Role

Chapter 1

Embers floated out of the coal filled clay smudge pots up currents of humid air
in swirling spirals of sooty black smoke flickering brightly and fading into the
darkness of the twilight sky as the breeze swept them away from sight and mind.
Sitting atop his bone pile, Zen'kra flicked his barbed tongue through his fangs
his foul yellow-eyed gaze falling on the trencher of freshly laid eggs laid before
him. Young 'Weh saurians surrounded him in a broken circle not daring to take their
attention from the spectacle taking place before them.

You are not ssspecial, the chieftain hissed, "you are not brethren, you are
sssurvivors who'sss only purpossse isss to ssserve Death, to ssserve me."

Igathrix stared, immobile as only a saurian can be, and watched Zen'kra
ritually take each egg from the trencher in turn, crack it with the tip
of a claw, then rotate the broken vessel up to let its contents fall into
his open maw.

The final egg was set apart and taken back into the shadows of the chieftain's
tent by his principal concubines. Their song drifted out into the ether,

a land of deepest shade, unpierced by tear or thought,
the endless domain of the dead, where all things are forgot

Igathrix and the other juvenile 'Weh, dispersed into the night, left alone to
contemplate their fate, and what it might have been, and what it would be.