Seed Of Evil III

A Story by Jason Damstra

Yet another, much shorter piece to add to the conceptual development of villains for a high fantasy setting.

The golden army ploughed on, their tarnished heavy armour, pitted with the dents and scratches of a thousand battles clanked with a discordant ringing. The army marched into the fading light. West, ever west towards the setting sun.

The faint glimmer of bloody sunset alighted on the field where the army had marched, had slaughtered. The picture it showed was one of grizzly horror. Corpses lay in their thousands, yet not one wore the ancient armour of the army that now lurched slowly onwards.

With tattered and blood soaked cape, the commanders of the army rode up front - behind them loomed their god. A thing older than the army itself hunched over its followers, its tools, salivating all the while beneath a grand and golden mask. Wolf-like the thing hopped and crawled, its sinuous incorporeal form was bony and wasted, its spine undulated beneath its grey, translucent skin.

The commanders revered their deity as it, and only it could have made their army immortal. The souls of the men clung to their bodies even when the most grievous injuries should have rent the former from the latter. Bones and flesh healed with startling rapidity on the grey and sombre husks that where once men. They lurched and shuffled in mindless fealty after their commanders... Forever loyal, forever dead. The horror of their actions having long since driven them numb. They trudged on in the fading light, through the ash and gristle of those that rose to oppose them.

What did this demon, this monster god of the golden army get in return for its dread gift of un-life? How indeed did such an infernal being profit?

It supped on the life-force of the cursed armies victims. It revelled in bestial glee as it drank the blood of thousands. The sweet sanguine pleasure dripped from underneath its great and terrible façade.

The golden army marched into the night.