"I smell... blood. Steel. Aggression without malice... How long has it been?"

Sheela opened her eyes, yawning and stretching her arms.

"How long has it been since I've seen a human in these halls? A few centuries? A millennia?"

She rubbed her eyes, adjusted her hair, presentation was everything. As the lost soul trapped in her dungeon walked closer, she sprung from her vessel. Spreading both her arms open, towering over the cloaked man.

"Welcome to my humble abode mortal! Consider yourself blessed to stand before me!"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Wha? Where the fuck am I?"

The soldier stood in the middle of what seemed like a desert temple, looking around.

The teleportation seal, that burned a hole through his uniform, began to fade from his chest.

He walked around the halls filled with sand and various riches, looking for an exit. Checking his

equipment, all his instruments seemed to no longer work.

The human knew he was very far from the battlefield he was on previous to teleportation.

"Fucking elves and their magic bullshit."

He cussed, walking into the main chamber of the forgotten temple.

"Welcome to my humble abode mortal!"

A female voice tore through the century long silence.

The man turned around, clenching his fist and aiming his left arm at the source of the sudden voice.

She was easily as tall as a two story house, long sable hair which flowed like it had a mind of its own, cascading down her back in waves. Her body, curved like the desert dunes that hid the temple and skin kissed by the sun and heat, was decorated in ornamental jewelry.

Eyes the colour of gold that filled the chamber, shined as the looked down at the man.

The human did not seem impressed. His initial shock had work off pretty quick, as he looked the massive woman up and down.

"You don't have a shadow." He said matter-of-factly, before picking a small stone from the dusty floor and throwing it at her. The rock went right through her.

"Just as I thought. More magic or illusions or whatever. Props for the entrance though, real showstopper."

"YOU DAARE?!" Sheela roared, raising her fist threateningly, but the deadpan stare of the mortal made her realize intimidation wouldn't work.

"Human... You fail to realise how fortunate you are. You stand before the great Sheela, Immortal Queen of the Dunes! I have made cowards into warriors, beggars into kings, mended broken hearts with harems of women! All you need to do say what you wish for and I shall make it true."

Her size changed as she moved closer to the man, now only slightly taller than him, floating around the room like a cloud of sand.

"How long was it since you've had a woman melt in your arms?"

The genie whispered, circling him, her floating turned to slow, deliberate walking as she gained a more solid shape.

Like a trained seductress, Sheela rubbed against his left arm, feeling the warm metal under her fingers.

"Or perhaps you would like your arm and eye back? Or more pieces of gold than there are grains of sand in the desert? Just say what's in your heart."

"Wish huh?" The man ignored the floating apparition, instead looking around the chamber, looking for where she had come from.

"Why are you even here?" He asked.

"Oh my tale is a tragic one. The scholar I have helped become a powerful Archmage imprisoned me here."

Sheela floated over to an old looking vase, theatrically falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around it.

"Now I wait here, for centuries, for someone so selfless to grant me my freedom at last."

She batted her eyelashes and gave him a sad look.

"So, you're a genie? Huh, I've always expected you guys to have beards and be blue."

The soldier said, chuckling to himself.

"You grant wishes, but twist them in a way, so someone would learn a lesson or something, right?"

"Wh-? No, no, no human. Where'd you get that idea?"

Sheela was caught off guard by the question, floating back over to the man.

"Don't tell me you have no desires. I've heard that a thousand times. I know it's a lie every SINGLE time!" She hissed.

"So be a good boy, save us both time and drop the act. What do you wish for? Riches? Power? Influence? Women? Your limbs back?"

The genie looked into the mans eyes, frowning at eyes looking back at her.

"You fucking warhound." She spat on the ground besides him, making a face of disgust and disappointment.

"First human in several centuries and it's a homicidal cripple with no will to live."

"Bark, bark, bark genie." Mocked the human.

"You can try any angle you want, I'm not falling for it. I know how y'all work. I will wish for gold or something, and you will turn me into a golden statue."

