Role

Chapter 6

Ronas did not remember how he had gotten back to his cabin but awoke to the hollow
emptiness of a room that had once known love and life but was now empty and pitiful.
The wound on his hand from the splinter had gotten worse despite the poultice he had
applied to it. The darkening skin had now travelled as high as his shoulder and his entire
arm felt cold to the touch. Perhaps it was dying, he though, dying as his heart does with
the loss of his family.

By this time it was well known in the region that Ronas' wife and young son had mysteriously
disappeared and that he would not even speak of them. Rumours were rife that he had killed
them in a mad rage and buried their bodies in the woods. He was seen running from the
village on the day they disappeared, after all. The only person to have not looked at him funny
in the weeks since the incident was an elven ranger who had travelled through the woods and
seen him mumbling to himself. The elf had looked at his arm with great concern and spoke to
to him of being overrun by darkness and doing what was right by everyone. Ronas thought it
an odd thing at the time but as time had marched on since then and the infection in his arm
appeared to worsen he found himself having dark thoughts and dreams.

In these dreams he was leading black creatures through towns and cities and tearing them,
and the people in them, down. He awoke after the third night of these dreams to find that
darkening skin was as high as his jaw line and across his chest where his heart lay beneath.
He knew now what the elf had meant and decided there and then to take his life to stop
himself from becoming a pawn of the darkness. He gathered up a coil of rope from his
tool shed and shambled into the forest towards the black tree where he would die as his
family had done and be with them for eternity.

He climbed as high as he could with one true arm and then through the rope over a branch
then tied it off. He then put the noose around his neck and spat at the tree before jumping.
He fell and the air rushed past him he braced himself for the jerk, the sudden stop or the
tightening but none came. He opened his eyes and he was back in front of the black tree.
He thought he must have imagined it so he tried again and again and again but the same
result occurred each and every time until he yelled at the tree 'What do you want from me?!'
A sound like a horn echoed in the mind of Ronas, 'To serve!'.