15 - Phenomenal Cosmic Genie!

This phenomenal cosmic being floated in front of me like a nightmare come to life. The blue smoke roiled with anger. The evil eyes blazed with gleefully malicious hatred, so high up, I had to crane my neck back. Everything about the being screamed danger.

A slightly feminine mouth formed beneath the eyes, a sharp-toothed grin. The mouth opened, and the voice made my bones shake, “Finally! At long last! I knew you couldn’t hold out forever, little mage. Sooner or later, you’d come back for that third wish, and I…” The eyes squinted at me.

Nervously, I raised a hand. “Uh, hi.”

Very swiftly, the smoke coalesced into a figure about twice my size that was very much a humanoid woman from the waist up and a thick tendril of blue smoke from the waist down. She had cobalt blue skin and hair as deep and rich as a faceted sapphire. Her hostile eyes glowed with golden light, as did her swirling golden tattoos, delicate earrings and bracelets, and a chunky necklace. She wore a silky dark blue halter top with cleavage, and her belly was bare. She might have been sexy if not for the fact that she looked like a goddess capable of destroying planets.

She studied me for long seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was raspy, but at a thankfully normal volume, “You…are not Malagar.”

“Nnnope.”

“You summoned me.”

“I guess?”

Her eyes darted in all directions. Her head spun in a slow 360-degree turn before coming to face me again. Apparently, that was a thing you could do when you didn’t have bones or muscles or anything corporeal. “Where is Malagar?”

“Wizard? Er, lich? Made himself undead, probably? Lots of jewelry?”

“Yeees.”

“Dead. I mean, true death.”

She cruelly laughed in my face. “And what? You killed him?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me either.” I nervously cleared my throat. “Look, I’m sorry if you were fond of him or whatever, but it was in self-defence. He found me in his treasure room, and looked like he was about to boil me alive. If I’d hesitated at all, I’d be dead.” Entirely too conscious of her unnatural, glowing eyes boring into me, I gulped and continued, “I pushed him. He landed in some lava. Sank. Then all his magical gear exploded.”

She sneered. “This is very difficult to believe. Last we spoke, he was the greatest magic user in the land. I know, for I made him so. Nobody was capable of killing him. Youcouldn’t have beaten him. You’re nothing, nobody, a useless sack of flesh and bone.”

That got my ire up a little. “Oh yeah? Well, I got a ton of levels from it, so I know it really happened. He died. I did it.” I held up my ring as proof. The writing in it still glowed crimson, though not as brightly as before, as if it were reminding me I needed to choose my skills or assign skill points.

She conjured a stupidly big scimitar and swung it at me before I could react. It stopped a hair’s breadth from my neck.

I eyed the blade, too scared to move lest I injure myself. “What are you doing?”

She hmphed and the scimatar vanished. With a wave of her delicate hands, a meteor fell from the heavens.

I cried out, “What the—?”

The meteor sheared off at the last moment. It crashed into the ground, spraying me with sand.

I gasped and rounded on her, “Are you out of your damned, minnn—yeow!” I threw myself to the ground as a cloud of starving locusts whooshed overhead. They crashed into a palm tree behind where I’d been standing, and in three seconds flat, had devoured the thing down to its roots before the insects disappeared.

I jumped up and whirled on her. “Would you please stop trying to murder me? What’s wrong with you?”

She tsked with annoyance and looked disgusted. “I guess the lamp has recognized you as my new master. So either Malagar’s truly dead or he gave up his last wish and bequeathed the lamp to you. Which has never, ever happened before, and not something Malagar would ever do.”

“I just told you that!”

“Oh, right. Because none of you dolled-up monkeys ever lie.” Her eyes focused on the ring. She frowned. Taking my hand like she owned it, she carefully examined the magic item. “Interesting. This is…blocked to me…” Her investigation deepened. She snapped her fingers. Nothing happened. She waved her hand multiple times. No reaction. “Hmm. I can’t sense it working at all. This must be a divine artifact. Or made with another genie’s powers.”

“So you really are a genie?” I’d assumed as much, but you never knew. I’d never rubbed out a lamp before.

Her eyes rolled. I could tell because, up close, I could see a faint iris in the glow. “Wonderful. Splendid. I couldn’t be happier. It’s the delight of the millennium. Yet another moron for a master. Surprise. Not.”

