In a club kept exclusive not by bouncers or reputation but by the need to possess certain arts unavailable to the masses, three liches gathered to discuss, as they sometimes liked to do, matters only a self-selected few would understand.
"I buried my soul at the end of a rainbow. No one can find it, not even I, though now I regret my act when an urge to check on it comes, the only urges left to me," Lich A said.
B's dry cackle acknowledged the humor of the situation. "I ensured mine might always be available by enshrining it in this country's founding document. Guards watch over it day and night, though I pay them not a penny!" It picked a rat out of its crumbling tricorne and tossed the pest aside.
"As for my soul," C said, "I would never speak of it aloud. I am surprised you both do."
The light dimmed when A chuckled, but he continued regardless. "So then. I will speak no more of that. Instead, try this. PIck a card and place it in your wallet."
Red lights rolled in C's eye sockets, but it did as asked.
"Excellent. Most excellent." A shuffled the deck and showed C the three of clubs. "This is your card."
"Nay."
"Ah. I was mistaken. This is it." The jack of diamonds.
"Nay."
"I feared to grow old, yet now I am older than old. I recall the trick now. The card is in my wallet." He reached in, and twin yellow lights flared in what remained of his face. "I am mistaken again, as this cannot be your card, being no card at all." He drew forth a diamond, large but uncut.
"My soul!"
A and B laughed, the laughter unnaturally denied the grave though surely of it.
Finis
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