What Would Pelinal Do?
"An Altmeri Sun Bird Captain alights on the shore of the River next to Pelinal's skiff and issues a naught-challenge."
WWPD?
"Pelinal would open his chest, refract the light of the Sun Bird into form swords that shot across the water and unprove the Sun, laughing like an idiot with bleeding eyes.
"And then the Aleshut would climb aboard Morihaus and wing thereby into the aether, apologizing, and return all things right, except for the dead Captain's life, whose severed head would be her first step off the Bull God's reentry, for he was an Altmer, and she is glad for his glorious removal.
"Pelinal, seeing this, would utter: !0100101010011010101010DIDREALGOODSORRYBOUTTHESUNBITLOLKTHX101010101001010101."
"Pelinal is sleeping in the rebel camp near Jarool-That-Flays-Girlchildren-With-Too-Many-Freckles. He is farting in his sleep, for he drank Elvish blood again in the day-battle of four hours ago, and ripping his tent to shreds with its hideousness.
"A rider approaches with news from Mor, but is knocked down, horse and all, as he gets caught in the wind of the Madman. He demands his honor to be recollected this night."
WWPD?
"A hoplite from a nearby campfire would behead the rider from behind, calling him a fool in a whisper, so as not to wake up the Star-Made Knight. The rider's news would not reach the camp, and the next day would be costly to the Revolution. Pelinal, for his part, would stay asleep, and fart."
Man One: "Dem tigers put they whole mouth round yo leg."
Man Two: "Yeah, dem tigers put they whole mother[censored]in mouth round yo leg."
WWPD?
"Call in an Orbital Strike. Tuned to tiger-stripes. The tribes of Man beat their drums and call off the Revolution for a day so they can play with their wives, who have all painted their faces as Perrif so that she becomes filled with the All Seed of Old Cyrod. KLO! HUDDA!"
"And then Pelinal, slipping across seed, blood, and charred skin, would bat heads (some too hard, and that is how the Road to Tara-Val lost the 18th), and froth enough to make anger-shakes, and roar: "Who the [censored] killed all these tigers?"
"A paravantial pardon was requested. Again. It had 'Sorry' written in 8th-grade girl bubble letters near the bottom, which is how it got through, "cuz that's so cute", Stendarr said."
"A moth-priest of Reman's Council reverberates with the roaring of his Emperor's name by Pelinal thousands of years prior. He immediately dream-drafts a memospore and sends the roar to the Imperial Dracocryptography & Authentifications Congress, who verify its origins and its status as a dangerous anachronism.
"Emperor Remans approves the sleeve-sending of a temporonauch warform to the fields of the Revolution to rectify matters, or at least plant the first seed for rectifying matters. It quickly encounters the Star-Made Knight and asks for a PIN number."
WWPD?
"Nothing, but not of his own choice. Instead, Mor freaks out, thinking the warform a trick of the eyelid, and gores it to death. It falls apart into what looks like angel's-hair pasta time-fibers and fabricant Anyshape Oil, and all present are stunned. Alessia finally anoints the location of manslaughter as a bed for her to lay in much, much later.
"Only some remember this and they are mostly erased."
"And these were days of Borgas Badly-Named, who had tree trunks for legs and that's not a [metaphor]...
"Wait, [this] is an Aldudagga story."
WWPD?
"Confused unto incoherence yet pre-programmed in nil-point foam to enact Mankind's Either-Or Violence, Pelinal attempts a Half-Nelson on the four-armed Dagon, which does not go well.
"A Fight ensues, which rips apart a sacred mountain, causing Giants and Snow Whale Bones to fall on everyone's head. Dagon goes limp from the impact, scattered Nords begin to see the Ghost Circuitry of Shor and head-hurt-mumble-it-so, and Pelinal phr33ks, siphoning [censored] THIS power from his aurbilical-port via wetware finger quotes cord end finger quotes.
"Madness washes over the site and spreads into the poesy-web of right foundation where if you tell a better story than I do then Tamriel lets you win, but the Pelinalada Holla Til It Hurts Gram rips it into new school Baltimore breakcore and Emergency Jills fly out all hitting RESET Oh GAWD RESET and The Eight Fights of the Aldudagga forever become just Seven.
