Fowlhunter [GL]

When Ennanis came to, there was a sandwich in her face.

Wincing, she straightened against the wall her back leaned against. She rubbed her head. Fireworks were going off in her skull, stabbing her behind the eyes and shooting down her spine whenever she so much as breathed, like a bad hangover.

Right. She had just died. Coming back always felt like this.

More importantly, though…

“Good morning, firebird,” Jemi Garen said cheerfully.

A cloaked, familiar gold-haired woman was bracketed on either side of her legs. She was pointing the sandwich at her on a skewer. Flatmeat and sliced pickles were smashed together by two pieces of bread that were dropping crumbs over Ennanis’ culotte. But something looked odd.

Ennanis squinted.

The toasting ‘skewer’ it was on was in fact a dagger. Its tip shone in the firelight as it pierced through the bread. It oozed red… with ketchup. A short distance away, a fire burned on a pile of kindling scraps, a meagre glow that barely illuminated their surroundings in the dark tunnel.

“Do you want breakfast?” the woman shoved the sandwich in her face again. “Or dinner. I dunno. Time is hard underground.”

“Why are you on top of me?”

“Oh,” Jemi gasped, “would you rather be on top?” She started to lean back. “I don’t mind that either… really, I’d quite welcome it.”

Ennanis gave her a flat stare.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Catching her gaze, Jemi gasped again. “Ohhh, is it this?” She reached out to pull the sandwich off the dagger, leaving a ragged hole in the middle of the breadslice. “Sorry. Don’t really have proper cooking utensils with me. Let that be a lesson for the next volcano spelunking packing list. But hey, honestly, the dagger works fine. Who’s going to care about fine dining when you’re dressed in dirt?”

Ennanis, “......”

“Huh? I've already removed the pointy thing, what more do you want? My clothes on the ground?”

“Keep your clothes on,” Ennanis droned. “I don’t need your… sandwich.”

“Aww, are you worried about me? Don’t be, babe, I’ve already eaten.” She patted her stomach. “I had the fresher sandwiches, if you don’t mind, these are just the leftovers. Apologies, but early birds get the worm, y’know, and the birds that come later get worm-food… still nutritious, of course, just considerably less tasty—oh—there we go.”

Ennanis grabbed the sandwich as she pushed the woman off her, sending her tumbling. She had no appetite, but she just needed the woman to stop talking; it was making her head hurt worse. She shoved it in her mouth, rapid chews to a swallow. After she finished it, she asked, “What’s going on? Where’s Capri?”

Jemi picked herself off the ground, still grinning. “Who?”

“A girl that I was with. Also, there were supposed to be…” Ennanis glanced around. “Three angels around here.”

Jemi’s face gave the barest twitch. “What do you mean, angels?”

“There were three angels, dressed in white togas. They were just here.” Ennanis caught sight of the parts of the wall that had caved in or crumbled from the impact of the fight, the scars of bullets and burnmarks of stray Soleki beams. But there was no trace of the angels that had attacked her. It was like the bodies had disappeared into thin air.

Lava sloshed in the distance.

The Wardens could have healed up first and left, of course; their damage taken hadn’t been nearly as severe as hers, so it was expected they would’ve woken first. But that didn’t make sense. If they had come to capture her, she would’ve been taken away. If they had come here to kill her, they would have punctured her wrists to ensure she wouldn’t heal.

That Prometheus’ Wardens could have done such a thing to her… the thought of it made her stomach curdle. But, even more pressingly—the fact that she was still here and sound…

Ennanis’ gaze landed on Jemi, humming as she tended to the flames.

“Just what happened here?”

“Hm?” Jemi looked at her, breadcrumbs speckled around her lips. She shrugged. “I don’t know what happened. I just got here and saw you sitting there passed out. So I, out of my benevolence, waited for you to wake up. Didn’t want you to get ambushed while asleep, yeah?”

“How did you get here, then?” Ennanis questioned. “You’ve been missing for days now. None of your friends knew about it.”

“I decided to take a tour of the mines for myself, and got lost,” Jemi replied.

“You got lost,” Ennanis repeated. “You got lost, somehow made it past all the security, and somehow ended up in the heart of the mountainrange, right where you needed to be.”

“I have an exceptionally poor sense of navigation,” Jemi said brightly. Then she laughed, a raspy giggle. “Just kidding! I’ve got this, after all. I simply followed it. Even a dumb human like me can do that.”

Between her fingers she raised her Kraken-marble in front of their eyes. The inky globule within was spinning madly.

Next, she put her finger to her chin. “Hey, if you say there were angels here, how come they didn’t help you? They really just left you there, all conked-out?”

“……” Ennanis’ gaze drifted. “You didn’t run into them?”

“No clue. Maybe I’m lucky. Or maybe, the angels decided not to do their jobs. But does that really surprise anyone, anymore?” Jemi held out a second sandwich—with her hand this time. “Another one?

Ennanis took it. After ingesting the first one she had found that she was rather ravenous, most likely catching up from all the healing her body had had to do. She bit into it, the taste of slightly-sour, over-salted tomato chilli prickling her tongue.

“You know,” she said as she swallowed. “There were two guards murdered nights ago. Clean stab wounds, head to pelvis. No signs of struggle, no weapon found on scene. Locked gate, no breaks in the fence. Sparkling blood.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It was. At least, if they were clean wounds, then they must have been swift deaths. Whoever did it must have been very skilled, very strong, and fully intended to make that obvious. It is strange that such brutal murders were carried out just for something like a cart theft. It almost seems more like a distraction; a diversion at a very opportune moment for us.”

“Lucky us.”

“Too much of a coincidence,” Ennanis corrected.

“Why? Maybe good things happen sometimes,” Jemi shrugged.

“Before, maybe, I could have believed it was a coincidence. But I was thinking. The fact that I’m still here,” Ennanis said, “means that something, or someone, had to have chased the angel Wardens off after I was knocked out. It couldn’t have been Capri—she doesn’t have the capabilities of taking on a Warden, let alone three.”

“Really.”

Ennanis nodded. “You, of course, are a magicless human; you stand even less of a chance. There is, however, one person that would be able to face them.”

Jemi blinked.

“The same person that practically announced her presence at the entrance of the cave with that stunt of hers,” Ennanis concluded. “The behavioural patterns line up, and to boot, this person has links to our group, and what we’re doing here.”

“Umm… yeah. Not ringing any bells.”

“Your friend,” Ennanis said. “The Cockatrice. I am certain she is still around here somewhere. Perhaps even very, very close by.”

“Uh, Commander? I’m not sure if you remember, but she’s dead,” Jemi repeated. “She can’t be here.”

The angel and the human stared at each other. Not for the first time, the silence of the tunnel draped thick and heavy over them. Cavebats chittered faintly, and the lava continued to slosh steadily. One wondered where all the guards had gone.

Ennanis ignored her, standing. “Sure. We evidently have more important things to do.”

Nodding along, Jemi dragged herself to her feet, brown cloak and scarf-end fluttering behind her.

“And, Jemi?”

“Mm?”

“You have tomato on your face.”

Jemi paused.

“On your right cheek,” Ennanis pointed on her own face.

Slowly, Jemi wiped her hand over her cheek. She looked at it, then sucked the red stain off her thumb with a grin. “Can’t be caught with a hair out of place in front of the prim and proper angel commander, huh?”

Ennanis elected not to mention that Jemi’s hair was always, all over the place.

“Let’s go,” she said instead.