The Making of the World

Nowadays anything not written down is cast into doubt, people err or mislead. Falseness is at the heart of so much pain, its mother is ignorance. Are the tales our distant ancestors passed on to their descendants true or part of an elaborate misdirection? Who knows?

Countless Librarians and Loreseekers have prayed for insight or wandered the world in search of answers. And while the tales are similar, even in Ghochandrugh east of Comhara, inquisitive minds will wonder. This isn’t meant as an affront to the gods – far from it. We know histories are rewritten to please one personage or another, but we’re talking about the Making of the World, a time when only gods walked the world, a time before the continents, before sunarghs, and long before elves.

Details may differ from region to region, and Dragh’s Ones and the Stonelords certainly tell tales differently. In the end, it’s the mother of all Fiery Tales, the beginning of history, the Making of the World.

In the beginning everything was frozen. The world as we know it was buried under Lady Ice. Beneath her ruled Master Stone. And beneath the massive shell of Master Stone’s domain lay Lord Fire’s realm, the burning center of the sphere that is our world. Master Stone created his children from the rock that is his domain, but they were small compared to the three gods. Of these dwarves there were but a handful, and they lived and died in the rocky shell surrounding the burning core. Lady Ice saw Master Stone’s children and felt a longing, a need to not be alone anymore.

There were no stars, just Ice. And one day, the Lady Ice decided to grow for herself children of her own. Inside her grew Lesganagh, which literally means, He of the Burning Heart, for his temper and his fury were boundless, and they burned within him. But he was trapped inside his mother, unable to move. The ice didn’t drown out his fury, (for he raged about his imprisonment), but Lady Ice taught him patience. She was the eternal cold, and patience was all she had ever known. She didn’t know it yet, but her son needed patience if he was to rule the world once her power weakened.

Next to Lesganagh grew two more children, a brother and a sister to her oldest. 

Lady Ice felt herself grow weaker, as her children grew stronger. Lesganagh felt her life fading, and in his anger about being unable to help his beloved mother, the fury that burned in his heart turned outward, melting the ice around him, finally freeing him.

Lady Ice’s melted body soared up behind him, as he jumped free, and Lesganagh’s brightness caused his mother’s molten flesh to glitter. And Lesganagh knew color.

Joy filled his heart, when, instead of the blackness of his mother’s womb, he beheld his siblings for the first time, bathed in colorful wombs just beneath the icy surface. He grew brighter as his heart sang out with joy, he had a brother and a sister! More and more of his mother’s flesh melted away, and Lesganagh grew afraid that his brightness would kill her, so he drew back, lest he burn his mother away. His retreat was slow, for in the dark he did not know if he could find the way back. Once his distance was great enough, he waited, until he thought Lady Ice was safe, and then he slowly crawled back, for now he knew the way.

As he drew closer, he could hear Lady Ice’s call, she told him that – once again – she covered the world.

“I am alone, Mother,” Lesganagh said. “And I cannot be with you.”

“You can visit me, and your siblings,” Lady Ice said. “And if you can control your joy and do not melt me, we can see each other more often.”

At this Lesganagh smiled, but even his smile was enough to melt pieces of his mother’s body.

For a while mother and son were content, but in time Lady Ice grew weak from his every visit. Lesganagh saw she used much of her strength to regain her form whenever he visited. And his siblings were still in their chilly confines. How he wished she would give birth to them for then he would no longer be a bright flame in the blackness surrounding the world. He decided to convince the Lady Ice to give birth to the pair, for they knew color and darkness and light, healing and growth and balance – all things his destructive flame had forced their mother to learn.

Again he visited her, and he begged her to birth his siblings, his brother and sister so that his visits could be shorter and their mother could be strong once more.

As he pleaded with her, drawing ever closer, he forgot the effect his presence had, and soon the wombs holding his siblings broke under the water that was their melted mother.

Seeing them drown before they were truly born, Lesganagh willed a spear into being. If he could make the water flow away, he could save them, and their mother. So he thrust the spear into the ground, but the holes he pierced into the rock were too small to draw much water from the surface. 

Frustrated, Lesganagh threw the spear away, and the weapon, gifted with the sometimes erratic behavior of its creator, did not fly straight. It curved and wobbled along a path of its own choosing. And every time the spear pierced the darkness that surrounded Lesganagh and the world, it left behind a small fire that shone down onto the world whenever Lesganagh retreated. So the stars came into being.

