Genie Puppet

"Imma kill two scum with one dagger!" Leela licked her lips as she laced her fire magic to her blades.

"Crude pirates." Genie hissed as he glared at a butch warrior wearing heavy armor of black metal plates fastened by hardened leather. The metal seemed to absorb the light. A red skull emblem was scratched on the vambraces and pauldrons.

The warrior made a heavy charge for him with his solid metal boots leaving cracks on the stone with his run.

Kairo saw the other 19 men wore similar armor, some had metal plates over quilted leather layers. All of them held the same skull emblem, heavily scarred faces and a madness in their eyes.

They charged with spears or staffs, releasing magic build up from the weapons' tips.

Kairo yelped when he felt the ground beneath him tremble and crack. He picked up Eldor-sekkat, who was recovering in a comatose state, and sprinted around the platform to dodge the oncoming blows.

"Can you teleport the malkin to the entrance?" he asked and yelped as he ducked and skirted around a spear swipe.

"It'll take too long to activate with all this fighting!" Genie swiftly countered a staff blow with his daggers. He did a half turn to land a side stab on his enemy, who squealed and writhed from the weapon's poison that had entered his skin with a burning hiss and overwhelming stench of magnolia.

Kairo hastily searched for a safe spot and saw a niche between two fallen pillars. He placed the malkin in the spot as carefully as he could: did an evade-roll to counter two spear attacks with Zeus.

"I'll defend this spot." He spat at the ground and laced Zeus with his spirit energy.

Leela laughed crazily as she danced about the fight with her blazing daggers. Her focus was on Kairo, who she wanted dead first.

Kairo deflected her fire attacks and counterattacked with magic wave attacks from Zeus.

She nimbly evaded them, returning fire with more magic. Seeing that Kairo was defending the malkin, she used this to her advantage by stacking attacks on him from many angles.

"Damn it!" Genie cursed as he swiftly slayed his three foes and saw Kairo being overwhelmed.

"Hah. Yah pretty boy is meat for slaughter. Yah gonna be shrieker fodder." A burly pirate grunted as he stomped toward Genie with a heavy axe raised high. It swung fast and hard for Genie's head.

Genie's eyes glowed with madness as he felt his anger boiling. No scum threatens Kairo's life and gets away with it. He empowered his daggers to make them burn white and used his hands to remote control their plight so they danced around the man's head. They rose in the air, with a sulfuric stench, as they did a fast dive for the skull.

The man wailed and screamed when the daggers penetrated his brain to make him slump to the ground as a lifeless heap before disintegrating.

Genie dashed for Kairo's attackers and saw them knocked back by Zeus's power wave attacks. Leela was frustrated by the amount of backward tumbles from the scythe's force.

A pirate's magic ice blade attack struck the stone near the malkin's body.

Kairo's eyes glowed silver with rage. His mind entered his Spiritual Sea, tapping into cosmic power. And had inadvertently activated the magic within Genie's spiritual consciousness, causing a clash to their spirit energies. Genie experienced a brutal blowback effect.

Before Genie could disconnect the link and recover, Kairo had gathered cosmic power. He exited his sea to perform his Timebound spell.

Genie stumbled to the ground as his spirit energy became unstable. Spits and spurts of his magic disintegrated his oncoming attackers due to the cosmic power boost. But he kept thrashing about in a fit, accidentally knocking his magical storage pouch to the ground. Some contents were split. The teapot he had taken from Lady Candice rolled out.

Kairo eliminated all the pirates with his spell in the same way he had done for the Shadow Cabal assassins. It exhausted his spirit energy.

Leela was knocked to the ground with bruises all over her body. She scrambled to her feet and smirked at Genie's pathetic display of Spirit Shock.

Kairo panicked at seeing Genie's condition and rushed for him. Leela cast a fire barrier around Genie.

"One move and he's toast. Or move and he's toast anyway." She snickered.

"Let him go."

"Hah, and you think I'll listen to an alien." It was sweet to see Kairo's weak and pathetic face as he struggled to reach Genie who was writhing in agony and non-coherent.

"My mother predicted you'd take this action when our spies saw him talking to her tool." Leela toyed with Kairo as she kept him at bay with fireball attacks.

Kairo yelped when a fireball attack singed his arm. Fortunately, his cloak had absorbed the harshest damage, but couldn't block the next attack. His desperation became paramount when Genie collapsed, unconscious.

"Genie!" He cried out and was thrown back by a magic attack. His magic was exhausted, his adrenaline spent, and his body felt like a weak lump of flesh.

Leela licked her lips as she cast a power blast with her daggers to send him flying to the other side of the platform, furthest from Genie.

"Why do this?"

"Why?" The chamber rumbled with her maniacal laughter. "You filthy alien humiliated me in front of everyone in the palace."

"It was your fault you got humiliated. You shot your mouth off like an idiot and got defeated by an otherworlder you took for useless scum. You're not as good as you think you are." Kairo stolidly reminded her.

Her mother's words, when she had returned from the mage library, surfaced in her mind to wound her pride. The alien dared to say the same thing. Well, she had her trump card to make them both pay. Everyone who looked down on her and humiliated her would pay the price.

"Did Genie ever tell you why he hates me?" She wiggled her finger to wrap both men in a magical fire bind.

Kairo struggled but it only made the binds tighter.

Leela continued with her taunt. She stepped before him and towered over his head with a gloating smirk. "Do you ever wonder why he's called a demon-specter?"

She kicked Kairo hard to make him roll further across the platform and almost tipping over the edge into a formless space. He managed to grab a platform chain to stop his fall.

"Pay attention, this will make you think twice about him." She lifted Kairo's body off the ground with her magic.

He was dangling midair at the center, still contained in fire binds.

"You see he and I were once together. I was his master and he was my puppet. He dared to break free."

"Puppet?"

Leela's smile widened with glee as she spilled her brief life being the master of the genie.

Genie suffered a misfortunate incident when he was a child, which saw his soul and spirit tampered by cosmic laws. He was forged into a specter, which gave him cosmic power to boost his magic. 

However, as a specter, he was vulnerable to Soul Bells: unworldly treasures that were used to establish a master-servant connection. Lyon kept the bells secured in an Ancestral Record vault. Valerr had Leela enter the archives to steal the bells back.

"My mother gave me those bells and my toy. Genie did everything for me without question. He was a good little porkle."

Kairo's ire reached a peak, but no matter what, he had to break free and save Genie. He focused on replenishing his spirit energy.

"Let me show you the good boy he once was." Leela stood next to Genie's unconscious body. 

Two blue metal bells materialized into her hands by magic, which she placed on her belt. She shook them over his head.

"Soul Bells: Puppet Bind!"

Kairo fiercely struggled to break free from his binds as the bells shook the air with an ear-piercing twang.

Tendrils of blueish spirit energy flew out of their bases and wrapped around Genie's body, entering his ears.

The tendrils disappeared, and the bells kept ringing, but silently this time. Genie's hands twitched as his body returned to consciousness.

Kairo roared as he managed to break free from the binds. He rushed for Leela and was thrown back by Genie's magic.

Leela giggled joyously at seeing her specter puppet in her control again.