Fowlhunter [GL]

Stepping out of the train was like walking out of a refrigerator and into a boiler. Ennanis felt herself break out into sweat almost immediately, beading at her hairline and making her uniform cling to her back, sticky and warm. This was in stark contrast to the cool weather of Wataron, or the dry furnace-heat of Casca.

This was not Ennanis’ first time in Kanch, of course. She had been to all over the undercloud on missions in the old days. But again, it had been years since she had been here, and to see old memories brought back to life in full colour and smell and touch invoked certain emotion in her, to say the least. So, even knowing she looked like an idiotic tourist, her eyes swallowed all there was to see.

And Amethyst, as it was named, was a beautiful prefecture. From a distance, you could see the city hugged by massive shoulders of ebony rock, the township built along the lower mountain ranges north of Mount Casca. But although the mountain range originated from Casca, the landscape was much different from the organised, scant, barren terraces of the angel kingdom. This kingdom’s mountains were lush with pine forests and trickling streams, while the town had sprouted itself organically all across the elevations, sloping roads and bridges and winding paths. The train that had dropped them off on the mountainface now rocketed off through a tunnel, before emerging out the other side on rails that suspended the locomotive hundreds of metres over-ground, where even more colourful roofs laid in a scattered, quilt-like mosaic.

When they walked outside, it became obvious that the Beasts were particularly perturbed by the hot weather. Their faces were wrought in constant grimaces, skin glistening and clothes drenched by perspiration. Ying had added a wide-brimmed hat on top of her headscarf. They insisted on stopping for cool desserts being peddled on the street—shaved ice packed into balls, stuffed with red beans and drizzled through with a rainbow of syrups—in an effort to alleviate their sweaty woes.

And then there was Jemi. The woman had kept her red scarf on; its diamond-holed end flapping behind her. The Kancha people gave her strange looks as they walked past her.

Jemi paid them no attention. As Ying, Asha and Lochlan licked melting coloured ice from their palms, Jemi was flipping a glass geode in her hand, throwing it up into the air, catching it, then flinging it up again. It was a remarkably nonchalant way of treating a stone said to hold a globule of the Kraken.

Ennanis stared at her, and Jemi gave her another carefree smile. The gold-haired woman had practically attached herself by the hip to Ennanis since they had first met, and this continued up till now. But even though she acted friendly—overly friendly, one might add—her dislike of Ennanis was quite plain.

It wasn’t that Jemi had done a bad job at hiding her real feelings; she pulled it off very naturally. It was just that Ennanis happened to very good at telling when people didn’t like her. That being most of them. The tension in their body language, the briefest of flashes in their eyes, was enough for her to tell. Ennanis could understand why Jemi didn’t like her; she herself didn’t like the Beasts nor their allies.

But when Jemi had begged her to trust her that night in the lake, had Ennanis been lying when she agreed, then? Ennanis rarely placed her trust in anyone, much less a colluder with Beasts; hence why Sabira had been so taken aback at her acceptance of the group’s deal. Ennanis had told Sabira that it was just a lack of other options… but in truth, it went deeper than that.

When Ennanis told Jemi she would trust her, she meant it.

Ennanis wouldn’t let her guard down, but she would believe in what Jemi had to say, and what Ennanis could learn from someone like her. It was that tug that led Ennanis to decide to follow her, and see where that might take her.

Whether or not it would ultimately end in her demise.

The pause of the scraping footsteps around her roused her from her thoughts. They had arrived at the base of the mountainrange. Jemi caught her stone between her fingers and looked at it, the dancing black globule within the frosted glass.

“The Kraken should be right in front of us somewhere,” she said.

Easy to say, except for the apparent: the wall of solid rock in front of them. Everyone looked at each other awkwardly.

“Blast our way in?” Asha suggested.

As unsophisticated as it sounded, it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The mountainface looked like just rock and curling shrubbery. Were it uninhabited, Ennanis might have employed the same technique herself. But Kanch was a kingdom of mines and mountain cave civilisations. There could easily be people in there. And indeed, a short distance away, there was a sign mounted on the rockface, spelling out Ennanis’ suspicions in granite print:

PROPERTY OF VESUVIO MINING CO.