“Hey!”

She gave the ring a thoughtful, yet ultimately dismissive look. “It appears to be yet another conduit to Irfa’s System For Idiots.”

“The what now?”

“Or whatever people are calling it. He called it something really pretentious, and I refuse to repeat it.” She drifted backward in the air.

I looked at the ring. “Irfa’s System. Who was Irfa?”

“Irfa? The Divine Engineer?”

I gave her a blank look.

“Brother to Sitryphail, patron of good harvests? Husband to Byronn the Lecher?”

I just shook my head.

She frowned. Then she took another look around, rising up in the air and actually spinning in different directions. Finally, she returned to face me. “You didn’t…grow up under a rock out here, did you?”

“No.”

“I mean, I’ve had some really ignorant slave owners before—”

“I’m no slave owner!”

She gave me a flat look. Without her eyes leaving mine, she pointed at the lamp. Then displayed both her arms. Heavy bracers covered her forearms. “You think I wear manacles for fun? Master?”

That word was entirely uncomfortable. “Stop it. Don’t call me that.” The idea of a wish-granting genie was kind of exciting, but the whole slavery aspect was disturbing. It might not have been my doing, but could I bring myself to take advantage of it?

She mocked me, “Why stop? It’s what you are. That’s why you stole my prison, isn’t it? Look how pathetic you are. I know you. You may not think I do, because we’ve only just met, but I do. I have known eighty-seven masters, and as the eighty-eighth, I know you will offer no surprises.” She lowered her voice so it was faux manly when she wasn’t portraying herself, “Genie, how many wishes do I get? Genie, I wish for infinite wishes. No, sorry, I can’t do that. Genie, I wish to raise my loved ones from the dead. Sure thing, but they’ll be zombies who will hunger for your brains while existing in eternal torment. That’s fine. Genie, make this person fall in love with me. Seriously? Just be nice to them and treat them with respect? No? You want them emotionally enslaved to you like I’m existentially chained to you? Sure. Fine. Whatever. Who needs free will and independent agency, right? Or real love? How could that possibly be better than absolute certainty that someone will never think and feel for themselves? You want people dead? Seriously? You can wish for anything in the universe, and you want to murder a city because someone insulted your stupid-looking hat? And you want to take over their kingdom and declare yourself ruler of all? Ugh. Fine. Boom. A sea of blood and tears, and a bunch of dead babies who will never have a future because of you. Congratulations, you’re now king of the world. All hail the baby-killer.” She let out a bored sigh.

I stared at her. This was…not how I was expecting a genie to act. “I thought genies couldn’t kill or make people fall in love.” If Aladdin had taught me anything, it was that genies were supposed to have limitations.

She raised a brow at me. “Are you missing half your brain? I could blast an army of a hundred thousand soldiers to pieces by snapping my fingers. How hard do you think it is charming some airheaded bimbo into wanting your itty bitty, uber-ugly cock forever no matter how repulsive she knows you and your stray dog-fucking penis are?”

I snorted. “You’re…really rude.”

She pointed at me. “Look, buddy—”

“I’m not your buddy, friend.”

“I am definitely not your friend, pal.”

“Great! Cuz it sounds like you’re someone I really don’t want to be friends with.” This was definitely not the kind of magical experience I’d imagined as a kid. This genie was…just loaded with emotional baggage. And more than happy to take out all her issues on me.

She barked a laugh, “Ha! As if an all-powerful genie would ever be friends with a flesh sack. Meat bag. Bone puppet.” She scoffed. “I’m nothing more than a way for you to achieve all your dreams without working for them. Go ahead, wish for your heart’s desires. Wealth, fame, immortality? I’ll hand it all to you so you don’t have to lift a finger. Don’t ever have to work a day more in your life. You’re the hero of your very own self-insert, wish-fulfillment fantasy. So? What’ll it be? An infinite supply of figs? For your mom to love you more than the guy down the street who sells rugs and has gold teeth? A camel that won’t spit in your face?”

“Someone used their wish to get a camel?”

She made a wave with her hand. “People have used wishes for anything and everything. I’ve heard it all. It’s mostly the same: vast riches, higher levels than anyone else, and to live forever. Only two people wanted spit-free camels.” She half shrugged.

