A Dwarven Story of the Creation

The Creation

In the very beginning, there was only the Universe. It was unbalanced and unwhole, and completely and totally dark and empty. It lay, slumbering, for thousands and thousands of years.
Then, finally, it awoke. A single Eye opened - this was the Eye of the Universe. From this Eye poured balance and unity and abundance, in the form of two beautiful gods, a female and a male. These two gods would rule the Universe and keep it balanced and unified and whole.
The female was named Yelika. She would be the Queen, and she was the goddess of motherhood and protection. The male was named Karnaem, and he would be the King. He was the god of fatherhood and fertility.
However, Yelika and Karnaem felt no purpose, no motivation. They had created balance in the Universe, and now there was nothing left to do. They became sad. The Eye of the Universe saw this, and decided to give them motivation. Again it opened, and out poured two more equally beautiful gods, another female and another male.
The female was named Elyssa; she was the goddess of love. The male was named Einar; he was the god of hatred. Elyssa and Einar were bonded, and soon they had two children, Liv and Agnarr, who were also gods. Liv was the god/dess of order and creation, and Agnarr was the god/dess of chaos and destruction.
All six of these gods had supreme power over the Universe, and exerted their balancing forces on everything therein. The love brought to the Universe by the birth of Elyssa formed a bond between Yelika and Karnaem, and soon Yelika gave birth to three beautiful goddesses.
The first to be born was Ronja. Ronja brought with her the Earth, and all its rocks and metals and precious gems. The second was Celja, who covered Ronja’s Earth in water - oceans, lakes, and rivers. The third was Helja, who surrounded the Earth with swirling winds, air, and clouds.
The Eye of the Universe beheld the sisters’ work, and instructed Liv to fill it with life, which ve did. Liv covered the earth with plants and animals, elves, humans, and dwarves, filled the sea with plants and fish and swimming things, and filled the air with birds and insects.
But a mistake had been made. The three sisters were imbalanced, and so was their creation. The world they had made was too perfect. Eskil, an evil spirit who had been created when the Universe awoke and created balance, and who existed with the intention of reinstating imbalance and returning the Universe to its slumbering state, noticed this, and began to corrupt the Earth and its elements, creating sickness that swept over the land. It rotted the plants and corrupted the flesh of the animals, so that the dwarves who ate them got sick and quickly died. Many humans starved to death rather than eat the corrupted food.
Liv and Agnarr saw what was happening, and they saw that Eskil’s forces of imbalance were behind it. They went to Yelika and Karnaem and told them what they had seen. “You must have another daughter,” they said, “to return balance to the Earth.”
Yelika and Karnaem were very open to the idea, and they relished the thought of having another child. By now, Ronja, Celja, and Helja were well-grown, and they missed having young children around. But unfortunately Yelika was past her childbearing years, and could not conceive.
So Liv and Agnarr created a child and placed it into Yelika’s womb, and soon their fourth daughter was born. Her name was Bonja, and she brought fire to the Earth. It spilled from beneath the rock surface, and it shot down from the sky, and it swept across the land and destroyed everything.
At first, Bonja’s three older sisters were enraged. She had wiped clean their beautiful haven, stripped it of all of its vibrance and made it barren. Then they became jealous, for what emerged from the destruction was new life, cleansed of Eskil’s rotting sicknesses. The plants and trees grew anew, and all the animals’ flesh was pure and edible once again. The humans continued to thrive. Their little sister was a hero, and they had all been outshone.
Because Eskil’s sicknesses had been allowed to set into the Earth before a solution was formed, they could not be fully eradicated, and sometimes they did manage to cause death and sadness. But Bonja’s wildfires continued to purge and rebuild the prairies and the forests, and the humans continued to use fire to cook their meat before they ate it, and imbalance was kept at bay.

This version of the story is told in many Dwarven lands, often as a teaching tool for those still learning about the Dwarven ways. Almost all Dwarves know this story in one permutation or another, especially in urban centers where official temples stand. Rarely it is acted out as a drama, with costumes and even bardic magic. Scholars speculate that this tradition was practices in the Kellkennons (Dramatic Temples of the True Eye, now in ruin) long ago.