Absit Omen RPG

It hadn't taken very much encouragement for Kaia to down her shot. Why would they be Unspeakables, after all, if they didn't enjoy a dalliance with the unknown? Rushing headlong into potentially risky new frontiers was practically part of their everyday jobs.

The sound of her voice coming out of Perry Gamp's mouth hadn't been what she'd expected, though. Kaia gave a disconcerted squeak -- one that came out sounding much different than one might have expected, much lower and more masculine, causing her to throw her hands over her mouth in surprise.

What had happened? Tentatively, she tested out her new voice.

"Um, hello? What's this?" Definitely masculine and also decidedly British. Kaia's eyes lit up as she realized -- it wasn't that hard to recognize Virgil Carstairs' lazy drawl -- and she let out a decidedly un-Virgil-like whoop, dissolving into a fit of laughter as she clapped Hyperion enthusiastically on his shoulder.

Kaia had flashed Jules Abbott a smile at his greeting, gamely stepping back to give their chatty colleague space to join the conversation circle around Yavin's table. She hadn't seen Janus, but the room was still crowded enough that it was possible that the young Unspeakable was just lost in the throngs. Apparently most of Level Nine had been ready for a chance to relax and mingle with their colleagues this evening.

"Yeah nah, it'd probably fall on me to tidy up in the morning," she agreed with Yavin, giving Virgil a wink. He could probably hold his liquor as well as any of them, but as much as she loved the relaxing sensation of drifting through space, the thought of returning to her usual station in off-work hours sounded less than appealing.

Still, it wasn't often that the boss gave them run of the floor. Kaia tilted her head to the side, appearing to have a think, as another of their colleagues approached.

"Have you all supped love potion?"

Drinking an unknown substance was never the safest idea, never mind when the sources was a slightly sus coworker who worked in experimental potions, but what was tonight about as if not a celebration of living a little? Kaia shrugged and gamely took a shot glass.

"Chur, mate," she replied, lifting the glass in thanks to Perry. "Nah, no love potions, but the Love Chamber's one thought, eh?" Kaia tilted a glance to Virgil, Ophelia, and Jules, clearly intending to take up Yavin's implied permission to explore. "Reckon at least it'd be a bit less messy than the Brain Room."

A bright laugh sounded from another small group just a few feet away.

Like many of the Unspeakables here tonight, Kaia had seized upon the opportunity to dress up. Under her robes, she wore a black dress that shimmered with all the vastness of space, dotted with twinkling silver stars, and silver star earrings to match. She'd taken the time to darken her lips and carefully painted a moko kauae on her chin, adopting a pattern from her mother's iwi, Ngāi Tahu. On nights like this that felt so far from home, when she found herself deep underground amidst flickering blue flames in the onyx black heart of the British Ministry, wearing the sacred tattoo even just for a night made her feet feel a bit more firmly planted.

She smiled now at Virgil as she stepped away from the others that she'd been conversing with to join the small circle around Yavin. Now that he'd served his year, the sleepy blond youth had been elevated fully to the title of Unspeakable as their peer. Learning hardly stopped when training was done, especially on Level Nine -- but even here, the title still meant something. For someone like Virgil, who had ended up as the target of considerable resentment due to how their new Department Head had favored him, completing the training year meant some extra. At least it would be a bit harder for the others to say that he hadn't earned his station now.

"Reckon you're a bit less able to say that now that you've signed the blood contract," she said cheerfully, the words far more teasing than biting. "You'd better watch out now, Carstairs. Before you know it, you'll be as ancient and run down as the rest of us, eh?"

Once again, the small bright thing made its approach. It streaked towards the tiny blue-green world, racing across the dark blue of the Pacific as the planet continued its slow rotation. Finally, it impacted at the lower end of an upside-down Great Britain, giving off a tiny white flare.

Kaia paused, pursing her lips as she considered the Department Head's question.

"Here," she said after a beat. "I reckon it's best if I show you, but we'll need to start a little earlier in the story."

She tangled her fingers in the invisible threads of space-time again and gave a tug.

