Fictoid: non-resurrections guaranteed or double your money back
Speak, wizard.
All hail your majesty!
May the gods grant you
a long and fruitful life --
Don’t waste my time, wizard.
You requested this audience.
What do you want?
It’s not what I want, your highness,
but what I can do for you.
Meaning?
Your late father.
I specialize in resurrections.
Do I look like a fool, wizard?
Oh, no, your majesty!
Then why would I pay to have my father resurrected?
Er…you misunderstand my motives, your majesty.
I have not come to ask for a reward if I resurrect your father.
Rather…I’m offering you my pledge not to resurrect him.
Are you insane?
The possibility has indeed been broached, sire.
Why would I pay a charlatan like you
to perform bogus rituals over my father?
To answer the second part first, you would not -- as you say --
be paying me to perform certain rituals. Rather, you would be
paying me not to perform them. And to answer the first part:
I am no charlatan.
I could have you killed for your insolence!
You could…but you won’t, your majesty.
Look, it is a very straightforward matter.
Your father, despite his age, was a very vigorous man,
and extremely popular with the peasants and landed gentry.
His sudden sickening and death are…well, let us say “puzzling”?
Are you implying --
That you had something to do with it, your majesty?
Heavens, no! As your own father would attest…
if I brought him back to life.
You keep making that claim without proof.
What proof do I need, your majesty? Either I can or I can’t.
If I can -- and if I do -- then your father may have
an interesting tale to tell; resurrected corpses often do.
Hopefully the experience of dying would not cloud his memory,
lead him to draw false conclusions.
I could have you killed in an instant.
Without a doubt, your majesty. But then you would have to
wonder if I alone possess this technique, if I alone
am capable of reviving the dead, or if any of my fellow wizards
could do so. Imagine how awkward that would be:
Two resurrected corpses casting aspersions on
your integrity, your honesty, your loyalty, your filial duty.
You lie.
Perhaps. But one way or another
it will cost you to find out.
You can’t.
I only have to do it once.
You’re a faker.
Is that your final say on
the matter, your majesty…?
…what do you want…
I’ll send a bill in the morning.
(c) Buzz Dixon
(updated August 8, 2018)
