I spun to the side, my khopesh slamming into Jinn’s sword. The sound of the blades scraping against each other made me wince. Jinn carried her thrust past me and lashed out with a backhanded slash. I finished my spin and caught the attack on the underside of my weapon. Spinning the khopesh around, I tried to snap her sword. It held up to the move, and the sudden stop wrenched my wrist. It was all I could do to keep hold of my weapon.

“Not bad,” Jinn said. She stood side on to me with both her swords extended. She held her right arm arched high over her head, and her left reached straight out.

She stepped in, windmilling her right arm in a vicious uppercut. I crossed my blades and stopped the attack, but she jabbed with her other hand. I twisted at the waist and managed to move my shoulder just far enough to avoid being skewered. Still, her sword cut a long gash in my upper body. I grimaced and jumped back. Jinn didn’t let up.

She pressed me, her swords a blender of slashes and thrusts. I did my best to dodge or block, but I took several more cuts. When I entered the Duat, I was remade into something new. All the knowledge of my kind was safely stowed in my head. That included how to fight, but there was a big difference between knowing how to do something and translating it into action. I was outmatched.

“Come on!” I screamed, “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way.”

Jinn snarled and slowed her attacks. For a moment, I thought she might listen to me. Then, she sheathed one of her swords and drew a small knife. In the blink of an eye, she threw the dagger, pulled her sword free of its scabbard, and charged me. I felt the thin blade sink into my chest moments before she was on top of me.

I flailed my khopeshes wildly, managing to deflect a few blows. More rents appeared in my body as Jinn’s blades did their work. Blood loss slowed my defense. The knife in my chest must have hit a lung because I couldn’t breathe right. My lethargic movements ceased, and I stumbled. Jinn slammed bodily into me, and I fell onto my back.

Jinn straddled my chest, breathing hard. Her look of fury and contempt galvanized me into a pitiful resistance. I bucked and writhed, but never so much as shifted a hair on her head. I rolled my head to the side and saw Em standing next to Ma’at. Rockslide stood a little way off, looking for all the world like a statue. I wanted to call out to them…to tell them I was sorry. Jinn pulled my face up to her.

“Look at me!” she huffed.

Oh, I’m sorry, I thought. Am I not paying enough attention to my killer? I closed my eyes. Petty? Sure, but if she wanted me to look at her, that’s the last thing I was going to do. Actually, it probably was the last thing I was going to do.

“Finish this,” Qad-her said.

I jerked my head out of Jinn’s hand and stared at the leader of the Zaeim Aljiniy. The Djinn sat atop his throne, secure in his power, and scoffed. In his power…his power! Qad-her was a beacon of probability. I’d done it once before, hadn’t I? I reached out and latched onto Qad-her’s aura. The threads of chance felt right as I grasped them. His scoff changed to confusion, then to outrage.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“My job!” I said. Deja-fucking-vu, baby.

I wrapped Jinn up in chance and tossed her off me. She cartwheeled through the air and landed hard on the ground. Qad-her stood and tried to move. Nope, dickhead. I solidified the air around him, freezing him in place. Of course, the air had to come from somewhere. Michael and Glendola gasped, trying to draw breath. I pulled more and more energy from Qad-her as he stood, helpless. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw Ma’at backing away. She looked nervous, and…afraid, maybe.

“Just now realizing how fucked you are?” I said.

I pulled the dagger from my chest and wove a life cord from Qad-her’s aura. I settled it onto myself, and my wounds vanished. Standing, I pulled even more power to me. It was a vortex now, swirling and oscillating wildly in the air. Qad-her sank to his knees as I drew from him. How many hundreds of years had he been accumulating this?

“Don’t move,” I ordered Michael and Glendola. They were surreptitiously trying to flank me. “Nevermind, you’re probably not used to taking orders.”

I siphoned off a small bit of the gyrating mass of power and held them in place. For good measure, I snatched Ma’at with tendrils of chance and moved her next to the Zaeim Aljiniy. I thought about pulling Jinn in as well, but she just looked at me, her mouth open and her eyes wide. The only way to describe the look was astonished reverence.

