“Nnnnnnngh,” Sabira groaned, her fingers and mind both aching as she attempted to reconnect with Ennanis for the thirtieth time. “Medusa damn it, Ennanis. Stop… blocking… all… my charms…”

The tangerine-haired Brigadier sat in the corner of Sugarette Inn, frowning in front of a table of cakes. However, even the angel’s favourite desserts of the undercloud did not seem to alleviate her sour mood any. Meanwhile, the rest of the taskforce dug into the snacks without any care of the world. All smiles, waiters and waitresses trotted back and forth, asking after them and refilling glasses with tea.

Opposite from Sabira, a greybelt raised his hand for another platter of kueh—multicoloured glutinous rice cakes—while his mouth was still full of the last dessert he’d eaten. A waiter nearly dropped the tea he was serving another customer in his haste to rush over.

Good Prometheus. It’s like babysitting a bunch of fledglings. A bunch of very hungry fledglings.

Finally, on the thirty-second try, Sabira received a pulse in her head. Never in her life had she been so overjoyed to hear the crunchy noises of Ennanis trampling around in her mind. To congratulate herself, she leaned over and plucked the most vibrant kueh from the colourful tray.

Energy renewed, she sat up.

“Commander, where are you right now?” she hissed once she had swallowed a mouth of cake. She looked out through the flowery veranda and peered into the distance, sensing a dim gold spot to the east. It was barely within Sabira’s range, flickering in and out.

“I’m searching for the Beasts’ hideout,” came Ennanis’ murmuring voice. She sounded as if she was talking to herself rather than talking to Sabira. “If that boy swum through the canal, then the canal might lead to their den.”

“Boy? What boy?” Sabira questioned. Would it kill this angel to give consistent reports? After listening to Ennanis’ explanation, she closed her eyes and pressed her her temples in frustration.

“Ennanis, you know that the canal system of Wataron is like—super huge, right?” Sabira sighed. “Even if you’d seen the initial direction he had gone off in, he could have taken an exponential number of turns from then on. Unless you’d tracked him as he was swimming, it’ll be impossible to search all of them.”

“It’s not impossible, it’d just take a long time.”

“Oh, alright. Go ahead and search the entire undercloud while you’re at it,” Sabira groaned. “Even if there’s only four kingdoms in the vicinity, covering them would would take you years—the continent of Loukoumades is massive. Searching Wataron is one thing, but what about Fenlin? Heck, the capital Archizoun?”

“Well, do you have any better leads?”

Sabira gave the taskforce a long side-eye. “... All we found out was that Lestor is allergic to coconut.”

Lestor, sitting in the corner scratching his reddened neck, gave a thumbs-up.

“Then I guess I will be searching the whole undercloud.”

“Or, you could have your squadron to help you with that,” Sabira interjected. “Take your role as commander seriously, will you? The people in this squadron are counting on you. I wasn’t the one sent by Emperor Prometheus on a babysitting mission—you were.”

“Then you shouldn’t have volunteered.” A pause. “And I command the Graveyard Division, not the Knights. Ask Truwing.”

“Well, now you’re got a Graveyard Squadron on your hands, girl,” cried Sabira, exasperated. “You can’t get out of this one with technicalities! And, Nana—you know very well why I volunteered.”

It was at this moment that Agnar piped up, palm sugar falling from his lips. “Uh, Brigadier? Just letting you know that if she doesn’t want our help, that’s perfectly fine by me.”

Sabira shot him a sharp look. The cadet couldn’t have heard what Ennanis was saying over the charm, but he had probably guessed based on Sabira’s crashout. Fighting to maintain her composure, Sabira turned away and pushed her voice down.

“Well, I guess you’ve always been like this. Give us something to do, then, Commander. I can’t stand another minute of idling.”

“Then have them search along Wataron’s canals as well. If you find anything, report it. Enjoy your dessert.” The charm began to fuzz out.

“It would be great if you could stop keeping us in the dark, too—!” Sabira barely managed to get in before the charm was sliced apart, the communication broken.