The man pointed to several gold statues of different creatures that decorated the corners of the main chamber.

"They don't look very happy. I mean, who makes a statue with it's arms raised up in horror?"

"Ever heard of artistic expression?" The genie hissed back bitterly as she walked back to her vase and sat beside it.

The soldier rubbed the back of his sunburnt neck with his mechanical left hand.

"Man, I wish..."

He mumbled.

Sheela's head snapped back up to look at him, a devious smirk of triumph plastered on her face, only to be met with the humans shit-eating grin and the index finger of his good hand pointed at her.

"Ah, got ya."

He laughed.

"Ugh... If there is truly nothing you want, get out of here. I want to go back to my slumber. Leave this place, live your whole miserable life knowing you could have become more than you ever imagined."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She waved her hand, motioning for him to get out of her sight.

"So... which way is the nearest settlement?"

Asked the soldier.

The genie shrugged.

"No idea. I've been here for so long. You know, when you're a genie, people sort of come to you. Now if you WISH to know, then I might be able to help."

What the human didn't know is that the more wishes the genie grants, the closer she is to her freedom. So Sheela's attempts to get him to make a wish weren't only for the sake of malice.

However he was not wrong in his assumption that genies are not benevolent and they, due to their superiority complex that stems from their almost omnipotent powers, often grant the wishes in a twisted fashion.

"We seem to be at an impasse genie. I need to get out of here and find my way back to my troops and you need to fulfil your sick pleasure of screwing over another moron. Since I don't intend to just die in the desert, I will take a gamble and have you grant my wish."

The man said.

Sheela almost leapt with joy, grinning ear to ear, once more assuming her towering and imposing form, her voice booming through the chamber.

"Splendid choice human! Now, speak! Tell mighty Sheela your wish."

"My wish for you, oh all-powerful Sheela, is that you become such, that the vase can no longer hold or bind you!" The man said.

Sheela roared with laughter, the sand from the desert pouring into the temple, wrapping around her like sandstorm. The vase shook and trembled, cracks appearing all over it, as the genie swirled and laughed, relishing in the thought of her, soon to come, freedom.

"You fool! You think this will grant you some favour with me? That I'll 'owe you owe'?"

She roared, her golden eyes shining through the vortex of sand and dust.

"Nonsense! You will be the first one I turn into a corpse for your insolence towards me. This temple will serve as your tomb!"

The restraints on her wrists fell to the ground with a clang, before turning into sad and being sucked back onto the rattling vase. The vortex soon too began getting sucked in. The genie soon followed.

"What?! What's going on? This shouldn't be happening! Your wish, MY FREEDOM!"

She screamed before finally being pulled into the vase.

The imprisoning vase shattered violently a second later, ceramics and sand flying in every direction, causing the soldier to cover his face with his metal left arm.

As the dust settled, he waved his other arm a bit, clearing the view in front of him, followed by some coughing.

"I'm... free." The genie said, sitting where the vase once was. Her body seemed tangible compared to before. She looked over at the man, covering her chest with both her arms. The woman looked the same as before, and the amount of clothes, or lack there of, had no changed either.

"Don't just stand there oaf! Toss me a curtain or something to cover myself!" Sheela hissed an order at the man.

The soldier grabbed a piece of cloth from the pile of various riches that littered the chamber and tossed it over the woman.

Sheela could not fully process what she was feeling. Liberation. Shock. Anger. Embarrassment

She never felt so exposed before, despite wearing nothing but her ornamental jewelry for millennia.

"Your wish... I was to be free. The vase is gone, broken. My prison is broken. Yet my power, I..."

The genie could feel power surging inside her, but it was different.

"There, there."

As the man patted her on the shoulder, she jumped like his touch was acidic.

Her body moved, her brain still processing what just happened.

"He touched me. He TOUCHED ME!" The thought overwhelmed her mind, as she wrestled with the realisation that she was no longer intangible.