"1001010101PEL!NAL10101001PEL!--
"--NULL."
"A Dragon Knight, the Ninth of Nine, kept asking around camp about the truth of Pelinal Insurgent, and some of the more terrified members said to him: No, do not ask these things, just join us in our Revolution.
"But the Dragon Knight, the Ninth of Nine, would not be satisfied. Like a maruhkati, he talked this sametalk in the presence of Pelinal in the eating tent. Many tribes left this tent right there and then.
"'But I'm right, aren't I? That you, Pelinal, are really--'"
WWPD?
"Everyone knows what Pelinal would do, and so we shall not speak of it here."
"And there was a weird thing: the Dragon Knight, the Ninth of Nine, had somehow reformed himself after being led into Heaven where his eyes and ears and mouth and nose were burnt unto a gravytrain of wrong-thinking and bent nails; and even after being cut into ninths he did re-knit; and even after being eaten and issued out from Another Night of Madgas...
"...he still yet came back, talking his godlogic, which Pelinal can never suffer except from the Paravania. And eager-foot did he make his way to the table of the Stranger with his cat-scratch asking...."
WWPD?
"He said, "Here, okay, I am to suffer your talktalktalk until I myself am cut into ninths though your texts will say eighths but that's probably because I'm gonna go nuts and eat a section of timespace away. Again. But, look at my hand, the one made of killing-light, and look at my chest, which is not there, and know that your thinking is sitting on the Corner of No and Duh.'
"After which, having admitted these things, Pelinal then laughed in the Dragon Knight's fully-answered-and-beaming face, saying: 'I LIED. Now do you get it? YOU CANNOT TRAP ME IN ANY NET SPUN FROM THE ANUPADHOME[censored][censored][censored]...'
"And all of Cyrod then did close its eyes, even those of the Paravant, because the moths were coming and all was going flutter-dark. They were, like Pelinal, uncountable in the minds of Men; and he, Pelinal, like the Knight, will simply not listen to any of this."
"Two soldiers hobbled through long grass to get to the lagoon. They carried knives and blowguns and painted faces and a hemprope of varliance beads that they may or may not use. The tallest of the soldiers, who the junglemen called Pellani, carried a staff with bones hanging from it and wet feathers and more the bones were these: one from a black sugarcat which made him invisible to his enemies, four from the neck of a Snow Throat thane whose crimes still largely remain hidden, and of bird legs like clicking moon'd tinsel of no matching pair, and set highest on the staff, like an eye (for it was an eye), the white knuckle of an unborn child. His student beside him was a hoplite called Small Mori, who wore the bull tattoos of his tribe and a nose ring as in the fashion of the Revolution in the northern quarter of Ut Cyrod.
"The lagoon was surrounded by pretty rust-haired girls that all looked alike, grim dark on crush. I remember Gyetai, Pellani said. Small Mori's breed-father once shovel-skulled a Nail-Face for talking [censored] in the rice fields. Just let us take a skiff, one girl said.
"They've been testing this design back east, Small Mori said, and let's all get in. There can always be joy. They rowed in cursive across the water, sinking the bright varliance as they went, reminding the girl that her eyes were stars that didn't know how to swim. Pellani grabbed a ghost and slid his knife vertical down its belly. Inside was a map that no one heeded. No one needed, she said.
"And now the paddles, held straight in the rush that came, made great fins of water on either side of their skiff, and to call it repose was to taste one another. When she finally runs it's never really to get out. The facepaint had been stolen and made by eyelid hands.
"And just as they got to Delodiil the magic ran out. While Small Mori pilfered a stone from an ancient eyelid-wall, the girl hitched a ride back to camp on a crooked bonewagon whose sides were tagged by first generation feather-rebels. Pellani handed his friend something she left behind. And that's what Small Mori will always remember:
"Back at the lagoon and they were dancing and he said, what currency can I offer so you never run away, she had said: you can pay me in moans, brave bull, aad semblio elhno ky'n."
***
WWPD?
"Destroy all history and hide his promise."
