Fowlhunter [GL]

The sky above was a gentle shade, like a pale, sick face.

Strong winds blustered through the air. Weather like this, there wasn’t an angel to be spotted flocking through the sky, as they normally did. Not when it was swollen with grey clouds, looking as though tears might burst through its skin at any moment. The cloud cover had parched the world below them of sunlight, submerging it in an icy basin of fog.

Of course, though the skies were empty, the human kingdom below was business-as-usual.

“Attention, please! The trains will be departing in an hour. Those who are travelling to Amethyst, please make your way to platform A…”

At eight in the morning, Wataron’s major railway interchange was a storm in itself. A bell blanged louder than any thunder, and announcements crackled through the station’s speakers one after the other. Pigeons scattered, fluttering into the air as a new wave of commuters shuffled between the crowded platforms. Orderly lines snaked in front of ticket booths. Locals and tourists alike peered at mapboards and signs, while others loitered by pillars or on benches, sparing impatient glances at the large public clock. It was a busy time for the commuters of Wataron.

Also, incidentally, a busy time for our ragtag bunch of Kraken hunters.

“Come on, this way!”

Trekking dirt onto the tile was a small woman named Asha, sprightly even after a long day of supply-gathering. A hefty bag weighed upon her shoulders, and yet she still bounced down the passageway towards the platform gates. The weight would have slowed any normal human being down, but this was not a normal human being. The Beast’s elephant muscles found this much more than manageable.

Behind her, a broader, somewhat grumpy-looking woman followed, heaving a bag of her own.

“Will you please slow down?” Ying grumbled. If the pixiu-woman’s tail weren’t tucked into her underclothes, it would’ve flicked in irritation. She pulled at her headscarf by nervous habit, which covered her pair of fuzzy lion ears and horns, allowing her to blend in with the crowd.

“You can walk faster!” Asha yelled at the top of her lungs. “Time’s a-wastin’! Pratas are a-flippin’!”

Ying nearly tripped over herself, before she steadied himself with her baggage. “Prata?” she echoed.

“Yep!” Asha trotted backwards. “Don’t you know? At the Jadestone Railway station, they give out free roti prata at the platform. But they run out fast, so if you wanna get them, you have to be early.”

“No way,” Lochlan said.

“Seriously! They have all sorts of prata. Egg prata, onion prata, cheese prata, and sweet pratas too…” she listed off her fingers.

Ying’s jaw hung open. Saliva glistened on her tongue as she picked up the pace. “Prata does sound good…” However, once there, she squinted in bewilderment. She sniffed the air with her keen pixiu senses, but instead of the waft of frying flatbread, her lungs were filled with just the stench of puffing engines.

“A-are we too late?... Where are the pratas?” she stammered.

“Huh? Oh—bwahahahahahha!” Asha guffawed in delight, clutching her tummy. “You seriously believed that? Pfffft- I’m just kidding! I just wanted y’all to walk faster!”

“Grrrr! I’m going to flatten you into a prata!” Ying pounced onto Asha, hundred ninety kilograms of lion plus forty kilograms of supplies. Lochlan began to look panicked, flailing his arms as he summoned a cloud of Lunaki misting to obscure their ruckus.

Behind the three of them were the last two members of this quintet, trotting along.

This really was quite the peculiar duo to be looking at. You had an angel commander, dressed in sky-blue vest and culotte, a breathtaking sight with her feathered wings and the sleek fall of pink hair around them. And then beside her, a pretty but relatively nondescript human woman, with dusty-gold hair that lay in frazzled curls at her shoulders, half-tucked into the crimson scarf she wore over her cloak.

The angel was named Ennanis Zoleil. Infamously known as the angel lacking a heart, Commander Zoleil had ruthlessly led the Graveyard Division against the beastial lunar army’s sieges of the angel kingdom, Mount Casca, for eight years. After a certain incident resulting in the petrification of five thousand soldiers, Ennanis was exiled to the undercloud with one mission. Destroy the World-Ender Kraken, and Prometheus would grant her back the honour she had lost so long ago.

Ennanis had expressed a lack of interest in said honour, but she seemed to be following the Emperor’s orders… for now.

Meanwhile, the unassuming human woman was someone even more shocking. This was the Cockatrice, walking in plain sight. The Cockatrice, after all, was the ace of the lunar army, the princess of these Beasts. Rumoured to be a devil on earth, the terrifying right-hand man of the Moon Queen Medusa herself, she turned others to stone with a look. It was she who had sealed the fate of those five thousand angels that night. That night, too, in a bewildering final act, she had saved Ennanis from death, taking an arrow in the neck meant for the angel’s mortal weakness.

