//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The Djinni's Tale 
// by Snake Staff 
//------------------------------//

	One day in Windswept, Saddle Arabia, a stranger came to town.

He was nothing special to look at: an off-white unicorn of average height, with a subdued orange mane. His cutie mark was an image of an opening scroll, and his clothes were simple, brown, and practical. He wore likewise plain and uninspiring saddlebags, though that did not prevent the odd pickpocket from taking a stab at their contents.

The stranger spent a good amount of time in the town’s marketplace. He searched for information, for books and maps and perhaps a guide. As with most credulous foreigners, he was duly fleeced by the more unscrupulous of Windswept’s merchants. But he persevered, seeking after a place he had read of in a book in his far-off land. Most he talked to didn’t know of what he sought, and the more honest told him so. For those who did know of it, it was considered a cursed place, and it was best shunned by those with sense.

Of course, in all places and times one rule holds firm: money talks. And the stranger was not without means. Eventually he found a horse willing to take him to where he wanted to go and back – though not to go in with him, of course. So they packed their bags with supplies purchased from the guide’s sister, slept peacefully through the night, and left at dawn the next day.

The Saddle Arabian desert is hot and fierce, like few others in the world. Even the most experienced of equines are wise to stick to established routes, lest the sun or bandits or tatzlwurms in the end claim them. Local folklore tells of restless spirits of slain travelers wandering the dunes, jealous of the living and hungry to drag others down to their fate. Even those who put no stock in superstition must be wary of sandstorms, hungry predators, and the unrelenting heat.

So it was that the stranger’s journey lasted for three days and three nights. Though they avoided the worst of the sun’s rays by traveling through the mornings, evenings, and nights, the way was still perilous. Had it not been for his guide, the pony would surely have been eaten by the vicious brood of titanic scorpions they stumbled across. Only his quick thinking and experience averted the end. Even then they had to spend the better part of a day sealed inside a massive cave, clicking arthropod jaws audible outside.

In the end, they reached their destination: a cave in a rocky cliffside the stranger’s book had said held the resting place of a long-dead emir of the region. Once this place had been a great city, the envy of all the world. But cruel fate had taken its toll, and naught remained but a few stones poking out of the sand. Not even desert vermin nested among them. The Saddle Arabians likewise considered this place ill-omened and had longed shunned it. The stranger’s guide took him to the edge of the cliffside city’s ruins, and no further.

And so, the stranger went in alone.



The tomb of Emir Ahan, first of his name, was a faithful reflection of its occupant’s personality. In life he had been a cantankerous, paranoid old horse who very much enjoyed his privacy in between his bouts of self-glorification. Consequently, his self-built resting place was a combination of monument to his eternal majesty and lethal death trap. The best technology and magic of the time had been employed to seal his body and prized possessions away from all the world. Protective glyphs had been carved, spike-filled pits had been dug, hidden dart-guns affixed to the walls, trap doors leading to cages of venomous snakes had been set up, guardian spirits had been bound, and of course a giant boulder had been placed precariously above a very narrow hallway. It would all have been quite lethal and nigh-insurmountable even to an explorer of the stranger’s caliber.

Had any of it been working.

The problem with leaving deathtraps in one’s tomb is that they are just as vulnerable to the ravages of time as one’s body. Compounding the difficulty was the fact that the stranger was far from the first to get it into his head to explore this place. The very book he had gotten the idea from had been written by a previous visitor. Grave-robbers and bold explorers alike had taken shots at that place over the centuries, and most were far from stupid. 

Consequently, as the stranger explored the tomb he found that the glyphs had been smashed with hammers, the pits filled with sand or boarded over, the dart-guns’ ammunition long expended or mechanisms rotted away, the trap doors’ hinges broken open and the snakes starved to death, guardian spirits laid to rest, and the boulder sitting happily atop the yellowed bones of a pony in what looked to have been a very nice hat. With fate having dealt with the tomb’s worst long before the stranger arrived, making his way through it was simplicity itself. He found the experience almost anticlimactic after all the time and effort spent to get there.

