-Outside where the Caves of Intrigue were, Daring Do-
The three of them were getting away, but I had to prioritize Ahuizotl as the Rings of Scorchero could do a lot of damage if they were all brought together. Caballeron and Teatime were just getting a tidy profit from all this.
I tried not to think about how I didn’t fail just one person this time… I had failed a whole group of people and now they were entombed.
I didn’t know if I could ever make things right, but I would darn well try to do so for them!
The end of immortality wasn’t going to be a problem to find, I just had to wait for Caballeron to lead me to the next clue.
Until then, I had to work harder to stop them all now.
-???, Flotsam-
As soon as the entrance sealed off and the last lights of the staircase started to fade away, the stairs started tilting upwards becoming vertical.
I scrabbled to find something to hold onto and my ability could only let me cling to something for so long, especially something as the large as the statue's throat we were inside.
I don’t know why Jacky wanted Daring to get out of here while we got stuck.
If Blackcap thought we could find a way out of this, then I was willing to believe in her positive outlook.
I tried to hold onto the stairs, but I started slipping and could hear Jacky and Savannah as they fell into the abyss below. I would be soon following them. Gene and Belfry were lucky enough to have wings to let them fall slowly and Nefer was riding Belfry so at least three of us would be completely okay.
Something had changed as soon as the entrance closed.
I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it and we were all about to fall into it.
Once my hooves slipped, I let out a scream as I fell into the darkness and struck something on the way down. Possibly Gene by the softness of the object I bounced off of and may have accidentally hit him with my tail.
Chalk that up to another problem I’ve caused, just by being what I am.
-???, ten minutes later, Jacky-
I groaned and put a claw to my head and opened my eyes… pitch black.
I couldn’t see or hear much of anything. It was dead silent wherever I was. I put my other hand against the ground and felt the coarse sand, it wasn’t only just under my talons it was also in my clothing.
I really despised sand now.
Seeing a small pair of glowing orbs approach me, I blinked a few times.
“Captain Blackcap, you’re alright! Please tell me you have an idea for how to get out of this place, because I don’t think we’re in the Cave of Intrigue any longer.” I felt something press into my chest and nuzzled up into my neck, Nefer was shivering and whining. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay Nefer.”
I felt around until I got one of Nefer’s ears in my grasp and I started to rub, he mewled affectionately.
“Nefer, let me up. I need to light a match.” After he crawled off of me, I started to fumble around in the dark until I found my cannon lighters.
I struck it against my hip and a tiny light filled the darkness, barely making Nefer visible.
Belfry came over to me and chittered while holding his legs out towards the lit match as if in a trance, until I smacked him with my free hand.
“No, bad butterfly, no lighting yourself on fire with the match!” Properly cowing the large butterfly, I lowered the match to the ground and saw I was sitting on sand.
It wasn’t normal sand either, it was all in a weird greyish color.
“Don’t worry everyone, I’m beautiful!” Savannah came over to be within the small speck of fire that was quickly burning down the matchstick.
“I’m sorry about hitting you on the way down Gene.” I could vaguely hear Flotsam helping Gene slowly stumble over to us.
“Is everyone okay, any injuries to report?” This was my family and we were all friends first and crew second. I was quite worried about everyone.
“I sprained Gene’s wing in the fall and accidentally slapped one of his legs with my tail… I think I might have broken it.” Flotsam reported worriedly as she looked at the speck of fire about to reach my talons, she seemed upset that she hurt Gene and that’s the kind of caring my crew needed.
“Hold on, I have an idea on how to get us some more light.” I had that angular oil lamp, I might as well put it to use. I dropped the match and it snuffed out upon touching the sand and pulled out the glowing lamp, looking around in the glow of the lamp I could see several things were wrong with our location.
For one the sand wasn’t exactly sand, I didn’t know what it was. For another there was nothing in all directions around us except darkness and the glowing lamp we were gather around.
“Now what Jacky?” They all looked to me for leadership and I was having problems coming up with workable ideas.
“I think we might get some more light out of this oil lamp if we lit the spout.” I sat it down on the sand in the middle of us and got another one of my cannon lighting matches out.
“Couldn’t hurt at this rate.” Flotsam was rubbing at her left leg and she looked particularly guilty about the accident and being slow to get around, which forced us to keep to her pace. “We don’t exactly have enough food to survive for long here, wherever we are.”
I always carried portable fire everywhere I went, because you never knew when you might need to light something up. Tilting the lamp so I could see oil pooling in the spout, I struck the match and carefully lowered it into the oil.
It lit ablaze and the area we were in lit up brightly, but that’s not the only thing that happened.
A large cloud of billowing yellow smoke started pouring out of the fire at the spout of the lamp and it coalesced into a stretching figure that looked like the upper half of a Minotaur. He had short horns and coarse, rough looking, yellow fur. His eyes were dark brown and his hair was black as the darkest night.
“A few thousand years in such a cramped space… it’s about time someone figured out how to activate my lamp once more.” The horned figure crossed his arms as his yellow smoke protruded from the fire of the lit lamp. “I am Evoker, the genie of this lamp. The one whosoever lights this lamp gets three wishes minimum. Possibly more depending on special circumstances.”
“Can we wish to know where we are?” I asked.
“Yes, you are stuck in a dimension in between the Caves of Intrigue and the world as you know it. If you fail to escape with the lamp, you will end up here within the lair of the guardian star beast Scorpio. He always puts me right back where I belong, especially after destroying those who fail to figure out how to call me out of the lamp or escape the Caves of Intrigue.” He grinned at us. “Not much of a first wish master, but I think I was quite helpful so on to the next…”
“Hold up, I never actually made it a wish! I only asked if I could make one to that effect. You answering as if I made a wish is on you.” I turned my gaze to Flotsam and she turned to look at me, we both nodded. Jerk genie alert! “So, are you trying to trick me here or what?”
