The Adventure of the Glass Dragon

Daszel crushed the last nut-sized concentration of magic between his fingers. Removing the alarms had been arduous and unrelated to his safety, for the mage who owned the place would have been worse off for acknowledging the intruder. The client wanted secrecy though, and Daszel the Stymph's clients got what they wanted down to the detail.
The main thing this one wanted was among the treasures deep below the earth in the mage's sanctum mirabiliorum, some of them plainly valuable and others coveted only by the knowledgeable. Daszel touched none of them save for the requested item, a glass figure the size of a rich man's stomach which represented a dragon and had inside it an unnatural gem which gave the thing a pleasing radiance. There it was.
He sent a charm of comprehension to caress the dragon; he was ever wary of traps and curious too about the importance of this innocuous gewgaw despite his policy of not bothering his clients with questions. The item must have some secret to it, and so it did. The gem within was a dragon's heart, something few realized could be so small. The work of converting the figurine into the core of a new body was well underway; a dragon reduced to its heart was a play reduced to its script and awaiting the right actor.
What use someone (whether mage or client) might make of a dragon was likely to worry the moral, but since Daszel contented himself with ethics, he absconded with the dragon and brought it to the client, whose gratitude came in a substantial form.
"Although," the man said, "It seems a bit different from when he displayed it before. The color is a little fuller, but duller too."
"It's closer to reviving, that's all."
"It's what?"
The resulting conversation left the client quivering like a tax farmer who saw his books in a judge's hands. "Oh, that's, not quite what I . . . Are you prepared to take on another job? Immediately? It's to put something somewhere. Without being noticed."
"I'm Daszel," Daszel answered.
Finis

Science Fiction Weaponry

If you just call it a death ray, you don't have to go into the details. Don't worry, the audience will believe that weapons kill people.

Addendum

But then when you try to claim your coupon, you have to answer some questions about the book. The answers are changed regularly for security reasons. This process may sound like a hassle, but do you want people to read more or not? What do you mean, "not particularly?" Well, yeah, I guess, when you put it that way.

Encouraging More People to Read

Coupons! For eggs! Inserted right in the book.

Addendum

Phoenikes also say "phoenix," but a lot else is different. For instance, they say "pop" and "bubbler."

Fantasy Dialects

When you think about it, sphinxes probably ended all their sentences in "sphinx," right? Same with phoenices, nagas, rocs, and on and on, mutatis mutandis.

Pseudo-Post-Apocalypse

When people are running around dealing out death with sword and spell while in the background there's what we recognize as advanced technology, the legacy of the civilization of old, we must consider the possibility there wasn't an apocalypse. Everybody just decided the world would be cooler that way.

The Strange Sources of Xenopaleontological Knowledge

I chased the space pirate all the way to Heraclius, one of those worlds that's nothing but grains and farm drones. I expected him to have some goons, a hideout, or at least a cache with a few guns there, but when I tracked him down, he was doing nothing but staring at a rock stuck on a couple other rocks.
"I remember," he said without turning around. "They argue whether a member of one species can be reborn as another, but it has to be true because I remember. I was a great magus once (for by that name we called those with the strongest psychic talents) and kings bowed to me even in their own palaces of brown-purple marble. They put before me the rich flesh of the uyilla, the delicate hobtgui roots, and I undid their difficulties. But even my wisdom failed when . . . Oh, I see the towers, how they crumble! The dead fill the streets and the wails of the living form inescapable clouds! Iauvne, where have you gone? Plellol ecsa, plellol monsa!"
"Fine, but I'm still going to arrest you."
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I should have waited for a convenient time to come here, but you sort of get these ideas in your head, you know?"
I wasn't interested in conversation with scum, so I didn't answer, but I knew all right.
Finis

Dragon Incentives

It's probably Pern's fault that riding dragons and their dragon riders so often have some kind of magic/psychic/empathic bond, but let's be honest: Both parties probably just liking wrecking stuff and pillaging what's left. The will to evil is sufficient without such contrivances.

A Matter of Maturity

The promising child studies bunny magic, the apprentice rabbit magic, and the master bunny magic.