that, to balance the scales, five hundred Djinn snap into existence, each holding some small measure of the life of that lost, beautiful land. Lost and alone, newborn.
Powerful, and afraid.
The storm doesn't see them as fuel for its fires, and turns north, toward a rich, green land full of energy, full of life, full of fragile things that it can grind apart in its fury.
And this is when it becomes my story, and my mistake. I can't stop it. The Djinn can't stop it, even with the addition of the Five Hundred; the storm is a natural thing, and we can't fight manifestations of the Mother nearly so well as we fight each other, or things in the world of man.
The end of the world is on us. We argue, the Djinn. Some of us try to turn the storm aside, but it's too much for us.
I realize there is no way for Djinn to help mankind, and no way for mankind to save itself, without making an irrevocable choice.
So I pull from the Mother and give power to humans to make them Wardens. And I give them the means to enslave the Djinn. By binding the Djinn, the Wardens can direct us, and we can tap the power pooled inside of humanity and amplify it, creating a web of intent and potential large enough to contain and weaken the storm.
The moment when we join together, humans and Djinn, and defeat the storm at the end of the world... it is, for a moment, the unity of all things. A perfect peace. But perfect peace can't last, and when it comes time for the Wardens to give up the power I've granted them over the Djinn, they refuse.
Should have seen that coming.
Ashan and the others are breaking the deal I made, all those millennia ago.
They're doing what I never had the courage to do: They're taking back their freedom.
And I don't blame them. I blame myself.
It's time for things to be clean again. Scrubbed raw, like the rocks of Atlantis. Maybe what comes out of this will be better. I've wanted freedom for the Djinn for a long time, but I've never actually been faced with seeing it happen before. Choosing it.
But it's the right choice.
If David were here, he'd tell me I'm crazy.
But he's not here. For the first time in my life, human or Djinn, he's not here to help me. I'm at the end of the road, and it's all dark out there, and I don't know that there's any right answer to anything, in the end.
Only choices.
So I think I'll sit here on the beach, with the waves spraying the sky, watching as that long-ago storm swirls itself back into life again, finishing what it started. The Wardens have been fighting this same storm for thousands of years, whether they know it or not. I always feel something about it, something familiar, when it manages to put on its cloak of clouds and come back for another round.
I can't stop it alone. Neither can the Wardens. And the Djinn... the Djinn have had enough of sacrifice.
I watch as the storm's heart turns black and furious, and I wish it didn't have to end this way.
But I don't know of any other way for it to happen.
EIGHT
No surprise: I woke up feeling like I'd had the hell beaten out of me by the Jolly Green Giant. Definitely not one of my better mornings. I tried to get out of bed, ended up more or less leaning on the wall, staring down at my naked body. I'd washed away the dump stains, but the bruises were pretty spectacular.
Couldn't see the really painful one, which was in the small of my back; I shuffled into the bathroom, dragged messy hair out of my eyes, and used an awkwardly angled hand mirror to take an appraisal of the damage. It didn't look as bad as it felt, but then, it felt awful. The bruise was black and blue, the size of a fist. Swollen, too. Ow.
I took another shower, because what the hell... massaging showerhead... and dried my hair into a more or less glorious shower of curls that didn't frizz too much, and put on makeup. Why? Hell if I know, except that the worse I feel, the better I want to look. After applying