DO NOT TRESSPASS

The others had noticed the sign too. It was Jemi who spoke her mind first.

“Let’s leave that as a last resort. We should find this Vesuvio mine first; it would be good to have a know of what we’re blasting into. And if there’s a way of getting inside that attracts less attention, we wouldn’t want to miss out on it.” She cast a thoughtful glance behind at the town in the distance, the sizeable number of villagers and carts passing through the road.

Asha shrugged. They began to walk down along the mountainrange. There wasn’t much interesting to see along the way, the scenery of long-grass and gravel becoming quickly monotonous. It was only after an undetermined amount of walking that something eye-catching came into view. And it was truly a magnificent sight: standing in the distance, nestled within the pines was a marvel of period Kancha architecture: a towering construction of shimmering purple, replete with tall black windows and striated pillars. The highest tower was home to a large golden bell, rocking in a shell of clay as it rang sonorously. In the courtyard of the building, the small figures of several human children could be seen running around in matching shirts and shorts, tossing a rattan ball between them.

“What’s that building?” Ying pointed at it.

“Hm? Oh! That’s Amethyst College,” Asha answered.

“How did you know that?” Lochlan asked.

Asha snorted. “It’s not that hard to know! Amethyst College is one of the most prestigious schools in the undercloud. It’s also the only school in Kanch with a specialised stream for sunblood students. Remember those kids we saw on the train? They were wearing their uniform.”

“You seem to know so much about every place…”

She puffed out her chest. “It comes with years of scouting experience, rookie. Anyway, once you’ve been a pincher long enough, this kind of thing will be no biggie to you, too!”

“I think you’re just smart,” Lochlan sighed in envy.

“C’mon, at least you’ll get there,” Ying grumbled. “Try being a fighter like me, you’ll remain forever clueless about the undercloud.”

Jemi seemed to notice Ennanis’ confused stare, and elaborated for her. “We all have different roles in the Beasts. Asha’s a scout, so she does a lot of undercloud travel to spy and gather information. Lochlan’s a pincher, which basically means that he ‘borrows’ things from people’s pockets.” She chuckled at that. “Then you have Ying, pretty easy to deduce; she fights on the frontlines on Mount Casca at night. You, Graveyard Commander, might’ve run into her once or twice.”

“What’s your role, then? Pincher?” She recalled Jemi nicking the watch on the train.

“Oh,” Jemi seemed to have a think about it. “I do scouting, pinching, food-hunting, healing… A bit of everything, I suppose. Human workers don’t really have specialised roles. No magic, and all that.” She waved her hand.

No magic, huh. Ennanis gazed mutely at Jemi’s star-bright, violet eyes. But she decided that would be a question for another time. They continued to make their way down the mountainrange, inching closer towards the school.

The next thing to hit them was not a sight, but rather a scent. The air in Kanch sometimes held the tinge of rotten-egg, thanks to the sulfurous vapours that rose from the volcanic channels that ran underground. But this smell was different. It was sharper and more metallic, like rust but somehow sweet.

“Lookie,” Jemi nudged her shoulder. “We found the entrance.”

Indeed, an entry to a mine loomed just ahead of them. Multitudes of carts passed in and out under the great stone archway, some rattling full of equipment, others heaped with glistening crystals. It was also from the mouth of this mine that a misty, purple gas seemed to be escaping. The rust-sweet smell intensified as the five of them descended into the streets approaching the mine.

“Is that smell the Kraken?” Ying wrinkled her nose.

Jemi shook her head. “That’s just the smell of Kanch. It’s been here for ages.”

“What is it?”

“It comes from mining amethyne,” she replied. Ennanis blinked, remembering the amethyne stone she had caught Lochlan stealing from the seller a few weeks ago. The brilliant violet stone was the pride of Kanch, who had made its national colour purple because of it. “Whenever the ore is mined, it releases the gas.”

“Is it like, toxic?”

“I’m not sure…” Jemi glanced around at the locals around them, bustling about their day like normal. Mouths opened and talked and laughed freely without any visible discomfort. “But it doesn’t seem to affect the people here much.”

