In a Bottle... Ch. 08

"Thanks. I should get something to keep this from getting infected," Alan mumbled as he went to explore the warehouse. He had enough problems without having to go see a doctor about a prescription for antibiotics for his infected gunshot wound. Surely no good would come from that conversation.

No wonder that old mage had such an enormous shimmer. Shifting time backwards had to draw an immense price. Alan knew nothing about temporal magic, but even a second or two seemed like a big deal. His mind wandered for a moment, considering the possibilities. He caught himself wondering why the mage hadn't reversed time when Alan had shot him, but then figured the obvious answer was probably correct. Dead magi cast no spells.

"So, what do I call you? I can't just continue to call you Master Genie. Do I name you like the other genies? That hardly seems appropriate," he pondered aloud as he shuffled through a first aid kit that he found hanging from a wall behind a forklift.

[I have a name. Kaelac'ara Kresh'tharus.]

Alan paused what he was doing to look over at the genie.

"Well, alright then. I suppose that settles that. It is going to be hard to remember all of that though. Could I call you something shorter? Like a nickname? How about Kaelac?" He winced as soon as he finished asking, hoping he wasn't betraying some formal tradition. The Master Genie still made Alan nervous.

[That will suffice,] it said simply.

Alan finished wrapping his shoulder in gauze even though there was no more bleeding. Kaelac had healed him most of the way. It was really just a habitual response--you get hurt and you find a band-aid.

"Did you take care of the first mage like I asked? Get rid of her magic or whatever?" he asked, remembering why the Master Genie was there to begin with.

[I have not. She remains in the car where you placed her. Would you like me to bring her here?]

"I don't know," Alan looked around again. The old telltale corrugated aluminum siding of the warehouse betrayed their location. "I know it's close, but exactly how far away are we from my car? I don't want to risk either of us getting caught out in the open."

[Your car is three blocks to the west. Though I wasn't implying transporting her physically. My magic is more than sufficient to conjure one human so long as I know their location,] Kaelac offered.

"Oh, that would be the obvious solution I suppose. I forget that you have access to conjuration magic--well, every school of magic really," he said. "Yeah, go ahead and bring her here while she's incapacitated so we can figure out the most effective way to resolve this."

Alan caught a slight shimmer around the edges of Kaelac's eyes and in his mind's eye pictured Kay, the mage with the wolf, as the area around her eyes also shimmered similarly. In the recesses of his brain he connected the dots, realizing she had been using conjuration magic against him.

And just like that, there she was--all taped up and written on like he'd left her--Winifrey the telepathy mage.

"So, can we just erase her memory and remove the magic that she stole from the djinni?" Alan asked, expressing his non-lethal intentions again.

[I cannot remove the magic from her. It would be akin to removing the flesh from your body. The result would be lethal. We can instead help her to ascend. Lacking any better options, and with your agreement, I will meld her.]

"Meld... her?" Alan faltered. "You can do that? To a human, I mean."

He looked down at the woman seated on the floor.

[One of the requirements for creating a living thing is another life.]

Alan suddenly flashed back to his final wish with Lucky. She had recreated Carmella to the best of her ability, but without a living person she was just memories. He had never considered the need for other components to be used in spells. To him, magic was simply power and will.

"Will it hurt?" he asked, anticipating an answer he would not like.

[She will experience no pain unless you desire it to be so,] Kaelac responded. [But we cannot do it here. The process would surely attract more hostile magi.]

"Right," Alan sighed, lowering his gaze to the floor. He thought for a moment, feeling unequipped to deal with the finality of such a decision right now. He didn't like it. 'Help her to ascend.' It sounded too much like a nicer word for dying. Alan had no idea what would happen to a person who was melded. He didn't really have many options though. He had a sleeping lion on his hands with a very poor excuse for a collar. He sighed again, the weight of everything bearing down on him. He didn't know what bothered him more: Blindly trusting Kaelac's intentions with his limited knowledge of the genie and its personality, or sentencing this woman without hardly knowing anything about her.

