Joining him at the desk, Jasper began his story. No father, just a single mother in a home bit too small; one older brother and a twin sister, now deceased. A boring office job for too little pay and too many loans. It wasn’t the best of lives, but neither was it particularly horrible. Indeed, if Jasper had to choose a single word to describe his past, it would have been “unremarkable.”
S̆arrābī kept silent as he spoke, only asking a few questions, but he never stopped writing in his notebook, filling one page after another with a hastily scribbled scrawl. When Jasper finally finished, he waited expectantly while S̆arrābī shuffled through the pages he had written. At last, the Djinn looked up. “I’m not certain, but I think your memories have been altered.
Jasper frowned. “What do you mean they’ve been altered?”
The Djinn circled one of the paragraphs in his notebook, shoving it across the desk to Jasper. “This was your description of age six. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Picking up the book, he scanned it quickly. It was a bit difficult to decipher the Djinn’s handwriting - clearly, he had missed his true calling as a doctor - but beyond that, Jasper saw nothing wrong. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he reluctantly admitted.
S̆arrābi flipped through the pages to another entry. “Read this one.”
Jasper skimmed through the second entry, shaking his head in confusion as he reached the end. “It looks normal enough. What are you wanting me to see?’
The Djinn’s frown deepened as he took the notebook back. “It appears you have some sort of mental block in place, then. By my count, there are no less than five instances in your life - two in childhood and three as an adult - where your mother disappeared for a significant length of time.”
Jasper furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
S̆arrābī shook his head. “Yas̆peh, when you were six, you and your siblings spent the entire year with a friend of yours' parents. Where was your mother during this time?”
“That’s ridiculous. We just spent a few nights with them,” he protested.
“A few nights?” S̆arrābī’s eyebrows nearly shot through the ceiling. “Reread what you told me, Yas̆peh. It was a year, a full year.”
That can’t be right. Once again, he glanced over the pages, trying to remember where his mother was. But the harder he tried to concentrate, the more his memories of that year slipped through his grasp like a greased pig at a gallop. They were there, but much like the word that lingers unspoken on the tip of your tongue, he just couldn’t quite remember it. “I don’t know where she was,” he conceded unhappily.
“Do you really think my memories have been tampered with? Shouldn’t the Fey charm protect me?” He patted the bracelet on his wrist which was utterly inert.
“The charm likely can only protect you from current attacks, not fix damage from the past.”
“Oh.”
“But if your memories have been tampered with, it tells us something else important, doesn’t it?”
The Djinn paused, clearly waiting expectantly for Jasper to fill in the blank. Closing his eyes, Jasper forced his mind to go back over the details. As long as he kept clear of the handful of moments S̆arrābī had identified, he had no trouble remembering his mother. But it wasn’t immediately obvious to him what the Djinn meant; his only memories of her, after all, were as a seemingly normal human.
Absentmindedly, his hand rubbed the signet ring on his fingers, the ring from the cult of Nahrēmah, and the ritual from her diary came roaring back to him. “She may have altered her appearance, but she was still able to use essence on me,” he said abruptly, “Or else she had an accomplice,”
“That is my assessment,” S̆arrābī agreed. “Whether she or a friend tampered with your memories, Da’iqta clearly has access to magic, and if she has access to magic, there is no telling what the current limit of her capabilities would be. I think it best to proceed under the assumption that your mother really did take this Laylah girl.” He grinned. “And if she did, that implies she is keeping tracking of you in some way or another.”
S̆arrābī was clearly elated by the prospect that his sister may be more reachable than he had thought, but Jasper couldn’t share in the Djinn’s jubilation. One thought kept running through his mind instead. If she really took Laylah, why couldn’t she rescue me?
But he had little time to brood on that question. “And that brings us to the Seraphs.” S̆arrābī circled back to the earlier question. “Tell me again why are you working with the Seraphs?”
Jasper hesitated a moment before replying, unsure whether to trust S̆arrābī with the details of his quest for Kas̆dael. But the cat’s pretty much of the bag anyway, isn’t it? “Well, I’m investigating the cult of Nahrēmah….” Jasper quickly filled S̆arrābī in on the details, explaining how he had gotten in touch with the Seraphs. “So you see, it’s all just a coincidence.”
S̆arrābi leaned back in his chair as Jasper ceased speaking, a deep frown on his face. “You are right - it seems like it must be nothing more than a coincidence, but…” The Djinn lord’s voice trailed off. “Something does not sit right with me.”
Leaning forward, he continued. “You said you had an older brother, correct?”
Jasper nodded. “That’s right.”
“So you cannot be the child my sister bore when she fled. Nor,” he added after a moment’s pause, “can you be the child of her seraph lover, Abdiel. He died only a few months after her disappearance and his death, unlike my sister’s, was no ruse.” A slightly guilty look flickered into his eyes, disappearing a second later. “Of that, I am, unfortunately, all too certain of. The logical conclusion, then, is that you have no actual connection to the Seraphs. You are likely only half-Djinn, the child of some human my sister met on your world. That would explain, too, why you experienced such pain when I gave you the gis̆ātu leaf - the tree was meant to bond with full-blooded Djinn, but it must have judged you worthy anyways, sparing your life.”
