Ahti is an eager person. He readily accepts my instructions, even beyond what is normal for true undead. He is quick to move to loot the place around us and then to get to work sorting the stuff while I deal with the bodies of his fellow zombies.
"The people in this mansion have met with a terrible fate. And there are complex questions that we'll need to answer when all of this is over. But for now I am going to use my powers to help protect the people of Besou and avenge those who've fallen to the cold rage of something… eldritch." I proclaim as my men look at me with a range of expressions.
I met half of the men here a long time ago. They've known me for years, and they know that I am on their side. The other men are newer to me and I can feel the emotions in them with a glance. They see my power, respect it. And fear it. It's understandable really, what I've just casually done is something that takes humans in this country years to learn to do and that's if you're one of the very few humans who can do it at all.
Deep inside of me there is a dark wellspring of necromantic power. I've had little reason to use it in this jump, exempting the fate I inflict on bounty hunters who sought to profit from me, but at this moment I'm glad I have the ability to call on it. This strange and dark power gives me the ability to allow the people of this town to avenge themselves.
My companions watch as I repeat my usage of true undeath on the zombies we just slew. In seconds their complexions improve, their wounds heal, and their eyes open. The new undead get up and thank me for saving them, before introducing themselves, and I ask them to recount the night of their demise. This doesn't please them but they do as I command nonetheless. My undead will obey me without hesitation though I'm not a tyrant, exempting my origin's unfortunate name, so I allow them the freest of wills otherwise which in turn allows them to express discontent pretty readily.
"Shortly after a meeting of the local authorities a strange… floating head broke into the mansion. It was a large, pale skull with these writhing eye stalks attached to it." One of the true undead, a woman who worked at the town storehouse says. This is good news. If it were a regular beholder that'd be a much worse matchup for me, since regular beholders have anti-magic and so I'd have to count on somehow sneaking up on the monster and getting it in antimagic range before it got me in it. Though even if it did… It'd be in for an unpleasant surprise.
"It could fire off these beams. They were hard to see, though the air around them seemed to vibrate and wobble a little, but if you got hit by them bad stuff happened. I was able to make it downstairs but I couldn't escape. It hit me with a beam that made me stop being afraid and it called me to the kitchen." She explains before pointing in the direction of a room at the far end of the hallway after the foyer. It doesn't take me being a genius to piece together that she was hit by a charm ray and not able to resist it.
"I started to clean because it told me to do so. It was so persuasive sounding in the moment but right now I can remember what it said and all it did was yell at me. When I messed up it hit me with a beam that just killed me. The next thing I know is… Well, it's now." She says, looking up at me in confusion. She was probably hit by a death ray and then reanimated by the monster's negative energy cone. The beholders that are my foes are not the ones with perks so they shouldn't be able to do much of the weird stuff I can do.
I smile sadly and touch her shoulder. She is the first of several of the undead to speak, and the guards and I listen to their remarks impartially while occasionally asking questions about the monster. When they are all done we know that the monster is lurking in the manor's basement and is a fairly passive creature that only just arrived here less than a week ago. I consider what to do next as I turn and look at the soldiers.
"The monster that attacked was a death tyrant. It's a special kind of undead abomination. It has powerful eye rays though I can cancel them out." I explain, causing the soldiers to look at me curiously. I normally don't like revealing my secrets, but I'm not about to risk lives unnecessarily by holding back.
"Show me that spear." I ask one of the men. He's one of the guards I trained and his spear was made by me a long time ago. He raises it up and it glows faintly with powerful magic. I put enough of my power into it that it visibly glows with arcane radiance and it's only one of several such spears and swords here.
One of my hair-stalks tilts in its direction and I fire a beam of anti-magic at the weapon. The beam collides with the spear and the weapon immediately loses its radiance, dimming one of the few sources of light we have in the dark manor. In the chaos of the attack something happened that shut off the place's power, as Ankoros is a fully modern kingdom with a working, complex power grid and there are electrical devices in this building. None of them are on. The soldier gasps in surprise as their eyes adjust to the sudden gloom and I smile before I mentally reach out and undo the effects of the magic-canceling ability.
"I can cancel out the death tyrant's abilities. It's actually a really bad matchup for the monster. I can cancel out its magic and it can't cancel out mine. There are other monsters that could cancel out my magic, but a death tyrant is easy." I say, almost idly.