“Good,” I said. “Now that I’ve got everyone’s attention let’s make some things right.”

I thought back to just before entering the Duat and how my soul seemed to want to jump out of my chest. Focusing on Jinn, and now that I was looking for it, I saw her soul. It was a dark and shriveled thing that seemed to beg for release. Well, I was in a giving mood. I engulfed it in Qad-her’s power and attached a thick blue cord. I looked at Em but didn’t see the glowing orb that marked her soul.

“Your choice Em,” I said, realizing a flaw in my plan. “Your body’s not exactly available.”

She looked from Jinn to me. “Do it.”

I wrapped her in the same energy I had Jinn and tied the blue cord to her. Pulling at the center, I drew the two souls together. Jinn’s body went rigid, and she wailed. Her soul resisted, and I pulled harder. I drew threads from the mass of power, braiding them around the blue tendril. I made sure to balance both sides as the weight of my power pulled Jinn and Em inexorably together.

A deafening thunderclap echoed throughout the Duat as Jinn’s soul was ripped from her body. In the same instant, Em was propelled into the void left behind. I let the threads go, and Em slumped to the ground. Rockslide was there in a heartbeat, and he cradled her in his arms. For a moment, Jinn stood where Em had been, then her spectral form was sucked toward Ma’at.

The goddess of judgment pulled a feather from her arm, and, almost before it appeared, Jinn’s soul was judged. The feather turned to dust and drifted to the ground. Ma’at smiled at me and lowered her head.

“David,” Em croaked.

I ran to her side and knelt. “Yeah, I’m here.”

She held up an arm, and I leaned in closer. She pulled me into a weak hug and kissed my cheek. I buried my face in her chest and wept. The Duat, the Zaeim Aljiniy, Ma’at, everything—it all ceased to exist for me. There was only Em and me.

“What about them?” Rockslide said, bringing me back to reality.

I turned to the four powerful beings. They were still held in place, but the threads holding them were weakening. The globe of energy was nearly spent, and Qad-her looked mostly drained. It took a lot of power to steal a soul, apparently. They moved their mouths silently, not having any air around them for sound to travel through.

“They’re not a problem,” I said. I picked up the khopesh that resembled Rockslide. “How’d you like to be a prison guard, big guy?”

Rockslide looked nonplussed and shrugged. Good enough. I pulled the remaining energy and began making a duplicate of the chamber. A rustling of gold got my attention, and I saw the dragon poking its head out. It looked a lot like Rockslide when he was upset. Okay, it was one thing to punish these assholes, but I couldn’t make the dragon suffer. I extended the Abued to include the horde and locked it into place. With a slight pop, the world blinked out of existence.

I surveyed my new Abued. Michael, Glendola, Ma’at, and a dragon looked at me. I saw their mouths starting to move and sliced my hand through the air.

“No talking,” I said. At once, their mouths closed. “So, now that I know how all this shit works, it’s time to make some laws. You like laws, don’t you?”

My prisoners looked at each other, then back at me.

“Law one,” I said. “Let’s call it this genie’s first law. You’re forbidden to leave my Abued. Law two. Fuck you, there’s only one law. Enjoy.”

I stepped back and left the Zaeim Aljiniy in my Abued, fuming. Ma’at stood at my side when we reappeared in the real world. She gazed at me, confused.

“Yeah, you’re a problem,” I said. “Those other assholes don’t really serve a purpose. You, on the other hand, have a job to do.”

“I do,” Ma’at said somewhat smugly.

“So here’s the deal. You stay down here and leave me the fuck alone. Just do your thing.”

Ma’at nodded. “I’m going to enjoy our time together. I hope you like it here.”

“I thought you might go that route,” I said. I looked between Em and me and saw the gold link that connected us. Same soul, same rules. “Em, you mind wishing us out of here?”

At Em’s wish, I pulled at the ether. Tendrils of chance drifted into the Duat, unable to resist the pull of a genie doing its job. The moment before Em, Rockslide, and I vanished, I flipped Ma’at the bird.

“Fuck off and die,” I said, smiling.