direct words. "Just an unexplained death, this one. Dragon burns were superficial so I could use your brain while I'm reading the post-mortem report. I don't know what I'm looking for, really."

"Yeah, I understand that." The hospital's overall atmosphere had become a little more gloomy and tense of late in no small part thanks to the announcement. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, uncertain of when the next body might go missing with the mystery still yet unsolved. "Sorry to hear about the rest. I hope your troubles with both resolve well."

He listened to Robin's summary and frowned a little. "Has there been any test to anything else? I'd offer my blood testing but you know how some people feel about that." A lot of people had feelings about it. "How does one get first degree burns from a dragon? Narrow miss? Did the dragon have any other properties to its breath that might have been harmful?"

It was easy to talk to Arc, he realised. Robin appreciated a straight-shooter.

"Thanks," he smiled wryly as they approached the great double doors, which opened onto the morgue once they were close enough. "Just life, ain't it? Gotta sit with those discomforts sometimes."

The temperature drop always gave him a bit of a shudder. It was the high ceilings and the cool, white tiles with their greenish hue. Robin had only a couple of experiences with hospital morgues, which were so much bigger and older than the ones at clinics.

They entered a kind of gothic antechamber and checked in with the mediwitch at the desk, who slid the logbook over.

"It's not direct contact with dragon flame," he answered Arcturus as he signed them both in. "You can get burnt just getting near it, or touching anything the dragon's breathed over. But there's not much else to the fire, unless you're allergic."

Through the antechamber was a hall that branched off into several narrower ones, where the corpses were kept in chilled mortuary cabinets. This larger hall was for the examination of bodies - about a half dozen such tables were arranged, complete with sinks and side tables and other necessary accoutrements.

"Talk about a quiet night..." he glanced around, failing to spot the mortician on duty. "Guess we'll have to get my guy out ourselves, huh?"

"That definitely doesn't give cause for death, no." Magical beasts had never been Arc's strong suit for some reason. He always needed Lyra's help with the subject since her penchant for anything magical animal was unrivalled in his circle of friends. He was more impressed that Lyra had managed to remain unsinged for all of her life too given her proximity to dragons most of the time.

He was accustomed to the morgue, unsurprisingly - and a little unfortunately, he mused as the space around them opened up into a grander, and colder, section. "The night shift isn't in? Strange." Arc shrugged.

"But we can cover most of it for ourselves. Need help bringing out the sleeper?" he asked, rolling up his sleeves. "I've done it a few times... more than anyone should, really, but it's inevitable."

Weekday nights weren't exactly the busiest at the hospital so he tried not to dwell on the missing night shift - at any rate, they could easily be busy down any one of the mortuary corridors.

"Help would be great, actually." Robin dug into his robe pockets for the memo sheet that bore his patient's name. "I don't have to come down here much, you know. Cases are pretty open-and-shut on Creatures."

Like most Healers he wasn't a stranger to death but he didn't exactly hang around it, either. They made their way towards the rightmost hall - corpses were sorted by floor and, within that, alphabetically by surname. Robin handed the memo to Arc.

"Taylor," he repeated the surname aloud as they entered the narrower hall. "Can I ask you a personal question, by the way?"

Here, the tiled walls on either side bore rows of mortuary cabinet doors - and each door bore a name scribbled in dark chalk. Robin carried on easily enough. "Are you a white picket fence sort of guy?" he glanced at Arc. "I mean, you and Cepheus I guess."

Further ahead of them, a light flickered once - twice, thrice. And then failed all at once, plunging the far end of the hallway into darkness.

"If only death cases on the third floor were as open-and-shut," Arcturus remarked, perhaps somewhat ruefully. "Part and parcel of more invisible conditions due to internal problems. There's always a detail to test for, as much as possible until we can rule it out. It's amazing what some people will put into their bodies without a second thought."

He took the memo and looked at it. "Hm, we should be further down if we need his cabinet--"

"Can I ask you a personal question, by the way?" "Yeah...?" This was said with the caution of a man surrounded by walls of excellent acoustics, even if the only ears available to hear the answer belonged to the dead.

