Serenity’s attention went to Rube first. At first glance, it didn’t look like anything had changed, but tears streamed from his eyes as he screamed. His arms were in front of him, holding each other, but it wasn’t clear what the problem was.

Serenity and Russ didn’t move. Rissa reflexively stood, but when she bonked her shoulder into the invisible wall bounding her hexagon, she sat back down.

“Why is he yelling?” Serenity looked at Rissa. There wasn’t anything he could do from here, but the spell shouldn’t have caused whatever this was.

“Pain.” Rissa shook her head. “Terrible pain. His arms, I think?”

“I’ve got it.” Russ stated it flatly and Serenity felt him navigate the defenses, then suppress Rube until he slumped, unconscious. “I’m not surprised; that right arm in particular should have been painful. I expect the djinn was suppressing the pain.”

Russ seemed unruffled, but Rissa was clearly flustered.

“Did that take care of it?” Serenity wasn’t about to let his fiancee be in pain if he could avoid it; if it meant taking Rube a bit deeper, that was fine. He couldn’t block the pain, but as long as Rube wasn’t really feeling it, neither would Rissa.

Rissa nodded, then took a deep breath. “Mostly. It’s - he should stay out, I think. I’ll know if he starts coming out of it, the pain will increase and I can put him back to sleep.” She definitely didn’t seem calm, but she seemed capable of handling it herself; Serenity would give her the chance to do that.

Serenity nodded. It was the best solution they had for now. They’d need a better one when the spell ended, but a short period of induced sleep wouldn’t hurt Rube.

Serenity turned his attention to the thoughts that weren’t his that kept appearing in his mind. He knew they weren’t his, but it wasn’t like spoken words; it was more like concepts. In that sense, it reminded him of speaking to the other Void Sovereign - Sovereign of Potential? - back in the Origin. Something about it seemed different, though.

One part of the difference was that the djinn did not seem to know it was speaking. It was far more like reading its thoughts, and they were disgustingly oily and almost acidic-feeling, though Serenity had no idea how thoughts could give the stinging, burning sensation he was feeling.

“What do you want?” Serenity directed the words at the cloud of magic in the center of the ritual circle. If he was going to talk to it, he should talk. The goal wasn’t to give it what it wanted but instead to figure out what to do with it. Knowing what it wanted was probably a good start.

Finding out if it could fix Rube was also a good idea.

The Long Darkness? Was that what it called being trapped in the vase?

Serenity tried not to feel for the creature, but failed; nothing should be caged and trapped like that. He knew how unpleasant it was to be alone, even when you had space to move in. He could feel sorry for it, but that didn’t mean he could afford to treat it as anything less than horribly dangerous. He decided that if he could, he’d kill it instead of trapping it again. It would be better for everyone.

“The seal on the vase you were trapped in has fractured. What do you want?”

Serenity frowned. Was that an answer or was it just continuing its previous thought? It had to be hearing him to think there were words, didn’t it? “Is a host what you want?”

It was almost like three voices, overlapping and echoing. Serenity considered for a moment that there might be more than one being in the vase, but he didn’t really think so. They all sounded the same, and he was confident that they’d “sound” different if they were different beings; every mind-voice he’d ever heard sounded different from the others, similar to how people’s real voices sounded different from each other.

It had to be hearing him; otherwise it wouldn’t have responded like that. “Why are you here?”

Quietly, behind all the other words, there was one more statement.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Was that the answer he was looking for? It wasn’t the direction he’d expected this to go; he’d expected a djinn to be talking about freedom or wishes, not a task. If there was some way to live with the djinn, Serenity would prefer to take it. So far, he hadn’t seen any sign of it being possible, but that was why he was here - to explore the possibility.

And more than that, explore the possibility of having the djinn fix Rube’s arms. If it could corrupt them, maybe it could fix them.

Wait. What if the task was fulfilling someone’s wish? That would still make sense for a djinn. “What is the task? Who gave it to you?”

“I see. This was designed for humans, wasn’t it? The spell, that is.” Russ’s voice was louder than the djinn’s.

Serenity glanced over at Russ, confused. “Of course it was. It’s a variation on a unidirectional telepathy spell merged with a defense ritual transposed into Mind Affinity, with a variation in the-”

“I don’t need the details, I’m not the kind of mage you are.” Russ interrupted Serenity’s description of the components of the ritual. “You gave me access to the defensive stuff and that means I can see where it’s connecting to both your minds, and it’s not connecting quite right to either one. Yours is close enough that it’s working fine, so congratulations on still thinking mostly like a human?”