"Give me your spears. We're gonna go through and purge the mansion before we head downstairs." I tell the men. No one bothers trying to counter my words. I reach into my soul and retrieve my hunter's kit which spawns in front of me. It's packed with powerful items and I use telekinesis to coat the spears of my men in holy water. They take their weapons and nod at me.
I lead the men from behind and we begin to explore the mansion. Each room is filled with at least two or three undead and we methodically exterminate them. Each time we do I resurrect them and they join us. After a few rooms I begin to dole out weapons to the undead I've resurrected and have them help us. All the while I can feel my men beginning to have more questions for me, but nonetheless I soldier on.
In one room I am at the front of the group holding my spear and my wand. Zombies shamble towards me, their hateful, feral eyes filled with the orange glow of necromantic power. My friends, undead and living guards alike, ready themselves for combat. The instant that a zombie gets close enough for me to lash out with my weapon I skillfully unleash my spear, my instincts driven both by actual memories and augmented by perks.
I almost feel time slow around me as I precisely stab into the shambling corpse. Perks like "Hunter" and my own nature as an essence entity with an essence that gives me skill in weaponry guide my instincts as I recall time spent training guards both here and on Veiled Earth, though I tend not to fight using weapons. I cut down one zombie, my enhanced strength making it quite easy for me to do so. Dark perks inside of me stir as the zombie falls and another begins to draw near. I point my wand at the monster and fire a simple but powerful self-defense spell that produces a round projectile made of arcane energy that arcs out past my wand and pummels the undead monster. Most encounters in this part of the mansion are similar to this, though I do take more of a lead role here.
In time we clear out the entire first floor of the surprisingly palatial building. I can see that Kleoshebet wanted his daughter to live like a queen, which is pretty nice. It's a pain in the ass for us right now, but intent matters.
When we clear out the first floor we've assembled a group of fifteen true undead, my four soldiers, and myself. We move to the second story of the mansion and convene in a hallway that stretches the length of the manor.
I teach the true undead a few simple attack spells using my magic essence abilities. I refrain from teaching them anything with fire, as this would not be a pleasant place for fire to catch and spread, but they learn plenty of water based attack cantrips like my flying icicle trick.
From there we split up, with one group being composed of true undead led by me and the other group being led by the best trained warrior from Asten's group and consisting of a range of true undead and the guards. The men have instructions to not destroy the bodies of the monstrous undead the death tyrant arrayed against us and just to beat them until they deanimate. It's a macabre instruction but at this point the men understand what I mean and they agree to do as I have asked.
I grab the remains of a ceramic cup that was shattered in the chaos of the beholder's attack and cast a simple light spell on it as it's now late enough that the skies outside have darkened and taken the last bits of sunlight that were streaming into the building earlier. The men nod at me and take the shard from me before heading off in the opposite direction.
The next hour is filled with plenty of violence. I lead my new friends in battle, thankful for the fact that none of us feel pain. We deftly cut down zombies, beating them with simple weapons and improvised ones alike before I resurrect the fallen as true undead. During this time I experiment with my cones and rays and find something curious.
When we are in the master bedroom multiple zombies rise up in maids uniforms and launch themselves at us. In the heat of battle as zombies lunge at us and my friends toss objects at them I try and hit them with an antimagic cone emanating from my central eye. The field hits them but only freezes them for a split second before they begin to charge again. I hiss in annoyance and I hurl icicles at them in anger as I switch cones and turn my antimagic cone into a slowing cone. The icicles thud into them and one of them falls and deanimates even as my resurrected allies throw debris and small items at our foes. A few of the undead with real weapons, even as simple as an arrow or a cross, impale their foes with them. Curiously my true undead aren't affected by my fiat-backed weakness to holy things presumably due to their origin essentially resurrecting them. The zombies fall quickly enough and in moments I am beside them reanimating them as true undead.
Magic flows into my hands and seeps out of my fingertips into the bodies of the slain maids. I watch as their bodies begin to visibly recover from the abuses they've endured. The undead army I've assembled so far watches darkly as I raise more members. They, like their peers, greet me warmly and I ask them if they want to gain vengeance on the monster that destroyed them. My features darken when the maids tell me they are happy to have the chance to avenge themselves.
