Chapter 3
He wasn't always like this. The possession. The endless scheming, twisting people's souls, seeing everything as a means to an end. He would never have done these things when he was young. He was a scholar once. He was innocent. He was good.
I have to remind myself of this as I create a bridge between firespace and the Earth and pull up a curtain of flame around us to shield the world from his malificence. I have to tell myself once again that no soul is completely corrupt until it has been judged by She Who Watches at the end of time. Because if I don't remember that, if I let my hatred consume my purpose, if I allow myself to incinerate this bastard's soul in firespace, where it cannot be reborn, it will be very bad for me.
The difference between jinn and the sons of Adam is that the more power a human has, the more society lets him get away with, whereas the more power a jinn has, the less she is allowed to use it. A newborn jinn is permitted all sorts of indiscretions - pretty much anything that doesn't involve the death of innocents - but an older one, an afrit or marid especially, has all sorts of limitations on the power she can wield, unless she's under a geas or serving a human sorcerer. When you get to those levels, you can hardly blow your nose in the human world without special dispensation from the Emerald Council or a waiver signed by an archangel.
That's why they call me the Brat. Because I do it anyway. I've never abused my power on a personal whim (I remind myself as I superheat the air around him and turn into a cobra), but when something needs to be done, when every other jinn is content to stand around looking wise while bad things happen, I don't. I go where the trouble is, and I do something.
I love trouble. I'm almost human that way.
The Powers That Be could stop me if they wanted to, of course. But the very same principle of noninterference keeps both the Emerald Council and She Who Watches from ever touching me. It irks the angels no end to see me "thwarting Her will", but She won't let them do anything to me, and angels always, ALWAYS do what She tells them. I think about this a lot, and over the centuries I've come to believe that She lets me be because in the end, despite the illusion of my independence, I really am part of Her plan.
Everything is, really. That's how She works.
We're in firespace now, far from the beautiful human architecture of New Orleans, and all around us are pillars of stone and flame. I strike at him, but he's shrunk and changed into a little animal with a wedge-shaped head, dodging my strike with little predatory dance moves. Mongoose. Just like in the story.
The second time I strike I feel his sharp little teeth on my neck. He's gotten very fast and very dangerous in the last few centuries, and my old shapes have lost their effectiveness. But I haven't been sitting still all these years, either.
I choose one of my newer shapes, one that can kill a mongoose in a heartbeat. A pit bull - one of my favourite new dog breeds. I do feel pain as my neck thickens and slides under his teeth, but the pain is nothing to me in this shape. I roll back and swipe at the little rat with a hind paw, hoping to brush it off and bring my powerful jaws to bear. But my paw hits empty air, and a hawk flies away from me.
I become an eagle and launch myself after him. He heads for the nearest landmark, a pair of twisted rock pillars straight out of a Frazetta painting, and I follow him. He's got a good lead on me, but every beat of my wings shortens the distance. I remember the last time we danced like this. There were three of us then. Me, him, and Ishmianthe. She was the best flier, always had been.
That was one of the reasons he tried so hard to keep her in his power. Well, that and the fact that he couldn't trust me.
So far, so good. He circles around the taller of the two pillars, spiralling down towards the ground, and I know that he's going to turn and hit me as soon as I get close enough. I can feel energy gathering within him, a halo around his little feathered form. He has so much power I can't keep its buzz out of my head. I wish I could take just one peek back at Earth, just to see if Bastiaan is shoring up his defenses, but I can't take the chance. I wish I could have warned him, and Gabriel too, but we vetoed that idea a long time ago. Gabe's mind is an open book, and if our one-time master even suspects a trick, none of this will work. Too much depends on this, and we've been planning for too long to let a moment of fear ruin everything.
I almost ruin it anyway, just by letting myself get distracted. Instead of jumping out from behind the pillar with spells blazing, as I expected, he turns the whole pillar into a storm of knifelike slivers that fall on me, spalling, and I manage to vaporize at the last possible instant, but he still gets several of my feathers. It hurts when I vaporize. If I survive this, I'll have marks to show for it.
I'm back in my own natural form for a change, and fire is spewing out of me. The slivers of stone melt in mid-air, a swirling hurricane of magma that engulfs my old master. But he's already thrown up a shield, and I can feel him chanting.
At least it keeps him from spewing any of his lame threats. I hate it when he monologues. That alone would have driven me away from him eventually.
I'm concentrating on gathering a storm cloud, which is not nearly as easy as most people think, when his shield disappears and he hurls out a handful of metal balls. They begin to whirl around me, and I have to cancel my lightning bolt before I fry myself. Pure fire can't hurt me, but electricity definitely can. Bastard knows way too much about jinn.
Time to start the big finale. I take a deep metaphorical breath and remind myself that I can do this.
I am Suriya, Kawkab el-Shareq, granddaughter of Iblis. I have slain dragons. Crusader armies have quailed at my shadow. I have fought witches and the living dead. This is just a man, and I don't even have to kill him. I just have to make him think he's killed me.
I stamp my foot, and a shockwave runs through the ground, throwing up sand everywhere and cracking the stone underneath. With both hands flung out, I send tentacles of fire to lash him and wrap themselves around his arms. His robes are instantly engulfed in flame. But already he's fighting back with tendrils of black entropy that suck the energy out of my flames.
I throw out more fire, hotter than anything I've unleashed so far, just to hold him, pull him closer, while a miniature sun begins to burn inside of my fire cloud. He quenches some of the flames, trying to pull away, but I'm reeling him in and burning hotter and hotter. If this works, it's going to leave me as weak as a human baby. I won't be running into any battles in the next few years. But, hopefully, I'll be alive.
He sees what's coming, and starts to call out to other spirits, calling in favours, promising the Earth to anyone who'll shield him. Some come, mostly the newly dead that he's diverted from Bastiaan's works, but not enough to stop me. Maybe, enough to protect him from the full force of my last attack.
I stamp my foot twice, hoping Ishmianthe can tell the difference between a stamp and a random explosion. I can picture her giving me that arch look, like would you hurry it up please? I've got places to be.
Oh, Ishmianthe.
The ground explodes on the second stamp, and the sun inside me lights up the world. I divert what I need straight down into the ground, into the waiting arms of my lover waiting in a cavern of shadowrock three meters under the sand. The rest of me goes everywhere else, including right at the sorcerer. Fire blows his hair off, turns his skin to charcoal. He rocks, stumbles, catches himself on one hand. Flames run up and down his body, but he's made it. The dead have protected him from the brunt of my attack, probably at the expense of their own souls.
He looks, and sees exactly what he expects to see - the weakly burning remnant of a jinn who just let out a kamikaze attack with everything she's got. And from my shelter down beneath the sand, I see him whisper a spell that sucks that wisp into a cool blue globe in his left hand. Then he smiles, not quite managing to hide the fact that I very nearly killed him, and he goes back to Earth chortling,
"Silly, silly Suriya Jinn."
I can't believe he's about to start another monologue.
I can't risk watching him, even if I had the strength for it. I let myself go limp in Ishmianthe's arms. The world fades to black, and my last thought is the frail hope that Gabe will eventually get the message I left for him.
To be continued...
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Credits:
Base Concept:
artman2003
Title idea:
DejaMorgana
Contributors (so far):
artman2003,
Uberbanana,
Dejamorgana,
jessicaj,
Junkill,
Dimview
Plot Developed by: Above-mentioned contributors, with some suggestions by non-contributing members of
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Directed by:
artman2003