The Six Aspects

In the early settler days, when the ground was still warm from the passing of the great worm, there was an outcast who was known to the other dwarves as Torguld, and that was all they knew about him. It was Torguld's preference. After all, what could he tell them? A foundling who was never found, Torguld was raised by the wind and the trees and the dirt. He couldn't speak, having no language, and he ate what he foraged, which was berries and bark and slow critters. Other times, he ate what he stole. He dressed in ragged castoff furs and fabrics from the settlements where he lurked in the nighttime. No one knew where he came from, or why he was around.

Torguld had seen himself in the stillness of a pond once. It seemed at first like a creature in the water and he recoiled, but then he saw how it followed his movement, and he poked it, and it poked him, and he understood that somehow, he was looking at himself. And so when he sighted dwarves one day in his lonely wanderings he knew that they looked a bit like him and perhaps were his kin, so he followed them around, hiding in the low places. This is how he was known about, but not known. He could only ever be seen out of the corner of one's eye. Turn to him, and he was gone.

When the dwarves began to settle the Halls of Moraguld, Torguld followed them in. The endless tunnels had endless secrets, and Torguld meandered in them. Caves connecting caves that turned to pits that turned to tunnels. Little clouds of gemdust marked where he stepped. Up and then down, up again, and then down seemingly forever. Torguld wandered a long time. He wandered for so long that he lost sight of the other dwarves, and of the flickering of their torches on the cave walls. He strained to hear the sound of their anvils and cheerful voices, but there was only the dry silence of the tunnel and his own breathing. As he slowed his pace, his eyes adjusted, pupils so wide that his eyes were almost completely black. He sat down abruptly, all at once in a puff of gemdust. He was lost. Torguld sat for a long time, and then he slumbered.

Hunger pangs roused him from a dreamless sleep. His wide, black eyes saw the pitchblack of the tunnel in dim blue relief, but he saw no way out of his situation. Resting the back of his head on the ground, Torguld began to consider ideas for which he had no words. If he knew the words, he would have been thinking about starvation and dying and futility. Instead, he felt the ideas, and understood them in a way that cannot be articulated. He started to laugh a bit, which he didn't do very often, so it was a strange hiccuping thing that he did, with snorts. Another dwarf would not have recognized it as laughter.

Resigned, Torguld slept again. This time he did dream. He dreamed that he had happened upon a great store of bread and the bread was fresh and ready to eat. He shoved handfuls into his mouth, gorging himself. The bread was fragrant and delicious. Torguld chewed and chewed and as he chewed the edges of his vision grew dark and gradually he found himself back in the dim blue of the cave and to his shock he found that the bread was the dirt he had been lying in! His hands were full of dirt, his mouth was full of dirt, but the strangest thing of all was that it still tasted the same. The dirt was as fragrant and delicious as fresh bread. So Torguld kept eating.

A long time passed in this way. Torguld luxuriated in his new chamber, sleeping and dreaming and eating where only he could see. The room got deeper and brighter as he consumed layer after layer of sediment and his eyes turned as black as oil. His flesh was dessicated from dehydration, but somehow the dirt sustained him. It seemed to Torguld some days that he was crumbling, but he never got any smaller, like some tectonic force was always putting more of him into place where parts of him fell away. Knowing this, a serenity gradually filled Torguld - which he could not articulate.

This is why Torguld was unbothered when he woke one day to find himself sinking into the ground. He looked and could see the shape of himself but he could also see the stuff of himself swirling with the stuff of the earth. He felt like so many leaves in a zephyr, but there were only stones, stones everywhere! And brilliant gems! And veins of gold and copper and platinum whipping around like willow tree branches in a storm! Torguld was falling, and falling faster. He could feel himself being squeezed. Tightly, then painfully, then unbearably, like he might burst, but the pressure was somehow perfectly equal on all sides. There was nowhere to explode. Dirt turned into stones and stone turned into coal and coal turned into diamonds.

Light erupted all around and Torguld found himself in an illuminated place. His black eyes felt like they were on fire. He felt a presence in the room with him, and he felt its heat which was intense, and then suddenly gone. The light was gone too. But the presence was still there. Torguld opened his eyes and found himself in a great empty chamber, now dim blue. He could barely see the ends of it - a huge rough hewn space that seemed as though it could contain an entire mountain. He was floating in the exact center, suspended by nothing. All around him, a great lengthy mass of gold and stone was snaking silently through the air. At its end, a maw of diamond teeth and a thousand gemstone eyes, all staring at Torguld.

This is Moraguld.

A voice filled Torguld's senses. It gave him language, so he would understand.

This is the servant of my servants. You are the same.

Torguld spoke for the first time in his life: "How can we be the same? Look at his vastness. And look at how small I am."

You are the servant of my servants.

Torguld's eyes turned from black to brilliant blue and the room flooded again with golden light. Torguld looked down and saw his flesh had melted into to liquid diamond, and his hands shimmered as he held them up before his eyes, solid and molten all at once. Moraguld snaked around him and a boulder of gold broke away from its back. The boulder floated and spun towards Torguld, fracturing and breaking, revealing at its center a hammer glowing bright blue. It slowed and stopped in front of Torguld, and he grasped it by the handle.

This hammer is my promise of wealth to the dwarves. Use this to serve my servants and you will never be alone again.

At this, the chamber imploded. Primordial forces surged and lights flashed and Torguld found himself back in his own chamber in a settling cloud of gemdust. He saw that he was still diamond, and the hammer was still in his hand. Wherever he looked, the dirt walls parted like curtains. It was in this way that Torguld passed through the Halls of Moraguld like a wind through a meadow. Wherever he went, he would slip into the workshops and swing his hammer, which could make no sound or mistake. And so it was said that dwarven blacksmiths could do no wrong, and the dwarven forces grew mighty with flawless weapons and armor. But Torguld still kept to himself, only ever seen out of the corner of one's eye. Turn to him, and he was gone.

This was Torguld's preference.

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