“All of which,” the Djinn pounded his desk, “only serves to make your story more baffling. If you truly have no connection to the Seraphs, why do you continue to run into them?”
Jasper frowned. “It’s just been twice really - the shapeshifter at Hargish and Abnu.”
S̆arrābī tossed a file in Jasper’s direction. “Make that three.”
Curious, Jasper perused the file while the Djinn continued speaking. “If you remember, I promised you that I would try to track down the quest attached to your weapon - the Sir Jakaryus who crafted it?”
“You found him for me?” Jasper’s head snapped up, and he shifted forward eagerly. “My shortsword just isn’t cutting it.”
“I found his grave,” S̆arrābī corrected him. “I’m sorry, Yas̆peh, but he died several decades ago. I’m afraid your quest cannot be completed.”
“Oh,” Jasper settled back. “That’s too bad.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The Djinn nodded sympathetically. “It is always disappointing to receive a quest you can’t complete. The System tries to account for it, but sometimes things slip through the cracks; the gods can’t see all, after all.”
“You say you need a weapon?”
Jasper nodded. “I received a short sword from a Mwyrani, but it’s not my favorite. I really miss the range the glaive provided.”
His uncle raised a brow. “A Mwyrani? You’ve been in contact with one of the star gods?”
“Well, more than one, actually,” he admitted.
S̆arrābī leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples. “Every time I think I’ve wrung the last secret out of you, I learn something else.” He looked him at sharply. “You don’t have anything else you want to disclose, do you? A few Sidhe at your beck and call, a secret portal that leads back to your homeward, an encounter with the Progenitor himself?”
Jasper shook his head no, but his mind immediately flitted to the quest he’d received from the gods - the quest to pursue apothesis.
S̆arrābī’s eyes narrowed, no doubt seeing something in Jasper’s expression, but the Djinn let it pass. Instead, grabbing a piece of paper, he quickly scribbled something down on it and tossed it at him. He scribbled something down quickly on a piece of paper and tossed it at him. The paper fluttered through the air like a drunk butterfly, but Jasper scooped it up easily enough. “Well, any nephew of mine needs a decent weapon. Take that note to the smithies, and they’ll take care of you.”
Jasper started to express his thanks, but S̆arrābī waved his hand impatiently. “Yes, yes, as I said: if you’re going to work for me, a good weapon is a necessity.” He paused to collect his thoughts, “But to return to what I was saying before you distracted me, once my agents found Jakaryus’ grave, I decided to do a little digging on the compound where you first arrived. I’m sure you can already guess what I discovered.”
“They were Seraphs?” Jasper ventured.
“Indeed,” his uncle confirmed. “Which is quite unusual. While there are a few merchants who regularly trade with Gis̆-Izum, aside from them, it is rare for any group of Djinn to choose to live outside our lands. Fortunately, everyone who leaves the provinces must depart through Dūr-S̆innu, so it wasn’t a particularly difficult task to track down records of this group.”
He flipped through his notebook until he reached the relevant entry. “Let’s see, about two hundred years ago, a small group of Seraphs - Jakaryus among them - split from the Namurru clan.”
“That’s the same clan Abnu belongs to,” Jasper interrupted.
“Obviously mere coincidence,” S̆arrābī replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “As it happens, the members of this particular group were in some sort of religious cult.”
Jasper knit his brow together. “As in dark cultists?”
The Djinn snorted. “Hardly. By all accounts, they were eccentric, obstinate, and querulous, but there is no insinuation that these Seraphs were mixed up in any type of dark arts.”
“So why did they leave?“
“The Seraphs elders hold a much tighter grip on their power than most of our clans do these days; they're a very traditionally minded group.”
Jasper kept his expression neutral, but he couldn’t but wonder just how bound by tradition the Seraphs were if the Royal House found them too extreme. It wasn't like the Royal House was particularly full of social revolutionaries, after all.
“This particular group apparently followed a leader named Lord Ishka, a rather talented mage who was completely unable to get along with the Namurru elders. Once this Lord Ishka managed to get himself banished, his friends chose to leave with him. They established the enclave you stumbled across in Sapīya and dwelt there for a bit over a century until the leader died, or perhaps disappeared, under unusual circumstances. After his death, the commune seems to have dissolved.”
S̆arrābī leaned back in his chair, propping his legs up on his desk.
“As far as I can tell, most of the Djinn that belonged to the commune were never heard from again. A single group of about twenty of them - Jakyarus among them - was recorded passing through Dūr-S̆innu and eventually reconciled with the Namurru elders, but as for the rest? They vanished like smoke in the wind.”
“Perhaps they moved deeper into the jungles; surely the tiger I encountered outside Hargish was one of them,” Jasper pointed out.
