A wizard, fed up with people lying just so they can get other people humiliated, hurt, or worse, begins cursing those that habitual liars so that they lose the ability to lie, not in spoken or written word. -- Anon Guest
Wraithvine got the blame, as ze does for most magnificent acts of magic. Nobody else could have the time or motivation to do what had been done to Ymamoraal. So they said.
Never underestimate the power and devotion of a pissed-off autistic Wizard.
Tired of the 'normal' folks' daily regime of setting her up for humiliation, she set about imbuing and invoking runes all over Ymamoraal. In the stones, on the slates of the roofs. In the upright beams and in the lintels. Day and night, anywhere that Asimaev found that was out of the way and overlooked.
And then, on a day when she had had enough of Ymamoraal's horseshit, she invoked them all. The entire town was unable to tell a lie from that moment onwards.
The cluster of young ladies kept giggling among themselves. The spokesgirl went to say, "Don't you trust us?" as part of their script, but what came out was, "Don't trust us. At all. We want to make you look stupid because you're too weird for us to like you."
Asimaeve breathed a self-satisfied sigh of relief and said. "Everything's better when everyone tells the truth."
They laughed because they believed their goal was accomplished. It would be days before they realised what had happened.
Every trick. Every cheat. Every little dishonesty. Every large one, especially, came into the broad daylight. All over Ymamoraal.
The street fights broke out on the third day.
The Watch had hard work on their hands. They could not call the hour and declare that all was well. All was clearly not well. As evidenced by the fact that people were fighting about truths they did not want to face.
A goodwife sided with her husband's mistress against the man who had been lying to them both. A cuckolded man was set on murdering his rival. A merchant was being tarred and feathered by their angry former customers. Even in the schoolyard, there was chaos.
"Hey," said one child to another. "You have to come play with us so we can make fun of you."
"Do not," argued the other.
The teacher, listening to all this, could not ignore it and side with the aggressor as she'd always done. She had to step in and discipline the more popular child.
Everywhere, all over Ymamoraal, the consequences of lies rained chaos on everyone's head. Except for Asimaeve, who had always been honest with everyone, and continued to be so.
They'd eventually beg her to remove the curse of truth, but then faced the problem of supplying enough motivation for her to do so.
[Photo by Carla Santiago on Unsplash]
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