"It really is better than killing her," Alan conceded at last. He looked over at Winifrey, stripped naked and bound with tape like a rape victim. His writing scrawled angrily across her face reminded him of the way mascara ran when women cried. His eyes kept focusing on the word, 'KILL.'

"Lets do it. Before I change my mind," he said.

[Then come stand beside me. I need to conserve as much magic as possible,] Kaelac said as it reached out a hand towards Alan.

Alan stepped close to the genie as it gathered Winifrey in one arm and grasped Alan's forearm in the other. The air in front of them began to hum. Soon the hum rose in intensity and surrounded them completely. Alan felt a dense pressure building inside of his head and got the urge to pop his ears.

He closed his eyes and flexed his jaw to try and relieve the pressure. When he reopened them he was no longer in the warehouse. They were standing on the sand and there was no trace of the aggravating hum in the air.

Without preamble, Kaelac set the girl down and took several paces away. It swept out an arm and the large mound of sand before it shifted to become perfectly flat.

Not wanting to interfere, Alan simply chose to watch. He felt like a silent spectator being allowed access to the taboo. It was like using blasphemy in church--no, more like sneaking into the girl's locker room.

Kaelac merely stood for a time, its eyes growing with intensity as they shifted from white to yellow. Something odd was happening. At first Alan thought the genie was using temporal magic again, slowing down time. Then he realized what it was. The strange orbs that continuously orbited its head were slowing down. He must have just gotten used to them, like seeing someone with a prominent mole on their cheek or a birthmark around their eye every day--after awhile you stop noticing it. Eventually the orbs came to a stop and Alan could see them better for the first time. They weren't actually orbs at all. They had very rough edges that were chipped in places. Under his renewed scrutiny they looked just like little pebbles--sandstone perhaps.

The three of them hung in mid-air above the genie's head, parallel with the ground, maintaining a perfect distance from each other in a triangular pattern. Somewhere in his head, Alan was a little boy again listening to his third grade teacher explain the difference between equilateral and isosceles triangles.

Alan saw Winifrey begin to move out of the corner of his eye.

He looked down and realized that she wasn't standing, but actually lifting up off the ground. She began to levitate over to the flattened area of sand, Kaelac's three stones moving to meet her in the middle. She settled down onto the ground with the stones hovering a few inches above her.

Alan stole a glance at the Master Genie and sure enough he could see the distinct shimmer around it as it grew into a thick blue mist.

The stones traveled away from Winifrey suddenly, all simultaneously moving at a constant speed and then stopping in perfect synchronicity. It was like watching a machine work. Each of the stones began to glow orange and Alan could feel heat coming from them even standing several yards away. The ground beneath them began to blacken and they each began their own erratic dance.

Alan kept his attention on the stone closest to him and saw that the movements weren't random. It seemed to be making a pattern of some kind on the sand by scorching it black. He could hear the crackling of the sand as it burned, like tiny popcorn.

As each one completed its design, the stones all shifted in unison. They rotated slightly clockwise, maintaining their perfect triangular distance from each other and their height about a foot above the ground. As they moved they continued to glow, leaving a thin black line trailing behind them. They stopped and began designing new patterns before moving clockwise yet again.

The stones repeated this process, blazoning runes onto the sand by turning it black. As he continued to watch, Alan had the strangest feeling that he recognized a few of the runes. One in particular caught his attention--a pair of crescents, the right one larger than the first, arcing away from each other. Three diagonally arranged circles, increasing in size from left to right, were mirrored on either side. Alan knew how to finish it before the stone even burned the final piece of the rune into the sand. The tiny star just above the crux where the two crescents met. This wasn't just a feeling. It was impossible, but somehow he knew this symbol.

Alan took an involuntary step towards the circle of runes they were making, wanting to inspect them more closely. Without warning the stones flashed and a wave of heat hit him causing him to stumble and plant his feet in the sand. They were getting hotter, preparing for something.

He looked around and realized that the circle was complete. No--it wasn't a circle really. None of the lines were curved except for the runes. He counted them: Twelve runes. It was a dodecagon.

