Part Three, please see my comment before reading.

The demon was beautiful. If Gorss believed in perfection, then he would have probably said that the word was invented after laying eyes on such a being. The demon’s skin seemed to glow and its features were pleasingly proportioned. But there was something else that made the demon so beautiful that Gorss almost lost himself, staring at its face.

Almost. The demon didn’t look much different to the Overlord and its kind, the beasts that had stolen the freedoms of Gorss’ people, so that they lived in perpetual fear of ‘divine retribution’. Gorss, like the others, despised the Overlord and its kind. Their bloody struggle had culminated in the utter destruction of the Beast’s brutal tyranny.

Gorss shifted position, and rearranged the assorted layers of clothing that he wore to try and keep himself warm. He coughed; deep retching paroxysms that he thought might tear his lungs from the inside of chest.

He could here Vritt nearby, snorting and snuffling – struggling as he was with this world’s atmosphere. After overthrowing the Overlord, Gorss’ race had left their homeworld, suspecting that if this God had produced more demons, then others might need freeing from tyranny. The planet Gorss had come to was a hell-hole, but unlike their home planet, the demons were very difficult to find. They had spent many of the planet’s orbital cycles, searching among the violence and terror struck streets of the cities hunting the demons.

Then the small search force, losing hope with finding the demons, like needles in a haystack, had found their prey with an alien. The alien was in no way as beautiful as the demon. It was injured, and the radiant demon had assisted it into a quiet alley among the black streets of this hellish city. From there they had stalked it.

The alien collapsed to the ground; one of its legs was bent at angle that suggested that it was broken. The alien had two legs and two arms; like all other sentient races. The Overlord had preached that God had created them. Gorss wondered at the limits of God’s imagination.

The radiant demon touched the alien’s leg, and it seemed to relax as if the pain was removed, it uttered something that was unintelligible to Gorss – what passed for the alien’s language. The alien seems to lose consciousness, Gorss felt pity for the alien, as he realised that the demon was sucking its life away.

Then the demon moved away, and they struck. The group emerged from their hiding places, revealing their demon-guns and fired.

The demon screamed as it died. It was music to Gorss’ ears. They stood, looking at the demon’s body, now bereft of its radiance.

“Funny,” said Sarll, with curious snort.

“What’s that?” asked Vritt, intrigued by the translator’s tone of voice.

“When the alien spoke, it said a word that roughly translates as ‘guardian’ and ‘healer’.”