They had covered about ten miles when Derolano reigned in, pointing in the direction they were travelling, his brothers followed his gesture and gasped as they saw the ragged looking crowd of tribesmen, women and children hobbling and limping along.
Derolano drew the tribal longsword it was his right to bear and urged his palta forward at a canter, his two brothers following suit.
It was not until they arrived at the rear of the column that any of them really came to understand why these various tribes people were walking together without any regard for the traditional boundaries his people put on themselves.
Derolano felt it first and jumped in fright as his right arm put his sword away of its own volition. The young chief could only stare in wondrous awe as his arms and legs moved on their own.
They dismounted him from his palta and he managed to catch a glance of his brothers doing the same, with expressions of fearful puzzlement plastered across their faces. His body turned towards the north-east and he marched forwards with the rest of the tribesmen.
No matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he concentrated, Derolano could not control any of his limbs. He was not even able to turn his head, the only thing he could move himself were his eyes and he glanced around at his brothers who were doing the same back to him.
His life since then had become a living nightmare. The group had walked without rest, food or water, through day and night until they came to an even larger group of people.
Derolano could just about make out two sections of people, the elderly and very young had been separated from anyone who was able bodied and strong. Derolano's body had gone to join the ranks of the latter group.
As four days ticked past, day and night passing slow as a snail, Derolano tried to move, yet he was powerless to control any part of his body, not even a finger.
Rain splattered his statue like body, along with everyone else's, and they all spent a miserable night stood, shivering in silence.
The sun had risen on the following day and warmed them all, but soon got so intensely hot their skin began to burn and sweat dripped down, dehydrating them even further. Derolano started seeing things as his mind began to slip into madness.
Vile, evil looking things which seemed to dance between the captives, drilling onto their very souls with massive, orange eyes.
Eventually his body separated from the pack and approached the group of old men, women, boys and girls, pulling his now rust spotted sword from its scabbard as it moved.
A short man passed by the side of him, his left eye missing and that side of his face ruined by some hideous violence.
Derolano's body turned towards this man as he took his seat on a comfortable chair in a large pavilion and he felt a wash of cold fright creep up through his guts, in between his lungs to grip his heart as he caught the marred man's glance.
What had probably once been a man now lacked any trace of humanity in theremaining eye and what had been left behind was pure, heartless evil, distilled by some horrific event.
Derolano felt warmth drip down his leg as his bladder gave way in fear of this thing and he swallowed, his dry throat clicking painfully.
The enthroned being who sat looking at them all, turned and spoke to something beside his left shoulder, a shimmering form Derolano could not make out.
As soon as his gaze turned back, Derolano's body turned towards the crowd of people packed together like cattle.
Horror, guilt and frightened shock slammed through his psyche as he watched his arm lift and drive his sword into the face of a girl, no more than twelve years of age. Her gurgled scream was cut short as the rusted point of his sword slid through her nasal cavity and into her brain.
Derolano's arm drew back and slashed left into the junction between the neck and shoulder of an old man. His eyes widened in pain and fright as Derolano wrenched his blade from where it had been caught in the old man's shattered clavicle.
Blood pumped from his right external carotid and subclavian arteries, bright and red in the sunlight. With a gurgling groan, the old tribesman slumped down to die against the legs of the other people who looked on in abject terror.
Somewhere within the crowd somebody screamed, a high pitched wail that drilled into Derolano's ears and brought tears to his eyes with the despair and loss he heard. Other voices joined the first as the slaughter of old men, women and children continued.
Guilt pierced Derolano's heart as he cut down a boy of around six, smashing the blunt edge of his sword down to crush his little skull.
Pain radiated from his sword arm but his body continued the mindless slaughter he was powerless to stop. The tribal chief was drenched in the blood of the innocent, harmless people he had been forced to slaughter and his throat was raw from screaming and crying.
Two vertical stripes ran down his cheeks where tears had washed tracks in the blood.
Derolano's breath hitched in and the hellish stench of blood, shit and piss mingled with the acrid tang of fearful sweat rising from his own skin.
His body retched violently, reacting to the sights and smells all around him but still hacked and slashed through the cowed people before him. He was vaguely aware there were others who, like him, were being forced to cut people down, like wheat being scythed, to either side of his body.
Derolano's mind finally gave out when he looked into the clear blue eyes of the toddler. She looked up at him with her massive eyes full of trust, her blonde curls falling back to reveal her beautiful, young face.
The same beautiful face crumpled in such agony as a little girl should never have to feel as the tip of his sword slid through the base of her neck and ripped her heart in two before punching from her little back.
Derolano felt a tension squeezing his consciousness, a building pressure which was slowly crushing his thoughts until eventually they cracked and fell away from him. All thoughts and feelings left Derolano.
His body took a deep breath and his eyes went blank, his jaw hung open, drool beginning to form on his lower lip as his arm carried on hacking and slashing through the crowd.
Malthrom watched as the vile Syclardii forced a few of his captives to slaughter those of his forming army who would be of no use in a battle.
Not only would it be pointless to keep them alive – feeding so many useless mouths would be extremely time consuming – but it was actually a bonus. His power was being boosted with every death and the Syclardii were having a feeding frenzy, imbibing the negative emotions as if they were nectar.
Malthrom's guts twisted in disgust.
The Syclardii were a necessary part of his plans but one he hated with a passion. Although he benefited from the deaths of these people, he felt no need or want to torture or frighten them.
Like a hunter he wanted a clean kill, there was no need from Malthrom's point of view to make them suffer but the Syclardii were from a different plane. A hellish dimension where time and place meant nothing and their existence was pure torture for other creatures that existed there.
They survived by inducing and then syphoning the negative emotions given off by conscious creatures.
Malthrom despised them.
From their hideous appearance to the way they made so many attempts to control him as well as those he wished them to. Their leader, if that was what it could be called, touched his mind.
We need more.
Its thought whispered across his brain and he had to suppress a shudder at the contact. Rage boiled through Malthrom's gut and chest, heating his blood,
"You have barely entered this world!" He thundered at the Syclardii before him. "And done nothing to earn more emotions."
He turned his remaining eye on the nasty, hellish creature and blasted it with a wedge of pain. The stench of decomposing meat filled the air.
"I allowed you to slaughter the weak and elderly to feed from and now you demand more?"
Master! The thing protested pathetically inside his head, but the dark necromancer continued as if he had not heard it.
"Remember this, fiend, the death of your kind can fuel my power just as easily as these sheep," Malthrom allowed his torture to end. "Now make sure the rest of them are fed and watered, if a single one of them dies through lack of care I will end your existence in this or any other realm."
The mass of flopping tentacles stopped writhing in pain as Malthrom walked off and it began issuing orders to the other Syclardii.