Twelve? An epiphany hit him causing a chill to run down his spine in spite of the intense heat coming from the dodecagon. Magic, of course. That was where he knew the symbol from. It was the Mirror. Reality on one side, illusion on the other. It symbolized the core existence of the illusory school of magic. Magik must have implanted it in his mind somewhere long ago when he had wished to know as much as she could teach him about illusions. There were twelve of them, one for each of the schools.

The stones were oscillating with energy now. Moving much more quickly than before they suddenly tore across the sand. At first Alan thought they were all converging on Winifrey. He panicked, hoping they wouldn't incinerate her, but they continued past, narrowly avoiding her and searing more black lines across the ground. They had formed a triangle, connecting three of the runes. But they weren't done, they sped around to the next triplicate of runes and made a second triangle slightly offset from the first.

Alan had difficulty keeping up with where the stones were at and where they were going by now, they were going so fast. After the second triangle, a third and then fourth were inlaid across the sand. The stones lifted high up into the sky, their heat finally dissipating. Their job was evidently finished.

Alan heard a ripping sound as the tape holding Winifrey tore itself apart. She rolled onto her back and was pressed against the sand in the center of the black diamond prism of intersecting lines. Her arms and legs splayed out like someone had pulled on marionette strings. Alan's eyes naturally wandered down between her legs as she lay spread eagle and he felt a stirring of arousal. A dome of energy had appeared over her and was steadily becoming more visible as it cascaded over her skin, caressing her lightly.

She began to moan then. Long, low moans of pleasure. She arched her back as the warm glow undulated against her exposed body in waves. With each cry of passion she exhaled something wispy.

Alan watched, both horrified and amazed, as the Master Genie pulled the woman's soul from her body, mingling it with potent magic as it was carefully drawn up and out through her mouth and nostrils. It looked like a vapor almost, but moved much slower, suggesting that it was highly viscous. Alan had never thought a person could actually see a soul but surmised that it was really the magic that he was seeing, not her actual spirit. Watching it made him itch underneath his skin. He had no idea what to expect, but the shock of what was happening left him feeling violated and very insignificant.

The chromatic haze descended upon her body, contacting her stomach and oozing across her skin in every direction. Her moans intensified and her eyes snapped opened at one point. With the way they seemed unable to focus, Alan was unsure if she was awake or not. He wasn't really sure of anything at this point. Her skin began to split along her belly where it was now covered by the thick haze. Her cries of pleasure finally stopped as an ethereal form began to emerge from the hole in her skin. As it came, it carried much of the haze with it, peeling it from Winifrey's skin as it stuck to itself.

The whole scene was a little disturbing. It was like watching a fish give birth to an angel. Alan knew now why Kaelac had referred to him when they first met as 'one of the flesh.' It wasn't meant to belittle him, but more a recognition of what it meant to be a djinn.

The figure rose to its full height, little more than a gaseous impression of a humanoid. Alan wasn't sure if it was shaped like a person or if he was only imagining things, like when you see a cloud and imagine it is a sailboat or an octopus. The entity left behind the corpse of what used to be Winifrey--now little more than a fleshy chrysalis. Alan knew without a doubt that he had just witnessed the creation of a genie.

[While the djinn resides within the prism, we normally instill the mantra and assign a powerful containment chamber,] Kaelac said, interrupting his thoughts. [The chambers are meant to deter those unworthy few who haven't the patience nor the intelligence to make a desire without endangering others. You expressed a desire to create a more modern system for future djinni. What are your ideas?]

Suddenly being put on the spot, Alan's mind went blank with fear. He had asked Kaelac to consider restructuring the system. He hadn't expected to be the one to try and fix a system that had existed several millennia longer than him.

"I, uh... you want me t-to," he stammered, suddenly aware of how little he knew about what had just transpired less than fifty feet in front of him. "Wha... I don't know hardly anything about magic or genies. What if I screw it up? An evil genie would be even worse than a mage."

[Indeed. The system exists because it works. Your idea of slavery is perhaps an unfair one. Maybe some beings deserve to be ruled in order to create harmony?] the Master Genie countered.

