Flying over the hills, Asrael spied a lone Fester, cunningly hiding under rocks and shadows. Pesky bastards, he thought, and swooped sharply towards the earth.

The Fester had no idea it was being attacked. Its main thought was on the campfire ahead. The light was just reflecting in its hungry eyes, and grew bigger, brighter…
Then it was gone, and the beast was caught by a lance of pure light and tossed aside, like a ragged bundle. Asrael gave a howl of triumph, and staked a red cross in the Fester’s chest. It ignited, sending a series of smoky patterns into the sky.

“Should’ve known you’d get the first kill, As,” a voice spoke in his ear, sly and slow. “Of course, the rest of us prefer targets of…value.”

Ascending again, Asrael growled. “Knowing you, Delor, you’ll be dumb enough to pick a fight with a Greaser, and we’ll have to save your hide from being sucked dry.”

Delor showed no sign that the insult marked him. “Of course. The Nine are coming up.”

Asrael turned to the east, and saw he was right: nine points of greenish light began coming into focus, in the pattern of a box. To any traveler, these points meant nothing, except a curious phenomenon. These ignorant souls would then be flayed alive by the very thing they paid no heed to, and have their skins worn as clothing and armor for the Nine.

To Asrael, however, they meant blood and glory, both what he had left Dwilight Keep for this night. He had taken the Black, a magnificent cloak that allowed him unlimited travel in any direction not impeded by a solid, and was now blessing the kindly mage who’d gifted it to him.
The Nine descended languidly upon the clouds, as though it was a methodical, meaningful dance. Asrael saw the familiar shapes of his companions riding to meet their arrival. Only one other than he, fortunately, had the such fleet of wing as he.

With a blood-boiling cry, he leapt upon the nearest green glow and fired the brightlance at its nape. The green effulgence dissipated, revealing a vulture-like contraption, covered in a multitude of animal and human skin. A hideous peal of laughter burst from it, as the crude wings with which it glided went limp and folded. Smoke poured out from its neck, and its many claws dropped towards the earth, along with the rest of it.

Asrael had no time for that, as the rest of the Nine (now eight) arced sharply towards him. Bending his knees, he flipped the bladed end of the brightlance up, and kicked off the smoldering remains. His target was the head of the nearest device, a shrieking mess of limbs and what looked like random pieces of human genitals. The Black billowed around him, buoying him up to death‘s maw.

But there was no target. In space of time it had taken Asrael to blink, a golden fire had wreathed the machine’s neck, and burnt the head off. Gazing up, he saw a great winged figure, scattering the remaining Nine with fire erupting from his wrists. “Always have to steal the show, Reg?”

The soaring man came to his level, and gave a wicked sort of grin. “I seriously doubt Delor or any of those landlubbers could have done it more efficiently, and in so short a time span.”

Shouldering the brightlance, Asrael fired a goodbye at the fleeing green haze. “And now, the fun is gone.”

As though in direct answer, the ground beneath them began to tremble viciously. The angel sighed, and tossed his long mead-colored hair. “Oh, you just had to ask…”

Delor’s voice became audible once again. “He’s just worried that the purple worms will mess up his hairdo. Bet you his mother made it for him. ‘Darling Regimentus, you‘ll look so much better this way…like a princess of old.’”

Laughter erupted all around, and Asrael descended like a smiling hawk onto the roiling earth. Hunting worms on foot was infinitely more dangerous, and, by that logic, gave more play. Sweeping aside the Black, he checked the charge on the brightlance, and leapt aside as a tide of earth and stone burst from under him.

From this upsurge arose the purple worm, jowls wet and wiggling. Its fellows arose in a similar fashion, and together seemed to hang in the air for a moment before crashing in a thunder to the ground. There, they began to tunnel back to the underground, where they might re-attack their prey.

Before they disappeared completely under the dirt, the Lords took parting shots at their tails, the least armored and most muscled part of the worm. Muffled howls shook their feet and rattled their armor. Delor, unfazed, discarded his bow and dove into the newly worm-made hole in front of him, unsheathing his claws as he went. Complete silence gripped the land, and it chilled Asrael more than the death lurking under his finely crafted shoes.

With a sound as close to a squeal as a purple worm could make, one jumped out of a hill some hundred meters off, Delor’s claws in its face. The angel dove, and set fire to its back, while a figure clothed in screens of silk drove a massive pike into its throat.

Showboating, thought Asrael as his quarry sprung from a rise a half-mile off, is for people who don’t know what real performance is. That in mind, he charged the worm.
With a bellow, it charged him back, jaws open wide. With a flex of its powerful body, it swallowed him, brightlance, cloak, and all. Shouts abounded, and Delor stopped tearing out one of the many eyes of the worm and prayed for Asrael.

Suddenly, the worm gave a cry. A burst of white light came from its underbelly, flipping it over. A red glow began melting through its left side, and a flash of smoke and mauve light gouged the spine of the beast from the inside. With a horrid bellow, the worm lay limp on the battlefield, its life spent and its will defeated. From its stupid, gaping craw crawled a blood-soaked, battered, and smiling Asrael. He walked out a bit unsteadily, due to the fact that he had robbed the purple worm’s large intestine of a portable artillery device, or redlance, in addition to a glowing violet cross and what could only be several man-sized emeralds.

Delor and Regimentus ran up to him. “Why,” Reg asked, panting, “Did you have to do that?”

His grin stretched wider. “Because we’re Lords.”

Delor snorted. “So? I thought that just meant we got drunk and blew stuff up.”

To underline his point, one of the worms was replaced by a fireball.

Asrael shook his head, an action that made him nearly fall over. “It means we do the things no sane warrior, farmer, or beggar would ever dream of even setting out to do. And we accomplish them.”

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