69. 1001 Nights

{Ritsu}

Ritsu felt helpless. He had tried to tell Naya what was going on – the plan that he, Uriel, and Zayn had come up with should Uriel lose control, but she wasn't buying it. Any of it.

In fact, Naya refused to believe that the disembodied death lord was Ritsu at all.

"Mistress," Ritsu pleaded, "you're in shock." He tried to get closer to her.

Tiny blue fiery tongues licked the air from under Naya's fingernails.

"Stay back! I know a con artist when I see one. And this desert is littered with them." Then she turned her back and ran, calling out Ritsu's name in the process.

If Ritsu had a jaw, he would have used it to grind his teeth. For now, all he could do was hang back and follow Naya. He had no idea if the rest of his body would catch up to his floating mask for a face. He sensed that the marid in the temple had died, but he hadn't been close enough to absorb its death aura and convert it into energy.

Ritsu would have to rely on what the desert had to offer. As he followed Naya, he probed his invisible antenna in all directions. Most of the life was not in the skies or on land, but underground. There were entire communities of insects, armored lizards and snakes, and even some small mammals.

After about an hour, Naya has stopped calling out Ritsu's name. During her trek, she had wandered away from the corpse city of Nastarajan, which Ritsu was thankful for. From the looks of it, she seemed to be trying to find a way back to the trails that they had taken while on their travels with Cyndr's caravan.

Ritsu knew that the chances of running into friendly, accommodating djinn like Cyndr and her crew were slim to none. He made sure to follow Naya closely, but not too close as to provoke her into wasting her inner fire on him. She needed that as energy, especially if they were going to go a few days without food. So Ritsu hung back and steadily grew his strength by feeding on any dying critters under the layers of sand. Even if Naya didn't want his help, he had to protect her.

+++

{Naya}

The floating mask that claimed to be Ritsu was following me. At first, this freaked me out to the point where I could barely sleep when night came. Part of me was saying that I should call up my fire and burn him until he was nothing but a dune of melted plastic. But the other half of me was like, Think about this, Naya. Do you really want to waste what fuel you have on an unknown djinni? You don't know what the hell that thing is or what it's capable of. The smart thing to do is just stay on your guard in case he tries anything, but otherwise, ignore him.

I wondered how long my sense of reason would last before I completely lost it.

That first night without Uri was brutal. This was also the first night that I didn't spend in Cyndr's magical wagon, so I had forgotten how unbearably cold it got when the sun went down. With no caves around to protect me from the elements, I had to kneel in the sand and wrap my arms around my abdomen. I tried to talk to my fire, asking her for warmth before pulling my hood over my head and lying down.

{Where is he? Where is he?}

When I reached for Aqua, I was blasted with waves of confusion and panic. I tried to steady her and speak to her in a calm, measured voice, as if talking to a child.

He's gone, Aqua, but we're going to get him back.

It was like she hadn't even heard me. Aqua kept dashing back and forth, asking where he was. It was making me upset. But I had to stay calm.

That first night I could barely sleep. With Aqua's moaning and that mask thing hovering just a few yards away, I couldn't get myself to go unconscious for more than a few minutes at a time. When the sun rose, I was thankful for its warmth and that I no longer had to force myself to sleep.

After I unraveled my limbs and propped myself onto my elbows, I peered around in the already scorching morning haze to see if that floating mask was still following me.

Shit.

There it was, hovering in the same spot as yesterday.

Only this time, it had a torso.

I sat up straight and sucked my breath in at the sight of a pale neck attached to the mask, along with muscular arms and a bare chest. At the waist, the body faded into ghostly wisps. The skin was nearly colorless, so much so that I could see the blue veins underneath the surface, even from a distance.

"What the hell is that thing?" I whispered.

From within, Aqua came to life. She flared and it took me off guard. I bent over and vomited in the sand.

Jesus, Aqua. That hurts!

Like the night before, she was frantic and disoriented. She kept demanding to know where Uri's fire had gone. The idea of her carrying on like this for the next sixteen hours made my eyes sting. I didn't know how much more of this I could take.

"Mistress, please."

I turned around. The masked half-man was just a few feet away.

"Let me help you."

Without even thinking twice, I leapt to my feet and spread my fingers out before me. Four deadly whips of concentrated fire lashed out.

"You get the fuck away from me!"

I didn't mean to make contact with the strange djinn, only to scare it. Still, Aqua bucked at the amount of energy I was trying to draw out of her. She didn't want to fight. My little marid just wanted to curl up and burn through her grief, using my body as wax.

"Ah!" I fell back before I could cause any damage. I retched. This time I didn't throw anything up because there was no more food left in me.

I tried to take deep, steady breaths. "What the hell is happening to me?"

The masked djinni floated closer to me. "Your fire. It can no longer sense the bond between you and Uriel's fire. This often causes it to behave irrationally and damage the vessel that carries it."

I wanted to throw up again. "How would you know?"

The fox mask tilted its head. "Because I'm your monkey."

"The hell you are."

Aqua thrashed again.

{Where is he?}

That was all my body could take in that moment. I felt my eyes roll back as I tipped face first towards the earth.