"No," Alan answered slowly, his face stolid and resolute as his mind raced madly to come up with some workable idea. "I don't believe that it is ever necessary. What we need is something sustainable. A new mantra of sorts. Can we do that?"

[If you are quick. I cannot maintain the prism for long, even with the power of my hewnstones,] it said.

"Okay, uh. Power is neither good nor bad, but the pursuit of power can lead to greed. We need the genies to work in harmony though, like you said. Magic for self gain would destroy the resonance." Alan paced back and forth in the sand as he thought aloud. "They use less magic while in a containment chamber... Something about worth. Self-worth, or respect, or..."

Alan thought about his genies. How did you design a good person? What made his genies special? They had assumed their forms and personalities based on his thoughts and emotions. They tried to become his idea of perfect women to better serve him and ended up thinking like him. Could that be the key? That might actually be crazy enough to work.

"Kaelac, what about a mirror?" he said, turning back to the Master Genie. "Could we have a hollowed out mirror hold this genie like a containment chamber?"

[A containment chamber may take any form you wish,] it replied.

"Excellent. How about this: The only way to unlock the containment chamber is for someone to look into the mirror and see the reflection of their perfect other and care more about saving that person than any reward they might get. You know, like when a firefighter runs into a building to save a little kid. They don't risk their life because they're thinking about their next paycheck," he said. "That way the genies end up with altruistic people most of the time. And rather than having them be a master, why not more of a partner? Or a lover? No more slaves. Which means we still need a new mantra to release them."

Alan thought for a moment and then slowly began to recite a simple verse.

"Magic is wealth,

Love before self.

Destroy the seed,

Fight against greed.

Care for your mate,

Purge the hate."

[Are you certain?] Kaelac asked after he had finished. [This will become a part of this djinn forever.]

Alan had no idea what he was doing, but it would have to suffice. He figured there would be a loophole that he hadn't considered, some detail he had overlooked, or a complexity with the melding process that he wasn't aware of. There just wasn't time. He nodded his head.

"Do it."

Kaelac's arms stretched out wide and Alan looked closely for the signs of the shimmer around the Master Genie as the magic was called forth. In the center of the prism a full length cheval mirror came into existence, bordered by rustic mahogany. The idea seemed very plain making Alan feel foolish at first, but the longer he looked at it the more he liked it. A simple looking object would draw less attention to the genie within, and that was really a fundamental part of making sure the right type of person found the chamber.

The newborn djinn lost its shape as it was drawn into the mirror like liquid being pulled through a straw. Once the strange soul-gas creature was all contained, Alan heard Kaelac begin a low chanting. The mirror itself took on a very unique shimmer for a few moments before fading and resuming its mundane appearance.

[...Care for your mate, Purge the hate,] Kaelac finished in its chorus of voices.

No sooner had the chanting stopped than the Master Genie dropped forward onto one knee. Alan rushed to its side.

"Are you alright?" he questioned.

[I must rest. I have used more magic than I am used to lately. Between this and crafting the oculus, I am beginning to feel weak,] it replied. [Yet it does feel good to meld another. It has been quite some time.]

Kaelac's hewnstones returned to their individual orbits around its head and it stood up to its full height once more. Alan realized how strange the genie had looked without its orbiting stones. He felt it was almost indecent that he had seen it without them.

He took a step back, still feeling uneasy at being so close to the djinn. He studied the mirror for a moment and watched as the wind blew the sand around, scattering the blackened runes until they were indecipherable.

"Kaelac," he said, not taking his eyes away from the ruined dodecagon. "I couldn't defeat all of the magi."

[I know. There will be more ahead,] it said. The Master Genie swept an arm out towards him. He could hear a dull hum coming from somewhere. [But now you know as I do. You believe that you possess the ability to succeed where others cannot.]

Alan felt a hand come to rest upon his head and nodded his agreement. A familiar pressure was developing inside of his head and unexpectedly he found himself standing on the sidewalk beside his car, trying to pop his ears.

The sand and beach were gone. He looked around nervously and confirmed that he was alone. He shook his head and began searching his pockets for his keys.