Doomed to Die in 3 Minutes

Planning for the Aftermath

After he finishes chugging his 7th drink he finally exhales and makes a sigh of relief. He looks over to me, who is completely dumbfounded. He snorts and slaps his thigh. “Ah, amigo. I love that look. I rarely share this drink with another but whenever I do, the expression is the same and yet I never tire of it! Hahaha… okay, that’s enough for now. You can go and enjoy the festivities but uh we do have some business to discuss first.” His tone becomes serious again and clutches his glass with both hands. 

“So, usually when I take a job like this, especially when I resurrect the dead, I need some way to deal with the heat that comes after. Most of my targets are high status so usually, there’s some form of retaliation after. The people out there having the time of their lives are choosing to forget that fact for a little longer, or they think Alisa will deal with the threat? Or maybe, they think I’ll bail them out by bringing them back from the dead if they die? It’ll be busy. I have a variety of methods I use to remove these issues but I prefer not to use the extreme measures.”

Vis sighs a very deep sigh and he looks towards me with a look of regret. “I make fake IDs for anyone I resurrect and make them leave the area, at least for a while until people forget. That I’ll still do for Alisa. The issue is the nobles retaliation… keep this a secret too, okay? More than the resurrecting power, well it’s that it functions... “resurrecting” is a sort of keyword. It’s more applicable to things than just bringing back the dead. I can bring back… a state of mind or being.” I try to let the implications of what he’s trying to tell me fully dawn and I begin to shake. His power is already beyond imagination but it goes deeper than that…?

“So, I bring back all the bad guys that died in my missions and revert their mental ages to whenever they were, well no more capable of evil than most normal law-abiding citizens. A lot of them basically become a version of themselves before they had trauma or a taste for blood. Though for some extreme cases they regress to childhood. That’s a mess. I need direct contact to do it, so it’s something I have to do after the fact most of the time.” That’s absurd and amazing… “So why is this a problem?” Naively I ask, what possible downside is there to this? Essentially he turns all the villains into well good or at least average people.

“I can’t go forward with this spell, only backwards, for some reason. Corai, if I turned your mind back to say five years ago, how would you feel? Then, imagine I revert you back to a mere child. Or a baby. What would that be like?”  Physically, the body wouldn’t change at all, but the mind which is built from our experiences both good and bad that form us in the present would disappear. “It’d be no different than killing them.” He nods as he pours himself another drink and gulps it down. 

“If I must, I must. It’s not a clean solution and I know I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances, or at least I think I am. After seeing you today though, I think there may be another way to deal with this, without reviving those guys and messing with their heads. Besides, the victims would have a bit of a traumatic episode seeing them again and then would have a major disconnect seeing their tormentors turn to well-meaning people. It’s a lot to handle. I think you can solve this issue, well Corai cannot but a big bad guy who is intent on destroying the nobility? Perhaps that would be a worthy target for a wild chase by those who would come for vengeance.” 

I get what he’s saying and laugh weakly. “Pour me another drink first.” He replies with a weak laugh of his own while saying sorry a few times in a row as he pours more of the golden liquid into my glass. I drink it down slowly and let that whirlwind of emotion that it magically gives me course through my body and when I feel it has left me, I reply. “Okay, I see. No problem, if you need a big bad bogeyman for some angry highborn fools to vent their rage on instead of the citizens then, I can plant a target on a fake back. It seems the stage comes for me even when I get away from it. 

“Thank you, amigo. I will not forget this.” He pours us both a new drink and we clang the glasses to our promise of continued work. We drink and as I do a thought occurs to me. “Alisa, she probably won’t need a fake ID or at least a complicated one.” He raises an eyebrow. “She’s an orphan, right? Just say she was separated from her family at birth for one reason or another and she has a sister that people found recently. Sounds pretty cliche but it’s the sort of barely believable thing that an audience will cautiously hold onto and then they are taken hook, line, and sinker. Complicated but actually not. I think that combined with the much bigger inflated fish they’ll need to deal with, will draw their ire away from her. That should make your job just a bit easier. It’s much easier to fake something if you can draw from a well-constructed story and sprinkle a bit of truth here and there.” He smiles and wraps an arm around my shoulders.

“Ah, friend, you are truly the gift that keeps on giving.” Oh, right. One more thing. “I think I heard this when I was passing out but did you propose to her?” He coughs awkwardly. “Really, bro? When I was beaten to a pulp and losing consciousness? That was the best time? To a girl you just met? Really?” He coughs again.