The Golden Arrow [ONC 2022]

Epilogue

"I can't ever thank you enough," Karim said to the lean dark-haired young man a few feet away.  At his side was a beautiful woman, tall and lithe, with warm brown skin that was close to the same shade as Karim's, and cerulean blue eyes. 

They stood at the edge of a small pond on the palace grounds.  The land was raised high enough that Karim had a wondrous view of the city below. Beautiful with expansive dunes of sand spanning out in all directions.  The city itself was vibrant with life and even now, in the Sultan's Palace high above the people who dwelled below, Karim felt a rush of affection.

Fate had put him here in Agrabah.  He only knew it was fate because nine hundred years ago, Agrabah had held a different name.  Ardta.  This had been the city that Karim and Jafar had been raised in before the two brothers had picked their way to a temple on the other side of the empire where everything had changed. 

            "You helped get me everything I ever wanted," the man, Aladdin, said.  He grinned, white teeth flashing and glanced at his new wife, Jasmine.  "Seems only right that I returned the favour."

            "I still can't believe you did it.  And the lamp is...safe?"

Jasmine nodded, ebony hair bouncing with the movement. "We've hidden it in the Cave of Wonders once more. Our mages have weaved protection spells around it and re-awoken the guardian. If anyone tries to get anywhere near the cave, we'll know."

            "Good," Karim said with relief even as he felt a hint conflicted. 

            His brother – now trapped inside the lamp that had held Karim for over nine hundred years.  Perhaps one day he'd find a way to set Jafar free but his brother needed the opportunity to return to himself first.  The events of the last few weeks had proven that well enough.

            Karim shuddered as he recalled the glint in his brother's eyes when he'd finally become the master of the lamp after besting Aladdin for it.  He'd had no choice but to grant Jafar three wishes. Three wishes that could change the world. 

            He knew why Jafar had wanted to change the past.  Understood it.  A part of him even...appreciated the sentiment.  But he could not condone what his brother had done to get there.  All of the kingdoms he'd toppled and the people he'd killed in search of the power a genie could bring him.  Those losses pained Karim even if they were not his burden to bear.  He'd shoulder them anyway if only so that someone did.

            Then the impossible happened, so fast that Karim still wasn't sure exactly how it had occurred.  Karim had been ready to cast his brother's first wish when Aladdin had stolen that cobra-headed staff and broken it.  The ruby eyes had smashed on the ground, scattering in all directions as the light within them winked out.

            And some lost and long-forgotten piece of Jafar had returned.  He was not the person he'd been before they'd first stepped into the temple but...Something human had re-entered Jafar's face with the destruction of the staff.  As if whatever hold the magic had on him had loosened its leash enough to let the man shine through.

            He'd turned his torture-filled dark eyes on Karim, magic swirling on his hands and in the air around them like a hurricane, and had simply said, "I'm sorry," before casting his first and only wish.

            The wish that caused the curse to relinquish its hold on Karim and be transferred in its entirety unto Jafar.  A wish that had set Karim free after nearly a millennia as a slave.

            Though the scream Jafar had made as he'd descended into the lamp still stuck with Karim a week later.  He'd fallen asleep each night, fingers tracing the pale bands of skin on his wrists where those shackles had been for centuries, wondering if he was wrong for leaving his brother trapped.  Karim had used his lingering magic to keep the lamp from disappearing to another distant realm.  Hadn't wanted to risk anyone else finding his brother until he decided what, if anything, he was going to do with him.