This is not a Story about Greed

by Edd

Six days ago I rubbed the lamp Jenna brought back from the East. I knew what I was doing. She would tell me at night of the experiments they were running on it and the other munitions left over from the Mana Wars.

Five days ago the Djinn brought me every magical lamp he could find. A few, he says, are hidden even from his senses. Each contained one of his brothers or sisters. He was eager to serve once I explained my goal to him. His laugh was a subsonic rumble.

Four days ago my first aide and two others finished sculpting the Moon into Jenna’s headstone. To say there is panic would be an understatement. I am being sought.

Three days ago my agents fought a new magical war with the world’s remaining mages and magical beings. Battles raged across the globe from the stroke of one midnight to the stroke of the next.

Two days ago we counted our dead. A Djinn can grieve as powerfully as any man or woman.

Yesterday my remaining survivors caused the seas to rise. They melted the glaciers and blew up a rain that will last the weeks it will take to drown a world.

Today I stand on the now-airless Moon in a clever suit of Djinn-design. I look up at a world shrouded in white, clouded from pole to pole.

The surface of the Moon rumbles faintly through my suit’s boots. It is, I imagine, the rumble of laughter. Tomorrows there will be, but tomorrows without Atlantis.