Something is wrong. The Djinn gathers power around it. Run!
I ignored the horror's dire warning. "What are you talking about, Aerolis."
"You wish to learn the true potential of the coffins you carry inside?" Aerolis' burning form drew back from me and lightning crackled around the flames. I should have listened to Ssserakis.
"Yes!"
"Then learn." The Djinn's lightning ripped into my chest.
Aerolis waited on the last of his brothers. Vainfold loved to make them wait. Not a single meeting went past wherein he wasn't the last of them to arrive. All the others were there. All who were left. So few of them yet survived. Only six. Six Djinn, and six Rand. It was foolish, Aerolis knew that, but they couldn't stop. The War Eternal had consumed both his brothers and his sisters, and unless something was done, the world they had taken for their own would soon be free of them once more. A shame, then, that peace was beyond their ability.
There was nothing in the realm of the Djinn. They had constructed that way. It was a void, a place with no form or structure, like the space between the stars. A purposeful design so no brother would hold dominion over any other. They all had their attuned elements, after all. Keratoll, the Learned, felt most comfortable in the rock and stone. The deep bones of the world. After all, the rock was wise and unmoving. The rock remembered all. Geneus, the Guiding Light, was light. He did not burn like fire but shone all the same. Ever the leader, never the voice of reason. Elleral, the Raging Heart, was a torrent of wind that never ceased. Violent and volatile, and never at rest. Elleral counselled battle wherever it could be taken. The strongest voice left who lobbied for such blatant mutual destruction. He had been even worse since the death of Jagran, the Swift. Arnae, the Wheel, preferred to exist within time. There were not many Djinn who felt most comfortable in that state, and Arnae was the last of them. Invisible to all the lesser creatures, they went without worship as anything more than abstract concepts. Predictable as ever, Arnae counselled patience. Wait, wait, wait. Always wait.
A fire bloomed in the void as Vainfold, the Eternal, made his appearance. A raging vortex of fire that burned with such foolish grandeur. Vainfold loved the fire. It made him feel important and powerful. But here, in the realm of the Djinn, they were all equal. Each voice counted, no more than any other, and each opinion would be heard before any decisions were made. Of course, hearing an opinion and listening to it were ever two different things.
"Were you waiting on me, brothers?" Vainfold asked, his voice a crackling hiss of flame.
"We are always waiting on you, Vainfold," Arnae said. He kept track of such things. Each moment in time memorised. He liked to say the future and the past were the same thing, fixed points along a fluid line that was more circle than line, except for when it wasn't. No one understood the inner workings of time like Arnae, and none of those left alive cared enough to try.
"I'm here now. But why?"
Aerolis changed his form, liquid bubbling up around him even as the rock fell away. He coalesced the form into a series of spherical bubbles of water, orbiting around each other. The others were mired to their forms, locked into the elements they felt most comfortable in, but Aerolis was different. Every form he tried felt right at first but constricting after a while. Some of the others mocked him for lack of consistency, but he felt his fluid nature to be a boon. He could see all sides of the conflict, just as he could take any form he wished.
"Something has changed," Aerolis said, his voice tinkling like a forest brook.
"Nothing has changed." Elleral rarely listened to others, instead he blustered over them and buffeted them into his way of thinking.
"Aerolis is right," Geneus seared the words into existence rather than spoke them. Whenever he said something, the others listened. He gave them no choice. "I could feel it after we lost Jagran, and then again after Ferinfal. We are losing our strength."
There followed a kind of silence that could only settle in the void of the Djinn realm. A true absence of sound. Even Vainfold's flames and Elleral's rushing winds muted.
Arnae broke the silence. "We were always so much stronger together. Linked as one, as hundreds, as one. Together we could move mountains, make them fly. Together we could will another world into existence, but each death shears us a little. With each death, power is lost."
"We've known this for a long time, brothers," Vainfold crackled. "The laws of Ovaeris link us to each other as they link us to our sisters. As we grow weaker, so do they. There has never been a better time to strike."
"Killing them kills us," Aerolis said. His argument was ever lost on the deaf ears of his more aggressive brothers.
"But they must be destroyed for their arrogance!" Elleral said. "Their mockery cannot be unpunished."
"Your punishment would destroy both our people." Arnae's voice sounded like the inevitability of time's slow advance.
"Then we imprison them," said Vainfold.
Old arguments were recycled. Failed plans brought up once more, as though their failure was from a lack of execution rather than a lack of knowledge. Too many of Aerolis' brothers were fools who couldn't see the truth in front of them. Too many could not understand that the road to victory lay not through violence, but through peace. The only way they could win was by not winning.
"A pocket realm could work," Arnae agreed though without his usual conviction. "But there is no way to convince our sisters to enter it."
"We should send them to Sevoari," Elleral said. "Let them wallow amidst the mockeries they created."
"We can no longer access Sevoari," Geneus' voice again seared itself into the void, and all stopped to listen. "This is the change Aerolis discovered. With the death of Jagran and Ferinfal, Sevoari has moved beyond our reach."
"Madness!" Vainfold crackled and then fell silent, his form wavering only slightly. It did not take long for him to see the truth. His flames intensified in panic. The others tried as well, with identical results. The Djinn were no longer strong enough to reach Sevoari. The world they had created, the world the Rand had corrupted, was beyond their grasp.
Even in the void of their realm, the Djinn became erratic. Fire crackled, earth rumbled, wind howled. It was all just a speck of noise and sound and time amidst a sea of nothing. Their realm was crafted that way for a reason.
"What do we do?" Elleral was, as always, the most vocal of his brothers.
"Are we stuck here?" Vainfold asked.
"We could open a portal," Arnae said.
"NO!" Geneus again seared the command into the void. "We cannot open portals, brothers. It would find us and send us all back. I will not be trapped again." Geneus turned his attention to each of the Djinn in turn. Even Vainfold bowed under the pressure of such scrutiny. The void was created so all the brothers would be equal, but by sheer force of will, Geneus would never be equal. Still, he was not nearly adaptable enough to survive the change that was coming.
"I have an option." Aerolis had considered his best time to strike, and it was now. Now, when his brothers were weakest. Now, when they were lost in their panic. Now, before even Geneus could convince them of another path. All attention turned to him and almost he faltered. Almost. "We can still enter our pocket realms." The void was a realm within the world, not without. Unlike Sevoari, it did not need reaching. It ever existed, close at hand. "And in our realms, we are safe from the laws of Ovaeris."