Fowlhunter [GL]

Jemi Garen had been missing for several days now. That was what Ennanis learnt from the other Beasts; that she had disappeared on the night they went to the Amethyst College library together, and hadn’t returned since.

“Could she be in trouble?” Ennanis wondered. They sat in a circle in the warm inn room.

“Maybe. But most likely not. She always does that; disappearing off on her own whenever she pleases,” Ying said, crossing her arms. “Give it time. She’ll come back. Jemi’s very persistent, for a human being. Nonetheless...” she raised an eyebrow at her. “I heard from Asha that you’ve finally made some progress.”

Ennanis nodded. She told them about Capri, the amethyne mining level, the lava pools.

“That’s the approximate location of the Kraken. I think,” Ennanis said. “But I couldn’t feel it anywhere.”

Asha looked at her. “You can feel the Kraken?”

“Up on Mount Casca, it had a terrible, frigid presence,” Ennanis said. “Sort of like the Cockatrice; she gives off this cold aura when she uses magic. Maybe all Beasts have it, but it varies depending on your strength of Lunaki.” She found that the Beasts trickier to defeat always leached waves of cold into the air, like fizzling cubes of dry-ice. To test this hypothesis, she leaned forward and attempted to touch Asha’s shoulder.

Asha yelped and flipped head-over-shoulder away from the angel’s outstretched hand. “Oyoyoyoy! No one gave you permission to poke! You’re not ‘Jem-jem!”

Ennanis retracted her hand. “So none of you feel the coldness your Lunaki gives off?”

“Do you feel the heat your Soleki gives off?” Ying countered.

“......” Ennanis turned her own palm over. The gold armbrace below it shone. “No. Only when I took my brace off, I felt it.”

“Yeah well, we can feel yours,” Ying said, fanning herself. “You’re a Prometheus-damned furnace, lady.”

“Interesting,” Ennanis noted. “I think that either the Kraken is in hiding, or I’ve got the wrong place. Or the heat of the lava is simply covering everything up. All the same, I have to help this girl rescue her brother to access the deeper parts of the mine.” She swept her gaze over the three Beasts. “This job will require more than two people to stand a chance at success.”

“......”

The room was silent. Asha had huddled herself into a ball, toying with the ends of her grey braids. Lochlan had suddenly become intensely absorbed in a mythic encylopedia. Ying scratched her ears, chewing nervously on her bottom lip as she glanced side-to-side.

Ennanis sighed. Truly these Beasts were led on leashes by Jemi Garen; without her they were afraid to make decisions. And Ennanis, for a commander, had never had much luck corralling her own troops, let alone another’s.

“I’ll go in myself,” she announced finally. When the Beasts looked at her in shock, she said, “I said the job would most likely require more than two people. Thankfully, we have one person, and one angel. Hopefully, that will be enough to make up the difference.”