It was a nearly impossible thing to get used to, seeing the cosmos shift around you. It left you with a spinning feeling, as if you might be the center of the universe after all and maybe the heavens would do what you said if you'd only thought to ask. Kaia found the disorienting thrill of the Space Room to be exhilarating, even if it left her feeling a bit like she'd crossed into the taboo. It was one thing to count the stars and number them, to use them to mark your way and even to calculate their journeys. It was quite another to stand as her own little god here, to manipulate the night sky in ways that so much of humanity would have never dreamed possible.

When the heavens finally stopped moving, they were floating in the ether of outer space. The star of the Sol system -- the Sun -- looked as if it were a mile away, a tiny beacon brighter than any of its brethren, but still just a bright speck dwarfed by all the darkness.

A large oblong rock about the size of a football hung in the air in front of them. Although it looked like it was barely moving, glowing blue numbers hovered next to it, calculating its speed and trajectory.

"Here we are, then," Kaia said cheerfully, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. "The eighteenth of July, 2011. That's when we first spotted this bugger on approach." She glanced sidelong at her boss; that had been just before he'd come to the Department of Mysteries, before he'd been summoned in like a savior to wash away the stain that Mortimer Gamp had left on the department. "I know you've read Rosier's report from back then, eh?"

March 20, 2012
Half past nine at night
The Space Room, Level Nine

She'd been drifting for so long that if it hadn't been for the shining little jewel of a world before her, it would have been impossible to tell which way was up.

The starscape of the Space Room seemed to shine brighter than normal tonight, perhaps lent some vigor by the outside world's equinox, which marked the transition from winter to spring. Kaia sat cross-legged somewhere just inside the orbit of Venus, curly locks splayed around her like the corona of a star, her gaze focused intently on an upside-down Earth. Silently, she watched as a small bright speck arced between the Earth and its shining silver satellite, orbited around, and then curved down to its surface, colliding with a barely visible impact on a large island deep on its underside.

In front of her, a series of shining blue numbers and symbols changed furiously, relaying positions and trajectories at a rate that nearly rivaled Muggle computers until they came to a sudden, final halt. But Kaia was barely paying them mind tonight. Instead, she reached out to grasp at the invisible fabric of space and twisted. All around her, the stars and planets seemed to slow their movement for a moment, and then began to move in reverse: the small bright thing rose from the surface of Great Britain and quickly began to retreat back around the Earth, until it had reached the point where it had started and she let the room's magical space-time resume its normal flow.

Orbit, impact, reverse. The magical calculations borrowed from ARTEMIS ran through their numbers again, and Kaia frowned as she glanced at them, and then let the pattern resume once more.

It was always the breeze that made it impossible for anyone to sneak up on her. It ruffled her hair like a shiver, and the Unspeakable glanced up just in time to see the door to the Space Room closing behind a familiar figure, who was oriented upside down to where she hung in time and space.

"A bit late for a spacewalk, eh?" Smiling, Kaia let the blue numbers fade as she waited for the Head of the Department of Mysteries to make his way across the heavens to her little corner of the solar system. "I didn't expect you to get my note until you were back in again tomorrow morning."

"Golf?" Kaia echoed, trading a befuddled look with Schlagenweit. But the confusion was fleeting; puzzling out whatever connection the young trainee had made between vehicular accidents and golf seemed less important than keeping an eye on the slow progress being made across the room.

Maybe they should have closed the atrium off.  But that was Morgenthau's call, and Kaia was half in agreement with the Department of Mysteries Head that there was only so much they could do to minimize accidents. When the situation was too controlled and there seemed to be too little a chance of something going wrong, it was easy to make careless mistakes. Knowing that there was a chance of someone brushing too close to the sphere kept all of them on their toes. Hopefully, it would be enough to see it down to Level Nine safely.

She kept a careful eye as one of the Ministry lifts rattled into place, revealing a Magical Maintenance worker. But one of the other younger Unspeakables was already moving to intercept him, probably to warn him to stay clear until the sphere had passed safely through.

Now Schlagenweit was talking about Void Ships. Kaia eyed him sidelong; there was a place for the fantastical imagination of science fiction, but she preferred to draw a hard line between that and their own mix of magic and science.