"Okay. In that case we have work to do." I state, before turning and bringing my altogether larger horde of the undead to the stairwell. I then proceed past the stairwell when I hear the sounds of violence in the distance. My minions and I enter a small guest bedroom in time for me to see Ahti launch himself at a zombie and proceed to punch it in the face. The portly man goes absolutely ham on the zombie, knocking it to the floor and distracting other zombies which gives the soldiers with him a chance to drive their weapons into the heads of the weakly animated undead. When the monsters all fall I restore them to their true selves by resurrecting them as true undead.
True undead are fascinating things. They are the ultimate forms of undead creatures in nearly all instances due to them being, at their core, essentially a second life of the reanimated creature rather than something like a zombie or skeleton coupled with them becoming undyingly loyal to me. They retain their abilities and powers even as undead, thanks to the powerful nature of my necromancy. Some forms of undeath grant new abilities to the reanimated figures but there are almost always costs that the undead pay in exchange for these new boons. In fairness as a true undead the costs are pretty extensive as well; at any point their animator, me, could command them to do anything from murder their friends and family to confess to something they didn't do and they would do it. A darker-hearted necromancer than me would be very scary with this power.
A small development, though not one that is unappreciated is grim. As a lich I can grow stronger by causing death and in this little adventure I've destroyed and deanimated dozens of undead monsters. Each foe I've destroyed, and even the ones my reanimated servants have destroyed, has contributed to my power a little. My reactor has grown bigger and my spells now hit a little harder than they did before today. Death is a grim power source, but I can't say I don't appreciate it in moments like this.
We spend another fifteen minutes clearing out the last of the undead sentries throughout the floor. After we finish I dispatch the undead I've reanimated to go through and grab the bodies we created. As I do the soldiers with us look at me and I can tell that there's something on their minds. I allow the awkward pause to happen for a bit before telling them to say what's on their minds, seeing as we've fought together, killed together, and risked life and limb for each other. Rua, one of the locals, is the one to speak.
"Lalo your abilities are incredibly strange." Rua tells me, and I can hear concern in his voice.
"Are you a necromancer? You're either a necromancer or a miracle-worker, which is rarer and weirder." Rua asks, and I laugh softly. I nod at him and decide to lay my cards, relative to this situation, on the table.
"I am a necromancer. A greater one. My reanimation abilities are… considerable." I explain, and the guards flash me clever smiles.
"That is interesting. When this day is over it would be good for you to discuss this with both the princess and the people you've reanimated." One of the other guards explains. I smile as we hear the closest undead dragging bodies over to us.
"What are your plans for when this conflict is over? Will you deanimate those you've resurrected?" Rua asks as I begin to reanimate the fallen.
"I will ask them what they wish, and consult the records as far as legal stuff goes. Though I think everyone here, for now, wants to at least deal with the… murderous dickhead who raided the mansion." I reply, and no one, living or undead tries to counter that point.
I add to the curious force I have built up with more of the reanimated living dead I resurrect. In all our force is about 40 people before we head downstairs and then down into the pitch-black basement. As we descend the stairwell a curious sound greets us.
The sound of metal hitting rock resounds throughout an enormous space so vast that I can't see the end of it. My enhanced senses allow me to see in the dark without issue and I study the gigantic chamber.
"Is this a… ritual chamber?" I ask one of the maids who once worked here behind us. The space is enormous and I can see small indents on the floor that create curious shapes. Additionally the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up as I take in the ambient energy of the space.
"Yep! Governor Cleopatrus is a wizard. He is now employed by the pharaoh directly. He had this chamber commissioned a few years ago. He didn't use it very often though." She states. In the distance the sound of metal on rock grows louder as we make our way into the chamber.
We reach a deep enough portion of the underground… complex, because it's way too vast to be considered a single room, that I can see a single floating creature at the far end of my sight line. The pale skull stands out in the darkness of the chamber and it is paying attention to the stone wall in front of it. Telekinetically controlled pickaxes smack the wall in front of the monster, and my allies continue their forward march. As we draw closer to the monster I order my friends and minions to ready themselves which we all do.
The monster turns as we draw near and lets out an inarticulate roar of displeasure. I move forward and turn on my conal ability, channeling it to fire off a cone of antimagic. I am surprised when no rays fizzle out, but only for half a second. I hear the faint sounds of movement from nearby and I realize that the space far ahead of us branches out into corridors that our current angle doesn't allow us to see right as two other beholders enter the space we can see. They roar and begin to fly towards us.