At the question, Arcturus paused to give Robin a bewildered stare. "Do I look the type? I assume that's why you're asking. I've considered what our future might look like but--"

Robin would not hear the rest of the answer; in pitch black Arc cut himself off immediately. There was a long moment of silence, possibly stunned, before "Lumos" broke it and filled their surrounding space with light. In this vast cavern the little ball of light at the tip of Arc's wand was feeble, only illuminating the space directly around them even if he raised it into the air.

"Could you kindly give us a homenum revelio?" Arc murmured, a frown on his face. "I'm not going to call out in the morgue. Personal reasons."

He couldn't help but bark out a laugh at Arc's response to the question, and would have happily clarified his purpose if the lights didn't suddenly fail. They were instantly plunged into a cold blackness.

Robin didn't react immediately - like some other werewolves, he had a keen sense of smell and hearing in the lead up to a full moon, and these senses came fully into their own in the dark. It was disorienting. Next to him, lingering cigarette smoke in Arc's robes, though in general the morgue was redolent of astringent potions and the underlying scent of raw flesh on the turn.

Something else, too. Something sickeningly sweet and rotten.

He almost startled at the Lumos but quickly recovered to draw his wand upon his colleague's request.

With little flourish, Robin sent the presence-revealing charm down the passageway - to no avail, the dark ate it up without reaction. "Could be a creature," he said after the spell dissipated. "We shou--"

A rough, gurgling sigh cut him off and he exchanged a grim look with Arc. It didn't sound close but it was definitely in the same hallway. He flicked his wand to send a spark of light down the passage.

Like a pink flare, it shot forward - giving them glimpses of mortuary cabinets and smooth stone. One of the cabinet doors hung open, further down. It was still swinging.

"You got my back?" Robin glanced at the other wizard.

The echoes of the rattling breath faded into cold, empty silence before Arc spoke with steel in his tone.

"Could be anything."

He couldn't smell as intensely as Robin, but there was no doubt to what he did smell. Decomposing flesh was not a smell one easily forgot, nor was it meant to be easily forgotten as part of the natural world. Arc exhaled forcefully, trying to get rid of the stench from his nostrils. "Three, four days old," he murmured, "putrefaction setting in already and progressing fast. They wouldn't have let that happen." 'They' being the morgue staff. Who weren't here.

"No need to ask twice," he assured the wizard, stepping behind the taller man to keep an eye out from behind. The swinging cabinet door sent a chill down his spine, but he had little time to dwell on it with the slap of soft, wet flesh against stone echoing through the darkness from ahead, along with what sounded like a creaking moan. Arc's free hand slowly lowered to the flask in his pocket and gently loosened the top. Just in case.

They wouldn't have let that happen.

The implication was clear and he nodded grimly. Something, not human. In an intense state of decay. Robin couldn't shake the smell of it but for that same reason he thought it better he lead - it would be easier for him to tell if he was drawing closer or farther from the source.

"Oh," he flinched at the sickening wet noise. "That sounds promising..."

Robin stepped forward, breathing slowly as he held his wand out. His own shadow preceded him: thrown by Arc from behind. The gurgling sigh again - closer. He glanced to his side but saw nothing in their circle of blue wand light.

The smell did not get any fainter or stronger. Whatever it was, it kept equidistant as they advanced. He gripped the mortuary cabinet door once they were close enough, to stop it swinging, and peered inside.

"There's nothing in here." Robin glanced back at the other Healer. "Do you thi--"

A squelching THUD cut him off, a movement past Arc's shoulder catching his eye. Something had just dropped from the ceiling - all Robin could see of it was a disembodied leg, chewed off at the knee and laying rigid on the floor.

He cast his own wand light quickly, holding it aloft but not in time to catch the thing scuttling along the ceiling. The smell was much stronger now.

Robin heard a wet, guttural groan and anticipated the lunge. He ducked, just as it leapt at him - a blur of naked, yellowing flesh - and crashed into the cabinet door, ripping it off its hinges.

Almost human, it moved more like a spider than a person, scampering back out of the reach of their light.

He stared at the dismembered leg in stunned silence. The groan shook him out of it; the blur went past him as he lunged sideways to dodge the indomitable stench and heard the crash. The clatter of limbs scrambling over a metal door, the squelch of flesh and they were both left alone once more, speechless and breathless.

