The Greatest Work, The Greatest Love
By: Sylvance Posted on: September 24, 2012
The pleasant chill of the Vashnarian air lent a counterpoint to the wakening caress of Lady Sol, and, little by little, Cyrene began to stir. Leather creaked as myriad adventurers pulled on their trusty boots and armor, the sibilant promise of steel being whet filled the air, and soon voices joined this symphony as fishmongers cried out the catch, and hordes of gold were traded for troves of vials, of inks, of curatives. Screeches and feathers vied for space in the firmament, declaring that falcons and doves flew about important business. Down on the cobbles a swelling number of dwarven children were playing a game of Slap the Orc, their voices alternating freely between riotous laughter and increasingly fervent curses. A rising crescendo of life: now the scarce-perceptible hum of telepathic communication heralding the contest for Senator; now the captain of the CCG putting the soldiers through their paces; now a Chorale being struck up at Centre Crossing and-
None had noticed the old man until the children's game spilled into his personal space. A mistimed slap threatened to strike him until he caught the little palm in a strong, weathered and calloused hand. The children stopped their merriment, and for just a moment there was not a sound in all the world. A deep cowl obscured his features, all but the salt-and-pepper beard that burst proudly from its confines, and when he stood up (finally releasing the child from his grasp), his stature cried dwarven heritage with equal aplomb.
"This is unmeet." His whisper cut effortlessly across the street. The attention of all was his to command. "This is unmeet. That the children of a great race should expend themselves in naught. Is this what we have become?"
The children looked askance at one another. Not a few frowns were exchanged between adult onlookers. Dwarven passersby seemed to take particular umbrage at the man's words, and one of them began to challenge him. Soon other voices joined the dissent, and a gaggle of guardsmen and troubadours looked at one another with worry. Then a sudden gust of wind whipped down the street, throwing off the man's hood, billowing his cloak theatrically. With a near-skeletal finger, he pointed at the ringleader of the dissidents, skewering him with freezing blue eyes, and suddenly there was silence once more.
"Fools! Lackhearts, workshy, and with soft hands! Speakers of the Silent Lie!" Those scathing eyes sliced across the cowed crowd, which was still growing. "Stand tall, ye dwarves, and throw off this life that ye have taken up. Ye have grown fond of ale and food, of the rattling of dice, of the softness of a woman's warmth. Yet tell me which tankard ever quenched as the first slake after a hard day's work? Does not an hour's toil at the searing face of the forge make your marriage bed softer thricefold? I am here to save ye, brothers, sisters. I do not preach bitterness to ye, but sweetness. Give me your indolence and your laziness, and I shall return to ye the splendour of real things. Understand: It is not food that satisfies, but the removal of a hunger honestly earned. I give you the Third Speaking: No worthy reward without worthy work."
Some murmuring now, as they pondered his words, some disagreement, some agreement.
No apathy.
"Silence," he boomed with authority. "Ye shall heed me, for ye are lost. Follow me, brothers, sisters, e'en ye who are not dwarves yet are Patroned by the Dwarffather, that ye may all be saved.
"Yet follow me not forward. Follow me back that ye may find yourselves. Come with me to the beginning of good days. Listen as I extoll the greatest epic in history; look with me, ye, to the time of the creation of a mighty people!"
The Briefest Rest
The world was made, and thus through His toil did Lord Phaestus become the Worldforger. Yet it was unmeet before the Great Smith that all He had made be a mere baubel, a thing of beauty. With a quiet smile, the god peered down from His Worldforge at the queer, small mortal creatures that teemed upon the skin of the world. With rising anticipation, He wondered what they would make of it. Yet these beings, these Tsol'aa, were weaved in the fashion of the Aldar, and their eye was upon things unseen. The physical did not interest them so much as the ephereal worlds of magic and abstraction, and thus the Worldforger's heart was stricken. Worse, the Tsol'aa were not merely uninterested in mastering the physical world, they felt no desire to explore it beyond the boundaries of their forests, and thus the Worldforger's heart was stricken.
Understand that it was not pride that drove Him but the harsh knowledge that all He had to show and teach about the world's deepest mysteries would go to waste. By His very nature, the Great Smith was driven to create, to teach. To give. And in order for One to give freely there must be one who would receive.
I give you the First Speaking: Above all else, Love.
The Greatest Quest
And thus it was that Lord Phaestus, the Worldforger, determined to craft a new race. He would improve upon the Tsol'aa, removing their unseemly preoccupation with the ethereal by ensuring that the new creation was inexorably tied to the physical plane. It would be built from the earth, for the earth. In His wisdom, the god had kept a mote of the essence of creation, the material from which the whole of physical creation had been wrought; this would be the very core of His new people. Yet still more things were needed.
Donning the form of a physical being, the Worldforger travelled one hundred days as we mortals measure time, until He reached the greatest mountain in all creation. Tirelessly and without complaint, He lifted His tools and bored into the mountain, deeper and deeper still, through rock and ore and deeper yet. The pressure and the heat were immense, and such cramped condition wracked His noble form with pain and discomfort that not a soul of us has tasted. But such was His love for the people He would create that these things were as naught. This was the expression of that love, for of course He might have simply reached out and taken the material He sought, but to work for it, to struggle for it, to suffer for it, these things were meet before Him.
I give you the Second Speaking: Loyalty through loyal action.
Giddy with toil, and with a final cry of defiance, the Great Smith shattered the last of the stone that hid His prize, and before Him, look! there was the mountain's heart-metal. After such work, this reward was great, and the god took that which He had earned and returned to His Worldforge.