"Better not to make assumptions, eh?" she asked lightly, raising an eyebrow at him. "We'll know more once we can take a closer look at it." The sphere obviously had interstellar origins, but it was still impossible to say if it had been sent or summoned here. The Unspeakables weren't ruling anything out until they could decode its mysteries.

"Oi, you ought to know better than that now, Schlagenweit." 

The Unspeakable who had been passing nearby was unrecognizable in her oblong fuchsia helmet, but her teasing tone was easy enough to pick out.  Kaia paused next to the two trainees, crossing her arms as she looked back in the direction of the strange silver sphere.

It had been a long night already.  The flight down from Scotland has been exhilarating, though there had only been a peek of the stars through the clouds to guide them.  Getting the sphere down to the Ministry's atrium had been a feat of magical ingenuity.  But this last part -- the journey across the atrium and on to Level Nine -- was dripping with tediousness.  The large size of their team, which had been necessary for their travels by air, was far less helpful now that they were inside.  It was starting to feel like they were simply getting in the way of each other, especially as the task had transitioned into one of intense concentration, but it was also clear that none of their number wanted to leave before this feat was done. 

Kaia winked at Sasha, passing a slightly cool look over Virgil.  Word had gotten around that Morgenthau's pet trainee had refused to wear a helmet, and it had set off another round of resentful murmurings amongst the younger Unspeakables.  She wasn't outwardly annoyed with young Carstairs like some of the others were, but it was a little aggravating that he couldn't suck one up for the team.

"Don't jinx us, mate," she chided Sasha lightly, though the levity in her voice made it clear that it was mostly in jest.  "We've still got a bit to go yet.  After all, the easiest place to get into a prang is right at the end of your drive, eh?"

"Reckon I'll pull through somehow," Kaia replied, not looking the least bit perturbed by the news as she flashed Theta an approving smile. 

She knew too well how it was: even here on Level Nine, it was a bit too much of an old boys club, with a certain chosen few getting easy access special privileges.  Kaia liked all of her coworkers, even the ones who were a bit stuck on themselves like Virgil Carstairs, but having to constantly play catch-up because she hadn't been childhood mates with their Department Head got a bit wearing.  Good on Theta for getting the shop keys turned over to her, even if just for a day.

The other Unspeakable wasted no time in getting right to the point, reaching for her apron.  Kaia responded in kind, her hand automatically moving to her chest to find the small magical hourglass that she kept tucked under her robes.

"It was brilliant, ta," she said, as she freed the Time Turner from her clothing, and then reached behind her neck to undo the clasp.  "Nice to pop back home for a bit to see family and get a taste of summer."  Warm weather, of course, was relative on the South Island even during the sunnier months, but she didn't miss the cloudy skies of London.   

"And no, not much use," she agreed, shaking her head as she passed the magical artifact over to Theta.  "Full Lent Term doesn't start for another two weeks, so I'm only holding down the one job for the moment."

Returning to London after visiting home always felt like the world had turned upside down.  It didn't help that the two places couldn't have been farther apart; the eleven-hour time difference essentially flipped day and night, leaving Kaia groggy for the first few days after she went from one to the other.  But it had been worth it to take a brief sojourn to summer and spend the holidays with her father and twin brother. 

Even so, her visit home had made it harder than usual to drag herself out of bed that morning, to brave the frigid rain and overcast skies on her way to the Ministry.  She'd arrived a bit later than she wanted to, which left her with not very much time at all to navigate the confusing hallways of Level Nine to drop her things off in her workspace, and then find her way to the Time Turner Workshop.

Having to stop in to this part of Level Nine on a regular basis might have been more of a hassle, but she liked the Peppers: the fastidious Francis and his apprentice niece.  Theirs was a family that really had time on their side, a side effect of the family business.

Usually, when she came for her appointments, both Francis and Theta were there to greet her.  But today, after she knocked twice and then turned the brass handle to push the door open, there was one less figure inside the tidy workshop than she was expecting.  Perhaps Francis was still out enjoying his holiday, so he'd decided to leave this particular piece of regular business to his very capable niece.

