King of Babylon
By Dark Sploosh
Chapter 7: Fallen
Jinn burst through the door, sending it flying off its hinges. Daylight seared his eyes for but a second, and then he saw he was on the roof. The wind whipped all around him, and although he could feel all of it, it could not move him like it could a human. Nothing could move him now that he had his target cornered. The Daskanni bastard stood at the edge of the roof, his arms spread wide to catch the wind, a grin upon his face.
“Kanakasi,” he laughed, every one of his sharpened fangs dancing in his mouth, “you are truly good for sport. You barely seem tired.”
Jinn had no idea what the Daskanni was smiling about. Jinn was still ready to hike the Tulashi plains in a day without rest, but the redflame’s chest heaved with exertion, perspiration casting his whole body in a sheen.
“How did you get here, redflame?” Jinn growled, taking a step forward. The Daskanni made no further movements, his smile twitching. “How did the three of you cross over?”
The redflame shrugged. “How did you?”
He took a step backward. Jinn kicked against the ground and crossed the distance between them in a flash. The redflame pitched back over the edge, but just before he disappeared, Jinn lashed out with his hand and grasped the djinni by the ankle.
“Get back here!” Jinn roared, pulling the redflame back to the roof. The Daskanni growled and cursed, but Jinn grabbed him by the throat and smashed his head down into the ground. The stone shattered under the force, crumbling away as Jinn pushed his enemy’s head down into the depression.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, increasing the pressure. Growling, the Daskanni’s claw flew up, but Jinn simply turned his head and it missed. Then he punched the Daskanni square in the face, breaking his nose with a thunderous crack.
“Done?”
Blood pooled around the redflame’s head, black as his soul, but he still managed to smile.
“Kanakasi, you better run.”
“What?”
“You better protect your human.”
Fear shot through Jinn’s entire body in that moment. He felt his inner flame twirl with self-hatred as he realized that he had completely forgot about Lachlan. He left his own damn human of all people alone with other Daskanni!
The accursed redflame laughed, and as he did, from somewhere down below there was a tremendous rumbling, and it shook the entire building. Jinn’s first thought was an earthquake, but then a worse truth filled his mind.
“Hope he got out in time. If he isn’t already dead.”
Jinn’s flame sprung back to life, surging fire down his arm as his rage pooled into the fallen Daskanni. It was dishonorable to do this outside of war, but these circumstances were different. They tried to kill a human, his human. They might have succeeded.
They deserved the same for even considering it.
A second later all life was gone from the Daskanni’s body. Jinn rose to his feet and turned from the bloody mass, and the building buckled a second time. The shock was so great that Jinn nearly lost his balanced, but he dug into the stone with his toes and kept upright. Then the world rushed to rise above him, and the building was falling.
Jinn focused on the first building he saw and jumped. He sailed through the air, the sound of the air rushing past him as he flew drowned out by the destruction of the hotel behind him. He crashed into the side of the tower he set his sights on, punching through the wall to halt his fall. From his perch he looked down just in time to see the massive gray cloud spread from where the building once stood, washing over the streets and filling them like water through drains.
Lachlan had to have gotten out. Jinn could not mess this up. He just could not.
Putting it out of his mind, Jinn looked around. He couldn’t see any of those flying machines the humans used, there were no windows on this part of the building he had landed at, and most people were going to be too distracted to look up. Still, it was day, so if he hadn’t already been spotted it was just a matter of time.
He drew his fist out of the wall and let himself fall. The potential rush of the descent was nothing compared to the terrible feeling eating away at his flame, lick by lick. Near the bottom, he dug his nails into the wall to slow down, scraping through the rock like snow. When he dropped into the cloud and the sun’s light left him, he let go and hit the ground.
In the shroud of the dust, his flame sprung to life, the orange light cutting though the fog. Djinni vision was great enough that it was not much of a matter anyway, but the inner flame always seemed to find ways to prove itself useful.
Proving that true, Jinn saw a golden glow shining through the cloud up ahead of him. He also made out the shapes of many humans gathered upon the ground, huddled and covering themselves. They had gotten lucky. It looked like the tower had fallen the other way. And hopefully, if Shanzi was here…
“Jinn!”
He couldn’t tell from that one word whether things were good or bad.
“Lachlan is safe!”
At that, Jinn’s flame flickered back to health, the light overwhelming the fog as if it was not there anymore. As he got closer he saw Lachlan, curled up on the ground like the others, Shanzi standing over him in protection.
Shanzi’s eye burnt holes through Jinn. “Why did you leave him?”
Jinn grit his teeth and looked away. There was no way to say it without making him look like the idiot.
“Thank you for protecting him,” he said instead. Shanzi shook her head and stood up, looking around.
“We need to find Anna,” she said.
“What?” Jinn said. “So you left your human too? Why are you-”
“I got her someplace safe first,” Shanzi said, pointing up at a nearby tower, about the same height as the destroyed pile of rubble had been minutes ago. “She’s up there.”
“Yes, because the Daskanni couldn’t just crumble that one too.”
“Shut up. Take your human. The others are noticing.”
Around them, people were beginning to uncover their heads and stare in wonder at the two figures burning with light. Jinn had botched enough today already without having this on his hands.
“Lachlan?” Jinn asked as he reached down to help the boy up. Lachlan rose, but he didn’t look at Jinn. “Lachlan, are you okay?”
