“To want is the nature of all things. That is no sin. In fact there are only two sins in this world. The first is to beleive that you know better. The second is to act upon that thought.” Poet of Tarim lost to the sands

Kabani sat as unmovable force upon her throne. The Alchemi marked her flesh with infused ink. He was trying to be gentle, the needle kind against her flesh. Kabani would have told him that it did not matter. Even if he decided to take the dagger from hip and stab her through the chest, she would not feel pain. She would not feel anything.

But she did not, she let him go about his business giving her the power she wanted. Her thoughts turned back to the time from her youth. The time she escaped those horrible Tariq that floated through the sky.

She could not remember everything only bits and pieces. Kabani remembered running so much. Running as she escaped the forces that guarded the islands. Things that made Djinn seem harmless. Horrors that still haunted her on the rare occasion she slept.

She had started with a group of friends and trusted associates. The idea that they would find untold riches and objects of power that would change their lives if the ascended those terrible islands. How naïve was. Oh, what a mistake it was. True she had found a power changed that changed her life. But not in the better, not with the cost it had incurred.

The further they delved into the haunted halls the more they lost and the fewer they become. Till it was only two who had remained. Her and her lover. And by then they had only reached halfway. It wasn’t long before she was the only one who remained. She’d found a key next to her soon after as though it was mocking her for her hubris. She’d found its door to it soon after. A well in the centre.

She clenched her fist against the painful memory. She could still feel the warm blood in her hands as the life leaked out of her companion. She had doomed the world with the choice she had made that day. All for a sliver of power a taste of divinity.

She drunk from the well. Its water bitter and black. If only she had that the cost of her actions and the terrible future she had thrust onto humanity.

She was not alone when she left that room. Disembodied voices chased her from the room as she fled. All the way back to the exit of the maze. She had carried with her the key back preventing anyone else from following in her footsteps.

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The horrors chased her tempting her to look back. Kabani refused running as she kept her eyes forward. This horrors would later become the djinn she unleashed upon the world. The laughter chased her till the edge of the island.

She threw herself of from the edge, preferring to plumet to her death than face what she had done. She fell for what felt like ages. The laughter following her till she crashed into the lush green grass.

Kabani lay broken in the crater that had formed. The blood leaked from her body, and she opened her arms embracing death. Darkness filled her vision as she let out a shaky breath.

Yes

But death denied her, punishing her for her sins. Her body begun to heal knitting itself back together. Though the blood splattered about by her descent did not disappear instead it multiplied painting the deserts rock in its crimson. Even her arm was still covered in it up to her elbows. To this day the blood was yet to dry still glistening. As fresh as the day it was spilt. She stood from the crater a new person. With the key in her grasped she limped back to her city.

When she walked through her gates, she adopted a new name. Kabani had died in that crater Domitila crossed the cities threshold.

She had conquered her home and the cities around it. Kabani had hoped to find peace soon after. But the labyrinth was quick to remind her of her debt. The earth had begun to die. Deserts formed and devoured the land as terrible beasts befell upon it. spilling the blood of the innocents.

It had taken her generations before she finally returned some form of order to the land. Now though most of the earth was a burren desert, only hardy trees endured and all but the rarest and purest oases still had grass.

She had created a few more of these using the last of her power, using them to correct some of the wrong in the world. Slowing the death of her home.  

Kabani ruled as an empress of a dying land, but her heart had grown numb over the centuries. The memory of her lovers cold blood on her hands never left her. The sorrow had only grown over the centuries.

For the first time in centuries a tear fell from her eyes. It burned as it fell, she wiped at it using her index finger. The tear was crimson and flecked with burning orange embers. She looked down at the Alchemi, who stared up at her in stunned silence.

“Continue”.

He hurried back, finishing the etching he had been drawing.

Of course, the alchemi would die, he saw her weakness but for now he had work to finish. She looked out of her grand palace and saw one of her sky islands drift close. Good she will be able to get some resources for those in the city.

How long before it all ended?

She had three decades at most, but the more time passed the smaller the window of opportunity grew.