-The next day, Zebrica Jungle, Flotsam-
A little knowledge can do a lot, I never imagined my movements being as fluid as this.
The two wing fins on my back are vestigial at the best of times and walking like a snake or a snail had always felt so forced, mostly because it kind of was before Nefer’s wish.
All he wished for was for me to have the knowledge of how I could move around better on land, without changing anything about me. I had become a lot faster with slithering about after some practice and I did need to practice with this new knowledge.
Any wish I could make to change myself now would be making that wish seem unimportant, not to mention it would gravely hurt Nefer’s feelings. The little guy looked up to me a lot, I could hardly understand why aside from the fact that he thought I was pretty. My little split tail brother was a sweetheart.
Despite the temptation to be something different, Jacky had told me to not let the world break me and be an inspiration. She was pretty inspirational herself, but I didn’t see myself being an inspiration to anyone… aside from Nefer.
The time I spend with Nefer is always worthwhile. He was so adorable and innocent at times, I was quite willing to be his big sister and read him a bedtime story or two from the one thousand and one Saddle Arabian tales. He was only onboard with Jacky for the adventure and I was right there with him enjoying them.
That reminds me, I’ll have to sign that last spot on the document to be his big sister once I got back and then Maries would get back to her job as a lawyer in Canterlot. I was still confused about how a chimera could gain such a job so easily.
I was heading down the river away from The Ardent Survivor slowly while making sure that I was doing my movements right. We didn’t find what we were looking for scouting up the river, just a lot of trouble.
It was safe to say that treasure hunting around here was fairly dangerous and I was thankful that I vaguely looked like a big snake, which made most predators wary of me.
I recalled all the good times I had with Savannah and Jacky the other day as I held the lamp in my right hoof, glancing at it every now and then as I moved alongside the river. I was a bit wary of falling in without someone around to help save me from drowning, not to mention the cragadiles were rather prominent in Zebrica.
It was nice to have friends like them, one who wouldn’t look at me as if I were weird since they were weirder by comparison and the other can actively sympathize with me fairly well.
Changing track, Maries were interesting, they were always of three opinions yet I could tell that they never bothered to voice all of them. You just had to pay attention to them to notice that they wanted to say something, but didn’t.
To think they could have gained eight more wishes… instead the last thing they wished for was that the genie would attempt to make a friend, then they had all glanced at me. They didn’t give in to that temptation to have more wishes, they only used what Nefer bought their services with.
Today I’m off on my own to think about what happened when Maries gave me the lamp this morning and had a knowing look in their eyes.
Apparently they knew I’d be heading out to scout around for our current treasure hunt and given what their last wish was, I think they expected me to try and get to know Evoker. I was a bit nervous about that.
Everyone on the crew were always so nice to me. I was kind of touched about what Savannah wished for me, it was the knowledge, wisdom and understanding to make my three wishes without regrets and a sound mind.
What could I possibly want that Evoker can grant me? For being a powerful genie he seemed fairly limited in what he could do, especially if someone can block his ability to get the knowledge Maries initially wanted. As best I could guess, the leader of that GODLESS organization had to be a powerful unicorn.
I can’t wish for love. I was already getting plenty of that from my new family, we’re mostly explorers and haven’t done anything that normal pirates would do yet. Well there was Jacky stealing from those thieves in Saddle Arabia, she liked the saber that one guy had and I’ve seen her practicing with it every now and then since.
I hoped to find romantic love someday, something like what Gene and Jacky had. They understood one another and even if Gene is a little tight in the beak when it came to expressing himself or even being emotional, Belfry’s wish kind of opened them up to one another. Despite the wish fading away after five minutes, they were still openly communicating with one another.
“Okay, I think I’m far enough away.” I stopped and looked around, birds making noise, insects flittering near the water, a wildebeest getting a drink and the copious amount of vine covered trees that blotted out the sun.
I reached into the pack on my back and pulled out a pack of what Jacky called ‘cannon lighters’, they were simply matches and they could be used to light cannons as one of the things they did. Being both protected from wind and water, they were useful on the ocean, high in the air or just about anywhere you needed to light a cannon fuse really. Supposedly they worked underwater as well and I didn’t see a point to that.
I struck it and looked at the flame I held in my hoof, I tilted the lamp and saw the oil pooling at the tip of the spout. I wondered if we’d have a lamp of infinite oil if Evoker stopped living in it.
Shaking that thought from my mind, I dropped the matchstick into the spout and eventually the yellow smoke poured out to reveal Evoker with his arms crossed. If one thousand and one Saddle Arabian tales is to be believe, the silver bracers he was hiding by crossing his arms were a sign of his captivity to the lamp.
“Ah, the fair sea pony maiden, what can I do for you master?” Centaurs were interesting beings, I don’t think I knew much about them other than what I’ve read about Tirek in the history books. That centaur would have destroyed this world by sucking it dry of magic and I think Tirek was too dumb to realize that it would have inevitably killed him to keep doing so. No one being aside from gods were meant to handle so much power. “All alone out here with me? Going to wish you were a different being, going to wish you were less depressive or are you simply going to…”
“I wish to know how you became a genie by you telling me a story and what your opinion on being one is like after the fact.” There was something subtle in the way he seemed to pause, he was just staring at me for a long time. I continued moving down the side of the river while looking around for some ruins or something out of place in this jungle.
Like that panther about to attack me. It was preparing to lunge for me from a tree from in front of me and to my right.
I reacted immediately to the creature looking to make a fish snack out of me. I pushed my hooves against the ground to jump up in combination with pushing off with my tail end.
