The figure knelt in the middle of the dark room, candles illuminating the surroundings - a circle on the ground, adorned with dark symbols that made your blood boil with a primeval terror. You heard a voice, soft, feminine and reverent, muttering incantations and rhymes reminiscent of a Shakespearean witch, or a nursery rhyme. They wore soft, worn-out black robes, the sleeves sliding back when they raised their arms in a contortionist-like manner. They were thin and pale, and tattooed with scrawlings of those same spine-chilling symbols. A short, thin knife lay at their side.