Fowlhunter [GL]

With Capri’s knowledge of their patterns, they escaped the supervisors’ notice and stayed in the tunnels after everyone had left.

Ennanis updated Asha on her location. Then she followed Capri into the northern tunnels. With everyone gone, it was eerily quiet, only the shuffling of their boots and the clanking of the oil lantern in Capri’s hand. Aside from the lantern, Ennanis could also switch on her headlight if she needed, but Capri advised against using it until they really needed it, to conserve battery.

According to Capri, workers used elevators and railed cart engines to get to the floor. But because Capri and Ennanis couldn’t operate these without being noticed, they had to take the long footpath to get there.

“Not everyone has left the mine,” Capri cautioned. “There should still be some guards around at nighttime. Especially on the tunnels leading down to the forbidden level. Though…” She swung her lantern around as she rounded the corner, peeking this way and that. “There seem to be fewer down here than usual. Probably because of the incident last night.”

“Do you know anything of what happened?” Ennanis inquired.

“Several carts of gems were upset, and a cart full of amethyne was stolen,” Capri said. “Two guards were murdered in the process. It’s pretty brutal.”

“I suppose it’s too late to inspect the scene for myself.”

“It’s bound to be crawling with guards up there right now,” Capri said. “Even with me helping, we couldn’t possibly investigate there. Besides, the bodies were cleared long ago—you and everyone else walked by the front entrance just this morning. I do know a few details though; Pelia was talking about it today in school.”

“Pray tell.”

“The guards were murdered with a clean cut through the skulls down to the pelvis. Like if a tall metal pole had skewered them through the middle,” she said. “But no weapon was found near the bodies. It’s pretty obvious it’s a Beast attack; the blood was moon-sparkling too. The real head-scratcher is that that the gate’s lock was secured and untouched, and there were no breaks in the fence. They're in a bit of a panic because they don't know how the Beast got in. Some kind of dark magic? But we don’t know yet a Beast that can teleport.”

Ennanis considered this. But she was also focusing on keeping track of her memory of the Kraken’s location, with every twist and turn they took in the descending tunnels, and could not let herself fall too deeply into her thoughts. Angels generally had an innate sense of cardinal direction, but even that had limits in this dark maze where every path looked like the last. She might not be able to head there immediately; she would have to help Capri with her issue first. At least they seemed to be moving in the same net direction: north.

“How do you remember where to go?” she asked Capri at some point. The sunblood didn’t seem to have any kind of map on her, at least not one that she referred to.

“As long as we keep taking the path that leads downward, we’ll get there,” she answered. Her voice was breathy as she spoke; Ennanis realised that her breaths were rattling through her ventilator, quicker and heavier than before.

Ennanis slowed her footsteps. “Do you need a break?”

“It’s fine… I can… keep going,” Capri panted, her eyes glinting determinedly. But it was only a few more steps before she went stumbling and caught herself on the wall.

Ennanis put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve been walking for over an hour. Let’s take a break.”

Reluctantly, Capri heaved herself onto her knees, her wheezing breaths echoing through the space of the cramped tunnel. Ennanis sat silently beside her, watching her remove her ventilator to gulp down a few sips of water from her bottle. Without the ventilator and goggles, her face was in full view. She looked very young—she could’ve been in her early twenties, but just as easily in her teens.

“How old are you?” she ventured.

Capri glanced at her. “Nineteen.”

“And you said you went to the sunblood college,” Ennanis remembered. “If you’re a student, then why are you working here?” She watched Capri blink sleepiness out of her eyes. “Don’t you have to study? Do you have school tomorrow?”

Capri gave her eyes a hard rub. “A.C.’s school fees can be pretty steep. And my dad got laid off recently, so I definitely have to do this.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Ennanis murmured.

Capri looked at her as she screwed the cap of her bottle back on. “Right,” she said finally, standing up. “Well, we shouldn’t be down here either. But here we are.”

