Fowlhunter [GL]

Once past that troop of guards, they quite easily made it to the storage room.

"Right on schedule," Pelia muttered when they found the room unguarded. "We've got a maximum of thirty minutes now."

The problem was the door, an imposing barrier of well-reinforced metal. Instead of a traditional lock, there was a little console hooked up to the door, with a numbered keypad and a digital blinking screen.

"Well, good luck picking that lock," Pelia said.

"Don't you have the passcodes to things down here?" asked Ennanis.

"I can try the general passcode," Pelia said, and pressed a string of digits into the keypad. BZZZZT! The screen lit up red, and an error buzzer sounded. 3 TRIES LEFT, read the screen. "Figures."

"Try birthdays?" Jemi suggested.

“That’s dumb, Rijina,” Pelia rolled her eyes.

“That’s Lady Rijina to you, squirt.”

“Why, you can’t call me—! I’m the real Lady of us two!” Pelia retorted, but turned to the console regardless. She tried her father's birthday, then tried her own birthday. BZZZZT! BZZZZT! Two error buzzers sounded. ONE TRY LEFT.

"That's not good. If we get it wrong one more time the alarm will sound," Pelia muttered. Her fingers were quivering from stress.

"I don't suppose we can just bash the lock in," said Ennanis.

"Simmer down, firebird. If it’s a lock made with any sense, destroying it would also trigger the alarm," Jemi said dryly. "Give me a sec." She walked up to the console, peering closely at it.

"What are you doing?" Pelia cocked her head.

"Quiet," Jemi hissed. It was then that Ennanis noticed her violet eyes wandering off, as if she weren't really focusing on the lock. Almost like she was… listening out to something. But there weren't any other noises in the hallway, other than the squeaking of the rats scampering up and down. One skittered between Jemi’s boots, large, brown and hairy. Ennanis expected her to jump, but she didn't. She merely kept her head down, dull gold curls obscuring her face. Her lips were parted; it was hard to see through the hair, but they might have moved slightly.

The rat blinked beady black eyes. It turned around in a circle. Fuzzy nose twitching, it let out several loud squeaks.

Then...

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

They held their breath as Jemi pressed the 'enter' key.

Bling-bling! The screen lit green. The door clicked. Jemi pushed it open.

Pelia gawked. "How did you do that?"

"No questions," Jemi reminded her, and walked inside the room.

"...Whose birthday is that?" Pelia wondered, sullen.

"Could just be a randomly generated number," Ennanis said.

"......" Pelia seemed lost in thought. Everyone followed Jemi into the storage room.

A switch by the side flipped on a row of electric lights, illuminating the room in a buzz of white. The room was simple, little more than a closet with metal walls, clearly not destined for anything more than simple storage. The far end of the room was lined with cupboards. Along the side walls, sheets of the finely-embroidered mesh grates were stacked in piles.

Each grate was unsurprisingly heavy. It took the three of them to drag it to the centre of the room. With thirty minutes on the clock, they didn’t have any time to waste chattering, so they started searching. The cupboards were indexed by a sheet of paper tacked to the wall. They seemed to be for storing tools. However, those were bolted shut.

“Something we could use in there,” Pelia said. “Shame about the bolts.”

“Move,” Jemi said, and walked right up to the cupboards. She slid a multi-tool from her cloakpockets, spangling with knives and picks and other dangerous objects. In under a minute, rows of doors swung open.

Pelia stared. She opened her mouth… then shut it.

They gathered around the grates and started whacking it with every tool they could find: axes, cattleprods, drills—but nothing made a scratch on it.

“Ugh!” Exasperated, Pelia was the first to throw the pickaxe she was holding to the ground. It thunked heavily as it skittered across the floor.

None of the other two had the energy to rebuke her. Jemi wiped a sheen of sweat off her brow, turning off her power saw and propping herself against the cupboard. “Maybe you two should use Soleki, after all.”

Ennanis exchanged a look with Pelia. Initially, they had avoided using Soleki because the only source of sunlight they had down here was through Lienna, and Ennanis hadn’t had the chance to recharge it aboveground in who knew how long. However, it seemed like they were out of choices.

“Okay,” Ennanis took a step back. Seconds later, warm gold light filled the expanse of the storage room.

Pelia Vesuvio breathed in, emerald eyes shining as she felt Soleki tingling at her fingertips. Jemi backed away, leaning against a cupboard.

Together, the pair unleashed torrents of fire at the grates. Arms folded, Jemi watched in silence. Several minutes of this passed… to no effect.

Ennanis looked at the faintly-glowing Lienna on her finger, and turned it off. “I think there’s really no charge left.” Pelia, too, couldn’t summon any more beams.

“Maybe we should think about what we’re doing,” Pelia folded her arms. “What do we do now? There’s ten minutes left.”

They lapsed into silence.

Finally, Jemi stood up. Walking over, she ran her hand over the grid of the grate. “This… is it powered with Soleki?”

Ennanis recalled. “I think so.”

“Can you withdraw the Soleki from it?”

"It has to be tangible sunlight," Pelia frowned. "You can't draw the Soleki trapped within the workings of technology, so you can't manipulate it."

"What if we somehow cracked it open?"

"Well, if that isn't what we've been trying for the past twenty minutes," Pelia said sarcastically.

"Maybe it needs a more… gentle approach," Jemi said simply. Saying that, she knelt around the grate, inspecting it from different angles.

"What are you looking for?"

"I don't believe this thing doesn't have any screws," she answered. "Aha." Holding on to one corner of the grate, she pulled a screwdriver from her pocket and gave it a few quick twists. She did the same for the other three corners, and the bordering frame of the grate popped free. This allowed her to wiggle the frame away from the grate, exposing the fine edges of the Soleki-powered grids sandwiching the glass layer between them.

Jemi pulled out a wirecutter, clamping its jaws around one of the soldered joints. SNAP! Pelia and Ennanis watched as the end broke off, and a thin whish of yellow escaped from the inner piping, wisping slowly into the air.

Pelia pulled the strands of glowing smoke between her hands and rolled her palms, crafting it into a beam of light. "It works," she said in wonderment. "So we can use the Soleki from the grates. But how about destroying the grates themselves?"

"Deplete the Soleki from it first," Jemi said, scuttling around the perimeter of the grate as she snapped more of the grids, releasing bound Soleki into the air of the room.

"Are you sure that will do anything?"

"I don't know, High Lady Vesuvio, must I do everything for you?" Jemi said, stowing away her tools. "Think for yourself."

"You!—" Pelia raged, but they really had no time, so they settled for bickering whilst they continued to draw the released Soleki away from the grates. As time went on, the grates’ warmth appeared to dim. But the process was slow-crawling, and as Pelia had pointed out, impossible to enact on the scale that they would eventually have to.

"......." With five minutes left, Ennnais pondered. Then, squatting down, she held out her right hand to one of the cut ends. Lienna began to glow again, very faintly---and then suddenly, as if struck by a match, it burst into bright gold luminescence, brighter than it had ever been since she had descended into the caves.

And the grate?...

It was completely cold.