Palanti-Aarbo: Itch
At first Palanti-Aarbo thought the itch at the back of his head was dandruff. He tried eight potions and a poultice of compost before the itch descended to his neck and he realized what was going on.
It was time to leave.
After Houserflaz he’d acquired 11 more acolytes, and they believed wholeheartedly in Palanti’s divine mission. Even Houserflaz, the most skeptical of them all, finally had reverence in his voice as he knelt before the hourglass-proportioned idol of Palanti and prayed. Why shouldn’t they? After all, the things they had achieved, and gotten away with, would inspire awe in any moderately intelligent being.
There were the detonating pastries scattered throughout the Baker Street stalls. Florists had found their entire stock replaced with cheese overnight. Every carpenter in Valtir woke up to find their hammers replaced with rubber duplicates and their saws so toothless they could only sing in C sharp. City Watch dragons developed laryngitis, and one morning the entire leatherjack division found their boots filled to the brim with minty toothpaste.
However, their crowning achievement so far had been sending the High Reeve, his wife, and their bed downriver—literally.
Yet for all the freedom a fake goddess allowed him under Draeg law—not to mention the bounty of tithes and other offerings—he still had to act like a priest. One can only say “Bless you” so many times before the mind and tongue go numb, after all.
With this in mind, Palanti-Aarbo put the final touches on a scheme he’d been concocting since he first turned the Drunken Dragon into a house of worship. It required all of his acolytes, and it would call upon every amount of devotion, cunning, and theatrical ability they could possibly muster for their divine goddess of mischief.
Prophet Boulevard was exactly what it said on the street sign: a wide thoroughfare where every holy, self-appointed prophet in Valtir could float his or her hoverdisc and scream at people to be more devout to their particular god. Several had developed quite a following, and those that hadn’t at least provided amusing entertainment for families seeking a free show as they walked back home from lunch.
Palanti-Aarbo had a ranked list of the 12 most popular prophets and watched their daily habits carefully. One bright morning, Palanti’s first band of acolytes struck. Each Valtir prophet found him or herself suddenly in pain and then very interested in becoming unconscious. They slept throughout the day in uncomfortable positions, thoroughly bound and gagged in their appropriately dingy prophet hovels, as knots grew on their heads.
Swaddling themselves in each prophet’s exotic robes and other propheting paraphernalia, the acolytes set forth to trod the surface of a hoverdisc for the afternoon.
Palanti-Aarbo took the last hoverdisc on Prophet Boulevard, which was by tradition and consensus the most prestigious spot on the street. It belonged to Karlara, a space Draeg who proselytized for Versivo, God of Space. Using Morph, the small Vijari mimicked the devout Draeg’s humped shoulder and limping leg, moving exactly like the prophet so many in Valtir had come to love—or tolerate at a distance, at least.
Houserflaz had taken up the hoverdisc across the street from his mentor. Replacing Archerzaz, a prophet of Dreha, God of Grass, was the most appropriate thing for the green Draeg. Houserflaz stood regally on top of his platform, with one part of his woven grass mantle draped over an arm.
As individual Draeg, couples, and entire families promenaded down Prophet Boulevard, they soon realized the air wasn’t thick with the pious cries of true believers. Yes, holy words still flew through the air, but it was more of a gentle drizzle than the harsh rain of religiousity. After the first few made a full circuit, they realized 12 prophets, the ones most had come to see to tell the truth, were standing stock still; each one crouched or standing in a pose of great thought, high piety, or deep despair. Soon their buzzing discussion drowned out the meager cries of the lesser prophets: What in the realm was going on?
A prophet at the street’s far end came to life. He threw his arms wide, billowing his robes.
“Hark, yond crowd. Hasten unto my disc. Hear mine glorious words of truth and brilliant enlightenment.”
The crowd relaxed, milling in the prophet’s direction. It must be some kind of special show, they decided.
But then the prophet turned around, bent at the waist, dropped his pants, and let out the largest flatulence yet heard in the city.
