Dusk settled in the moors.
One day, this area of haunted hills and oily fens would become Westvale, and even then, thousands of years before Ormendahl's time, demonic orgies polluted the land with black miasma and fiery sulphur. When the sun set, eerie fire lights dotted the moors, and in the moment of sunset a sick gold like that of coins made the land gilded in vibrant but noxious splendour. Dry grass went from yellow to gold to gray to hearth orange and then black.
Liesa knew better than to be mesmorised. She had a task to do.
As the warmth faded from the air, she glided downwards towards a hill. Upon landing, she struck the ground seven times with her staff.
"I come with blood" she said, her voice low but echoing far and wide, as majestic and cruel as the sun that now faded away.
The echo reverberated with a laughter, and smoke began to emerge from the oily waters, the miasma taking a horned form with orange eyes, black pupils zigzagging like a cuttlefish's. He was enormous, but Liesa knew enough as to pity him.
"Well, where is it then?" a voice like rasping stones demmanded in a maddedned hybrid between glee and anger.
"Patience, Avlaz" she said stoically, "I demmand your blood first."
The demon made a strange frustrated noise like a more grave version of a whimpering dog. Contorting wildly, he cut his right palm with a claw, and extended it, its shaking movements spraying dark red blood everywhere. Liesa did her part, and their ichors mixed.
"I, Liesa of the Flight of Dusk, henceforth pledge my services to the demonlord Avlaz. My light casts shadows if my terms are met: the Skirsdag are to disband and no demon, vampire or devil is to set foot on human habitations."
"I agree to these terms" Avlaz said.
"Then my first service is thus provided."
Disentangling her hand from the demon's, Liesa waved her staff to the heavens. White slivers like moving stars glided downwards.
They were angels, holding humans captive.
Men or women, children or elders, Liesa pitied them all, but it had to be done. They were ungagged only for their pleas to turn to screams as she gutted them, her demon master savouring the torment before flesh and soul alike were burned by his touch. And his touch was not a release into death, but a small glimpse into hell.
All that pain and suffering weighted heavily on the angel's mind, but that night she slept with the certainty that this would be a rare occurence, controlled by her. Most would sleep soundly, and this would become simply a rumor in the moors.
***
Avlaz was endlessly pleased.
The Skirsdag had disbanded... just long enough that a completely normal cleric would alert Avacyn herself. That same cleric now bowed in chains, eager to please the real master.
Liesa was simply a rumor in the moors.
