Two dozen corpses stood to her attention. Rotted bones stained brown, bound to flesh by black sinew. Some were armed, others held old rusted shields. Many were nothing but shambling frames of old bones, swaying before her. Others from the winding tunnels of the catacombs joined, their voices adding to the rest.
Her audience grew as did her power, with some newcomers fully fleshed with bright armour. High-ranking generals and brave heroes whose bodies had been preserved for the afterlife stood ready to fight again.
The undead responded very sensitively to her own thoughts; she could move them all like a newly acquired limb. With half a gesture, the crowd parted, and she walked towards the cave’s exit. The reanimated corpses of Yarlaith and her mother followed her.
“She has grown so much,” said the voice of her mother.
Only Yarlaith seemed to be aware of what was going on.
“Morry… no.… This is madness. I beg you to stop. Please.”
Morrígan rolled her eyes. What does he know? She was about to accomplish more than he had in a lifetime of hard work, and as sure as Sin, she wasn’t about to give up so easily.
“Don’t try to stop me,” Morrígan said. “You of all people should know that they’ve brought this upon themselves.”
“No, Morrígan. You don’t understand.”
But with the power of so many souls within her, Morrígan understood now more than ever. Mere moments ago, she would have been content with reuniting her family again, but a different desire consumed her now.
“Fine, then stay,” she said, then dismissed the old man with a flick of her wrist. His corpse fell to the ground, lifeless again. Morrígan turned and made her way to the exit, with the souls of a thousand people raging in her heart.
When she reached the mouth of the cave, a cold sea breeze greeted her. She raised a hand to the sky, changing the direction of the wind with Aeromancy. With her own pendulum augmented by the power of the dead, manipulating the mood of the air was as simple as swirling a pool of water. She pulled clouds from across the sky, feeling the moisture between her fingers. She twisted her grip, and energy exploded from above, lighting up the sky as rain poured down from the heavens.
Morrígan smiled. They will cower when they see what they created.
She turned her attention to the swarm of voices in her head, each a part of her now. With barely a thought, an army of dead soldiers strode out from the cave.
She paused. There is nowhere for me to go. They will chase me and hunt me through the Glenn when they find out what I am capable of. They have forced my hand.
Thunder rolled overhead as she called to her army. In unison, the voices in her mind responded with cries in a dead tongue. The ground shook as they charged towards the village, more thralls emerging from the cave to follow their comrades.
There are so many. Ancient bones creaked under rusted iron and steel as they passed. Some were missing limbs, some were missing heads, but each marched forwards. In their wake, Morrígan followed the dead army, eager to see what she was capable of.
She commanded the horde as she reached the peak of a grassy hill. From there, she saw the battalion of mages emerge from the village. Colonel Eodadh stood on the front line, with Berrían the Green by his side.
Eodadh roared a strange command, and a salvo of rocks and stones washed over the undead soldiers. The stones collided with the horde, but the dead remained unmoved.
Again and again, the colonel gave the order and his men fired, but none of the corpses fell.
It is impossible to kill what is already dead. The Hydromancers stepped forwards and launched arrows and spears of ice at the wights.
Before the Pyromancers took their turn, Morrígan raised a hand and the dead legion charged. The mages yelled in terror and screamed in pain as they fell, but the undead soldiers carried out their massacre without a word. Morrígan’s power touched upon the soul of the first mage from the battalion who fell, and with a slight push, she brought him back from the dead and turned him upon his brothers. As the soldier’s soul merged with her own, Morrígan heard his voice echo through her head.
“Lord help us! This power, it… it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. They stood before us, in such silence… but then…. Is this it? Have I died? Is this what it’s like to be dead? I…I was promised paradise. They told me I’d see my family again….”
Another soldier fell to one of her skeletal minions. His thoughts resounded in her skull too.
“I told them! I told them we should have burned the house while they slept! Eodadh, he wanted a trial first, a mock trial, and this is what he has brought upon us!”
Every dead man added to the discord. The power they brought her was far more significant than the old skeletons and corpses from the catacombs.
Of course. These are mages already skilled in the ways of magic. Where once there was a single, heavy pendulum swinging from her heart, now there were dozens: one for each of the battlemages who now rose to serve her.
Some of the remaining living mages broke from the fray and regrouped behind a stone wall that encircled the field, out of sight from the undead.
Morrígan focused on the new power she possessed. With the magic of half a mage battalion surging through her veins, her soul wrapped around every pebble and grain of sand along the road before her. She raised her hand, and a cloud of dust and stones erupted from the ground, surrounding the cowering mages like a whirlwind. Bringing her hand to a fist, the stones engulfed them, tearing through their flesh like damp parchment. Their screams surged through the night. Then there was silence.
She reached out for the remaining men’s souls. The power inside her amplified further as more servants rose. The colonel was one of them, but now he stood hunched over with his broken spine, his face torn to shreds.
“He warned us. His Highness warned us of power gathering in the north.” Colonel Eodadh’s voice did not resonate with fear as the others had but was deep with repentance and lament. “Power strong enough to bring the Gods to his knees, he had said. Could this be it? Were we wrong to be wary of the Silverback? The Godslayer, he called him. Could he have really meant this… girl?”
Morrígan toyed with her new power as she walked towards the Sandy Road, passing over the blood-stained fields. She pulled at a wooden barn in the distance, crumbling it into a pile of splintered timber with little effort. After a sweeping gesture, the trees to the south collapsed in unison. A black cloud of birds rose from the distant wreckage, their cries echoing through the night.
She commanded the soldiers to follow her into the village, all marching together. Mages walked with skeletons, and old war leaders in bright armour followed in the rear.
There was still some commotion in the Square. Morrígan saw that one of the remaining stakes stood alone and proud amongst the charred wood where Yarlaith had been burned.
The villagers screamed and scrambled into their houses as the dead marched in. Morrígan walked towards the old stone well and climbed to the top of it, granting herself a full view of the Square. Some villagers peered out from their windows, while others huddled in fear amongst the market stalls.
You have no battalion now. There is nobody here to protect you from the Simians of Penance, from the beadhbhs of the Glenn.
She flicked her wrist and brought the buildings behind her crumbling to the ground.
“Justice!” she screamed. “Tonight, you gave Yarlaith the White justice in the name of the Lord, but it was you who set fire to the stake. This is justice, but at the hands of something greater than the Gods.”
The undead charged on the villagers; Morrígan watched in silence as the slaughter unfolded.
One skeleton hacked at a man pinned to the ground, while a bloody corpse threw a spear at a young boy running to his mother. The old woman shrieked as she saw her son fall, but her screams of anguish turned to screams of terror when his corpse stood up and pulled the spear from his stomach. Two headless skeletons with shields and swords chased Sorcha towards the High Road, but she took a crossbow bolt from an undead villager before she made it. Ciarán from the mill tried to fight off an unarmed solider with a pitchfork, but the wight did not fall, even when stabbed through the neck. The miller was quickly overwhelmed when others took notice of his attempted defiance.
