Fowlhunter [GL]

They were in the middle of having dinner when the door to the inn opened.

The group turned to see an angel with long rose hair walk through the door. Ennanis had changed out of the red cheongsam she had been wearing at the Ball of Souls, and was now wearing the sky-coloured uniform of the angels. She ducked through the entryway and joined them at their table.

While pushing food towards her, the motley crew reintroduced themselves. Lochlan, the first Beast she’d met since her return to the undercloud, was the pale, timid boy with mousy-teal hair; he allegedly could turn into a Loch Ness, though Ennanis hadn’t seen it for herself. Asha was the exuberant girl who could turn into an elephant-crocodile—a creature known in myths as a makara—with dark skin and grey-green hair done in two braids. Ying was the muscular, olive-skinned woman who could turn into a pixiu—winged guardian lion—with a headscarf to hide her lion’s ears. Lastly:

“Jemi Garen. But call me Jemi,” said the human woman. Her dusty-gold curls gleamed under the brazierlight of the inn. Bright violet eyes glinted as she spoke.

“Is that a nickname?” Ennanis asked.

The woman stared at her. “What’s your name?” she said instead of replying.

“Just call me Ennanis,” said the angel commander.

They finished the rest of their dinner over polite conversation.

“We usually do travelling at night, but we’re going to spend the daylight tomorrow gathering supplies, so for tonight we’re sleeping,” Jemi said as they approached the front counter. Thus came the matter of rooms.

“Who’s paying?” Ennanis asked.

“Uh. You?” Asha said.

“...You’re paying,” said Ennanis.

Asha pouted. “Don’t be stingy. Angels are rich.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, you’re definitely richer than us.”

“No. I actually don’t have any money,” Ennanis said. In demonstration, she took out a coinpouch and tipped it over. A grand total of three coins fell out into her palm, all pennies.

Everyone gawked.

“You said you weren’t going back to Mount Casca, right?” recalled Ying. “Where were you planning to sleep if you hadn’t met us?”

“Under a bridge.”

“That’s insane.”

“Okay, fine. We’ll pay,” Ying said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “How many rooms are we getting?”

“Two,” Jemi said. “Ennanis sleeps in her own room. I think that’s fair, given that we’ve only just met.”

“That’s fine by me,” Ennanis shrugged.

And so, uncontested, Jemi paid for the rooms. They went up the stairs. Ennanis’ wings kept hitting everyone who went behind her, so they made her go last.

They piled into the first room. The room was sparsely furnished, with just three beds. It was the cheapest type of room available at this inn, so that was to be expected. Wood floors and bare walls, the plain-white paint cracked and peeling in several places. The only pieces of furniture were the beds themselves, and yet the room was still cramped, only allowing enough extra space for them to open the door and shimmy their way inside.

Asha was the first to pounce onto a bed on the right. She pulled her hairties free and shook her grey hair loose, letting out a loud and relieved sigh as she unravelled the tangled braids. Ying sank on the same bed next to her. Lochlan sat on his own bed on the left, removed his cloak and began carefully folding it. Ennanis stood around awkwardly, eyes flicking about as if unsure whether to leave.

It was then that a hand brushed lightly over Ennanis’ chest.

“Stay a while,” a voice whispered by her ear, “we’re going to discuss some things.”

It was Jemi, trailing behind the group as she latched the door shut behind them with an innocent smile. Ennanis’ gaze followed as slender fingers lingered on her breastpocket a touch too long.

“-Okay, nightie nightie!” Asha’s exclamation interrupted the moment. The makara-girl hugged a rock-hard pillow to herself, rolling around in bed.

“No nightie just yet,” Jemi drifted on as if nothing had happened. She walked over to the last bed, which was nearest to the small pane of window, smeared in foggy condensation. There, Jemi sat, crossing her legs, and patted the bed beside her as she looked at Ennanis. “Well? Sit down.”

Left with no choice, Ennanis strode over and sat on the bed too. The angel pretended not to notice as Jemi scooched herself closer, her leg coming to rest against the side of hers, their skin separated just by the sheer layer of the woman’s stocking.

Jemi acknowledged nothing. She simply cleared her throat and looked at the rest of them. “We have to plan what we’re doing next.”

“Eeh, but I’m exhausted…”

“Shouldn’t have eaten so dang much at dinner then,” a certain pixiu grumbled.