Flabbergasted, the crowd stood stock still as the robed Draeg began dancing to a beat entirely of his own devising—for it was most certainly a he—and punctuated certain notes with a mighty blast of his only instrument. As the shock wore off, and the smell set in, the crowd began to disperse toward other prophets as they sought more familiar forms of worship.
They were greatly disappointed, and disgusted.
At each turn they were met with rude words, rude gestures, and, in one case, a rude puppet show. Driven by their devout ways, the mass of Draeg fled toward the end of Prophet Boulevard, seeking the comforting words of those truly pious two who would certainly not desert them in this time of religious crisis: Archerzaz and Karlara.
As planned, Houserflaz waved his arms at the near-panicking multitude, flapping his mantle in the air, just as Archerzaz often did. Relieved to see such a familiar gesture, no one in the street seemed to question how Dreha’s greatest street prophet had grown taller by a foot. Hoverdiscs tend to have that effect, they supposed, and Archerzaz’s first words were a calming balm spread across their feverish, fearing faith.
“Mine fellow beings. Listen to these prophets not! They speak naught but the greatest of heresies, claiming their gods to be supreme, when all is owed to Dreha, in truth.”
A great wave of nodding ran through the large audience. Stock phrases though they may be, Archerzaz was now the only prophet talking sense.
“Do not harken unto the knave across from me,” Archerzaz cried, thrusting a finger at Karlara and his asymmetric form. “For we cannot worship that which we cannot see. That which we cannot touch. That which we cannot smell.”
Smiles were breaking out among Draeg as they clustered ever tighter around Archerzaz and Karlara. They looked from one to the other, expectantly, waiting for them to go toe-to-toe on a theological basis. The other prophets fell silent in a ragged order, began dressing themselves as necessary, and then they too turned toward the pair of prophets to await the verbal battle.
“Thine god is as immaterial as the wind from mine own backside,” shouted Archerzaz. “Worshipping space is blasphemous. Who should pour their devotion into a void exceeding all empty space excepting that between thine ears, knave? Rejoice instead in the bounty Dreha brings to us all. Shall we not smoke the sweet grass and enjoy another’s company on the bedmat? Shall we not gorge on Dreha’s finest wines and messily void our guts wherever ’tis convenient? Shall we not nudely romp through the tall grasses and enjoy the bounty Dreha may foist upon us all?”
Here, Houserflaz held his hands out to indicate generously sized breasts. Somewhere out of the slack-jawed throng, a single cabbage whistled through the air, and Houserflaz artfully ducked it.
“Even such bounty as that thrown at a humble priest is a gift of Dreha. I implore you—”
“If only such bounty would drop from the void and bury thee fathoms deep in sustaining vegetation, villain,” cried Palanti-Aarbo, perfectly mimicking Karlara’s warbling, hawking cry.
At this, the massive crowd of Draeg turned toward the most pious, holy prophet in Valtir’s history. Their eyes uplifted, their hands clasped in prayer, they all to a one fervently sought to hear holy words dedicated to Versivo, whether they worshipped space or not, as what was once a torrent of holiness had flashed into a desert of dissipation, and they ached for holy words to slake their spiritual thirst.
Karlara stood as regally as he could, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed and scanning the mass that now ran from one end of the long street to the other.
“The only such bounty I need is that which crawls into my lap each evening!”
The following hip thrust and groin grab sent eight particularly devout Draeg fainting straight to the ground. No one bothered to catch them, stunned as they were by the old Draeg’s lascivious act.
“In space no one can hear your screams of delight. Versivo will extinguish your pleasurable howls as concubines cover your flesh from stem to stern, fore and aft. My friends, are you not tired of hearing your neighbors fornicating like beasts and ruining your own nightly sinning? Pray to Versivo to cast them out into the black, vast gulf of space itself, where they may explode from decompression, their frozen gore drifting from star to star, reflecting only the reddish hue of organic viscera draped with the tentacles of delectable sin. Shall you deny yourselves the absolute pleasure of vengeance, my flock? Surely you cannot—”
Palanti-Aarbo struck a nerve. With a cry of “false prophet,” a Draeg tackled the disguised Vijari and began pummeling him before they both hit the ground. The blows stung, certainly, but Palanti-Aarbo couldn’t help but to shake with laughter.
