A Simple Question

"I do not know, Master," replied Astra, "suffice to say, while you could make a wish and simply *know*, you could also ask the necromancer himself, rather than waste your wish." In spite of her calm words, Astra seemed desperate for the remaining wishes to be preserved. Fred could not blame her. He would choose his words carefully from now on. She was only two careless phrases away from being whisked into eternal servitude as djinn of the lamp.

Fred turned and found Splitgrave watching them amiably. His face was rendered utterly unreadable by its lack of tissues. His remaining eye glinting in the firelight and Fred found the corpse's gaze singularly unsettling, to say the least.

"Necromancer..." Fred cleared his throat, and the lich leaned forward attentively. Fred stifled an unreasoning urge to pluck the shrivelled eye from its socket, swallowed and pressed on. "I have learned you were disguised earlier. I would know why."

Splitgrave's brilliant, perfect eye rolled in its lidless socket and its mate jiggled grotesquely as he shook his stitched, cadaverous skull. "Simple, Sir Frederigo D'Honaire..."

1. "To lure you here. I require your services, as you do mine. An... eye for an eye, as it were."
2. "To lure you here. To be perfectly blunt, I need your body, D'Honaire... literally."
3. "To lure you here. I have lived an awfully long time. I wish to leave a legacy. I chose you, as the most convenient person available, as my heir."
4. "Coincidence. Merely polishing up on my mystic illusions."

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