"Hullo," Kaia said cheerfully as she entered.  She flashed Theta a friendly smile, closing the door behind her.  "Your uncle left you to mind the shop today, eh?  Or will he be joining us in a bit?"

Truth be told, Kaia was far more interested in the smooth black monolith in the center of the lake than she was in keeping an eye on her erstwhile charges.  In her parrot form, she looped easily towards it, skating between the updrafts created as the steam still rose from the roiling lake.

She’d known how big the meteor was, but seeing its size up close for the first time still left her feeling a sense of awe.  So large as it loomed over the lake, but so small in the grand galactic scheme of things.  It was incredible to think that it had traveled so far, traversing endless solar systems and crossing paths with countless stars, only to end up here at this time, in this place.

Even with Carstairs’ ably-cast charm, she could still feel the emanating heat through her feathers as she headed towards the looming meteor.  Smooth and glassy, their interstellar visitor seemed even darker than the night all around them, as if it had taken all the heat and light produced by its journey and sucked it within so that it could cloak itself in an eclipse.  Straining towards it, Kaia quickly lost sight of the two trainees and her other colleagues straining in the water below her, barely took notice of Rosier’s shouted reminder to stay ten feet away.  Alone in the sky, soaring between plumes of steam as hints of stars peeking through overhead, she could almost imagine that she was back in the Space Room at the Ministry, just her and the meteor.

But then the screaming started.

The first unexpected cry cut through her thoughts.  The parrot banked hard, losing altitude for a second until she flapped to regain her position.  Down in the water below, she thought she’d spotted a hint of Virgil’s blond locks, but then whatever she’d seen was gone, dragged underneath the surface.

”Kaia!” someone shouted down below. 

Something was deathly wrong.  But there was nowhere to land out here, nowhere to set herself down and regain her wand unless she turned back for shore or headed straight for the rock.

Kaia made her decision in an instant, turning sharply to fly towards the rock.  But before she could take more than a few flaps towards it, an enormous mass rose up out of the water ahead of her.  A long, slimy tentacle, looking like something out of someone’s worst nightmare, uncurled towards her, water dripping from its glistening surface as it reached out to try and knock her from the sky. 

The mist was lifting quickly now, carried away by the breeze as if an invisible hand had been summoned to scoop it away.  The large black rock loomed suddenly into view in the center of the lake, massive and foreboding as a solemn obelisk.  Although it looked to be formed out of some sort of extrusive igneous rock, it seemed far too perfectly curved to be natural, with none of the imperfections or inevitable wounds that she might have expected from a long interstellar journey.

Rosier, at least, had relented on the ban on approaching after casting his mapping spell.  Eager to venture closer, Kaia had fallen in with the two trainees, Carstairs and Schlagenweit to approach the edge of the still-steaming lake. 

Schlagenweit had been nothing but wariness and suspicion when she'd spoken to him at the university a few days ago.  Now, though, he was quick to throw caution to the wind, casting a grin at them before he ran forward and dove in.  Kaia blinked, casting a look at Virgil.  There were technically protocols to be followed before diving in, but now she was stuck between following through with them or letting their greenest trainee get out of sight in proximity to a potentially dangerous foreign object.

At least she had a way of catching up.

"Seems like we're going in first then, eh?" she asked Virgil, more than a bit dryly.  She shrugged off her coat, letting it fall to the ground behind her; protective or not, transforming with that on would make her feel far too heavy to fly.

"Cast a heat repellent charm on me, won't you?" she asked the trainee, as she stepped forward towards the water's edge.  "I'll stay just overhead from you two."

She bent her knees, and then leapt into the air above the lake, her body transforming with a shiver into a green-winged parrot with a sharply hooked beak as she took to flight.

The night had been freezing cold when they'd taken up their watch at the start of the night, but now at the edge of the roiling Loch Monar, the night was sweltering again.  Even so, Kaia barely noticed, a wide grin on her face and her eyes shining as she stepped up with the others next to the lake.