There were few that knew the Cockatrice’s true objective. However, now, she was here with a mission of her own, too. Under Medusa’s orders, she was to recruit Ennanis to the Beasts.

Theoretically simple. For the thousand years of the Moon’s existence, all that was needed to turn a random woodland animal into a Beast was making it drink from the moon. But there was a chance of failure, in which case the animal would turn into an uncontrollable Runt.

Jemi would not accept failure. She would take her time with this. Gain Ennanis’ trust first.

Then take her to the moon…

…And drown her in it.

Thus, the Cockatrice’s identity remained secret to Ennanis. To Ennanis, she would simply be Jemi Garen, a human hunter who sided with Beasts.

Jemi glanced at the angel beside her.

Currently, Ennanis was preoccupied with looking everywhere around her. Her slit-gold gaze roved over the signboards, the railtracks, even the loo, as if a railway station were some kind of magnificent tourist attraction. Well, really, she had been like this for the entire day, while walking up and down streets and shophouses and restaurants, staring at everything she could get her eyes on with zero subtlety.

“Have you never been outside in your life?” Jemi finally couldn’t help but utter sarcastically.

Ennanis turned to her. Her expression was always flat, her words a dull drone. Many thought her to be emotionless as a result.

“It’s been a long time since I was in the undercloud,” she said. She did not appear to take offence at the question. “As the Graveyard Commander, I’m defending Mount Casca every night, and I spend the day sleeping. So, you can imagine, not much time for hanging around.”

At that, Jemi felt a vague sense of pity for her. Even if she herself had spent innumerous nights leading the charge on Mount Casca, at least it hadn’t been every single night. Such was the advantage of being on offence rather than defence. Jemi was more than familiar with the undercloud. Even though it was a place of many horrible things and horrible people, there were still good parts to it.

Also… it was because of her that the angel was in the Graveyard in the first place.

She shook it from her mind. She looked over to Ennanis, whose eyes were still lingering on the loo.

“The toilets can’t be that interesting.”

“They aren’t,” Ennanis agreed. “I just need to piss.”

Ying and Asha ceased their brawl, looking up with wide eyes.

Ennanis raised an eyebrow. “Why do you all look so surprised?”

“I, uh, kinda didn’t think angels needed to piss,” Asha scratched her head.

“Well, we don’t eat rainbows and sunshine. Angels piss. And shit,” Ennanis droned, the coarse words dropping from her angelic mouth like they were nothing. “I’ll be going now.” She turned away in a sweep of pink hair.

Shuffling, everyone gathered into a corner to put their bags down while they waited.

“Yeesh,” Asha sighed once she was safely out of earshot, rolling her shoulders. “I hope she takes a long shit.”

“Why?” Ying asked.

“Wh- Doesn’t it creep you out? Her being there twenty-four seven?” Asha glanced up. Her voice was uncharacteristically hushed. “I’m scared we’ll blow our cover and she’ll beat our asses to high hell, like back at the Palace!”

A few weeks ago, Jemi and her friends had tracked Ennanis down to the the capital of Wataron, attending the Soul Ball celebrations. There, they’d released a rampaging Runt duck into the lake, then ‘helped’ Ennanis dispel the threat. This was meant to get them on her good side, from which Jemi would gradually change the angel’s heart.

However, the plan had not been without hiccups. From the beginning, Ennanis had acted strangely. Firstly, she’d clearly kicked up a big fuss about her presence at the ball, like she’d wanted to be found. Next, she’d gone from violently rejecting their help, to handing them her trust within an instant. It was utterly baffling.

Queen Medusa had once warned Jemi not to underestimate Ennanis. But really, there were few in the world, undercloud and above, who spent as much time estimating Commander Zoleil as her greatest foe the Cockatrice did. The one who had deceived her from the prisons and out. The one who had gone toe-to-toe with her for eight years.

“There’s no need for you to worry about that,” Jemi told Asha, crossing her arms. “I’m keeping an eye on her.”

Strange behaviour, Jemi had come to expect from Ennanis. She would just have to watch her more closely than ever.

“Ugh. Never mind about Ennanis. How about the Kraken?” Asha wrung her hands. Indeed, despite her cheerful act, she really was anxious about being in the same team as the Graveyard Commander, feared Beast slayer. “We can’t keep this up. If we do, we’ll stop the Kraken… which we need to conquer Mount Casca, right?”