“That’s rich coming from you, Ying! You ate just as much, if not more.”

“I’d like to plan what’s next, too,” Ennanis interrupted. She steepled her fingers and leaned forward. “Tell me, what do you all know about the Kraken so far?”

Shuffling around in her cloaksleeves, Jemi pulled out a piece of stone.

It looked like a large marble, made of a translucent, frosty glass. Encased within the geode was a globule of what appeared to be some shining liquid. As the woman turned the geode around, the globule shifted within its crystalline geode, a droplet that stayed pointed in the same direction no matter which way the stone was turned.

“This is a piece of the Kraken,” Jemi explained. “It’s trying to rejoin the rest of it, so it acts as a compass. I nicked it from the Beasts’ den before we left.”

“Don’t the Beasts know where it is? I mean, because you guys are controlling it?”

“No one can control the Kraken. It’s more like a negotiated deal,” Jemi said.

“It’s capable of reason?”

Jemi paused, geode snapped between her fingers. “It seems to be willing to benefit the Beasts’ goals. Exactly why or how is… unknown. That’s why it is so dangerous.”

In its glass casing, the mist globule swirled about innocently.

“Surely someone knows. How else would the arrangement have come about?”

“The arrangement was between the Kraken and the Queen alone.,” Ying said. “The rest of us have no clue.”

“Not just the Queen,” Ennanis countered, “The Cockatrice is involved. I’m fairly certain of it.”

The atmosphere in the room suddenly tensed. Lochlan smoothened out the folds on his already-smooth cloak. Asha’s fingers twitched and began tapping out a rhythm on her pillow. Ying remained impressively straight-faced.

Jemi stopped twirling the geode between her fingers.

“What do you mean?” the gold-haired woman asked slowly.

Ennanis raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t you noticed that your leader had been missing for the past six months?”

Prior to the Battle of Fifth Peak, the Cockatrice had been absent from night fights for six months. It was very odd; for eight years, the princess had been there to command her troops without fail. Yet, Ennanis had not seen her for nearly half of the year, no matter how thoroughly she scoured the mountain. It was only at that last battle that the Cockatrice had made her sudden reappearance—accompanied by the Kraken.

As Ennanis explained this, the Beasts exchanged several glances.

“Oh, we’ve known she’s been gone,” Ying crossed her arms. “We just don’t know what it is she’s been doing.”

“She could’ve been on vacation!” Asha spoke for the first time since the conversation started. “Poor girl works herself to death.”

“I agree,” Lochlan said.

Jemi’s nose wrinkled. She recrossed her legs, shifting away from Ennanis. “She does not.”

“How do you know that?”

Jemi turned to look at Ennanis, who’d spoken. Without missing a beat, she answered: “Because we were good friends.”

The room fell silent. Ying’s eyebrow twitched.

“Ah,” Ennanis said.

“Yeah.” Looking down at the geode in her palm, Jemi continued, “You’re not wrong. The Cockatrice may have had something to do with this. But in the end, even she may not have known what she was doing. The Princess belongs to the Queen; she simply did whatever Queen Medusa commanded her to.”

Here she looked up, violet eyes shining. “But she’s dead now. So that doesn’t matter!”

“Ahem-hem-hem!” Loudly, Ying coughed. “Anyway. Regardless of whether the Cockatrice was involved or not, this doesn’t tell us how at all to stop the Kraken. And if only the Queen knows about it, we can’t exactly walk up to her and ask.”

“We can start by finding the Kraken, with the help of the geode,” Lochlan mentioned. “Seeing as that’s all we have.”

Jemi turned her nose up. “Don’t say it like that, all we have. I went through a lot getting this!”

“It does seem like a start,” Ennanis nodded. They all looked at the globule within the crystal. “So that’s… northwest of here?”

“Kanch,” said Ying. “It makes sense. It was just in the fissures of Mount Casca not long ago; so it probably flowed out through the mountain ranges into the Kancha rockhills.”

“Okay, then that’s where we’ll go next. Done! Lights out!” Asha crowed, then blew on the single oil lantern. The room plunged into black. Everyone seemed too exhausted to protest.

Ennanis stood up. She was about to make her leave when she felt a hand brush against hers.

“I didn’t manage to get adjacent rooms,” spoke Jemi’s voice. “Let me show you the way.”