"Hello, good sir. Can I ask for your help?"

Robert, a peasant of his condition, turned to see who had just addressed him thus. He was an elderly man, dressed in an ample black robe embroidered with silver stars. What struck him about the arrival was the foul odor that seemed to emanate from him, a smell of marsh and putrefaction.

"Sir, please go away, you smell horrendously. Are you hiding a corpse in there?"

"I happen not to be at the moment, but I'm afraid the reason you smell this is that you are, in fact, dead, and that I'm a necromancer."

"I am?"

"Indeed. You're a ghost, and a very powerful one at that."

"Oh, and... Are you going to enslave me, or something of the sort? Cast Engledorf's Gruesome Ghost Enslavement on me?"

"My, my, of course not. I was merely going to ask for directions. Have you by any chance seen an old, wizened man smelling like I do?”

“Uh ...”

“Do not worry, I cannot ask you to remember everyone. But if you wish to accompany me, I will make conversation to pass the time while I find this man.”

“Well, I do not remember what I was supposed to do, so why not. But can you do something about the smell?”

__________________

The villagers of Sainte-Colombe had been caught by surprise by the arrival of Zamioculcas at dawn. Without warning, a troop of monstrous undead had presented itself at the entrance of the village; Father Henri, who had come to present the surrender of the inhabitants, had been the first target of the terrifying powers of the dark magician; in a few moments, his body was nothing more than an empty husk animated by an enslaved soul.

Zamioculcas savored the sensation of the soul of his victim sinking slowly into his stomach and threw his horde to the village. He expected to have at least fifty prisoners in this hamlet of two hundred and eight souls and hoped for a hundred casualties among the inhabitants. With his hands raised, he chanted the incantations of his spells, and shot down the walls of the houses with fireballs and waves of death while his zombies and skeletons dragged their victims in line outside the small town.

"Demon, answer my call," mumbled the old man, stroking his long beard. How many years do you think I will be able to get from the souls of these unfortunate people? "Immediately, from the long sleeves of the wizard appeared a small creature holding an oversized book in its arms. Adjusting an eyeglass on his scaly, red face, the miniature devil looked through his grimoire with astonishing quickness.

"By hell," he said after a few seconds, "I'll be able to answer you once you've given me three of their lives."

"Three? Usually, devouring the souls of three humans offers me almost half a century of life! The information cannot be worth that much!"

"Three lives, my lord. Take it or leave it."

With a scowl, Zamioculcas twisted his beard again, then pulled a ragged wand from his cloak. "Well, I accept, but this is truly the last time I'm being scammed in such a way!"