He of the Burning Heart next created an axe of gleaming light, and used it to cleave the earth so that the water could escape, granting Lady Ice a respite, draining the water from his siblings’ wombs. Lesganagh hurled the axe into the ground again and again, until much of the rock was torn asunder. Into the fissures the water poured, past the lands of Master Stone, deep into the bowels of the world, where it met the molten core of Lord Fire’s domain. It evaporated, filling the world with air instead of Ice. The Lord of Sun cleaved many fissures into the rocky shell, thus creating oceans and continents.

But the world shook, for Lord Fire was angry. Dragh, as his children knew him, had been caught by surprise as Lady Ice’s melted remains extinguished parts of his realm. Thinking it an attack, he summoned his Ones to do battle against the offender.

Oceans and continents and air had reduced the Lady Ice to a mere fraction of her being, and she retreated to the northern and southern ends of the world, away from Lesganagh’s brightness. She named her twins Eanaigh and the Moon (Which is not his real name, but we do not know the brother to Lesganagh and Eanaigh. ~R)

Eanaigh saw the danger Dragh and his Ones posed, and she wanted to convince her older brother to withdraw, so that their Sibling could negotiate with Dragh, and explain they had never meant any offense.

The Forgotten Sibling descended past Master Stone’s realm towards the fiery core of the world to speak with the Lord Fire. On his way, one of Master Stone’s small children bid him rest and talk, and informed him that the Master Stone had foreseen Lesganagh’s and the twin’s births, and what it would mean for the world. Master Stone knew things would never be the same, but he also warned the Forgotten that Dragh was not trustworthy, that war was unavoidable for water was the natural enemy of fire, and by unleashing Lady Ice’s remains into the depths, Lesganagh had unwittingly declared war on Lord Fire’s realm.

Thus prepared, the Forgotten moved on, into Dragh’s fiery domain. The talk was short, apologies were made, and supposedly accepted, but the Forgotten heeded Master Stone’s warning and saw deception in the Lord Fire’s demeanor. The two gods agreed on a truce, and the Forgotten returned to the surface.

As he climbed up, one of Master Stone’s children whispered another warning. “Fill your ranks, Child of Ice, for the enemy will come sooner than you know.”

Lesganagh looked upon the bleak world, remembering the colors, and willed into being a flower to grow on the stony surface. It died a dry husk. Something was missing.

“What shall I do?” he asked.

Eanaigh, who had been tending their mother’s withered form, answered. “The flower dies because it can’t hold on to stone.”

And Lesganagh created flowers that would cling to the rocks. A field, a mountain, a continent of flowers . . . but all withered and died. Into this bleak land returned their forgotten brother, who warned them of the coming fire.

Eanaigh, Lesganagh, and their brother each birthed children, the grandchildren of Ice.

Master Stone wanted to return to the balance before Lesganagh’s birth, but realized such was impossible. The Stonelords knew well the forces Dragh was assembling. Like his neighbor of rock, the Lord Fire had long started fanning the flames of sentience into the burning core of the world. Some were of lesser intelligence, little more than puppets controlled by the higher ranks of Dragh’s Ones. Soon he had amassed a vast host of firelings. Eight massive dragons followed in his wake. They were his captains, the Ones, each leading an army of firelings, lesser dragons, phoenixes, sprites, and the like, rising up through the cracked rocks, past Master Stone’s guardians.

In Master Stone’s realm, the Stonelords followed the Master’s lead. They created weapons and armor from the remains of those who had died before them. For the dwarves, the Stonelords, died in time. (In the Hierarchy of Stone, those of highest importance live the longest, and when they perish they become deposits of platinum. The lower a dwarf’s rank, the earlier they die, and the more common the metal left scattered about in their stone shells. For dwarves and firelings move through their element as if it were air – they glide, the matter bothers them not.)

The Stonelords had been producing arms and armor for the Children of Ice, and when Dragh’s Host gushed forth from the cracks, water boiling away as they rose, Lesganagh and the others met them, sword and axe and spear in hand, shield and breastplates reflecting the firelings’ flames. The Lord of Sun charged Dragh, but the Lord Fire feinted and pulled back, letting his Ones fight in his stead.

The continents became pyres as Children of Ice clashed with firelings. Huge dragons mauled gods both great and small, lesser dragons and phoenixes charged again and again, spewing flame and working magicks, and the Children struck down many and were felled in turn. Lesganagh stood firm, Eanaigh beside him and their Sibling, a bulwark of Lady Ice’s children. They held the line, their offspring rallying around them.