“Of course not master… while I can’t exactly lie, I am supposed to at least try to trick you into making poor wishes which I can twist based on the wording alone. You’re one of the small few who’s surpassed the first hurdle of idiocy by tricking some free information out of me.” The genie wheedled unnecessarily, his grin seemed too wide after he tried to write off one of the wishes he owed me when I asked him a question. “By the way, yes, you can make wishes for knowledge like that. Good show on tricking me before even making your first wish. I like the smart ones, they always make such interesting wishes.”
“What was your previous master like?” Knowing the words ‘I wish’ were not going to pass my beak anytime soon if I could help it, I had to question this Evoker a bit.
“Oh she was quite unusual, she also passed the first wish litmus test to prove she wasn’t an idiot… managed to even get me to make her a bunch of these things called cupcakes for free. I don’t know about you, but that girl was extremely sharp and her last wish is one I’ll never forget.” Evoker rubbed his hands together while leaning closer to me. “So what’ll it be, a wish to change the sea pony’s species? With her curse she could use some extra limbs, a sea pony that can’t swim… how cruel is this world we live in?”
“What was your previous owner’s last wish?” I narrowed my eyes in suspicion as he frowned at me.
“She wished for me to have a happy future. Of course, since I’m a jerk, I immediately twisted that wish against myself and that means that it couldn’t take effect until a long time from then. I’m sure that master survived given she didn’t even move the lamp from the pedestal when she used it. She only wished for small amounts of information… smart move really. Could have made her head explode if she asked for too much.” Evoker smiled impishly at me. “By the way, the flames of my lamp are attracting the guardian Scorpio and he’s coming over here right now. Make a wish quickly, before you surely perish like most of the others did before you.”
“He did mention that this is the Scorpio’s lair not too long ago.” Gene muttered as he looked to the creature in question approaching us, its large glowing white eyes were clearly focused more on us than the lamp.
It looked like a giant scorpion that was made of stars, it was kind of like an Ursa. It had eight spindly legs, three large tails ending in points big enough to stab my body in half, and either of its two pincers could crush my entire body like an iron maiden.
It was quickly approaching us and it was very much a visible outline of glowing stars in the shadows of this place. I would call it somewhat beautiful if it wasn’t likely dead set on killing us.
“What can you not do as a genie?” Aside from twisting wishes like you’ve already said you could do.
“I can’t kill, I can’t force love, I can’t make more wishes, I can’t bring back the dead and if you’re wondering about your curse…” Evoker was talking slowly and continued to stare at the star scorpion as it was getting close. “I can’t take that away as it is intrinsically a part of your nature and while magic can do a lot, it can’t change who a person is deep down and said curse is begrudgingly more powerful than I am.”
“Well I know what my first wish is…” The others were giving me curious glances, Gene was likely wondering what kind of wish I could make if I couldn’t bring back Jade. If Jade was dead, then this wish wouldn’t do anything and therefore it wasn’t a waste. “I wish that my sister Jaded La Perm, a sun priestess, the daughter of Kuril La Perm, who was born within this given century, the Abyssinian that gave me a special bow as a birthday present and who dated both a chimera and a unicorn with a broken horn at the same time, was here!”
I would then at least know my sister Jade was resting in the afterlife or was at least untouchable by genie magic. From there I could then move on by making a second wish to stop the star scorpion.
Speaking of, I can hear Scorpio’s legs thundering as it was only more than a few football fields away now.
“That was a rather highly specific wish, one that’s stupidly hard to twist even for me given how many specific markers you gave me and that one about the chimera was far more than I needed to know. So you wish it, I will grant it!” The magical upper minotaur torso, that was Evoker, waved his hands and magic started flooding out of him. A moment later, a large frown marred his face. “I cannot complete your wish… this quite perplexing really...”
“What does that mean exactly?” I tapped my toes as my friends started moved to the far side of the circle of light being created by the bright light coming from the lamp.
“Well for one, something about the wish worked. The only problem is… it can’t be completed to full fruition.” He sighed while placing both his hands to his horns and tugged at them while groaning as if he didn’t want to tell me something. A grin did start building up on his face though. “Therefore I actually still owe you three wishes, don’t even know what it is my magic just did. Partial wishes don’t count as fully granted wishes and they are freaking annoying for me! Alas… it’s too late for you or your friend’s master. Unless you want to blurt out a final wish before you die?”
“What do you…?” The giant star scorpion roared cutting me off.
I turned to see it raise its left claw high in the air and tried to bring it down on me.
The claw made a whistling noise as it did.
What happened next was that the world exploded into flames and the claw was blown back by a powerful barrier of light. I blinked and stared at the fire that encased us and warmly caressed our bodies gently.
“….. Jade?” I was in shock. I couldn’t see her anywhere, but this was definitely her fire and that meant she was here with us somehow.
-Scorpio’s Lair, one minute prior, J… A… D… E…?-
What the… where in the…?
I was about to sadly watch Fizzle cry herself to sleep again and then I’m just suddenly pulled from her side.
One quick glance around and… a genie, Jacky, Gene and several others I’ve never met before.
Not that a genie would really help me at this point, but I wished I could get a message out. I wasn’t that lucky and apparently neither was Jacky at the moment.
Seeing the scorpion about to kill my sister, I did the only thing that came to mind.
As excruciating as it was, there was nothing else I could actually do to save Jacky in this given situation. I couldn’t physically touch the world, but I could use the one ability that is still tied to me. Even now, I was a sun priestess.
So I agonizingly exploded my existential soul.