Houserflaz watched as the Draeg mass surged toward his downed master, torn between helping him and sticking with the plan.
Squirming out from underneath his attacker, Palanti-Aarbo scampered up the wall flanking the boulevard, and stopped halfway up. Using Grapple, he adhered himself to the stones and dropped his Morph disguise. In an instant, a red and gold robed man, with a massive and expertly waxed mustache, wearing a stuffed chicken, appeared before the roiling crowd.
“Praise be to Palanti, Holy Divinity of Divine Mischief,” cried Palanti-Aarbo. “May she long bless those who seek to disrupt, interrupt, and put them up. Come, Acolyte H. Come, my followers. Our holy work here is complete. May those of you who seek to cause mischief and mayhem be blessed!”
This pronounced, Palanti-Aarbo then scampered straight up the wall, disappeared over the top, and fled the scene.
A moment later, 12 smoke bombs went off underneath 12 hoverdiscs. Clouds of bright blue, pink, orange, yellow, chartreuse, turquoise, violet, magenta, cyan, red, peridot, and tangerine tango billowed into the street, forming a swirling rainbow of confusion and chaos. Twelve acolytes scrammed in 12 different directions and ran as swiftly as their lives depended on it.
While his 12 acolytes began their convoluted routes to regroup at the temple, Palanti-Aarbo skipped over rooftops, leapt across alleys, and ducked through broken fences as he sprinted to the other side of Valtir. There, where a small herd of sheep meandered around a rickety shack, he had hidden his growing collection of pilfered supplies, wealth, and forged papers to get him off Xydak. By the time his former followers had re-robed and washed the dye from their scales, he would be zipping through the upper atmosphere.
Having tossed his robes aside, chucked the chicken across the room, and ripped the medallion from his neck, he donned a skintight stealth suit, grabbed his provisions, and had his vortexes safely strapped across his chest. Then, when he laid his hand on the door latch, the itch returned.
It flared when he slid the latch back.
It blossomed a third time when he cracked the door open.
Turning around, he saw the stuffed chicken. It was laying on its side, black, glossy, dead eyes staring directly at him.
“Stop doing that.”
The stuffed chicken didn’t move.
“You can’t actually move, you know.”
The stuffed chicken didn’t retort.
“Why am I still talking to you?”
The stuffed chicken offered no response.
Palanti-Aarbo shut the door, crossed the small room, and took his former official headdress up in his hands. He looked into its fake glass eyes and saw a fisheyed distortion of his own reflection.
“Is this my conscience coming back to bite me in the ass?”
The stuffed chicken bobbled slightly in his hands.
That night, after all the candles in the temple were extinguished save for the one burning on Palanti’s momentous bosom, Houserflaz shuffled off to his private quarters. The evening prayer had been much more muted than usual, what with the concern every acolyte had for their master’s wellbeing. The town criers had said nothing about a priest being murdered in the street or in the watch’s custody, but Palanti-Aarbo should have returned hours ago. A few acolytes had mentioned searching for him, but the street patrols were seeking false prophets. It simply wasn’t safe even with the cover of ritual law, which, admittedly, would be stretched to its extreme in defending their actions today.
When Houserflaz lit the four candles he was allowed as head acolyte, unfamiliar dots of light pattered across the wall. He turned, wondering what was reflecting the candlelight.
It was a medallion. Yes, the pot metal was starting to show through some scratches and it had been brighter when he first saw it all those months ago, but the writhing, generously proportioned goddess on it was just the same: Palanti. It was draped around a stuffed chicken’s neck. Even though the feathers were mightily ruffled, and a few stuck out at broken angles, the dark glass eyes still glistened in the candlelight.
Houserflaz let out a slow breath as he took it in and his mind zipped through the implications. It was a few more moments before his eyes alit on a rolled piece of parchment propped up against the chicken headdress.
Breath coming in quick bursts, he untied the red silk cord and unrolled the parchment. It was his master’s writing, plain as day.
“See reverse side for holy catechism.”
Houserflaz flipped the parchment over.
“Manage some mischief, high priest.”