Taking time only to be refreshed, He turned His eye towards the heavens, and there above burned the bearded star, Brillach. With a bending and straightening of His knees, the Great Smith launched Himself into the void between worlds and soared towards that star for one hundred days as we mortals measure time. His physical body screamed for the lack of air in this place, an agony unending and unquenchable, and yet, being Divine, He did not die. Pain beyond reckoning burned in His lungs, and the assault of meteors and comets and asteroids was unending, yet still these things were as naught. Slowly, so slowly, Lord Phaestus neared the searing brilliance of His prize, and as He finally entered its awesome presence His entire being was awash in flame and agony, yet e'en this could not outshine His love nor His loyalty. With a final cry of defiance, the Great Smith brought together His mighty hands and grasped the star, claiming mastery of it and bending it to His will in service to His people. After such work, this reward was great, and the god took that which He had earned and returned to His Worldforge.
Next, taking time only to be refreshed, He looked to the deepest, darkest frozen places of Creation. Wreathing His physical body in the thickest furs, and donning the sturdiest boots, the mighty god began to walk, for a hundred days as we mortals measure time, through chill and snow, through sleet and hail, downwards into a world of coldness beyond our ken. Such was the frigidity here that for a time e'en the Great Smith's thoughts were frozen, and for these dark times He did not think. Only the fires of love and loyalty in His breast kept His limbs moving with a steady determination, the deep knowledge of what must be done a recurring thing in His silent mind, a beacon pulling Him towards His prize. And, finally, when He reached the very lowest point of creation He stopped. He had reached the goal, and yet His mind was frozen, and thus He simply stopped. How much time passed, as we mortals measure time, we cannot know. But in the very act of stopping, thus did the Great Smith free Himself. For e'en a human simply cannot take flight unaided, nor was it possible for the Great Smith to stand idle; this was a thing of impossibility, unmeet. And lo! in the moment that this paradox was screamed across the universe, He burst into action with a final cry of defiance, and carved out a slab of that archetypal ice. After such work, this reward was great, and the god took that which He had earned and returned to His Worldforge.
The Unsurpassed Forging
Taking time only to be refreshed, the Great Smith laid out His materials. A few sketches. A measurement, a silent nod. Taking the essence of creation and the heart-metal, He began the greatest work. With relentlessness born of love, His hammer rose and fell, subjugating the materials with His will and the heat of Brillach, until both metal and essence were fused for all time. The mighty god folded the searing material again and again, building strength into the core of it, pouring Himself into His work until a short, squat, unmoving figure emerged.
"Thus I make you sturdy enough to withstand the knocks and bumps of the world, and small enough to explore its confines, and doughty enough to climb its highest peaks!"
Yet innured against physical trauma, the elements might still wear down this creation, so the Great Smith took what He had made back towards the bearded star, heating it beyond measure. Next, He flicked the white-hot figure over the block of archetypal ice that was now at the bottom of his quench tank. With a screech of protest, the lifeless form trembled as the forces of heat and cold warred within its form, and with a sound like shattered certainty, and a mighty flash of light, it became harder than tempered steel.
"Thus I infuse you with the rage of the elements, that you may know the fear of them and yet feel it not."
Holding it aloft, then placing it before Him, the Worldforger looked upon His work, and it was complete, and it was fine upon His eye and fine within His breast. From deep within Him, Lord Phaestus, the Great Smith drew up His pride and hurled it towards His creation, and with a voice brimming with promise and love and fullness, the Dwarffather compelled it so:
"Live, and know you delight your Creator!"
A silent crowd, whose breath was barely audible. Whose eyes were focused on a time long passed.
"Yes, I can see that ye are stirred, and rightly too! For who may hear this tale and stand idle, I ask ye? Take up your hammers and find work for your hands, brothers, sisters. Know that ye must be good workers, for ye are the creation and the wards of the Good Worker."
The dissenters in the crowd were all but silent, half-converted, and in truth most people were examining their fingernails and navels in quiet shame. Still, the robed stranger did not spare them, continuing on with dwarven determination. "Ye love, yes! Greatly, yet wrongly, ye lovers of pleasure. Tell me, all ye who worship at the shrine of recreation: without spending yourselves in work, what is it that ye seek to recreate?"
They looked at him as one, hungrily, their eyes begging him for answers.
"Look within yourselves," he rebuffed. "If ye are not diligent, then how can your Father be diligent? If ye are seekers of pleasure and not seekers of work, then what has your Father taught ye? Stand tall and firm, therefore, and display your Father in all ye do, else ye say without words that your Father is a stranger to work, and a poor teacher both; thus are ye speakers of the Silent Lie. And for that there is no salvation. So tell me, Cyrene, dwarves, brothers and sisters: will ye turn your hands to work?"
Pregnant silence, and then somebody cheered, then somebody else, and soon the crowd was alive and loud with tears of joy, crying out promises of good things. Some falling to their knees and begging forgiveness even as others threw their small children into the air with jubilation. They surged towards the comm shop, the forges, the workshops, the studios. At first the lawmen attempted to slow the crowd, yet soon they too were swept up in the fervent ecstasy.
When later the stranger was sought out, there was no sign of him, and none could say where he had gone nor when he had left. More confusingly, none could quite agree on the finer points of his description, such had been the force of his message. A strong hand, a proud beard, a whittling gaze: these were the things upon which folks concurred. Whoever he had been, and from where, Cyrene was changed by him that day, and forever. And to present times their remain those who proudly tell their grandchildren that they, yes, they! were there when a member of the proud dwarven race had stood amongst them and, with passion and conviction, told the tale of the greatest work, the greatest love in history.
FIN