It was the Forgotten Sibling who first noticed that Lord Fire was merely directing his Ones, the first to realize that the enemy’s chief was a coward.

The Sibling then devised a plan. He shouted at the biggest of the great dragons, taunting her, pointing out that they were nothing more than pawns to their cowardly leader. That hugest of Dragh’s Ones called for the firelings to pause, and she challenged the Forgotten to a duel. What followed was not a duel of strength at arms or brawn, but a measured parley amongst two equals.

At the pause, some of the lesser dragons and Children grew restless, and from beyond the lines, the Lord Fire became aware of the “duel.”

The stories differ here as to what happened, and that might well be attributed to different sources. It’s unclear what the First Ones knew, what the gods divulged to mortal lovers, or what the rulers of the Dragonlands chose to divulge. Some sources say a lowly sprite, keen on gaining its master’s favor, spied for the Lord Fire, and told him of the talk. Others claim the Lord Fire could, at the time, enter his creatures’ minds and listened in on the conversation as it happened. A few sources even claim that one of the Children turned traitor and told the Lord Fire about the talk.

What did the Forgotten Sibling and the hugest of Dragh’s Ones talk about? We can only guess that Lesganagh’s and Eanaigh’s sibling made the dragon aware of her lord’s cowardice, that the Lord Fire was using his creations as fodder against the Children of Ice. The dragon realized the Sibling was right, and then they conspired as to what was to be done. This was the point where the cowardly Dragh struck down the Sibling, but instead of taking credit for the kill, he schemed to lay the blame on the hugest of dragons.

The huge dragons were having none of it, and even the lesser dragons and phoenixes were appalled by the treachery and turned on their creator. The Children of Ice joined their erstwhile enemy. Lesganagh and Eanaigh led the charge.

Children and firelings died galore before the Eight and Lesganagh and Eanaigh subdued the Lord Fire, beating him into unconsciousness. Together, with the permission of Master Stone, they imprisoned Dragh in the rocky shell, burying him at the bottom of a deep ravine, beneath a pillar of stone a mile in height. Then, for the first time since the battle had begun, they inspected the world, the battlefield.

Corpses were strewn everywhere, on every continent. Firelings, Children, the bodies of gigantic beings born of both fire and ice lay dead, piled high as the mountains Lesganagh had hewn with his axe. Chief amongst them the Sibling.

“The world has changed,” Lesganagh said. “Let there be peace between us.”

“How can you talk of peace with so many of our kin laying dead?” the leader of the Eight asked.

“Because the other way lies death for us all,” Jainagath said. “Let me burn the bodies, so that they may shine in our memories.”

“You,” the leader of the Eight said, pointing at Lesganagh. “You are the Lady Ice’s firstborn; you caused all this, did you not?”

“He didn’t know what he was doing, he was trying to save his mother,” said Eanaigh.

“Yet here he is, so bright that his mother still melts in his presence,” the dragon said.

“What would you have me do?” Lesganagh asked.

“Take your light away; circle the world to give it color and life, but your luminance may never directly stride upon the world again.”

“But my mother . . . ,” the Lord of Sun and War protested.

“She will live on, at the points farthest away from your influence, the poles will be her home, you may come closer at times, to be near her, but never to the detriment of us all.”

“And the surface? Who will rule here?” asked Eanaigh.

With a wave of his claw the largest of the huge dragons summoned a chain of volcanoes that encircled the world, dividing it into two hemispheres; North and South. “The north is yours to do with as you please, the south is ours.” And with that, the great dragons departed.

And so it was. The ashes of the dead became the soil; Lady Ice’s melted body filled the oceans, and sprang forth to become rivers and seas.

It is doubtful that all this happened exactly as described here, but as is elsewhere noted, magic permeates the air, in every tree, blade of grass, and in everything born. Are there questions about details? Certainly, but in the end, we deal with the facts that branch and bone and air remembers. These things are undeniable, and those who have ventured far north to the ice fields tell us of the profound sadness and longing they feel. If it’s Lady Ice mourning for her dead child or the damage her birthing the Lord of Sun and War had wrought, and a mother’s desire to be near her children, or the traveler’s own desire to return home . . . who knows?

In the end, only the gods know what really happened.

(But it’s fun to hypothesize. ~K)