Flaming Summer!
A Most Atrocious Parody by Chetwynd
Interlude: Abyssal discoveries.
"But I've never abused of any child," Par-Salian was complaining again. In spite of his constant wailing, he had managed to earn a position as garbage collector; in fact, his bosses thought his lamenting added flavour to the Pits of the Damned. "You must believe me, Ari."
His new best buddy, Ariakas, had been granted a privileged position among the Dark Queen's employees upon his death, but he had ruined it all leading the Abyssal Trade Union to demand a raise of wages and better working conditions. For his treachery, Takhisis had him transferred to Hiddukel's realm, and now there he was, picking up demon poo together with the dirty-robed loon. The former Emperor of Ansalon was not very friendly to most of his new workmates ─he thought himself well above them─, but he felt an affinity for the old man who had died at the hands of his own co-murderer.
"Maybe you should speak with Dracos about it. It's unusual for a report to be wrong, and I don't think you will be able to do anything to change that even if it is, but at least you can ask him the details," Ariakas suggested. "We can go to his office at Devil's Gore."
After another humiliating working 'day' of shovelling around shit and worse things, the two condemned souls ─one because he was the interested, the other because he so bored that even the prospect of put up with red tape seemed thrilling─ found themselves querying Galan Dracos about Par-Salian's report.
The soul worker was helpful in an amused but exasperated way. "Ssso you insssissst on your innocccence regarding the charge of child abussse."
"That's right; I've never had any questionable behaviour toward any child. I avoided them like the plague."
The short, scaly man took the corresponding dossier from his bursting filing cabinet and took a quick look, seeking the right page. "Let'sss sssee. It would be much easssier if our filesss were computerisssed like thossse of Missshakal'sss or Ssshinare'sss headquartersss…"
"That was one of my demands," Ariakas interfered. "But no, they prefer to get cooking utensils or industrial amounts of cheap booze over improving the situation of us foot-workers."
"Pleassse, don't ssspeak about thossse thingsss in here. I don't want my licccenccce taken away," warned the soul worker.
"All right, all right, mate," said the ex-tyrant with a pacifying gesture. "Have you found anything yet?"
"Here it isss. Mmm… Yesss, it sssaysss that you abusssed of one minor, by the name of Raistlin Majere. That'sss a ssseriousss offenccce even here, my friend."
"What! But he was of age the first time I even laid eyes upon him!" protested the former Head of the Conclave. Of course, he took great care of not revealing that his initial intentions had been make him pass his Test when he was merely sixteen; he had been so eager to forge the Sword! However, he had known that his friend Antimodes would not have allowed it; he had been angry with Par-Salian for calling the youngster at twenty-one as it was. The uproar about the false clerics and the Judith renegade in that poky old town Haven had been a marvellous strike of luck and the perfect excuse to summon Raistlin to Wayreth.
"I hope you molested him thoroughly," Ariakas leered. To Galan, he addressed a haughty half-smile and a raised eyebrow. "What? The little shite helped that half-elven bastard Tanis to murder me! And then he went to my faithful although chaotic dragon and beat the crap out of him with his staff 'til the poor beast was killed!"
Par-Salian pretended he had not heard that last part. "But that's all wrong. I didn't molest or abuse him; I just did what required of me, and he was an adult."
Huma's contemporary sighed, then shrugged.
"I'll sssee what it can be done about thisss. Don't hold your breath though, thisss sssort of thingsss worksss very, very ssslowly without fail. You know, paperwork, bureaucracy, and the underworld don't mixxx well. Maybe you ssshould turn to a lawyer, thisss realm isss infesssted with them. However, I doubt you'll be able to afford hiring one, with thossse almossst non-exxxistent wagesss you earn. Perhapsss a ssstudent then? Mmmm… Yesss, yesss, that would be the bessst sssolution."
"I know of one that will do. He isss ssspecializing in penal law in hisss ssspare time. I can sssummon him right now if you wisssh me to."
"That would be nice," Par-Salian replied.
At Galan's request, a damned soul like them came, one Beldyn.
Beldyn was a scarecrow of a man, skinny and jerky. His eyes usually darted around, taking everything in an almost frightened manner, and his laugh was shaky. He was fearful of open spaces, so Galan had devised for him a contraption that covered his head with several ribs mounted on a shaft and with a canvas tensed over them. The resourceful soul worker tied up the shaft to Beldyn's back with trappings. That way the former Kingpriest of Istar was able to toil in Takhisis' realm without his fear of gigantic fiery mountains falling on his head paralysing him.
After assuring him that the old man was not the avatar of Paladine in disguise, the ex-renegade explained to the fallen priest Par-Salian's dilemma, then shooed the three of them out of his office adducing a new damned client was to arrive at any moment.