Extending her right hand, she focused her magic. The feeling of it coursing through her was so alien, it made her skin shudder.

"Wither to dust and begone from my sight." Sheela shouted, as a torrent of sand hit the man and launched him backward into a pile of sand.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So, have we calmed down?" Solon* asked, sitting down next to Sheela, but still keeping some distance.

"Don't patronize me human." She sighed, turning head to look at the man, as he was shaking sand out of his metal arm.

"My power is gone so much I could not even end a pitiful human." She frowned.

The sun was sending its rays through the holes in the temple ceiling, bathing both of them in light. The former Genie watched, for the first time, as her own shadow stretched across the floor.

"How did you trick me?" She whispered.

"Pretty simple." Answered the soldier, grinning at his own ingenuity and the fact it actually worked.

"I wished that you become such, that you get free. The vase imprisons genies, like yourself. So through my wish, you got changed from a genie to... human?" He ended his explanation with a question, looking at her long and pointy ears.

"Desert folk. They used to be most common in these lands. Hell, they even built this temple." Sheela replied.

"As for your magic, don't worry. I'm immune to magic. Almost all of us who came here are." Solon patted her on the back.

This time she didn't jump away, accepting the reassuring gesture.

"Came here? I agree, you are far different from any human I've met before. You have metal welded to your body and you aren't going insane. And you have no magic either."

"Mhm. To keep a long story short, many centuries ago, humans from here found a way to open gates to other places, to expand their civilizations. They would pop up, use their extraordinary powers to help civilizations grow, in turn being worshipped as gods or demigods or wizards and shit. Issue is, not every world they came to was equally attuned to magic as their world. In case of MY Earth, the attunement was so bad, it actually drained them of their magic. So they helped what little they could, and decided to leave before they completely lose their powers, leaving the gates they constructed behind them."

The soldier explained.

"Despite leaving pretty early in our own history, they helped our civilization stand on its own two feet. That was enough to have us continue progressing on our own. Eventually, with technology, we reverse engineered the gates, and went to meet our gods and demigods of old folk tales. Coming here, we realised there is a LOT more species beyond just humans, like elves and dwarves, who weren't too happy with a reverse gate situation. Humans are actually pretty rare in this world it seems. The others tried to shoo us away, but once we became aware of how much land this world has and all the resources that create energy without pollution. Well... we had to stick around. The natives aren't too quick to embrace democracy though."

Solon knocked on his left shoulder and it made a 'clang' sound.

Sheela listened to the explanation, nodding her head. As insane as it sounded, she felt like the pieces fell in together so well it made sense. Or at least it felt good to believe this crazy story over accepting that a human has screwed her over twice in one day.

"So... what do we do now?" She asked.

"Well, priority number one is getting outside of this desert. Finding a settlement or something." The man replied, getting up and patting the dust off his pants.

"I think there used to be a settlement West of here." She got up, putting on a dusty all toga like dress, that she took from one of the golden statues.

"Should not be too far. Maybe a day or so away."

"Oh you are tagging along, almighty Queen of the Dunes?" Solon grinned.

"Fuck off. Thanks to you, my only alternative is starving to death in this temple, so yes. I am coming with. Better take good care of me, Solon."

She huffed, walking past him. Even in her normal form, Sheela was still an entire head taller than the human.

"Solon?" The soldier followed her as they both stepped into the unforgiving sun, wrapped in cloaks made from dusty old cloth they found in the temple.

She pointed to his mechanical left arm.

"Yes, that is what I have decided to name you."

"But I already have a name." The man protested.

"Not in this world you don't. Now stop being difficult and walk." Sheela huffed, her superiority complex back in full effect.

The soldier sighed, choosing not to argue.

"The former genie seemed to have gotten over her new change pretty quickly." He thought to himself, as they pair left the temple behind them.

(Authors note: *Solon - "Lump of Iron" in Greek. Sheela gave the solder that nickname as an insult due to his left arm and as a way to get over being bested by a human twice in one day.)