Thea

“What is this place?” The djinn asked.

“This is Elysia,” La’akea replied. “Home to the gods! You’ve found yourself in the domain of Kai, the mighty trickster. Consider it a great honor.”

“Interesting story,” the djinn smirked. “I’m sure I’ll remember it when I’m back on the mortal plane.”

There was a flash of purple light, followed by the djinn reappearing about a meter to the left. She seemed confused.

I pulled out a bottle of vodka, a real one this time, and offered it to La’akea. She traded me one of the sandwiches and we watched as the djinn tried to teleport six more times.

“That's not going to work, little djinn,” La’akea finally shouted. “This realm is warded from mortal teleportation. Nobody is allowed in or out without the assistance of a divine being.”

The djinn glared at us and tried to teleport one last time. It failed again, so she stomped over and sat down on the blanket. I offered her half my sandwich, which she bit into with a huff.

“Sooo…” I waited for the huffy djinn to introduce herself.

“No,” she responded instead. “You don't get three wishes just for releasing me.”

I quickly turned towards La’akea for an explanation, but she just shook her head and shrugged. Since my dragon friend wasn’t being useful, and this was starting to get a little awkward, I introduced the both of us.

“I’m Thea, and this is La’akea,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“I am Ithnaa, the Slayer, mighty lord of the south-eastern sector.” Ithnaa was holding a hand in front of her mouth to hide the fact that it was full of spam sandwich, which caused her introduction to lose most of its gravitas.

