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For a moment, the battlefield was silent. It was too early for the carrion birds to come, the blood freshly spilled, the ringing echoes of steel on steel still fading away through the canyons.

"I'm afraid you've wasted your wish, human," I said. "Djinn don't have the power to compel mortals. All I can grant you is strength or riches, but those won't save you from succumbing to your wounds."

The young man smiled weakly, and I had to lean in close to hear his next words, softer than the wild winds that howled through the steppes.

"Well, you're someone, aren't you?"

His words took my breath away. It had been many years since someone had treated me as more than a slave bound to their bidding, and many more since the day I had sold my soul for power. But the man was right. I was someone, even if I was beyond redemption, even if the gods no longer listened to my pleas.

"I could end it now, if you like," I offered. "The pain. The suffering. You would pass quickly, and leave this mortal realm."

His eyes fluttered open. "No," he gasped. "No, I want to stay. Every moment on this earth is a gift, and I will hold on to it for as long as I can. Can't you see the sky? It's beautiful."

Even surrounded by the horrors of war, he still found beauty in the world. No doubt an artist, drafted to fight another man's battles.

I hadn't cared much for beauty, when I'd lived. I'd only cared about power. The world had been wasted on me.

As I listened to the spaces between each breath grow longer and longer, I told him stories. I spoke to him of the foolish young man that I had been, wandering the Ashari desert while seeking glory, seeking fame, seeking power. I told him of the bargain, of the debt, of the chains that now bound me to servitude. I told him secrets that no mortal man had never known, stories that no mortal man had ever cared to ask me. And when the last rays of the dying sun illuminated the battlefield, the young man took his last breath.

With my task complete, the chains that bound me to the mortal plane vanished. There was nothing left holding me here, and I closed my eyes as the Nameless Realms swallowed me once more.

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/r/theBasiliskWrites

That was great! I love Djinn stories!

thank you! thanks for your amazing prompt, it hit me hard. there's a program called no one dies alone at a hospital that i used to work at, really makes you think about humanity and mortality