The Doomshape, called the Destroyer, in Egypt, was seen in all the lands, thereabouts. In color, it was bright and fiery, in appearance changing and unstable. It twisted about itself like a coil … It was not a great comet or a loosened star, being more like a fiery body of flame. Its movements on high were slow, below it swirled in the manner of smoke and it remained close to the sun, whose face it hid. There was a bloody redness about it, which changed as it passed along its course. It caused death and destruction in its rising and setting. It swept the Earth with grey cinder rain and caused many plagues, hunger and other evils. It bit the skin of men and beast until they became mottled with sores.

In the glow of the Destroyer the Earth was filled with redness. The face of the land was battered and devastated by a hail of stones which smashed down all that stood in the path of the torrent. They swept down in hot showers, and strange flowing fire ran along the ground in their wake. The fish of the river died; worms, insects and reptiles sprang up from the Earth. The gloom of a long night spread a dark mantle of blackness which extinguished every ray of light. None knew when it was day and when it was night, for the sun cast no shadow. The darkness was not the clean blackness of night, but a thick darkness in which the breath of men was stopped in their throats. Men gasped in a hot cloud of vapour which enveloped all the land and snuffed out all lamps and fires. … Ships were sucked away from their moorings and destroyed in great whirlpools. It was a time of undoing.