Jemi was silent for a moment. Then, she said, “You’re not wrong. But… the angels aren’t wrong about the Kraken, either.” The wreckage on Wataron’s shores, the frequent storms, flashed through her mind. Even though there wasn’t proof that it necessarily had to do with the Kraken… what if it did?

“The Kraken once nearly destroyed the entire world. It would be… good to have a failsafe. Necessary, even. We want the Kraken to help us overtake Mount Casca, but stop short of actually razing the world to the ground.” She exhaled. “That’s why we’re going to help Ennanis find a way to stop the Kraken. But unless we have to, we won’t go through with it. And she won’t go through with it either.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Ying said sceptically.

“If we manage to make Ennanis our ally, she wouldn’t. If that doesn’t happen, well,” Jemi shrugged lightly, “we get rid of her.”

“Lot easier said than done, considering you’ve been trying to get rid of her for the past eight years,” Asha said pointedly. “Don’t forget, you nearly kicked the bucket the last time!”

“Nah. The last time, I won,” Jemi smiled enigmatically. “Next time, I’ll win again.”

“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Asha demanded Ying. Ying shook her head. “Do you?” she asked Lochlan. The boy shrugged. She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Okay, mystery woman! Keep your secrets.”

Jemi’s smile only widened. But then, her eyes narrowed.

Ying noticed. “What’s the matter?”

“Someone’s inspecting,” Jemi whispered. “Heading this way.”

Just a few yards from them, an angel Knight was patting down a group of commuters. When he was done, he started wandering in their direction.

“Lochlan, your misting-” Ying said, but it was too late. Before Lochlan could cast any more Lunaki to hide their presences, the angel had already turned his eyes on the group. Lunaki misting was useless if he had already noticed them.

“Good evening to you all,” said the Knight to them with a small bow. He held out his hand. “Just conducting some checks. Can I get you to remove your hoods and hats?”

Jemi stood up and stepped forward, shedding her cloak and handing it to Lochlan. “Check me first.”

The Knight glanced at her. Shrugging, he started patting her down. Meanwhile, Jemi’s fingers twitched at her sides, looking for an opening. But his movements were too fast, too cursory. Jemi felt almost insulted. Was he even really checking for anything? Wasn’t he going to feel her up even a little bit?

Before she could make any move, the check was over.

“Next,” the angel said. “Remove your cloaks and roll up your sleeves. You first,” he nodded at Asha.

A look of panic crossed Asha’s face. Her level of misting magic would not be enough to hide the patches of crocodile scales running down her arms.

Jemi’s mind raced. Then, from the corner of her eye, Jemi saw Ying’s hand discreetly reaching into one of her pockets. Just a couple more seconds and the pixiu could fish out a flashbomb for a quick getaway. And if that didn’t work, she'd just have to...

It was just then that a warm voice cut through the air. Like a ray of sunlight through fog:

“They’re with me.”

The Knight looked over to see who had spoken. At first, his slit-eyes landed on her grey belt, and his nose wrinkled; but then he caught sight of the golden ribbon, paired double-wings of her rank insignia, and his expression changed.

“Apologies, commander,” he said stiffly. He bowed and turned away, footsteps retreating across the platform.

Everyone breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Sweet Prometheus, you sure took your time,” Jemi sighed as Ennanis approached them, even as the line of her shoulders relaxed.

Ennanis tilted her head. “Do Beasts pray to Prometheus?”

Jemi cocked hers. “It’s just a figure of speech.” She took her cloak back from Lochlan, pulling it on once more. “So what have you been up to? Explosive diarrhoea?”

Ennanis held up her hand. In it, five train tickets were splayed.

“Where’d you get those?” The angel commander’s tri-pennied wallet couldn’t possibly have covered their entire fare. The Beasts, themselves, had been planning to sneak onboard the trains unticketed.

Ennanis paused. “I asked.”

“You asked,” Jemi repeated, “and the ticketer gave them to you?”

“Yeah?” Ennanis tilted her head. “I told him I was on a mission and needed transport, so he gave them to me.”

Asha whistled. “Wow. It sure is useful having an angel on our side.”

At that, the angel’s face darkened, like clouds closing over the tiniest sliver of light. She lowered her hand, glancing down and shuffling the tickets. She looked up at them once more, and clarified: “I’m not on your side. I will never be on the Beasts’ side. We’re only working together because we have to stop the Kraken.” She slid the tickets into her breastpocket, picked up her share of the supplybags, and walked for the platform gates on her own.

“You say that now,” Jemi folded her arms as she watched the angel commander’s retreating figure. But they all picked up their bags and followed her through the gates.