"I've heard about you in the school," said the timid genocider. "They all say only a madman would accept your case ever, but I don't think so."
The two garbage collectors looked at each other, both of them doubtful.
"You have been wronged by the gods of Good, just like I was. You did your duty towards them, and they have rewarded your faithfulness and application with a damned afterlife. Since we are kindred spirits, I'll charge you nothing for my services."
"That's very nice on your part, Beldyn. Thank you."
"Not at all! I began to study law in order to be able to cleanse my name and make them withdraw the charges of genocide and all the other crap. Then, they will be forced to accept me at my rightful place at Paladine's right hand."
The White Robe kept quiet about his doubts on how the lawyer wannabe would manage to erase the immense hatred the Platinum Dragon must feel for him; after all, the wise god had thrown a mountain onto him. In addition, Paladine's right hand was his place. Nevertheless, he smiled to his spasmodic soon-to-be defendant.
Some no-time later, Beldyn came to find them when they were at work. The fitful soon-to-be lawyer had intended to wait patiently for them to finish their pointless cleaning, but since the working day was so 'flexible' in a place where time never passed, he got bored, frightened, and a little nauseated at the sickening stench that emanated from the pits where his client and his friend laboured.
"Uh, Mr. Salian," he shouted, and immediately cringed, since he knew that raising one's voice could attract undue attention. "Could you meet me up here please? I have some information of relevance."
A few no-moments after, he could hear as the old wizard struggled to climb up the pit at the bottom of which had been working. A pair of bony hands appeared at the edge of the hole, clawing the muddy, foul ground, and slipping. Beldyn would have helped, but he could not be sure the hands belonged to his client ─even if they seemed so─ and they were incredibly dirty and stinking, so he thought he might catch something if he touched them, never getting he was already dead and that 'something' could not possibly affect him.
"Coming!" said a feeble voice from the bottom of the pit. No one came though.
"Please, I've been told there is volcanic activity in this area," he fretted.
"Yes. I mean don't worry, I'll be with you just in a moment!" The old man seemed to be arguing with someone down there.
After a moment that might have been a lifetime or two, the old magician was thrown bodily from within the hole, landing messily near the edge. Even before he stood up, the thwarted Emperor of Ansalon climbed up the pit, dropping at Par-Salian's feet two shovels and two buckets.
The last Kingpriest stepped back, nearly gagging at the stench. He covered his mouth and nose with his formerly magnificent vestments. "Ugh, couldn't you do something about your foul smell."
"We toil incessantly shovelling demon excrement and worse things, so please excuse us our malodorous states," Ariakas snorted with rage. "Perhaps you should try it..."
"Uh, excuse my furious companion, good Beldyn, but he has had an altercation with an anti-labour union demon earlier, and they have come to blows," the former Head of the White Robes explained as he tried to tidy up his defunct robes. He leaned towards his lawyer to whisper conspirationally, "The demon lost by the way, so I suggest you to not upset him."
The frightened ex-cleric nodded, then turned to the wrathful garbage collector and bowed a little. "I'm sorry. Please excuse my thoughtless words."
Ariakas grunted something Beldyn hoped was his assent. Clearing his throat, the twitchy genocider presented them the folder he kept on this case. It was very thin.
"Umh, Beldyn, what's the 'information of relevance' you talked about? There's nothing new here."
"That's just the significance of it, Mr. Salian!" the would-be petty fogger said brightly.
"What? That there's nothing new?" the old mage asked. "And it's Par-Salian, all together."
"This fraud is wasting our time," the burly ex-tyrant sneered. "I've learned of several undead in Chemosh's domain that are interested in joining the Union, let's meet them. They probably know how to do their work."
"I know how to do mine as well," Beldyn protested, offended and hurt at being accused of unprofessionalism. "Just allow me to explain myself and how my inquiries went."
"All right, my boy," Par-Salian said in a placating tone, forgetting that the last Kingpriest of Istar was his senior by several centuries. "Ari, let's hear what he has to say. Then we'll go to meet those undead."
The dead ruler of the world snorted, but agreed with a brisk nod.
Beldyn began his tale of woe and red tape, "At first, my investigation proceeded very slowly. I had to do my job in the Repair Brigade and the archives of the Abyss are a right mess, so it went at snail's speed, as you can imagine. There was nothing of relevance in your folders ─I have you to know that there are several of them, all of them bursting─ or your case's. Therefore, I went looking for the file on your presumed victim, Majere comma Raistlin." Both the mage and the tyrant growled in unison at hearing the hated name. "You told me he is a notorious person here in the Netherworld, so I was surprised I found nothing about him in the archives. I put it down to the chaos the files were in."
"But?" Ariakas urged on.