Their visitor had arrived.  The extrasolar object had placed itself neatly in the lake as if that had been its goal all along, as if back when its journey had begun in some distant time and place, its creator had known that this would be the only acceptable place to set as its destination. 

Department Head Morgenthau, swaddled in his black coat with a gray scarf and gleaming glasses, looked a bit like a Who or a Which or a Whatsit from one of the Muggle children's novels that she'd devoured when she was young.  He'd led the way to the lake, pausing at its edge to look out through the still hissing steam.  The rest of the team had followed closely behind.

And now, through the rising steam, they could just begin to make out a shape in the simmering lake.

Schlagenweit stopped alongside her, his feet just at the edge of the pebbled shore.  "It's beautiful," he murmured, his eyes locked on it.

Kaia grinned and looked over to their team leader, who had stopped alongside Morgenthau.

"Shall I go have a look, then?" she asked cheerfully, directing the question at both Rosier and Morgenthau.  Safety had been one of Level Nine's utmost concerns to this point -- hence the cloaks, hence the isolation and the barrier spells.  But now that the extrasolar object was here, she was eager to stretch her feathered wings and see it for herself. 

Kaia laughed, flashing the undergraduate student a quick smile.  Schlagenweit's version of Level Nine did indeed sound like some sort of medieval horror play, where dangers were lurking and informants waiting at every turn to jump out at you.  The Department of Mysteries was certainly not safe, and there were plenty of Unspeakables with their own competitive agendas, but she'd yet to truly end up on the worse side of office politics.

At least Schlagenweit appeared to be relaxing.  This was more typical of the conversation that she'd expected when she first approached him: getting to share a little of that excited anticipation, the knowledge that soon he too would be inducted into his share of mysteries and wonders.

"Might even turn out to be the most brilliant," she replied, grinning back at him.  "Just don't let your university studies fall by the wayside, Mr Schlagenweit.  We're a bit rare, those of us who wander back and forth."

It seemed like Schlagenweit needed a moment to think through his concerns out loud.  Kaia waited patiently as he sorted through his thoughts.  She didn't know what had been said to the young man, but apparently it had been enough to set him along a horrible spiral imagining possible deadly outcomes.

His final questions were enough to cause her to chuckle.

"Can't exactly talk about it if I am, can I?" she countered with a grin.  "We're Unspeakables, eh?  Unless this is a secrecy test that someone put you up to trying on me."  She winked at him, to show that she was kidding.

Interesting, though, that young Sasha Schlagenweit knew about ARTEMIS and its connection with Level Nine.  Apparently Morgenthau was serious about recruiting him if he'd dangled that potential project like a carrot.  She liked the Department Head, but he seemed to be collecting young men as potential proteges like weta to an old, fallen log.

"For all the talk about secrecy, it seems like someone has put quite a bit of trust in you already, mate," Kaia pointed out, her tone a mix of curiosity and bemusement.  "I can't talk about anything specific that we're doing, but if you're interested in the kind of work that involves Greek moon goddesses as an acronym, Schlagenweit, then I think you might enjoy your time in the Department of Mysteries."

The graduate student wrinkled her nose, studying Sasha with an expression that was somewhere between bemusement and confusion.  If the teenager was really serious about his dream job, then she would have thought he’d be jumping at the chance to work for Level Nine.  In her (albeit limited) experience with British magical society, there were very few places where the boundaries between mundane and extraordinary were blurred with as much intention or frequency as the Department of Mysteries,

“Anything’s dangerous,” she said, giving a shrug.  “Especially when you work so close to the edges of the known world like we do.  But knowledge never comes without at least a little risk.”

That was what drove most of them, after all:  wanting to know, and being willing to take risks in exchange for satisfying their own curiosity.  In their brief interactions in class, she could see a little bit of that same drive in Schlagenweit.  (At the very least, he wanted to know so that he could include all of the details in his lab reports.)  But she had also observed a note of caution in him, a desire to hedge his bets and account for every option.  Perhaps that was what was driving him to be so wary now.

“There’s a blood contract when you sign on, but I’ve never heard of a secrecy test before,” she said, frowning.  “Are you sure Carstairs or one of the others wasn’t pulling your leg, mate?”