They navigated the mishmash of streets, until they eventually happened upon a road that brought them up the incline of rock leading to the mine entry. The metal wire gate was ajar for the carts passing through. Amidst the distraction and business, they managed to walk in easily without anyone stopping them. And it seemed they were not the only ones; there were others not in mining gear or occupied with work, who just looked like regular townspeople with flowy shawls and light bags on their shoulders.

Curious, and to look less strange, they crept closer to that group of townspeople. Until they could hear their voices. There was a man and woman, dressed in sarongs, followed by two younger children. The man and woman were discussing.

“How long does this tour take again, honey?”

“It won’t be too long,” the man said. “The mine is huge, but they only let us view certain parts of it.”

As they got closer to the mine, one of the children started coughing. The adults looked down, alarmed.

“Did you bring masks for the kids?”

“It’s okay, they’ll provide ventilators there. They know people not from the mountain tend to be more sensitive to amethyne dust.”

“So there are tours of the mines…” Jemi murmured. “Well, let’s get in on it.”

They followed the family up to the mouth of the large mine. Off to the side, there was a ticketing kiosk. Another group of people budded off from the line, strapping the ventilators over their noses and mouths, and headlights around their foreheads as they chattered and disappeared into the dark of the mines.

The family joined the back of the line. Meanwhile, the group of Beasts peered at the sign reading off the ticket prices. And their eyes bugged.

“Fifty gold per person for an hour of walking around,” Ying read. “Medusa damn. Are those mines built out of diamonds?”

“Well, we’re definitely not going by the front door,” Jemi said. “I only have the cash on me for one ticket.”

“That could be enough,” Ennanis said. “We can just have one of us go in.”

“No way,” Ying said. “You have a clue on how powerful the Kraken is, don’t you? One person won’t be enough to stop it. And we’ll be finding ourselves neck-deep in other mining workers and supervisors and guards. If you want to prevent human casualties, or even just get out of there unscathed and jail-free, that’s going to be a tall order.”

“But we’re just gathering intel for now, right? Even if we find the Kraken, we currently have zero information on how to subdue it. Zilch,” Asha said.

“That’s true,” Jemi agreed. “If we went in for a tour, they’re probably only going to show us the surface level. We might not even get anywhere near the place where we last sensed the Kraken.” She turned her geode in her palm, where the globule shimmered faintly within, laying tame in its glass cabochon.

“Alright. I’ll go ask someone for a search,” Ennanis said.

“Yeah, you go do your angel thing,” Asha waggled her hand.

Ennanis made for the ticket kiosk. The staff behind it was currently unoccupied, mopping his sweat-soaked hair with a handkerchief while a desk fan blew a strong current of air at him. He peered at her as she approached.

“Fifty gold, please,” he droned as he put away his handkerchief and held out his hand.

“Actually, I’m here on an angel investigation,” Ennanis said.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “We’re not due for any inspections.”

“It’s an investigation for a case,” Ennanis persisted. “From Emperor Prometheus.”

He paused, as if pondering something. Then, he sighed, “Eh. I’m not the person you can ask for that,” He shuffled around. “You can write a letter in and request an investigation. But if you ask me, angel, you’re not going to get anything back.”

“Why is that?”

“Hm? The Vesuvios are very… private about their mining operations. If you catch my drift,” the staff said. “But don’t quote me on that. Just that, I’ve had several angels come by asking to investigate the mines. They send in the requests, but I don’t think any of them have ever heard back from the administration. And I can’t help them with that, either.”

Ennanis hesitated. Had other angels known the Kraken was here? No, that was impossible—or simply too unlikely. “For how long has this been happening? These requests?”

“Fuckin’ forever, I guess. I’ve been around here for five years, and I’ve heard the stories from those who’ve been here longer. The Vesuvios have just always been like this. I think that old Marshal, Atlas was trying to do something about it, but with Epimetheus in charge, no way in hell is it gonna change.”

…So it was something else that the angels had been investigating, not the Kraken. “Can I ask what they were looking into?”

“Sorry, angel, I’m not allowed to say,” the staff mimed a hand sweeping across his neck. Then he plastered on a smile. “For fifty gold, though, you can take a tour of one the finest mines that Kanch has to offer.”

Ennanis smiled wryly back at him. But then, she thought of another idea…