Except they weren't alone anymore, were they?

Arc looked down at the broken cabinet door, its hinges a sorry state for weathering the poundage of a body and coiled limbs that had been poised to strike. There was a black liquid smeared across the shine of metal, the insidious ooze of decay marring the surface of smooth clinical safety. A barrier once meant to keep things out. Now it could no longer keep things in.

"Are you alright?" he asked Robin under his breath, free hand unscrewing the top of the hip flask entirely. It leaned against the shoulder of said flask, opening as dark as the rest of the morgue around them. "We need to get the lights back on in here asap. There should be a series of emergency lamps along the corridors that don't exist on the same spell the main lamps did. Barring that, we could do with some fire."

The silence in between his pauses and his soft words tried to settle like death upon them, but he wasn't having any of it. "We need to find those lamps."

Was he alright? Robin huffed a grim laugh, glancing at the other wizard. Who was... drinking? No. Arc had some kind of flask open but wasn't taking a swig of whatever it contained.

"I'm fine," he reassured him in a hushed voice. "Shouldn't the lamps have come on as soon as the regular ones went out?"

They had no idea how the lights had gone out the way they did, or if the thing stalking them had some kind of averse reaction to light magic that would negate it. Their Lumos held up well, though.

Around them, just at the border of darkness, he heard a wet dragging sound overlapping subtle clicks. Like fingernails clacking against a surface. Robin turned with the noise, rubbing his nose at the stink of the thing.

"It's circling," he muttered. "But keeping its distance. Do you know where the lamps are? Let's see if it follows us."

Robin slowly stepped away from the cabinet, in the direction of their new friend. Whatever it was scuttled back - but not quickly enough. He caught a glimpse of it.

Its decrepit head, not sitting quite right on a crooked neck, lolled to the side and offered a grinning countenance below colourless eyes. Grinning only because the flesh has rotted right off its mouth. The thing pulled back jerkily, on all fours, back into shadow.

"Um." Robin paused, blinking. He had seen its outstretched arm, skin peeling off raw flesh, finger bones jutting out.

"I wish I had an answer for you." Why hadn't the emergency lights come on? He remembered being told that they would turn on if the main lamps shut down for any reason. It had been years since he visited the morgue when he was but an apprentice, so he had never actually seen them in action.

"They should be along where the wall meets the ceiling, and they should be red in colour. You might have to light them with a spark, but if--"

Robin's words did not set him at ease. He too caught sight of the creature with its missing eyelids and clouded lenses, bloodstained toothy grin with remnants of lips peeling back to expose deteriorating gums. Its movements were slow, deliberate, akin to an animal watching its pursuers warily. Pursuers - or prey. He would not know if it delighted in a fresh, living meal.

"I can't light them without extinguishing my light spell," he murmured, "and I'm keeping an eye on your back. I can lift my wand higher for you to see the lamps while keeping an eye on it." It wasn't as if the creature was making any effort to be particularly quiet, though the acoustics in the morgue dampened the sounds once it withdrew an unknown distance. He could not afford to let down his guard.

"Sounds like a plan," he replied in a faint voice. "Nice and slow then, I'll give the lamps a tap as soon as I see one."

Robin felt pretty good about keeping his head on - he's been around the block, so to speak, as a clinic Healer for creature injuries. You don't do that for so many years without running into trouble of that variety. He has had to heal his own fair share of gashes and bites. So whatever this thing was, he felt confident they would manage.

Hollingbury, at least, was as cool a customer as you'd hope to be stuck in a corner with.

They moved towards the wall, step-by-step, the dragging sound following them at the edges of Arc's seemingly protective light. Robin could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck every time he heard those finger bones clacking.

"Hold up, I see it!" he raised his own wand to a bulbous ceiling lamp, almost dark purple in the blue wand light. "Okay. I'm going to give it a go, no telling how that thing is going to react so get ready to shield."

Robin did a quick 3-2-1 count, knowing better than to hesitate, and gestured at the emergency light with a quick spark charm.

The lamp jumped to life, glowing red - and in quick succession, one after the other, so did the other lights in the ceiling. It turned the morgue a strange pinkish hue - soft colours in contrast with the sudden, wet shriek over his shoulder.