The History of Holm, Part 3: The Arcane Winter
When the Gargant smashed into the soft matter of the Earth, it struck with such force that as the planet drowned in fire and ice, its very name was wiped away. All that the humans had known, their history, their works, their countless candle-flame lives, were blasted into ether. The mighty temples they had been driven by a thousand contrivances far worse than the lash to build, that their blood had soaked to the very roots, shuddered, shattered, and fell. The objects for which the Age of Wonder was named fell inert in the thunderous light.
The New Gods watched from the cold spaces above as the comet landed, saw the completeness of the devastation, saw their works all but obliterated, and abandoned the flaming wreckage that had once been called Earth. They tore free of their terrestrial past and set off in a thousand different directions into the stars, a metastatic celestial cancer, reaching out to infect and corrupt all it touched. And deep beneath the planet’s flesh, those glowering devils that had buried themselves alive bade their time, dreaming, waiting for the fires to die, the storms to break, the glaciers to crack and for life to begin anew so the gore-drinking flower of their tyranny could bloom again.
Firestorms swept across the face of the world, razing forests and cities and mountains. As a great hall grows chill after a feast, the holocaust that had raged for months, devouring entire continents, soon exhausted its fuel and left only smoking ruin. For weeks the clouds drank gluttonously of the smoke and alchemical ash of the cataclysm, growing thicker, heavier. This fulgurant death shroud would hide the dying planet beneath a flickering darkness, and the warmth of the sun and the majesty of the night sky would fade like lovers’ dreams.
Black was the everlasting blizzard that swallowed the earth. Howling winds drove the snow with murderous ferocity, like clouds of ripping daggers. Humans took refuge where they could, huddling in caves and in the remains of the Age of Wonders. The ruined fortresses of their former masters became their wretched homes. Scattered, lost, and broken, humanity survived, hanging by a fraying thread.
But the sweet release of death was withheld from the winnowed humans. Had it not been for the eldritch composition of the comet, it is likely that the surface would never have recovered, that the world would have fallen to desolation.
Ah, but the comet’s strange compounds and energies kept life tethered to the world, if only in the tiniest of islands. Aberrations pushed their forms into the material of the world, bidden by the alchemy of the Gargant. Mycelia, molds, and unnatural plant life dug their roots into the ice and rock. Concealed behind walls of murderous storms, the mutagenic nature of the planet-killer seeped into the very bones of the planet and the creatures that wandered it.
Some of these abominations were men, for certain. These men had stared, shivering and empty, into the bitter eyes of the omnipotent tempests, for far too long. Worse than these altered, feral men, the ice and the arcane ash spawned forms the world had never known before, that seemed to have slipped forth fully formed from tomes of foul alien antiquities.
These monstrosities haunted the snow-blinded wastes. Some huddled low, chittering like vermin, stalking the transmuted wastes like wolves. Others towered in the mists like walking trees, stirring reality itself with their passing as if wading through an algae-covered pond. These strange beings grew more numerous even as humanity's numbers dwindled, drawing ever-closer to extinction.
The scattered tribes picked through the broken bones of the old world in search of shelter and resources, finding little but hunger and despair. What the New Gods had left behind, vast silos of nourishment and stockpiles of supplies, was too dangerous to seek; for no treasure is without its dragon, and the Shenxian dragons demanded blood sacrifices that the stumbling race simply could not pay.
Faced with annihilation, humanity, the cursed, doom-worshipping race, returned to its old ways. Even a millennium of pacification and defilement at their cruel masters' hands could not kill the animal savagery that slept in man's heart. Ever eager to snap and howl and rip and tear, it awoke in the eternal winter, eyes glittering and fangs agleam. The disparate clans of humanity cooperated when necessary, but ancient vices were warm company in the endless cold. Treachery, greed, violence, and worse, painted the white lands in crimson sorrow.
This grim winter would last for nearly ten thousand years. The weak would die, and the strong would simply die slower, blood-stained teeth gnashing and cursing the cruel universe. Perhaps it is best to leave the Arcane Winter’s woeful tales of barbarism, haunted ruins, walking gods, and nameless things lurking in endless lashing storms, untold for now.
For now it must be said that had these horrific anecdotes never come to saturate the oral histories of the time, had humanity’s warlike nature not been rekindled and hardened them against an ossified world, it is doubtful they would have survived what was to come next.
For though the aromatic bloom of spring rose on the wind and filled their nostrils sweetly, evil portents fell in gibbering torrents from the lips of the mold-addled oracles, and ominous shadows gathered at the edges of the world.