Besides… she had an inkling of where Jemi could be.

~~~

The next night, she and Capri delved into the tunnels. But this time, instead of walking the tunnels, Ennanis wanted to rig the elevators.

“But the elevators are full of guards,” Capri gawked.

“We’ll take way too much time if we go on foot,” Ennanis said.

They crept around to one of the elevators that Capri knew. Out from the tunnel, a short bridge connected to the elevator. In front of the elevator, four guards were stationed. They were all alert. It would be difficult to divert all their attentions at once.

“Hold on,” Ennanis said. She turned and retreated into the tunnel system. After a while, she emerged and beckoned, “Come this way.”

She had found an opening in the rock on the other side, likely where a thin wall had crumbled and no one had bothered to patch it up. It led out into open air, looming over a precarious, dizzying drop. When Ennanis peeked over the edge, the walls adjacent were poished-smooth, lacking in footholds. Even if there had been, it would’ve been an impossibly arduous climb down.

Fortunately, they didn’t have to. Reaching behind her, Ennanis loosened the binding of the corset under her vest. She had cut a dip in the back of the vest beforehand, and now heard Capri inhale as great white planes of feathers sprang free. Ennanis flexed and stretched them, shaking out the pins-and-needles feeling from being confined for so long.

She reached her hand out to Capri.

“H-h-huh!” Capri stuttered with as much terror as she could get in her voice without being heard by the guards. “We’re going down by, by there?”

“You have to do it,” Ennanis nudged her hand.

Ennanis wasn’t a very comforting presence, but her voice had the kind of authoritative confidence that made people follow her anyway. So Capri did, awkwardly holding on to her shoulders as Ennanis wrapped an arm around her. Impressively, she did not scream when Ennanis leapt off the edge. With a turn of wings, they descended rapidly into the gloom of the abyss.

They reached the ground level much faster than before. Barely an eighth of the oil lantern was through. Now all they had to do was walk a relatively shorter path to the lava pools. Unluckily, that meant more tunnels, and they couldn’t fly through those because they were too cramped for Ennanis to extend her wings. In the meantime, they ran over their plan once more as they scurried through the passages.

“It’s fairly straightforward, if difficult in the execution,” Capri said. “We’re going into the underground bunks where the dust—the children all sleep at night. I’m going to need you to hold off the guards while I check the rooms for my brother.”

“Don’t you know which room he’s in? You seem to have been down there many times before.”

“No, not inside the bunks,” Capri chewed her lip. “I’ve never gotten this far on my own. I always get caught by guards first. And that… didn't turn out too well.” The lanternlight caught the ghosts of taser-burns across her skin, scars that never quite faded.

“It will be hard going unnoticed,” Ennanis mused. “I'll do my best to hold their attention, but the other kids will definitely spot you in the act, and any one of them could tattle if asked… or threatened appropriately. Besides, surely someone will do a headcount at some point and discover who's missing. You are easily linked to the case. You could lose your job.”

“Oh, no… I’m not going to get him out,” Capri shook her head. Upon Ennanis’ baffled glance, she said, “There’s no way I can get him out, reasonably, as you said. I just want to talk to him; see him, make sure he’s okay.”

“You would go through such lengths just to… get a glimpse of your brother?”

Capri crooked her head. “Do angels have family?”

“Angels have mentors. Sisters-, brothers-in-arms,” Ennanis said, “comrades.”

“That’s not the same.”

“How so?”

“Would you die for them?”

“In a heartbeat,” Ennanis answered readily.

“No. I meant just one of them. One specifically. It can be any one in particular, but it must only be one. If you held one person in your hand and the rest of the world in the other, and one of the two had to die, who would you pick?”

“...The world, of course.” Give up the lives of so many to protect that of just one? It was hard to fathom that anyone might make such a choice. Did humans really think this way? Could anyone really be so selfish?

“Then it’s not the same,” Capri said. Midway through her words, she suddenly paused in her footsteps. She stuck her hand out and pushed them back into a fold in the wall, going very tense and quiet.

Ennanis was confused; she hadn’t heard any sounds or signs of guards approaching. But maybe Capri knew something she didn’t, so she waited, too.

After a while, Capri stirred and peeked out. Her ventilator rattled with her breaths. There was no one in the tunnels. “Sorry. I thought I saw something.” She shook her head. “Sorry… it must be the lack of sleep. And I’m pretty paranoid. If we get caught, I’m done for.”

“It’s alright,” Ennanis said. They proceeded ahead. Soon, the red glow of the facility drew into view.

The underground bunks were located a distance away from the lava pools. Many guards prowled the entrance; there would be no way around without engaging them in one way or another.

“I was thinking of setting off the fire alarm,” Capri whispered. “If we manage to break the lava grates it’ll go off. It might be enough to cause a panic, and we can slip inside while they’re scrambling.”

“Do the grates keep the lava under containment or something? Is such a thing possible?” Ennanis wondered.