“Oh, that’s neat,” I said. “Want some vodka?”

~~~~

“And then he put me in a bottle of the fucking worst liquor in the damn network!” Ithnaa complained loudly, before shaking her head and continuing much more quietly. “He didn’t even empty it first. I spent an entire week of my imprisonment with a terrible hangover.”

“Oh my gosh, yes, Teolix is just the worst!” I exclaimed. “Did you know he uses gold plated shipping crates?”

“What purpose could that possibly serve?” La’akea asked as she refilled her glass with the whiskey Ithnaa had summoned.

It turned out Ithnaa was an excellent drinking buddy. Whenever we ran out of alcohol she would just magic up a few more bottles like it was nothing. That, combined with La’akea’s ability to create sandwiches on demand, was making this little vacation almost tolerable.

“No possible purpose, other than to reinforce Teolix’s terrible aesthetic,” Ithnaa replied. “I swear to the gods killing that dragon is going to be the first thing I do when I get back. Then I’m going to murder my brother for betraying me to him.”

“Want help?” I asked. Teolix had tried to betray us to Lysc, and if she hadn’t been such a sweetie, then we could’ve been in a lot of trouble. He was overdue for an ass kicking.

“I don’t need any help to kill a dragon. No offense, La’akea.” She paused for just long enough for the dragon to wave it off. “And you wouldn’t stand any chance against a djinn, even if you are a devil.”

I laughed. “Fair enough. Teolix is a pushover.” I finished my whiskey and held out my glass to La’akea, who was apparently playing bartender with this bottle. “But I already killed a djinn. Another would be no problem at all.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Sure, I had killed a djinn. His name was Rajak, and I cut his head off with a soul-destroying sword, but I had a lot of help to do it. Killing one by myself probably wouldn’t be as easy.

“Is this true?” Ithnaa asked La’akea, as if she was there, which she wasn’t. So, I answered for her.

“Of course it’s true. Rajak was bullying some werewolves, so they paid me to cut his head off, and I did.” There was more to it than that, a lot more actually, but Ithnaa didn’t need to know that.

“You killed Rajak?” She asked. It was at that moment that I remembered Lysc explaining that all the syndicate lords were related to each other.

“Erm, maybe?” I answered. “That depends on how angry you'd be if I did.” Going back to that whole not being sure if I could kill a djinn by myself thing, I didn’t really want to piss off Ithnaa. I hoped that La’akea would side with me in a fight, but I had run out of liquor a while ago and the djinn was still pumping out more. So, I wasn’t entirely sure which side the dragon would fall on.

“Rajak was one of my subordinates,” Ithnaa said, and I prepared myself for an attack. “He was weak and constantly tried to undermine me. His interference was the sole reason I was unable to expand my territory.”

“You’re welcome?” I asked cautiously, but I still kept up my defenses.

Ithnaa shrugged and took another bite of her spam sandwich. Those seemed to be her favorite. “Under other circumstances, I would be forced to kill you in order to avenge his death. He was a pompous fool, but still my cousin.”

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“But you’re not going to, right?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said through a mouthful of food, which she thankfully swallowed before continuing. “You released me from that dreadful bottle, and besides, Rajak may have been weak, but if you killed him by yourself, then fighting you alongside an ancient dragon would likely dirty my robes.”

“Hey! I’m not that old,” La’akea objected.

I released my defensive posture and went back to sandwich eating. “How old are you?” I asked La’akea.

“I refuse to answer that.” I figured that was fair. It had been a bit of a rude question. But that question may have tipped Ithnaa off to the fact that the dragon and I hadn’t known each other all that long.

“How long have you two been trapped in here?” Ithnaa asked.

“Don’t know, and also it depends,” I said. “I’ve only been here for about a day and a half in Elysian time. But time is weird here, and that could mean just about anything in the mortal realm.”

“Whereas I’ve been here for over a century,” La’akea said. “Which, by my calculations, is somewhere between three days and seven millennia in mortal time.”

Wow, she had managed to narrow it down pretty well. Most people couldn’t do the sort of calculations required to convert between the two timescapes in their heads. I was genuinely impressed.

“Well, that doesn’t inspire confidence,” Ithnaa said. “Is there any way for us to contact somebody on the outside?”

“Not that I’ve found,” La’akea answered. “Magic isn’t able to pierce through the wards.”

“What about technology?” Ithnaa asked.

“My implants mostly work,” I said as I took another bite of my sandwich. “But if I try to contact anybody, then I get an error message accusing me of having ‘network connection issues’, which I think is both presumptuous about my relationships and just plain unhelpful.”

Ithnaa blinked at me a few times. “I’m not sure how to respond to that level of technological ineptitude.”

Which was a rude thing to say, but I just shrugged. I only had the implants for about a month, and besides I knew my limitations when it came to technology. I could hardly be expected to understand all the nuances in such a short period of time.

La’akea laughed. “For what it’s worth, I don’t even know what she means when talking about implants.”

“If that’s the case, then I believe your imprisonment is probably closer to your seven millennium estimate, and you can hardly be blamed for your ignorance,” Ithnaa seemed to think for a moment before asking her next question. “Thea, you haven’t been here for too long, but La’akea, I’m assuming you’ve explored the area thoroughly and haven’t found an exit.”

La’akea nodded. “That’s right, I’ve traversed over 12,000 rooms.”

I quickly did the math in my head before adding. “I’ve been to six, seven if you count this one.”

“Are all the rooms this bare?” Ithnaa asked.

“This room wasn’t bare,” La’akea said. “It contained a 20 meter tall rabbit who asked rude questions until you killed and ate it.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the intended solution to the puzzle, but it seemed to have worked, so I wasn’t going to complain.

“Each of the rooms I entered had a puzzle of some sort,” I explained. “Although, the solutions were either all super obvious or I was impossibly lucky and got them right on the first try. Most of the time, it was both.”

“I’ve had a similar experience,” La’akea said.

“So this is some sort of puzzle labyrinth?” Ithnaa asked. “That doesn’t seem all that related to Kai’s domain.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “She’s the goddess of mischief. Puzzles aren’t super mischievous. They’re more… logicy.”

“That’s a common misconception caused by her title,” La’akea said. “Kai is actually the aspect of chaos. Her mischief is more of a… racial trait.”

“Wait, is that true?” I asked. La’akea was actually one of Kai’s followers, so she would definitely know better than me. But, I hadn't heard of that and I had grown up with one of her daughters.

The dragon nodded. “Her first mantle was of luck, then it evolved to be probability. She later gained the illusion mantle, which did eventually lead to the mischief one, but she didn't actually have it for that long before they all just kind of combined to turn her into the aspect of chaos. You can only take in so many domains before you stop being a god, and become something else entirely.”

I blinked a few times. “That is a lot of shit to unpack,” I said.

“How do you know all this?” Ithnaa asked.

“I was there for most of it,” La’akea shrugged as she grabbed another sandwich. Hah! I knew she had been lying about her age! She was definitely ancient.

Oh shit, she had been lying about her age. It hadn't even registered to me. I couldn’t read her, like, at all. This had never happened before, and I was about to ask La'akea what her deal was, but Ithnaa beat me to the punch.

“You’re older than you look,” she said. “Who are you exactly?”

La’akea stopped chewing on her sandwich for long enough to raise an eyebrow at the question. “I’m not sure if I should thank you, or eat you.”

“I’d prefer if you just answered the question,” Ithnaa deadpanned.

“Fine. I'll humor you, little djinn,” La’akea sat down her sandwich and straightened herself to her full sitting height. “I am La’akea, the tarnished, feller of kingdoms, maker of queens, and servant to the mistress of mischief. I am exactly as old as I am, and needless to say that is far older than you.”

“You’re one of Kai’s kids, like for real kids,” I said. “A celestial.”

The celestial dragon smiled as she picked up her sandwich, but she didn’t say anything. I furrowed my brows at her lack of response. If she really was an ancient celestial, then that would explain why my lie detecting skills weren't working on her. Especially if she was one of Kai’s kids. I mean, lying was kind of her thing.

“If that's really true, then what are you doing here?” I asked. “Isn’t this a prison?”

“Even divine prisons need guards,” Ithnaa said, which kind of made me wonder what it had been like in that bottle. “The real question is what’s behind that door?”

“Nothing, just more puzzles,” La’akea said, finally. "An endless number of them."

“Then how do we get out?” I asked.

La’akea took a bite from her sandwich and leaned back against the door as she explained. “You use a special key that turns any of these doors into a portal to the outside.”

“And we’d end up where?” Ithnaa asked. “Just some random location in the mortal realm?”

“I would end up wherever I wanted to be,” La’akea said. “You wouldn’t end up anywhere, because I’m not giving you the key.”

Things were getting kind of tense. La’akea was the only one eating and I could feel power radiating off of the djinn next to me. It was making my hair stand on end, and I was just about to make a joke about it to cool everybody down when Ithnaa asked the worst possible question. “And if we took the key from you? What then?”

The dragon washed down her sandwich with a swig of whiskey before replying.

"If you tried," she said, only half-interested. “Then I’d kill you.”