Role

Chapter 1

The screams echoed through the small desert village.
In the dead of the hot, silent night a woman's cries
rang through the make-shift streets of huts and bazaars.
Concerned Villagers looked at one another but none spoke.
A cloaked and dark figure walked slowly down the vacant
street toward the hut with the screaming.

Before the hut was a man weeping. When he saw the man
approaching he began to panic. "al-Caliik!" he said,
that being native tongue for "he who belongs to Death."
The man was frozen in fear as the figure entered the
hut behind him where he found a woman and a midwife
grieving over the corpse of a stillborn child. The
women froze much like the man outside as the cloaked
figure took the child into his hands. He raised the
boy high and then whispered in a strange, serpent-like
tongue in the infant's ear. He then laid the child back
on the table and traced a rune on his chest followed
by another utterance. Suddenly the infant took a deep
breath and then began to cry.

The man turned and left the hut and disappeared into
the night.