"Master, look out! We didn't see those ones when the monster attacked." One of the undead, also able to see in the dark, shouts. These two beholders are both much smaller than the death tyrant and are visibly alive. They begin to fire rays at us and I order the undead to get behind the living soldiers even as the rays streak through the darkness before fizzling out when they hit my cone.
"Gah! Magic." One of the smaller beholders, or rather a beholder's clone, hisses.
"No, stupid. Antimagic." The other one shouts, causing them to both grunt in anger. They both open their eyes and lock onto me, while I unveil my eyestalks, turning my face into an exact replica of my beholder head in irritation. This is, annoyingly, a bad matchup for me. But it's not so bad that I'm helpless against it.
I begin to fire rays out of my fingertips, aiming one hand at the clones; rare members of a thing known as a "Beholder Hive-Mind". The two clones are not exact matches for each other so they must be the clones of different, both actually, of the hive-mind beholder foes I have somewhere in the world. I fire assorted rays out of my fingertips, cognizant of the fact that the beholders are immune to many different status conditions so I fire off my offensive rays.
Beholders have three different types of direct damage dealing rays: enervation rays (which are the ultimate damage dealing rays because they hurt you if they hit, no ifs ands or buts), disintegration rays (which are the best for destroying objects and terraforming places), and death rays (which deal the most damage and kill you outright if they deal enough harm to send you into a critical state; below 0 HP). The other rays a beholder has are useful but are not damage-dealing, inflicting status conditions or in the case of the telekinetic ray seizing control of someone or something. My rays fly through my antimagic cone, weakened by it but not destroyed by it thanks to my powerful magic essence perks. I also mix it with something sneaky; a pair of antimagic rays that would disrupt someone's ability to do magic if they hit and are not resisted. Each of the fingers on my hands and half of the rays from my eyestalks streaks through the air and when they hit the cone in front of the beholders I feel them weaken but they still streak through the air and smash into the beholders shocking them.
The beholders are sturdy and resist some of the rays, notably one of them shrugs off all of the antimagic I fire at it, but each of them seems to invisibly fail some of the saves and the beholder that doesn't resist the antimagic ray's cone shuts off right before it gets nailed by two enervation rays. It gets sent spinning back so far it smashes the wall behind it even as the damage wracks its impossible form. The other beholder seems to not take so much damage against the rays due to the fact that it kept its antimagic cone active and shuts its eye for half a second before firing off a flurry of rays, all of which immediately fizzle out as soon as they touch the area about forty feet ahead of me. My soldiers charge forward and this draws the wrath of the death tyrant.
"Living creatures!" It roars in explosive fury before trying to fire rays at us. The sinister beams of eldritch power streak through the air and we can actually hear them, but they also fizzle out when they touch the area my vision protects us in. Antimagic is a hell of a thing.
"When this fight is over… You'll all join my faction." I say as I point at the death tyrant and fire off multiple death rays. The beholders with the undead abomination try to shield it from my rays but even both of their antimagic cones don't stop my streaking magic, and the creature is invisibly nailed.
Death tyrants aren't immune or even resistant to necromantic energy. I sense the creature's struggle as it seems to succeed on some of the saves, but as it does I watch it lose some of its energy and not in a "Oh its tired" sense but on a deeper, more curious level. When it opens its eyes after getting hammered something about it seems slower. I return my attention to the other beholders and spread out my next barrage of rays which results in almost two dozen streaks of strange light rocketing out of me at the same time. This time the barrage kills one of the clones, the one who can still do magic, as I focus more rays on it. The creature is knocked out of the air and crashes hard onto the floor as it is nailed by fifteen death rays.
"Now's the time! Charge!" I roar, causing my friends to dash forward. The death tyrant roars in inarticulate fury as we dart towards the enemies.
There are creatures I'd be a bad matchup against, and the beholder clones are annoying but they aren't able to overcome my cheat abilities. An army of beholders would be able to do something against me, or at least hold me back, but with my power to overclock my magic and my magic's resistance to antimagic I'm just a bad matchup against my kin. This is very clearly a case of specific OCP; out-of-context perks transforming someone into a menace.