Managing to get myself off the ground high enough, I snapped my tail forward from underneath me. It went right up into the panthers chin with a sickening crack that had to have dislocated its jaw and I sent it rolling on to its side.
I landed on my back, only to quickly roll onto my belly and raised my tail up in a threatening manner while planting my hooves on the ground.
Staring the panther down as it got up, I waited for what it would do next. It eyed me for a moment while groaning in pain and then stalked off, it was going to look for far easier prey.
“Well you’re attitude sure has changed recently, that was a rather impressive blow there.” Evoker didn’t say anything about my wish and didn’t seem to want to as he floated over to me after my short altercation with the wildlife around here.
“Are you going to grant the wish or not?” I asked tersely as I began moving forward again.
“Wish… granted.” Evoker looked away and his jaw was clenching a bit, he floated alongside me as I continued to look about to make sure nothing else was going to pop out at me. “There once was a centaur who sought to become powerful. In blindly chasing this power, the centaur should have worried about the strings that were attached to said power. A king, having heard the centaur was looking for power, bade him come to his kingdom through a messenger.”
“I can kind of see where this is going.” I figured he goes to king and then becomes a genie.
“Anyone can really. So the centaur arrives in the king’s kingdom and is immediately captured to be forcefully brought before the king who had a ‘something’ that could grant someone other than the wielder almost limitless power. The caveat is that the person it’s used on has to ultimately want that power and for there to be a nearby object that has some space inside of it, the centaur foolishly wanted that power and had even craved it.” Evoker snorted loudly in anger and then gained a look of regret on his face. “The king had already done this to several others before by this point, but had wasted his many wishes on frivolous things that he could have just asked for otherwise from his servants normally. He enjoyed giving other beings this power, because they always quickly become a slave to his every whim even after using up all their wishes. The king guarded the secret of the genies he created zealously. Nobody knew how the king had acquired so many powerful servants, but the king made some pretty big mistakes in his hubris.”
“He made a really stupid wish I take it?” The smile I saw on Evoker’s face was chilling.
“That he did, he wished for the freshly created genie to kill someone who threatened his rule. He was once a good person, but had become a known tyrant thanks to all the power the genies gave him. This wish obviously didn’t work as one of the limitations is that a genie can’t kill anyone, at least not personally. That’s when the king found out about that particular rule.” Evoker chuckled a bit and I finally saw something a little away from the river on the opposite side. There were some ruins, they were not really great or large. I turned around and started on my way back towards The Ardent Survivor. I’d come back with the others and we’d do some looking around in that area. “As you can imagine the king was displeased to hear that his whims couldn’t be adhered to. He absolutely thought himself a god thanks to being protected by many powerful magical servants and thought that nothing could stop his rule. The fact that someone unknown was trying to was what made him speak his own doom. In his hubris he said this, ‘I wish that nobody in my lifetime could be higher in the world than me’.”
“What happened?” Though I was afraid to find out, I just had to know for curiosities sake.
“He shot straight up into the sky and didn’t come down until he died from a lack of food and the injuries he got from smashing through the opulent ceiling of the palace, this incidentally destroyed the ‘something’ that made the genies in the first place. Nobody could go or fly nearly as high as he did to save him until he ultimately perished looking down on the world. He couldn’t even make any wishes to save himself even if he were conscious, since he was too far away to hear at that point. That’s not the end of the story though.” One would think not Evoker, but the king incidentally killing himself through a poorly thought out wish was rather dark. “After the new genies master was killed, the genies that had been under his command were suddenly pulled into the objects that they were tied to and scattered to places too difficult to reach without determination. From there the centaur genie spent years of his life being found and lost in a constant loop, having passed through many ownerships to eventually be put into a magical cave and be sealed away to never see the light of day for thousands of years.”
“The ‘Caves of Intrigue’.” My second wish was going to be for Gene, I thought he deserved it. “For my second wish… I wish that Gene Eric, the first mate griffon on The Ardent Survivor, had…”
-The Ardent Survivor, Gene-
A present box appeared on the deck near me and I blinked at it, I picked up the card and read what was on it.
“I think Sammy’s going to be just fine Nefer.” I opened the box and smiled a bit at what I saw inside, I certainly owed her now.
“Yay!” Nefer crowed out and hopped around in circles, happily dancing on his paws.
-Thirty minutes later, Evoker-
“So as you can imagine being a genie isn’t fun and the likelihood of being free is slim to none, because everyone always wants something from me even if I can’t grant it to them.” I was making that honest attempt to befriend the girl. “I like smart people, but you guys haven’t made a single destructive wish yet. I’ve been angry because, for once in my life, I can honestly say I’ve met a group of decent people!”
She whined a lot about her life and didn’t take steps to… actually...now that I look, she was taking those steps right now. Even if she wasn’t walking in a normal sense.
She was a far sight better than that old pony king and she was a decent conversationalist.
Darn that wish for me to make a friend! It’s making me feel like actually being nice to her.
“Still those who became genies got exactly what they wanted, they became powerful under the king your story talked about.” True, I cannot deny that fact Master De Brie.
“Do you have a third wish now Flotsam?” Why did I say it like that, my tone was supposed to be more demeaning than that!
“Yes, I do.” Closing her eyes the sea pony continued to slither forward and then she opened them. “I wish… that all the genies in the world may eventually be given a chance at redemption and then freedom, provided that they will 'mostly' be held 'accountable' for their 'magic' after freedom.”
My eyes widened at the implications.