Still, the stranger was far from stupid. It was possible that something still lingered in that place, and so he spent many hours going over the path forward with a fine-toothed comb. But still, nothing. Once he reached the actual body chamber itself, the stranger’s sense of disappointment was magnified a hundredfold. The place seemed but a dusty, crumbling ruin. The treasures reputed to be there had been taken long ago, whether by archaeologists seeking to advance their discipline or by those after more monetary rewards. The gold and jewels and scrolls said to have been piled about the sarcophagus were nowhere to be found, the stone lid of the coffin itself missing. When he looked inside, the stranger’s heart fell to see that not even the emir’s body had been spared the ravages of looters. Nothing but dust and a few odd bits of moldy cloth remained inside.

Horn aglow, the stranger searched the tomb from top to bottom. What he found was… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Hours into his search he saw little but dust and pebbles. Somepony had even taken hammers to whatever had been carved into the walls, rendering them utterly illegible and unsuited for rubbing. There was, horribly, simply nothing of value left in this place.

It was just as he was preparing himself to leave that he caught a slight glint in the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he looked over at one pile of rubble in a dark corner of the emir’s tomb. There was the slightest hint of reflected light coming from underneath one of the many dusty rocks there. Curious, and having little to lose, the stranger walked over and immediately fathomed why he had not seen this before: he simply hadn’t examined the stones from the proper angle.

Chiding himself for being careless, he gently pulled the rocks aside with magic. He soon saw what it was that had caught his eye… and was again disappointed. It was a simple bronze oil lamp of modest size. To be sure, he dug further, but there he found nothing more. The old vessel appeared dusty and severely tarnished with age. It was simple bronze all over, alternatively flat or mildly dented. It lacked any distinguishing marks, symbols, or artistry, so utterly generic that the stranger could not even hazard a guess at its age or origins. It could have been part of the emir’s belongings and simply have been tossed aside as worthless, or perhaps was simply a lost possession of a previous visitor.

The stranger briefly considered throwing the old thing aside himself, but quickly thought better of it. It was the only thing he’d found of even minor historical value in this place. Worst came to worst, it was a souvenir to add to his collection back home. Still a dismal result considering all the effort and money he’d had to invest in getting here. He moved to place it into his saddle bags, but in doing so brought it too close to his nose. His sneezing echoed throughout the empty tomb.

When it finally finished, he looked irritably down at the dusty bronze lamp. Muttering to himself, the stranger pulled a small cloth from his bags and set to cleaning the thing, or at least ridding it of dust.

It took a few seconds for the lamp to explode.

One moment it was just an inert lump of bronze in the stranger’s hooves, the next its spout went off like a firework, flash and bang and all. The startled pony dropped the lamp to the stone floor and scrambled backwards, heart racing. The little lamp unleashed a truly prodigious quantity of golden fire, forming a miniature hurricane that whipped through the dusty tomb. The stranger squeezed his eyes shut as it swept over him. Astonishingly, though the flames warmed his skin to the touch, they did not burn.

Then, just as suddenly as it had burst onto the scene, the fire retracted itself. It flowed back across the chamber, collecting in a swirling tornado above the toppled oil lamp. That too folded in on itself. The stranger watched in a strange combination of fear and fascination as the flames took on a vague equine shape before becoming more and more solid with each passing second. At length the fire was gone altogether, and in its place stood the strangest mare that stranger had ever seen.

She was tall, taller than anypony of his country, and even larger than the stallions of Saddle Arabia. Her coat was a pure white, her mane and tail both flickering flames of orange and gold that drifted in a nonexistent wind. Thick golden bracelets – or perhaps cuffs – encased her two front ankles, while the base of her neck was bound tightly in a shimmering, bejeweled golden brace. A ruby dangled from her horn. She was undeniably beautiful, but what really caught the stranger’s attention was that she had a horn and wings. That was impossible! Everypony knew that. So what was this?

The mare’s head rose slowly, as if unused to doing so. The two ponies’ eyes soon met, whereupon her body instantly went ramrod straight. Her face acquired a blank, almost mechanical expression as she lowered her head into a bow.

“Master mine,” she said. “My will thine. Render to me your wishes three. And I shall see them done.”

And then the mare blinked and shook her head, groaning audibly. She ruffled her wings and then stretched herself out while the confused stallion watched. Once again she raised her head, and they made eye contact.

“Oh,” she muttered, sounding dazed. “Hello there.”

The stranger scooted back a few steps. The mare shook her head again before speaking.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said in a gentle, soothing tone. “I am not here to hurt you.”

He did not believe her.