They continued to make their way through the tunnels, at a slightly less brisk pace than before. The occasional cavebat flittered through the passages, its high-pitched squeaks startling the still and gloomy air about them. Each time, Ennanis’ instincts were to lash out and expunge them, but she reminded herself that these were exceedingly unlikely to be Beasts… and if they were, they weren’t her main objective for tonight.

At some point, in a bid to pass the time, Capri began to talk about her family. Her mum was of angel lineage; left Capri with her dad. Her dad re-married, and Capri gained another little brother. The same brother that she now wanted Ennanis to save.

“His name is Moru. He liked collecting and playing with marbles a lot; he asked for new marbles whenever he was told he could get a gift, and was really into trading them with his friends at school,” Capri said. “Other than marbles he also liked finding shiny rocks in our yard. Oh, I wish he got to go to Archizoun; my class went there once on a field trip. He would’ve loved collecting seashells.”

“...So, where is he now?”

Capri rounded a final bend in the tunnels. “Here.”

A sprawling cavern opened up before them, as immense and as enormous as the tunnels before were cramped. Four walls went straight up and vertical, then sealed at the top, and it was like walking on the base of a huge furnace. The shuffling echoes of Capri and Ennanis’ boots suddenly disappeared into the huge, airy space, becoming muted, insignificant scuffs on the rock. It was like squeezing out of constrictive intestines and emerging into the belly of some earthen dragon.

In the tunnels, Capri’s lantern had only lit up barely a metre before them, the darkness and bends in the rock swallowing up anything beyond that. But in this cavern, it was almost as bright as day. This was due to the pools of glowing, fiery red in the centre of the cavern, like pulsing veins beneath their feet. Lava, thick and rumbling, churned slowly beneath latticed grates of steel inlaid with glass. An errant spark splashed up, before melting back into the sizzling tide. The intersecting lines of the grates created the pattern of flowers, and the igneous glow cast up on the ceiling of the cavern, stretching the red out like a webbed veil hanging over the whole place. Ennanis could feel the rapturous heat warming through her boots as they skulked around the perimeter of the chamber.

“This is… the amethyne mining level?” Ennanis glanced around.

“A little past here,” Capri motioned. There were many more guards patrolling here. They wore heavier protective gear, covered head-to-toe in copious amounts of reflective, foil-like material. Capri and Ennanis themselves had turned their fluorescent vests inside-out to avoid notice as much as they could, but this also meant less protection from the elements. Ennanis was faring alright; she had the heat tolerance of an angel commander. As for Capri, she could practically see the girl’s skin turning lobster-red. But Capri pressed on, and so did Ennanis in her footsteps.

Other than the outfits, the guards also carried different things in their belts. It looked like a weapon; but it was longer and bulkier, far more sinister-looking than the small tasers their supervisors used on bats.

Ennanis had the feeling this was what Capri had brought an angel down here with her for.

Sneaking from rock to shadow to pillar to rock, they reached the other side of the cavern by some miracle. Capri said that it was because more guards were being assigned to the entrance; normally there would’ve been even more. What was so important here that required so many guards? Wasn’t this just a normal amethyne mine in Kanch?

Then again, this didn’t look like a normal amethyne mine. Regular amethyne mines didn’t have exposed lava pools like this.

Then they reached the mouth of some structure. It looked like a tunnel, but it was very tiny, like the opening to a slide of a nursery playground, leading down into hollow darkness, illuminated slightly by a vague orange glow. As Ennanis looked around, she realised that there were many of these little mouths in the rock, dots that surrounded the circular lava pool, like worm-holes in sand.

“At the bottom of these shafts,” Capri explained. “The miners collect amethyne ores that form from the lava contacting the rock wall around it. But the wall is extremely fragile and prone to deadly leakages. They don’t dare to dig large tunnels near it for fear that the entire structure will collapse. So the only workers who can go inside are kids. When we refer to the dust, we refer to them.”

Ennanis was quiet for a long moment. “And… your brother is one of them.”

Capri gazed mutely at the lantern in her hands. Half of the oil was burned up. “Time’s up. We have to start going back now. But hopefully, with what I’ve shown you, you can come up with a plan.”