Russ sounded like he was half-joking at the end of the statement; Serenity grumbled at him. He was human!

…Well, okay, he really wasn’t. He was a dragon; he simply forgot sometimes. It felt so natural; it didn’t really seem like there was any particular difference, other than the wings. Oh, also the claws and scales. But none of that was important! He was still … almost human?

He was in denial and he knew it. It didn’t make it easier to give up the notion of himself as human.

Serenity shook himself; it wasn’t time for introspection. “So what does that mean?”

Russ grinned broadly. “I can tune it, make it more understandable both ways. Thing is, while I’m taking care of that, I won’t be able to handle anything else. I probably won’t even be able to listen to what either of you is saying; that would be too distracting. Upside is that it ought to make it as clear as normal telepathy.”

Serenity really wanted the backup of a true combat-trained telepath; Russ would be better than either Serenity or Rissa at dealing with attacks. That same ability and training was probably why Russ could see what the problem was; Serenity still wasn’t finding it.

Unfortunately, the amount of communication he was getting was simply not enough. He needed more clarity. “Do it. I don’t think we’re going to get much out of this otherwise.”

Russ nodded. “Thought you’d say that.”

Russ’s gaze grew distant and Serenity heard noises on the edge of his mind; it was almost like static. After a moment, the static warped and stretched; it was far more like a voice. A smooth yet somehow oily and sneering voice that reminded him of some people he’d met over the years, the ones who liked it when everyone else was at each others’ throats because of misinterpreted slights.

With themselves performing the interpretations, of course.

Serenity shivered; his first workplace, fresh out of college, had someone like that. Brian was good at it; everyone’s friend and ally, a model employee until suddenly you were fired over something true that was completely blown out of proportion and Brian was another step up the ladder - or simply laughing at it as everyone else blamed each other for missing the signs.

He’d escaped by jumping to another job before Brian set his sights on Thomas. He doubted he’d have seen it if he hadn’t been there, quietly working on a computer on the other side of a partition, when Brian “confidentially regretted to inform” Carol’s boss about her missteps. After that, he paid attention and noticed just how often Brian got friendly with people a couple of months before they disappeared from the company.

Thomas hadn’t run into anyone else that nasty in his working life, but Vengeance had. Serenity had a moment to wonder if that was part of why things went the way they did, in the end; it would explain some things that never made sense to the Final Reaper. Yes, undead were hated, but why had defensive action proven so infuriating?

He was never going to be able to answer that question, so it was just as well that the disquieting voice finally made sense.

Might as well start with the same question as before.

“Yes, I am. Who are you and what do you want?” Serenity decided to speak out loud; it’d worked before, so he assumed it would still work. It was easier than focusing on sending his thoughts only to one other person, and there was nothing he was trying to keep secret.

The static was back when the being gave a call-name, but Serenity managed to pick out “Elatiq”. It would have to do; it wasn’t the important question, anyway. “What do you want?”

Power and freedom were empty, hollow things without someone to share them with. Serenity remembered that well. He didn’t think he’d convince Elatiq of it, at least not quickly. It wasn’t worth the effort. “What will you do with your power and freedom? Why do you want them?”

This wasn’t getting at the answers Serenity needed. Perhaps he was asking the wrong question. He needed to know if the creature needed to be killed or not, not what it thought about freedom. “Why are you in the jar?”

Serenity frowned. That wasn’t much of an explanation. “You lost? What did you lose?”

The voice continued, quieter; somehow, Serenity guessed it was thinking to itself instead of directing the thoughts outward.

“Why were you fighting?” Serenity wasn’t certain what the djinn was thinking about, but the word “host” was concerning.

It was definitely clearer; Russ was correct about that. The fact that Serenity didn’t like what he was hearing had nothing to do with whatever he was doing to the ritual.

Speaking of which, exactly what was he doing to it? Serenity took the time to look over the Mana and - because it was Russ - more important Essence flows happening in the ritual. He couldn’t afford the time to examine them in detail, but he could definitely save an image. He could only hope that it would capture the Mana and Essence flows and not just his mundane vision; while he’d taken pictures using his new integrated cybernetics, he hadn’t yet tried taking pictures of magic.

“It seems awfully pleased with itself.” Rissa’s warning overlapped with another not-quite-spoken soft comment from the djinn.