“It’s made of luminarial steel,” Capri explained. “The glass panels between the bars conduct the Soleki enchantment from the steel. It stabilises the lava, and a cushion of air prevents it from melting the glass.”

“Then isn’t it dangerous if we break it? Not just for us, but everyone here.”

“If it’s just a small break, it might not hurt…?”

“But you don’t know that for sure, do you?” Ennanis said. Capri shook her head ruefully. “No. I’m just going to do it my way.”

“What’s that?”

Ennanis shook out her wings and stood up from their hiding place. She walked right towards the guards, who all looked toward her.

“Eeeeh?”

“An angel??!”

“What’s one of you doing down here?”

“Greetings, humans,” Ennanis said levelly. “I’m here on investigation.”

“We, were not notified of this, ma’am…”

“Previous attempts to reach your personnel regarding the matter have been… unsuccessful,” Ennanis intoned. “I am here myself to account for the lack of correspondence. I am a Commander, you see,” she rolled up her vest sleeves to reveal her armbraces. Rank insignia was also engraved on the end of the brace, double-lobed paired wings etched in gold. ”I would like to be shown inside this… room. As well as around the facility.” She would think of a way to get Capri in later.

“Kid, angel or not, you still can’t just—barge in here without any notice,” fretted one of guards.

Ennanis cocked her head. “Why? Is there something you have to hide?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” bit out another guard. “This place is sacred, you know, the birthplace of the Agni, you—”

Just then, his walkie-talkie crackled. He put it up to his ear.

“Oh,” his eyes widened. “Sir, you’re here—?” More unintelligible crackling ensued from the speaker. Frantically, he adjusted himself. “Yes, of course, right away, but there’s an angel here, sir, a commander.” He listened some more, before nodding. “I see. I understand. Alright, sir. See you.”

He clicked off the walkie-talkie and nodded to her. “Just wait here a moment. Management will see you soon.”

Management…? Did that mean…

And then it did.

From the opposite end of the chamber, a bell over the elevator chimed. Curtained by the red glow of magma, a tall shadow stretched over the red-veiled ceiling as someone strode out from between the doors sliding open. As they approached, their appearance fell into view.

It was a man, finely-dressed in suit and tie. It was strange and out-of-place given the environment they were in; it seemed he was not afraid of the suit getting soiled or crimped by heat. He wore a hardhat and goggles, but seemingly as an afterthought. He was perfectly composed as he strode over the swirling lava pools and to them. His face was somewhat familiar-looking: the set of his jaw, the narrow corners of his eyes. That, and the shade of his closely-cropped red hair. Ennanis had the impression of having seen these features somewhere before.

And then Ennanis was reminded promptly of it: by the girl who walked behind the man.

Pelia Vesuvio stood primly beside her father, hands clasped behind her back, her posture a textbook on politeness. Her peachy-red hair gathered in a ponytail, sticking out the back of a mining helmet. It was an awkward addition to the rest of her attire, formal like her father—blouse and poufy black-white buttoned pinafore. She was quiet, all proper-like, but her chin was still held haughtily.

It was the man who addressed the group of them, and Ennanis specifically.

“My name is Ahi Vesuvio,” the man smiled genially. He reached out a hand and grasped Ennanis’ firmly in a handshake. “Owner of a simple amethyne mine in Kanch, just as many other folk in our kingdom do. It is our national pride and treasure, this gem,” He said this in a way clearly meant to resemble humility. “And you…”

“Zoleil,” Ennanis returned. She must have looked quite absurd; an angel—in an inverted safety vest, a haphazardly-ripped hole in the back, sleeves scrunched up to reveal her armbraces—shaking hands with the single most powerful man in Kanch, second only to their King.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Zoleil,” Vesuvio said, “a great pleasure indeed.” He did not seem to recognise the name of the Graveyard Commander, nor of the once Golden Rose. Not many remembered the names of specific angels anyway, let alone someone with undoubtedly many more important things on his mind, so this wasn’t surprising. He inclined his head at the guards, still keeping that cordial smile.

A guard spoke up. “Sir Vesuvio, what brings you and your daughter here today?”

“Ah,” Vesuvio’s eyes gleamed below his goggles. “Simply here to pray to the fire spirits tonight, friends. It’s good to return to our roots, once in a while.” He turned to his daughter. “Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, father,” Pelia said demurely. She was a far cry from the spoiled brat Ennanis had seen on the train. She wondered at it, but Vesuvio turned to her next.

“I heard from my workers that you wish to inspect the amethyne mining level. Well, there is absolutely nothing in your way, Miss Zoleil. We have nothing to hide.”

Behind him, Ennanis caught sight of a tiny thing of a camera, a device blinking and black, tucked between the roof of the bunker and the ledge of rock it rested under. She would have to be wary of that.

Such easy admission reeked of suspicion, but there wasn’t sense in rejecting it at this moment. So, as the Vesuvios turned back to the workers, Ennanis walked into the gloomy metal corridor, uneasiness sprouting in her chest.