The History of Holm, Part 2: The Day of the Sword
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There are legends about the day the Gargant came. They say that it was no mere random comet and that it was not aimed by the blind eyes of fate. It is said that the Gargant was not a comet at all, but rather a frozen ocean of world-warping material, as rich with life as with death, and the tomb of an impossibly ancient god, a thing called the Star Dragon.
It i told that a little boy brought it to us, that he prayed to the heavens one bitter morning, as he sat weeping in a lake of blood, surrounded by the corpses of a thousand friends and strangers, all slaughtered by the cold golems of the New Gods. The shivering thing's faint prayers reached out through vast eternity, took the Gargant by the hand, and led it like a roaring devil to the Earth.
The world shuddered with the impact. All who bore witness to the apocalyptic landing felt first the hot light burning through their retinas, blinding them, then consuming them whole, scattering their atoms to the raging winds. Waves of killing pressure and cleansing fire raced around the planet at impossible speeds. The mantle vibrated and buckled, mountains rising and falling like the backs of titanic sea monsters. Continents shifted, the oceans evaporated, and columns of molten fire leapt into the air.
All who would have born witness were vaporized or died long before they could describe the dread events of that day. Even had they survived, our simple euclidean minds are not made to know what truly came to pass. All we know is this: it was as if the laws of physics, long cherished by man, had been suspended with the passing of our miscreant civilization, standing back to watch the world unravel in strange, unpredictable ways.
Where the Gargant landed, there rose a monstrous mountain, like a flaming blade, wide at the base, tapering as it reached up into the heavens and vanished into the depths above. In time, that mountain, hidden behind a pall of ash and flame, cooled and darkened. Like a jagged tombstone rising from a field of tumbled granite, black and dreadful, there stood what would come to be known as the Tower of Fate, The Black Needle, The Tomb of Infinity, The Godspar.
This monolith, like a god standing in silent judgement, would come to cast its shadow across the face of the world, and where it landed, there would spring wonder and doom, miracles and madness. It would rend the veil between realities, channelling a deluge of arcane energies and beings down into the world from the outer darkness. Strange materials would bubble forth from its shattered roots, luring adventurers, arcanists, and the avaricious alike. All who would see it would be enthralled. All who would hear the songs of the still-living corpse of the Star Dragon, buried in its base and singing promises of power through the very ground, would be drawn inexorably to it.
These things would come to pass, but not for many thousands of years. Not until the fires burnt out and the ash choked the light from the sky. Not until stone and earth were buried beneath miles of ice. Not until humanity was hunted to the edge of extinction by cold and starvation and savagery and the chittering things that came at night or that stalked from within the endless blizzards.
The horrors of the Day of the Sword came and went, leaving smoldering ruins in its wake. People and planet alike, clinging to a thread, trembled in aftershocks. But had humanity known the suffering that was to come in the following age, many would have begged for the Sword to fall again.