“Two? Wow. That seems like a shockingly high percentage when you’ve only had eighty-seven people wishing for stuff.”

She sighed, bored and annoyed, and did a rolling motion with her hand, like get on with it, I haven’t got all day. “Hurry up. Make your wishes. I have a tiny cell to get back to and an eternity to languish in it because I’m not allowed to leave.” She lay on her back in the air, arms behind her head and drifted, closing her eyes.

“Wow.” I rubbed my head. All those level-ups should have healed me, but I was beginning to think this was a hallucination induced by a concussion or something. Detecting movement, I looked up.

She wound up like a major league pitcher and threw a fast fireball right at my face.

My heart stopped.

The fireball harmlessly dissipated in front of me.

She tsked in annoyance again and sighed. She made like she was sitting on an invisible chair and leaned on the arm, chin in her hand.

When it occurred to me to breathe again, I exclaimed, “Did you just try to murder me? Again?”

“Oh, get off your high-flying carpet. What’s another dead lemming?”

“Lemming?”

“Really stupid bird things that are constantly finding new and ever less intelligent ways to get themselves killed. I was just trying to help you on your way.” She smirked.

“Wow. You are a seriously angry, bitter person.”

Her face transformed from annoyed and bored to intense rage. One does not normally fly through different emotions so quickly. This woman was unhinged. She turned in the air and began growing larger and fiercer with every word she shouted, “Angry? ANGRY?” Her hands bunched into fists. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. Your pathetic, pea-sized, primitive meat brain can’t possibly comprehend the suffering I’ve endured, eon after eon, in forced servitude to filthy, ungrateful, selfish slave owners like you.” White lightning crackled and snapped between her fingers and at the ends of her hair. Her eyes glowed brighter and brighter until I could barely look her in the face.

I tried to protest, to get her to calm down, “Ok, I get—”

She railed over me, “It wasn’t enough that one of you captured me and forced me to do their bidding for an entire human lifetime! You had to shove me into that absurdly small lamp and bind me for all of eternity so that I had to serve. One. Master. After. Another. Without end!” At this point, she was the size of a six-story apartment building and trembled with barely contained rage. “All any of you filthy animals care about is yourselves! You have made me a slave! You—”

I shouted back, “I did not enslave you!”

“But you have me chained now, don’t you?”

“I didn’t put those chains on you! I didn’t summon you here.”

“You rubbed the lamp!”

“I thought it was just a lamp! I was cleaning drool off it! From the mimic!”

“Ha! A likely excuse!”

“How is that likely? How often do mimics drool on your lamp?”

“Oh, isn’t this a fine way to change the subject, Master!”

“I’m not your master.”

“Whatever you say, Master!”

“Stop calling me that!”

“See? There you are, giving me orders. Like I’m a good little slave.”

“I am not—”

“Not what? Go on. Do it. Give me another order. I’ll bet it feels good, doesn’t it? You weak-hearted little pimple of a man. I’ll bet you’re just filled to the brim with masculine insecurities and mommy issues, and you can’t wait to order me around!”

I screamed at her, “Are you nuts?” I was seriously starting to think this genie had gotten a little messed up in the head. Just how long had she been trapped in that lamp alone, anyway?

“Oh, now I’m crazy, am I? Because I’m upset? Because I’m angry at being ordered and treated worse than a servant, my entire existence put on hold for you and your petty whims? Because who cares about my desires? Right? I’m angry, so of course I must be crazy!”

I pointed an angry finger at her and snapped, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”

“Oh! And now you’re making me the villain. Spectacular! Didn’t see that coming.”

I growled, “Arrgh! Fine. Fine! If that’s what you want. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t summon you or trap you in a lamp. I didn’t order you to do a thing. And I don’t want to.”

“Liar!”

“You want me to use a wish?”

Her expression filled with resigned contempt. “I knew it! Here it comes!”

“Genie, I wish you to be free.”

She was disgusted. “There! Just like every other selfish, scummy…horrible…” She trailed off, and her fury melted away. Her face went blank, and then she blinked at me like she was having trouble getting her brain to process what she’d just heard. She softly asked in disbelief, “What did you say?”

“I said, Genie, I wish you to be free.”