When my undead minions reach the beholder clone they jump at it. It tries to fly out of the way but I focus a barrage of telekinetic rays on the beast and force it to stay low to the ground. My undead minions get the first part of their revenge by tearing the eyestalks off of the monster, while my living allies turn their spears on the death tyrant. They lob them at the monster and it screeches, emitting the loudest sound I've ever heard before firing telekinetic rays at the weapons. The rays fizzle out when I turn my head in the direction of the death tyrant. The spears do miss in the dark but it's only because of the guards being humans and lacking the ability to pierce the gloom visually.
The remaining undead charge at their killer and enter the range of my antimagic cone. As soon as they enter the range of my cone I feel my connection to them dissipate and they fall to the floor, still animate but now free of control. This is a curious thing and when the first of them to recover gets up she glares at the death tyrant and moves forward, her anger and reason now fully her own. The monster looks scared as the maid runs at it, and turns to move but a spear flies out from behind the maid and nails an eyestalk. The maid leaps at the head and begins to beat on it. Multiple other people proceed to join her and they physically beat the monster to death, or at least deanimation, over the course of a few minutes.
Only Ahti is next to me and he smiles as he admires his handiwork. He is the figure who lobbed the spear that caught the death tyrant's eyestalk. In minutes the death tyrant and the clone are both dead. As they perish I shut off my cone and I cast light spells on the chamber before telekinetically pulling the corpses to me and reanimating them. The floating monsters protectively hover over me, and I feel less bad about adding them to my slowly increasing undead army given what they did than I do about retaining control of the mansion's staff and the experts who were here when the eldritch monster attacked.
I ask Rua to go and get the princess while I test what my antimagic cone does on true undead. In the minutes between Rua departing and Arsinoe and the guard returning I am delighted to discover that my antimagic cone really can sever the bond between a true undead and myself, allowing me to use true undeath on people without robbing them of their free will. When Arsinoe enters the lit ritual chamber she darts forward and hugs me.
"Lalo! You're a necromancer?! What else haven't you told me?" She asks, and I can hear annoyance in her tone but I can also see relief in her eyes that we are safe. She looks out at the staff of the estate, visually indistinguishable from the living, and the powerful monsters I have now turned into my own minions and sighs before kissing my cheek.
"I'll tell you everything. But let's do that privately." I reply, before turning and entering a state of sleeping so I can dream up a legal pad and pencil. When I'm done I ask the undead to tell me what they wished done with their bodies when they died and what they wish for now, before assuring the living members of our small army that these wishes will be double-checked against legal records and legal scholars will be privately consulted before we make binding decisions.
In minutes the staff have told me what they wish, and I am not shocked to find that most everyone prefers this state of being rather than being a simple undead or even being permitted to pass through to the afterlife. Arsinoe and I give my notes to the guards and we retreat to our bedroom. I adopt my true form, in this jump, and begin to clean the room as I talk to Arsinoe.
"I have a range of powers that are impressive in their versatility. In a one-on-one fight I can do a lot to most foes." I tell her as she badgers me about my powers. I explain what my rays can do, not leaving out a single one this time, and I tell her about both antimagic and my negative energy powers, which completely surprise her.
"Antimagic? That's… that's a doozy." She replies when I explain these powers to her in detail. She's right, even the fact that my antimagic isn't so incredibly powerful that it just shuts off undead, the ability to make them lose their connection to their animator or controller is extremely powerful and in some ways stronger than simply turning them off. I can grant undead free will, though this doesn't help unintelligent undead like normal zombies, and that ability in the right settings can make me an unbelievable nightmare. If I were to go to Azeroth with this and fight the greater members of the Scourge I'd be able to turn them against the Lich King.
"I am also a true necromancer. The sort that can resurrect whole towns with the spell I used to bring back the staff of the estate. It doesn't have a limit and as I use it… I get stronger." I confess, telling her things even Rosalind didn't know. This is true, but it's true in a curiously deceptive sort of way.
My connection to magic is a fundamental part of me. I don't just get stronger with True Undeath and my destructive magic, I get stronger with all magic. Even spells like my flying icicle spell or my version of healing word get stronger when I use them, and that's before I overclock them.
In the hours that follow Arsinoe learns everything about my actual powers, including "Hunter" and I tell her about my power with wishmagic but I do keep it mysterious and say it's straining. In fairness to me wishmagic is the most costly of my normal magic, but this does make Arsinoe the only person in this world to know essentially everything I can do.