"Since I was unable to find anything I turned to a colleague. He seemed very interested, and helped me to search, to no avail. My colleague said this was very strange since this Raistlin character is something of an anti-celebrity here.
"Of course," the dead ruler laughed bitterly, "the bastard nearly razed the place to the ground some years ago."
Par-Salian refrained from adding he could have done a better work, and committed suicide afterwards.
Beldyn stared at Ariakas. "Oh, so he was the one that wrecked all the signposts," the ex-priest growled, feeling a very unprofessional dislike for the victim of his client filling his dead being. "Anyway, the rumour I was working on a case relating him spread like wildfire, and I was called in the presence of Her Majesty Takhisis." The fretful man's eyes widened in remembered terror. "She was… big… as big as a fiery mountain…"
"Snap out of it!" Ariakas snapped, thumping the paralysed former cleric when he seemed unable to escape from his fearful remembrances.
"Ah–yes. She was… eh… kind enough to change into her Fearsome Warrior form to speak to me. It was not as scary… er… Anyway, she said she was very interested in my case and, even though she had no time to lend a paw, she wanted to help. Therefore, she granted me a leave of absence."
"It's understandable that Takhisis wants to know the nasty truth behind this case," Par-Salian reasoned. "She would probably want to find some blackmail material regarding my case to use against Mighty Paladine." He and the ex-priest raised their hands to the murky skies in a devotional gesture, but the latter hurried to look down in fear.
"Hey, wake up, you twits. It's not your case what interests the Bitch," the former conqueror snorted at the wizard, "but the prospect of getting at the traitor. Nevertheless, we can use that in our favour. Continue you tale already, pettifogger."
"Er, yes. With more timelessness in my hands, I endeavoured to find any scrap of intelligence regarding the bast... er, the victim. I searched the archives from top to bottom and moved heaven and earth. Alas, there was nothing to be found there, or in the archives of the other dark gods' realms."
"I can't believe it," Ariakas sneered.
"Excuse me, Sir Bellicose, I may be fearful of the wrath of the gods and of falling mountains, but I'm quite good at charming my way around bureaucracy, so stop scorning my work. There is nothing there about that Raistlin character... And there the relevance lies in."
The two garbage collectors regarded thoughtfully the would-be lawyer.
"You're right, Beldyn," Par-Salian said. His companion only condescended to grunt and nod. "There should be some files on Raistlin in most of the seven archives."
"Seven?" The last Kingpriest of Istar seemed confused. "I thought there were only six."
The former chosen of Takhisis snorted. "There are seven dark gods, so there must be seven archives."
"Is that so? I was never any good at theology."
The two damned workers regarded each other and sighed.
"And how did you manage to become the ruler of the Church of Paladine?" the mage asked.
"Charisma I suppose." Beldyn shrugged. "Let's see, I went to Takhisis' archive, Hiddukel's…" He began to count on his fingers. "…Sargonass', Zeboim's, Morgion's, Chemosh's… Who's the seventh I left out?"
"Bah, Nuitari," Par-Salian spat. "But it's probably not important anyway."
"Who is Nuitari?"
"The black moon. The god of dark magic," Ariakas explained.
"Is there a black moon?"
"It seems so. The Black Robes say they're the only ones they can see it, so most people think it's a myth they invented to make for not having a real godly patron."
"In any event, no one told me of another archive, and I asked about any source of information. When I exhausted every resource –except that Nuitari's– I turned to a Mishakite information point, but my search proved as fruitless as before."
"But that's not possible! There must be information about the bastard somewhere!" the scourge of the Good Folk of Ansalon grumbled.
"That's what I thought when I went to Mishakal's offices. In her archives there is a file on every being born in Krynn, and they usually keep it updated as they're computerised. However, our 'victim' didn't appear. The clerk told me that she knew that character should; the file was probably misplaced or corrupted…"
"Something smells foul here," Par-Salian said. "There's no way the little viper doesn't appear anywhere."
Ariakas regarded the stinking pits thoughtfully. "Unless they're withholding the information," he suggested.
Beldyn shrugged. "We have no way of knowing so."
"Yes, we have." The eyes of the dead tyrant shone. "Reddy, my former mount, is a hacker." Seeing the blank stares of his companions, he explained himself, "He can access those computerised files and look for what is really there, instead what they want us to believe there is."
Several shit-working days (or whatever) after, the three condemned souls went to the Abyss in search of the red dragon Ariakas unoriginally had termed 'Reddy' during his ruling days. The beast was now a construction worker in the Abyss, as many of his brethren.
"Hello, Reddy," said the Emperor of Ansalon. "What's up with you, pal?"