“Jinn,” he whispered. “The building needs to be fixed. The people inside…we need to fix it. I wish-”
Jinn clasped his hand over Lachlan’s mouth before he could get the rest out. The last thing he needed was his human wasting a wish. Lachlan snarled something from under his hand, but Jinn shook his head.
“We need to get out of here first. If you want to wish for the building to saved, at least wait until we know what happened. You don’t want the wish to screw up, do you?”
Lachlan grumbled something that sounded like an agreement, so Jinn removed his hand. The frown on the boy’s face hurt him, but he ignored it as he lifted Lachlan and helped him climb onto his back.
“Where are we going?” Lachlan asked. He didn’t sound terribly apprehensive for some reason.
“Anna,” Shanzi said, and then she took off towards the building where her human was. Jinn followed, feeling Lachlan’s grasp tighten around his neck. At the building he followed Shanzi up the side, grabbing the spaces in between the stone and around the windows for support. It took less no more than thirty seconds to reach the top, and waiting there was Anna with eyes wide open.
“Oh my God, are you guys all right?” she said, running up to hug Shanzi around the legs. “I saw the building fall down and-”
“We’re fine,” Shanzi said. “The building wasn’t meant to harm Jinn and me anyway. It couldn’t.”
She left it at that, but Jinn knew they had to address soon exactly who the attack had been meant for.
Lachlan dropped down off Jinn’s back and turned to look down at the dust and destruction below.
“Can I do it now?” he asked.
“Lachlan, it would be a waste,” Shanzi said.
“What are you talking about?” Lachlan said, whirling around. “Do you know how many people must have been killed when that fell? How many might be still alive under the rubble? If I fix the building at they might be saved! I wish-”
“Shut up Lachlan,” Shanzi said. “There were no more humans in the building when it fell!”
Lachlan stopped right before the last word escaped his lips, to Jinn’s immense relief. “I know it looked like that. But how can we be sure?”
“Remember that no one was on that floor with us? I had seen other floors on my way to you, and they were all like that.”
Jinn had noticed that as well, although he had been too focused on chasing the redflame to care much. Now that it was over, it did seem strange.
“You said those hotels always have many humans in them, right?” Jinn asked.
“Yeah, always,” Lachlan said, looking back down at the remains. “Are you sure?”
“With what was going on, I’d say it is impossible we would not have seen more fleeing humans.” Shanzi gave Jinn a sideways glance, and the cool look in her eyes made his guilt come rushing back.
“What?” he asked.
“Jinn, I can only think of one way this is possible.”
It was like she hadn’t been furious at him just a moment ago, and somehow that made it worse. But past that, Jinn realized what she was talking about. It made sense, but they didn’t have time to explain it here. His eyes turned to Lachlan.
“Lachlan, we need to get somewhere safer where we can discuss this,” he said. “But I think Shanzi’s right. Wishing the building back is going to be a waste of a wish.”
Lachlan scoffed and turned back to look at Jinn. The displeasure on his face was meant for the redflames and what they had done. But Jinn couldn’t help but feel it was directed at him, at his failure to protect his human, to have had another djinn do it for him.
“Fine,” Lachlan said. “Let’s go. Anna.”
Anna nodded, her eyes still glassy with shock. “Where to?”
“Lahkseis, the capital,” Shanzi said. “Anna simply has to wish us to the djinni side. It shouldn’t be far from here.”
“Is that all?” Lachlan asked. “If we’re that close, why didn’t we do that when we got here?”
Jinn suddenly felt as if Shanzi’s death glare was upon him. He didn’t have to look at her to know.
“You still haven’t told the boy everything about wishing, have you?”
“Forgive me,” Jinn said. “We’ve been busy since you tried to kill us.”
Shanzi groaned, but said nothing more about it.
“Anyway, Lachlan,” she said, turning to the boy, “one of the rules of wishing is extremely important. One of the most important. Although you do have infinite wishes as long as they follow the Greater Than Last rule, there’s another condition. Too many wishes in succession can harm you.”
Lachlan nodded, his eyes scanning the ground in thought. “Death?”
“Maybe. Eventually. But there’s a lot you can lose before that point, things you don’t want to lose. Anna is young, and she already used two wishes in a row to get us out of the djinni world and to this city. I wanted to give her time to rest a bit.”
“I feel fine,” Anna chimed in. Shanzi gave her a slight smile.
“It hasn’t been long, but I think maybe one more may be okay. It is not good to stay around here in any case. More Daskanni could still be here, so it’s for the best.”
“Those evil djinni are called Daskanni?” Anna asked.
“And there could be more?” Lachlan added. “If there are more-”
“The rest of the humans here are safe, trust me,” Shanzi said. “The redflames are only interested in you and Anna.”
Lachlan took in a deep breath, and then let it out very slowly, closing his eyes.
“You’ll explain this all very soon, right?”
Shanzi nodded, then shot Jinn a look. He nodded too, feeling it was all needed to lend.
“Okay then,” Anna said, “I wish the four of us were on the djinni side!”
Shanzi’s glow, near invisible now under the sun, burst forth brilliantly from within her as the world around them began to change. Jinn watched the massive buildings shrink and widen until they were rolling hills. The ground rushed up silently to meet them, streets melting into grassy fields and boulders jutting up from the earth.
Shanzi’s flame dimmed and the wish was complete. And in the distance Jinn could see the red spires of the capital city, Lahkseis. He was home again, a place he hadn’t seen in years. So why was his inner flame tinged with fear?