“It is quite likely that this ‘Namrah’ was a former member of the enclave,” S̆arrābī agreed, “but I’m skeptical that the majority are living in the jungle. Even if they could entirely avoid detection by both Aphora’s elves and the empire, which I doubt, it is more likely that they achieved Lord Ishka’s goals.”
Jasper cocked his head to the side. “That’s right. You never did say what their beliefs were.”
S̆arrābī grinned, revealing his row of jet-black teeth. “As a matter of fact, they were rather relevant to you.”
Jasper arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Me? How?”
“There was a prophecy,” the Djinn said, his tone somber and serious, “of a mighty and powerful Djinn who would come to save the empire from danger and carry them off to the land of Nūr.”
Jasper just blinked, unsure what to say. “Uh-“
Lord S̆arrābī’s booming laughter echoed off the study’s walls with such force that even the noise-muffling runes were likely not sufficient to mute it. “Shamsha’s light,” his uncle gasped, slapping the table, “You really are gullible.”
Jasper could feel his face burning with embarrassment - even if his wine-red skin hid the tell-tale signs - as the Djinn laughed. But he took it in good humor. “Fine, fine, you got me.”
When S̆arrābī finally stopped laughing, he once again leaned back in his chair. “Obviously, the prophecy stuff was a joke, but there really is a connection between their beliefs and you.”
Jasper crossed his arms, not willing to take the bait again so soon. “And that connection is?”
“Lord Ishka’s followers were true devotees of the old faith, of Nūr. Are you familiar with the distinction between Nūr and Shamsha?” S̆arrābī asked.
“The subject’s come up,” Jasper replied, after some thought. “Annatta said something about them being both ‘one and not one.’”
Surprise bloomed on the noble’s face. “So she actually was paying attention during temple,” he mused to himself. “That is essentially right. Although the Djinn are one of the oldest races in this world, unlike the Fey and Elves, we are not natives. Our kind was born on another world, beneath another sun - Lord Nūr. The priests teach all suns are simply the manifestation of a singular entity, be he S̆amsha, Nūr, or-“ he hesitated a moment, “I believe your world calls him Sol, no?”
Jasper nodded slowly.
“But there are some amongst us, the so-called 'old believers,' who maintain that Nūr and Shamsha are entirely separate gods. They will participate in the worship of Shamsha, but they acknowledge only Nūr as our father and maintain many rites that have long since fallen out of usage.”
“And this particular group shared those beliefs. Lord Ishka was obsessed with the idea of returning to our original homeworld, Zaginnu, believing that, quote, ‘no Djinn bereft of Nūr’s rays can ever reach their true potential, but only those blessed by his holy light.’”
“This is related to the Nūradīn myth, right?” Jasper questioned. “But wasn’t Zaginnu destroyed?”
S̆arrābī shrugged. “Who knows? What few texts we have from the time only confirm that we fled from our homeland after a series of terrible disasters, following in the footsteps of the Mwryani to arrive here. It is true that the priests teach that Zaginnu perished, but much knowledge has been lost or distorted over the many millennia since our arrival. In any case, there are none living amongst the Djinn,” his mouth twisted wryly, “at least as far as I know, that possess the knowledge or means to return and verify if Zaginnu was truly destroyed. Lord Ishka, however, was completely obsessed with the idea.”
“And as absurd as the man’s ideas were, Ishka was not crazy. Just three of the twenty who returned to our lands are still living and, after going over my agents conversations with them, I think it possible that this Seraph enclave may have genuinely rediscovered a method that would allow them to consistently and regularly pass between worlds, searching for our lost homeland. Unfortunately, those who were left behind did not belong to the inner circle of the cult and don't know how it worked.”
“So, the enclave I arrived at was doing experiments on traveling between worlds…” Jasper began slowly, “That seems unlikely to be mere coincidence.”
“Highly unlikely,” S̆arrābī agreed. “I’m not sure what binds you to them, but I firmly believe that the Seraphs and that enclave are in some way connected to your arrival to this plane.”
“Should I meet them, then?” Jasper blurted out. “The elders, I mean. Abnu’s friend said they wanted me to meet with them.” He paused a moment to collect his thoughts. “But Abnu really didn’t seem to have any idea who I was.”
S̆arrābī frowned, steepling his fingers. “Perhaps he didn’t,” the Djinn offered. “Perhaps the Seraphs are playing some game with you, or perhaps you are merely caught in the webs of the Spectral Spiders, fated to encounter them again and again. At this point, no possibility can be ruled out.”
“I think you should go,” he added after a moment’s thought. “If Da’iqta really is alive, I want to see her again, and these elders might just hold the keys.”
“Be careful though,” he warned. “If Abdiel is not your father, then you are no kin to them, but you are kin to me. It is possible that some of the Seraphs might harbor thoughts of revenge for Abdiel’s death. Do not go alone.”
Jasper smiled. “I think I learned my lesson on that.”
The Djinn laughed, shaking his head in denial. “Somehow I doubt that. If you take after your mother, it will take more than one lesson to teach you anything.”