Peryite Lies for Alduin

It came a time during the early days of the Aurbis when Peryite was doing the duties that his father-shedder-brother Aka had assigned him when Magnus leaped to the Little Dragon looking very panicked.

“I can’t find my Tome of New Words!” he shouted so loud that the other spirits (which Magnus had went around calling et’Ada) grabbed ahold of their ears and went to their secret places.

“You have a Tome of New Words?” Peryite said from his perch upon his shedder-father-brother’s nose, looking very much confused. “Wait, what’s a Tome of New Words?”

Magnus threw up his arms and began waving them around. “Well, it’s… a Tome. Of New Words. If we don’t find it, we’ll forget the meaning of the all words we created and we would all become dumb!”

The et’Ada shivered from the sheer thought of knowledge becoming useless, but Peryite frowned, because he thought Magnus was being extremely materialistic.

“Why can’t you just make a New Tome of New Words?” he asked politely.

“Because I might not be able to remember all the new words in the old tome, and the new tome would be incomplete. And besides, New Tome of New Words doesn’t have the exact ring to it that Tome of New Words has.”

Peryite sighed, but agreed to Magnus’ request mostly to put the spirit’s mind at ease but also because that was the job his father-shedder-brother had given him. And so the Little Dragon flew around the Aurbis and began asking everyone if they had seen the Tome of New Words.

First he went to his good friend Jyggalag, who was busy straightening various pieces of the Aurbis he thought was messy.

“Have you seen Magnus’ Tome of New Words?” Peryite asked him while he was taking a break from all the straightening. “He seems to have misplaced it and he doesn’t know what happened to it.”

“I’ve never seen a Tome of New Words,” Jyggalag replied. “But if you help me finish my straightening I’ll tell you who might though.”

And so Peryite helped his friend finish his straightening, which was actually more difficult than he thought it would be. After this was finished Jyggalag told the Little Dragon that he heard Molag Bal say something about a tome, but he wasn’t very sure.

Peryite frowned because he didn’t very much like Bal, but he flew nevertheless to the spirit, who was too busy bossing around other spirits because he was just mean.

When Molag saw Peryite approaching he lifted his finger and laughed. “Look, it’s the Little Dragon and he has decided to come out and play. Do you wish to play a game with me, Little Dragon?”

Peryite had heard all about Bal’s ‘games’ and knew that they were very cruel and mean, and he wanted no part in them. “Just tell me where the Tome of New Words are at, and I’ll leave you be.”

“Oh, I know all about that dumb little book Magnus wrote,” Bal grinned nastily. “But if you want to know where it is at you must beat me at a new game I just came up with. If I win, you owe me a favor. If you win, I’ll tell you want you want.”

“Absolutely not!” Peryite spat. “Your games are not games at all, but brawls and sadness. You will tell me what I want or I’ll wake up my father-shedder-brother and he’ll get you.” And this made Bal very afraid, and he told Peryite that he had seen the Tome with Alduin when they were playing a game.

This shocked Peryite, because Alduin and Magnus were very good friends, and they would often go leaping around the edges of time together when they got bored. And so the Little Dragon flew to find Alduin, who was sitting on a bunch of nothingness with a very fat belly.

“Hello little brother,” Alduin said with a burp. “How are you doing?”

“Where is Magnus’ Tome of New Words?” Peryite said sharply, because he was quite tired from all the flying around. “Molag Bal told me that you had it.”

Alduin’s eyes went very big and he shifted on his feet. “That idea is preposterous! What in the ever so slightest gave you that notion?”

Peryite frowned because he didn’t understand most of the words his brother had said. Suddenly, a deep feeling of unease entered his mind.

“You… ate the Tome didn’t you, Alduin?” said the Little Dragon, and he stared directly into Alduin’s eyes until his eldest brother gave in.

“I didn’t mean to!”

“How could you?!”

“Blame the hunger our father gave to me. Me and Magnus had just finished leaping around as usual when we both stopped, and he pulled out the tome to write in a new word. And then Z’en came and asked him to teach him a new word, and I suddenly grew horribly hungry and next thing I knew the tome was sliding down my gullet.”

Peryite was outraged. “I can’t believe you did that! Now how will we all learn new things to say? I need to tell Magnus immediately so he’ll know what happened to his tome.”

“Please don’t!” Alduin cried out. “He is my greatest friend and I don’t want him to get mad at me. Just tell him the tome got destroyed some different way.”

Peryite really wanted to tell Magnus what had happened, but at the same time he didn’t want to see his eldest brother lose his friend. So the Little Dragon decided to break order just this once and went back to Magnus.

“Did you find my Tome?” the et’Ada asked anxiously, and Peryite (his mind still filled with doubts, however) told his lie about how the Tome had been destroyed while he was helping Jyggalag straighten out the Aurbis. Magnus was very sad about this, but cheered up when he thought of all the new words he could come up with alongside the old ones. And Alduin and Peryite helped him, because they felt guilty about their lie, even though Alduin had to control his words.