Unholy Night

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The magic of Old Testament times is coming to an end.

Great floods, mystical beasts, and parting seas have given way to the empires of man. Many believe that God has abandoned the world — most of which is ruled by Rome and its new emperor, Augustus Caesar.

One of many Roman provinces, Judea (in modern Israel), is ruled by a cruel puppet king named Herod the Great, who — although sickly and dying — fiercely clings to power through murder and intimidation. And he has reason to be paranoid, for the Old Prophecies tell of the imminent birth of a messiah — a King of the Jews — who will topple all the other kingdoms of the world…

A herd of ibex grazed on a cliff high above the Judean Desert — each of their tiny, antelope-like bodies dwarfed by a pair of giant, curved horns. A welcome breeze blew across their backs as they searched for what little shrubbery there was here in the great big nothing, each of them pushing their hot, cracked noses across the hot, cracked earth, gnawing at whatever succulent bits of green had managed to push their way through.

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