A/N This first chapter is, I will admit, rather strange. Actually, it's probably strange to the point of absurdity. But I assure you, it will normal out shortly if you'll just bear with me.
People wake up naked in small stone rooms face to face with a grumpy three headed dragon quite often, really. Of course, it's not a typical an occurrence as falling off a roof or spontaneously combusting, but in the widest scope of things it's not as uncommon as most people would think.
But Nathaniel didn't know this. So when he found himself waking up naked in a small stone room face to face with a grumpy three headed dragon, he was understandably surprised.
The first thing he did was let out a strangled sort of yelp and scrambled back against the opposite wall, away from the serpentine creature in front of him. It was sitting behind a tall oak desk.
Nathaniel threw an arm in front of his face in a reflexive attempt to defend himself, but the dragon didn't attack him as he had expected it to. Instead, it just drummed its glimmering black talons on the surface of the desk and studied him with three pairs of critical lizard eyes, as if bored and impatient.
The next thing Nathaniel did was blush. His arm snapped down from in front of his face to cover his nudity. Or at least the bit of him that made his nudity most obvious. Under the dragon's icy stare, he suddenly felt ashamed and uncouth. There was something very knowing about the reptile… something almost human…
"Good." The dragon said, utilizing the head in the middle, "You're awake. Now we may begin."
Nathaniel frowned. Now that the immediate overwhelming emotions of fear and humiliation were wearing off, confusion and annoyance began to set in as he realized how truly bizarre his situation was. "Begin what?" he snapped, "Where am I and what in hell's name is going on?"
The head on the right rolled its glassy eyes, "Why are they always like this?"
"You are in, what you mortals may perhaps know as… The Other Place." The dragon ended his last word with a dramatic sort of hiss.
Nathaniel scowled, "Come now." He said, "This is ridiculous. If you are Bartimeus attempting to play some childish and idiotic joke on me so soon after I tried to save your life then I swear-"
"BARTIMEUS!" The head on the left roared.
The head in the middle leaned forward to Nathatniel and hissed venomously, "How dare you! We are not that disgraceful excuse for a djinn! We are far more noble. Far more ancient."
Nathaniel flinched, resisting the urge to tremble as he watched the light flicker off the dragon's rows of white needle sharp teeth, "Ah," he said, "Erm, my mistake then. But you are, in fact, a demon, then?"
"Demon!" The head on the right spat, "We are more than that, mortal. So much more."
"I see…" Nathaniel said, trying to maintain an air of stoic superiority despite the fact that he was naked and a little light headed, "Well, if it is true that I am in The Other Place, as you seem to believe, I always pictured it as a little less… cold and dank."
"This is not truly the face of our home," The dragon in the middle said, "This is simply as we present it to you. Mortals find the true nature of The Other Place difficult to grasp."
"Ah." Nathaniel said, nodding slowly, "And may I ask why I am here? There are some pressing matters back in the world of mortals that could use my attention…"
The dragon head on the left chuckled, "They would not be helped by the attention of a dead man."
"Erm," said Nathaniel.
"You're dead," clarified the head on the right.
Nathaniel paled a bit, but he hadn't been altogether expecting not to die, so he wasn't terribly surprised. "Please," he said, "Don't tell me this is the afterlife."
"It's part of it," the center head of the dragon said, "But it's not where you'll be spending the rest of your death."
Nathaniel smiled with relief, "Ah," he said, "Good. I was getting worried there for a while."
"You should not cease in your worrying yet." The head on the left said, "Depending upon our judgment… where you do spend the remainder of your death could be considerably worse."
Nathaniel winced, nodding slowly, "So what happens then? You weigh my heart against a feather?"
The left head snorted, rolling it's eyes, "Please. Don't degrade us so. Such barbaric practices were abandoned long ago. We simply use our insights into the actions of your existence, your moral value, your motivations what you did and what you did not do…"
"All in all," said the head on the right, "It's not looking very good for you, I'm afraid."
Nathaniel gulped. He had always assumed he wouldn't have to deal for this sort of thing so soon. It wasn't fair; he hadn't planned to die young with very little morally correct actions to his name! He had always thought that, once he reached old age, he'd donate some large sum of money to an orphanage or something in his will and have the afterlife business (if there was any afterlife business) taken care of.
"I… I did great things for the sake of my country! I… I made many sacrifices for the, erm, many sacrifices for the good of my people." He said to the dragon.
The dragon snorted, "You made great sacrifices for your reputation. You made great sacrifices for all the other corrupted creatures you worked for."
"Well, it does sound bad when you put it that way…" Nathaniel grumbled. But he knew that the dragon was right. It was something he himself had felt niggling in the back of his head for most of his life as a magician, and it was something that he had worried over near obsessively in recent days…
"And then there is the fact that you aided a greedy institution that was little more than a machine for oppression and war… you enslaved other creatures against their will…" The dragon's center head continued.
"Demons? That's nothing!" Nathaniel protested, "Everyone has demons! That's what they're there for!"
The dragon's right head sighed heavily, "As hard as this may be for you to believe, not everyone enslaves demons because the vast majority of people on earth are, in fact, not magicians."
Nathaniel sighed. There was a flicker of something like sadness behind his eyes. "But… at the end…" he said, "I gave my life up for someone else. That counts for something, doesn't it?"
"Exactly," said the head on the left, "And that's what makes you such a peculiar case…"
"We're not sure just what needs to be done with you." Said the head on the right, "You certainly don't deserve to be rewarded… but eternal punishment doesn't seem to be in order either. It's a predicament, really. We deal with those like you occasionally… Perhaps…."
"We should give you another chance," finished the center head.
Nathaniel felt a slow, relieved smile creep across his face. "Yes!" he said, "Yes, thank you! I will live ten times better, I swear it! Never a cruel word to anybody; I'll free all my demons I'll-"
"Not so fast," The dragon's left head said with a low rasping chuckle, "It is not as simple as that. We're not sending you back to your life of leisure…"
Nathaniel frowned, "Then what are you going to do?"
The dragon told him.
Nathaniel scowled and clenched a fist indignantly, "That's ridiculous!" he said, "It sounds like the plot of a cheap novel! Don't tell me you've been reading Charles Pinderflick, that old windbag…"
The dragon discreetly flicked a copy of The Miser Eliezer And the Ghosts of Mercy under his desk out of Nathaniel's view and said, "Of course not. We care not for such mortal foolery. Our judgments are based on only the most ancient wisdom and laws."
Nathaniel rolled his eyes, "It sounds like a penny novel to me… but fine then. Get it over with."
The dragon hissed something Nathaniel didn't quite understand, and then everything went black. He was getting rather tired of everything going black.