This news excites her, and I feel her take to it with more excitement but less scholarly curiosity than Rosalind did, which I suppose reflects the differences in their personalities. Rosalind is ambitious but scholarly and has a different relationship with power than Arsinoe does, as Arsinoe's power is fundamentally that of relationships and social tiers while Rosalind is personally powerful and acquired her power through intellect rather than having it innately like Arsinoe does.
We take advantage of our sleepless natures, or my ability to seem like I'm not sleeping, and we begin to plan for the future of Tapte, planning first to address the fact that Tapte is so far from everywhere else. While there are ways to address this that are more complex than our initial plans Arsinoe is the one to come up with the first move we make: a blend of her social acumen and my own ability to learn magic and simplify it to achieve a notable end; the creation of a teleportation port that links Tapte and the rest of Ankoros.
In the days that follow we send out messages to Nefros, including reports of the heroism we displayed, and we request the deployment of an expert crafter-sorcerer to the province. In a private report Arsinoe explains the plan to her father, and in the first few days after the defeat of Xanthogos, which is the name of the death tyrant, the very same necromancer I once met in the palace of Nefros arrives and is prepared to help us do battle against an unknown foe. I get to introduce the goth necromancer, a man in his early thirties named Tom, to Xanthogos and explain that in practice I've taken over the role of necromancer for the province but that Tom is welcome to stay here and help if he wishes.
Xanthogos reveals that he was bullied by the beholder hiveminds and they wanted to test the strength of various parts of the world. As powerful as death tyrants are against antimagic and the action economy a lot of their power is reduced to surprisingly little. This bad matchup isn't dissimilar to the bad matchup I represented even against the lot of the beholders.
While Arsinoe and I wait to hear back from Kleoshebet we get to work studying the minutiae of the province and comparing its actual situation to the reports we've received. We learn that while there's basic stuff like food and water in enough of a supply there's little effort to modernize the province and it lags behind the rest of the country in areas like connectivity and spread of information. In this time I deploy minions of my own and have them search the province, double-checking census notes and confirming records, while occasionally dealing with bounty hunters and using them as a chance to show Arsinoe my power to fully resurrect someone as an undead being.
When a full team of crafters arrives from the capital armed with knowledge I readily greet them and explain to them my plans. It doesn't take them a long time to see the wisdom in what they initially view as a theoretical plan more than a practical one, but when I dream up the resources they need to get to work and I teach them dwarven sorcery in exchange for them keeping my abilities a secret they quickly get onboard. Between my charisma, my ability to gain loyalty by teaching people things, and my enhanced teaching abilities outright, the crafters quickly become incredibly loyal to me while also teaching me the sympathetic space-bending magic of the people of Ankoros after seeing just one person do it himself.
A crafter teaches me the art of linking sarcophagi while also telling me that Kleoshebet has already had the first of the sarcophagi in Nefros made. Arsinoe gets to see me learn magic in real-time as I immediately take to the powerful space-bending sorcery of the land of the festive dead and we successfully link the capital city and the shockingly far province, creating the first instant linking of the two areas in modern history as one of the things that makes this magic so hard to use is its cost. Which… doesn't matter to me thanks to my reactor.
The first trip we take to Nefros is one where we get to see an old friend: Rachel herself has arrived in the capital and greets us warmly when we appear in the palace. She is quickly brought to Tapte and onboarded to help us transform Tapte into a glittering, modern province while also learning most, though not all, I can do.
It is late one evening weeks after we arrived and began the vital, early work of modernizing the province when Arsinoe asks me if I want to try and use wishmagic. I tell her that I'm ready, eager to see what she has in mind and what her desire energy feels like. I take on a fully human form as I decide to teach her about the wishmagic of the earthly sex genies, mostly as a way to make this more fun for myself, essentially planning to turn her into a sha'iir and for me to, for all intents and purposes cosplay as a genie. She eyes me curiously as I undress, though I note the smile on her lips when she studies me, and I can sense her growing playfully excited for what is to come.
I think about the curious secrets I discovered while Rosalind had me granting wishes. Namely the fact that my own brand of wishmagic lacks some of the rules that govern earthly genies since my magic isn't tied to the wish brokering authority like theirs was, essentially making me closer to a marid than a regular genie. One of my biggest secrets is that I don't actually have a limited number of wishes I can grant, which is a significant departure from how most earthly genies work according to Zumurrud.