Role

Chapter 4

It was so easy back then... I got my contracts and grabbed my
things, then it was just to find the caravan and report for duty.
Work was in abundance, I had all I could ask for and more yet
there was something missing. Was it thrill? No, the bandits gave
me that. Fighting? Hardly. Had I had my way the desert would have
been scoured from the bandit-plague by now.
Without being able to pinpoint exactly what it was that I craved,
I toiled, fought and guarded what I was paid to guard. Perhaps it
was my kin I missed during those long and most often excruciatingly
hot days. To be around others... like me, home in the encampment,
in the wonderful chill and the biting winds, hunting over the tundra.

I should have seen it coming perhaps, the concern of parents for
their offspring. I did not reflect much about with whom or how I
hunted back then, they were my friends. My parents must have seen
something in them, for when I was eleven years old or so they took
me and my siblings with them and moved to Blackclaw, my... home.

I was still looking at life through somewhat naive eyes by this time,
I thought I could always live with my parents. They cared for me now,
why not in the future? Alas, how harsh the truth of life can be.
Soon I found myself lounging about and looking for work before being
recruited as a guard. It took a while to learn the ropes, so to say,
but it went rather quickly.
Not a day after that went by without me passing by that dark pit out
there. The tales circulating about it were more than you could count
on your claws many times over. They all held something in common
though, not a single one was about anything remotely resembling merry.
Rather, every one seemed to try and outboast all the others in
horror and gruesome details. I was more or less forced to listen, my
ears were so used to snatching up everything around that they would not
even give me the slight respite during night.

Curious. How could I not be? Was it all true? In an attempt to escape
the exaggerated stories I one night snuck away, closer to the pit.
Now what a sight it was... or lack of sight might be a better
description. Darker than the night itself, that... shade loomed there
by where I imagined the entrance to be. Stealth was wasted on the thing
for he must have caught my scent from far away, shooing me away with
but one word, "GO!" and a look with eyes that could burn through any
good-spirited soul and turn it to smoldering ashes.

Fascination can be a very powerful thing though and I suspect this is
what overtook my that night. Time and again I would leave my caravan
to sneak out and observe that dark spot in a comparative bright night.
Even the stars blazed as the sun in comparsion to what was held in
there. Drawn towards it, I soon found about how far I could go without
catching the attention of that damnable shade and so I settled down on
the sands... and watched.
The people moving in and out of there were ones I had never seen before,
elves with skin dark as the night itself, lumbering giants that could
be heard from miles away and some things that I do not have a proper
name in any mortal tongue. I saw them bring in others, strangers to my
eyes but the odd thing was... I never saw these people leave the dark-
ness again. Hoping for the best I remained many a night on my spot, the
caravan now forgotten altogether. Until that night... the cruel, sad
night when I saw them return with new priso