Edgar’s army of the dead had overrun every parish in the lowlands and were now assembled in a single great army below the cliffs.
Not a corpse had been wasted; Edgar’s army was comprised of the victims from every town they had conquered. Farmers and bakers and children and wives stood alongside soldiers. Some of the dead wore armor and others wore nothing at all except the grey, necromantic pall cast upon them by Edgar’s magics.
Atop the cliffs, the northern forces looked down at Edgar’s army. They shifted mighty stones to the edges of the cliffs where they could push them onto the enemies below.
No such protections would be required. For Edgar’s army suddenly began to collapse into piles of limbs and bones and dust. Again and again it happened, throughout the ranks of Edgar’s army until the man himself stood all alone, surrounded by corpses.
Edgar’s face was without expression. Words echoed in his head—words he had once wrested violently from the dead as he had sought answers he was unprepared for.
The necromancer threw back his head and laughed, even as he was surrounded by an ever-collapsing ring of corpses; limbs jutting, faces staring. And finally there was nothing left of Edgar’s army at all, except cold bodies and cold earth and Edgar himself, perhaps the coldest of all.
Explanation:
The story of Edgar was one of the first things I wrote after my mother died in 2014.
Sometimes in our search for answers, we find none.
Links:
The Shrine of Insanity 