71: Fight in the Throneroom

Jahi and his staff lunged between his wife and this fiery threat, staff upheld, and shouted out loud, the beak of the Horus head already stained with his blood, blood pouring down his arms.  The Blood circle closed around both of them, hands upraised, their ushera, in all their forms, attacking what had once been Kyan.

The form of the man floated on spirals of fire drifting out deadly fingers probing for those of the court fleeing the hall, most protected by their ushera.  The bennu flew above struggling to absorb the heat and keep their heart friends safe from the killing fires of what was now, obviously, a Djinn.  Naida saw a man and a woman snatch up their children and run, wigs beginning to burn, their linens melting as they ran, hunched over their babies.

Sybaris boiled out of the lamp and threw her coils around the flaming man, once, twice, three rounds and screamed as he took flaming hands and grabbed her by her shoulders.  Her face tore open and her fangs dropped and darkness descended into the room trying to muffle the Djinn’s light and as he raised her human half over his head she lunged and bit down over his head and shoulders.

“Mama!”

Asteri’s wings opened with a thunderclap as he stood before the flaming spectacle.  Naida ran toward what was left of the throne and –her father?—and –her mother?—The tall, gloriously dressed woman with thousands of beads down to her feet, skin like chocolate, steely eyed, raised both hands as her husband raised his staff.  “FIQUITUK! YOU ARE NOT FREE!  WHICH OF YOUR LORDS WILL YOU THEN DISOBEY?!”

Sybaris’s darkness snapped tighter around the Djinn and she pulled back to free his head and let him speak.

“They can’t beat him,” Kurama whispered in Naida’s ear as she stopped by Asteri’s hoof.  Re, or Apollo could beat him.”

She shook so hard that she couldn’t stand, sank to the floor that was hot enough to almost burn her hand.  She set the lamp down so she could lean on both hands.  Tears ran down her face from her watering eyes.  Even with all of Syb’s darkness the Djinn was too bright.  Then she realized.  The lamp.

“I AM.  THE NAME YOU KNOW ME BY IS NO LONGER THE NAME TO RULE ME BY.  I AM FRE----“

“--SYBARIS!” Naida screamed as loud as she could to be heard over the roar of the nearly free Djinn.  “THE LAMP!”  and with all her strength threw it at the Djinn’s head.

Syb saw it coming, jerked her head back and as the Djinn roared that he was free, his fires began to be sucked into the lamp.  “NO! I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED.  I WILL BURN THIS WORLD CLEAN OF THESE CELLED CREATURES FULL OF WATER AND DIRT. NO! NO!”

Naida got to her feet and found that the tall woman was next to her, one hand on Asteri’s shoulders.  “PUSH!” Kurama yelled and actually grabbed a coil of Djinn’s fire in her mouth and hurled it toward where the lamp spun in place right over its head.

Everyone’s hands and paws came up, flat palms toward the Djinn.  Flat palms or wings or paws or hooves.  Everyone pushed.  The Djinn was fighting the lamp, struggling to hang onto the edges of the door but more and more of its flame was being sucking into the lamp itself.  Sybaris pulled her coils in tighter and tighter around the creature and still bellowing ‘no’ and ‘I will burn you’, the Djinn was finally compressed to a pin-prick the size of one of Naida’s hair beads, too bright to look at, and then that was dragged into the lamp.

Sybaris slammed it shut and wrapped three times three chains made of darkness and the lamp bulged, and danced on the damaged tiles but did not break.  Then it was still. Silence.