Scowling, Sabira buried her face in a bowl of grass jelly.

~~~

To the east…

Ennanis was not blurring across a canal.

Even she wasn’t daft enough to search the entire canal system of Wataron. In her time away from the undercloud, she had not forgotten its sheer magnitude—a sprawling, dense web of waterlines visible from the first peak of Mount Casca in daylight. To search it would not be a display of dedication, only one of idiocy. It would probably be a feat impossible by the likes of Prometheus himself.

Instead, Ennanis was sitting on a rooftop. Wind rushed past her, tangling in her hair as she leafed through the pages of a manila folder. The file on the Cockatrice.

It was a very light folder, no thicker than her little nail. Indeed, the Beast evaded surveillance exceptionally well. There was very little information that had been gathered on her. Flipping through its sleeved documents, Ennanis found that a lot of the information that was available was dated, for the Beast had gotten better over time.

To tell the truth, she had already seen most of these pages before—so many times that she had them committed to memory. The most infamous of the Cockatrice’s misdeeds were the serial arson attacks of Wataron’s capital city Jadestone thirteen years ago, and the mass robberies during a drought ten years ago. This was other than her ‘smaller’ crimes, which consisted of blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, and so on. The Cockatrice had taken great care to conceal her identity when she was committing misdeeds, only ever being spotted as a hooded figure. Anyone who might have seen her true face had either not known it was her, or had not lived very long after finding out.

And on the very first page: the earliest record of the Cockatrice, seventeen years ago. There were no photos for this one, only a handwritten recording of the event. Apparently, when the Cockatrice was eleven, she poisoned her village’s water well, causing a mini-plague. It was a small village, and it had sickened most of the population living there. She had not spared even her own family.

For her heinous crimes, she was then placed in the sunprisons of Casca. Only that, she somehow escaped the inescapable prison, and continued to live out her terrifying reputation as the Princess of Beasts.

Among those whose lives had been claimed by her was the fearsome angel general, Amanita Zoleil.

Angels were born from sunfire, and therefore could not have blood family. But angels, like humans, still tended to group themselves in clans, from which they derived surnames. At a young age, Ennanis had been taken under Amanita’s wing.

She wondered what her mentor would think if she saw her now.

She closed the folder. In the end the file was useless. There was nothing that she didn’t already know. This copy, too, was years behind from her latest memory. Definitely nothing from the last six months. She couldn’t have expected much from a police record in a small village like Lightwood. There were probably more complete records in bigger cities; that was where she had to go next, then.

The rest of the Knights may’ve found it incomprehensible, Ennanis’ preoccupation with seeking out the Cockatrice. Her comrade Sabira Beneste, and the emperor Prometheus, had made their doubts clear. But Ennanis knew, as Graveyard Commander, that the Cockatrice was their best shot at a lead. The Princess of the Beasts would not have disappeared from Casca’s night sieges for six months without good reason. For eight years, it had always been her that Ennanis clashed her spear against.

That was all there was to it. If the Cockatrice could be found… Ennanis was certain that the rest would unravel from there.

If she was still alive.

No—she was still alive.

Something creaked past her, on the rooftop. Glancing that way, Ennanis realised it was a weathervane: of a cockerel, perched proudly atop an arrow.

A shiver ran down her spine.

Ennanis had nothing to prove it. Yet, she believed her arch-enemy had to be alive. She couldn't stop the feeling that… she was still out there, masked eyes watching her, somehow.

Creakcreakcreak… the weathervane began to spin wildly, squeaking on its rusty hinges as cold wind gusted past it. Looking up, shivering some more, Ennanis belatedly realised that the sky had turned from azure to gloomy and overcast. The angel had been so engrossed in her reading that she hadn’t noticed it before, the way she felt drained and colder, as the thick clouds blocked out the sunlight.

Shutting the folder, she got to her feet and stretched her wings, ready to find shelter somewhere. It was just then that she heard a shout.

“Hey, girl!”