Fantasy Edutainment

"Seems like an easy case, Stovak."
"Are you kidding? I've never seen a more puzzling mystery in all my career. We've got a long road ahead of us, Drupil, and there's no doubt about that."
Knight-Detective Drupil looked around the scene. The victim, the signs of a struggle with blood and broken pottery all over, the open window, the zombie standing next to the victim. "Uh, how so? The zombie killed him."
"Impossible." Knight-Detective Stovak raised three fingers. "Remember the three laws of zombonics. One! A zombie never kills anyone onscreen. Two! A zombie will chew nearby corpses for dramatic effect. Three! A zombe will attack all living things it sees slowly and ineffectually."
"Right, right. Wait. It's just standing there. Does that mean it isn't a zombie?"
"Yeah. And maybe . . ." Stovak kicked the victim, who grunted. "Maybe this isn't a corpse."
"That just makes it a simple case in a different way." Drupil reached down and helped up the ersatz corpse. "It's great to find out you're alive, God-Steward Tuild. Wait. You aren't Tuild!"
"No," the zombie said. "I am." Dun dun dun!

"I can't believe God-Steward Wregil knocked out Baron Edrak, who was threatening him over his relationship with his daughter, and used Count-Magician Brunuil's experimental transformation magic to turn his rival, God-Steward Tuild, into a zombie so he would eat the evidence," Drupil marveled.
"Too bad for him that there's one thing he forgot," Stovak said.
"The three laws of zombonics."
"That's right, partner."
THE END
Next time, a professor of lichology is found dead after a ritual gone wrong . . . and Knight-Detective Stovak's old squire is accused of murder.

"I hate this theatrical series. You can always tell who did it because it's the most famous actor in the cast that week. Besides, only Itrenorn zombies act that way."
"You say that every week, Trumarl, but every week we end up back here."
"Yeah, but you know why."
"Sure. Who'd your brother-in-law play this time? The temple custodian?"
"Right. Hey Criuak, you were great today, and so on, and my sister asked me to bring you this . . . Criuak? Criuak!"
"I can't believe it! He's been murdered!" Dun dun dun!
Finis

The Lich Society

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