The large dragon –so large that poor Beldyn trembled with fear, not because it was a dragon, but because it reminded the cleric of something big… like a fiery mountain– regarded his former rider with disdain. "Call me that again and kiss goodbye to your physical form. I find that term disgusting and racist."
"C'mon, Reddy. Do you prefer being called your given name? Strawb…"
"'Red' will be fine." The beast bent his long neck and took the safety helmet from his mighty head. "What do you want, Ariakas?"
"What are they building here?" Par-Salian asked the ex-tyrant, pointing a twisted structure.
"I think they're reconstructing the old Temple that collapsed in Neraka."
The dragon nodded. "You're right. That's what we do."
"Er… It seems a bit… crooked."
"Of course…" A resounding groan cut through the impure air of the Abyss. "Here we go again," the beast sighed.
Before the stunned onlookers, the temple shook, groaning voicelessly its despair, and then suddenly fell apart, filling the realm of the Dark Queen with dust and dirt. When the dense cloud of dust dispersed, there was nothing of the building but a pile of rubble and twisted bars.
"I see Takhisis is still stingy about spending her money on quality material," Ariakas commented off-handedly. "If you hadn't ditched me the moment she…"
"Don't wanna hear about it," Red growled.
"We want help in finding information about your murderer," explained Par-Salian, trying to break free from Beldyn's terrified grasp.
"That will be a pleasure."
The three men –when they managed to make the former priest come to his senses again– explained what was going on to the red dragon. He agreed that it was suspicious, to find nothing on the notorious wizard, and wasted no time in hacking his way into Mishakal's databases.
"This is very, very strange," he said. "There were files, but they were removed long time ago. No file is ever removed from the Sissy's database…"
"Can you find out who removed them?" Beldyn asked timidly.
Red shook his mighty head. "Already tried. Whoever they were, they covered their tracks carefully."
"Then what can we do now? We know someone or something has hidden or destroyed any information about Raistlin, but now we are at a dead end…" Par-Salian despaired. He wanted so much clean his good name and find some juicy dirty secret of the bugger's.
"Well, we can do the desperate search…" the beast said and typed in something. "Let's see what Goggle finds for us…"
"There are thousands of results!"
"'The course of love is seldom smooth, especially if you're Raistlin Majere. Emotions may be shared but there are still brothers to escape…' What's this rubbish?" the old mage spat with disdain and not a bit of revulsion. "'Love' and 'Raistlin' should never go together in the same sentence, unless it is to say the viper has destroyed it…"
The dragon shrugged, wrinkling its snout. "It's called 'fan fiction'. There's a bugger who calls herself or himself 'fistandstylus' that is drowning the 'net with that garbage."
"'Fan fiction'? What's that?" asked a mildly uninterested Ariakas.
"It's like you take the history of Huma and you 'rewrite' it or write some 'unknown' part of it, mainly to insert yourself as a character and beat the crap out of the 'bad/good guys'. Thanks the Gods this guy here has not a penchant for sues…"
"'Fistandstailus'…?" was murmuring Par-Salian.
"Not very subtle, isn't he?" The former oppressor smirked; he had also recognised the supposed nickname.
The old dead made a grimace of disgust. "It's the same as with 'Raistlin' and 'love' for him and 'subtle'."
Ignoring his formerly human companions, the dragon had narrowed the search, ruling out 'fics', 'pics', and things like that. The result was still overwhelming. None of them understood who anyone might be interested in the traitor. Anyway, after burning their retinas with a myriad of webpages, one more tasteless than the previous, even the resilient Ariakas was willing to call it a day. Beldyn, for his part, had given up long ago, and was now engrossed reading articles on the dangers of fanaticism that the dragon had kindly printed for him.
"I think that I cannot bear looking at another page stating the little bastard is 'cool'," the worn out ex-tyrant groaned. "I don't understand what can possess anyone to name their baby after him. I'd consider it a curse myself."
Par-Salian nodded in agreement, frowning at the smirking image of who had become his killer. "They don't even portray him right," he mumbled. Downhearted, he was to consider the search a failure when the great beast called them to take a look at the screen.
"See this! I've found something that might be of interest!" Red said brightly. "It's a database!"
"'Blacky's Fabulous and Extensive Dragonlance D&D Database'," read the old man aloud.
"Whatever have dragonlances to do with the little shite?" wondered Ariakas. His comrades shrugged.
"They seem to equal Krynn with dragonlances," the dragon explained. "I haven't the foggiest idea why. Let's see if he's in the character drop-down menu… That's it! There's a whole character sheet with extras about the pest."
The three former humans looked at the screen avidly, then paled like the corpses they had been.
Ariakas, eyes wide and fists tightly closed, turned to his friend in misery. "You are so in deep shit, Parsley…"
"More than usual, that is."