"I hate patrol."
        "As do I, my brother."
        "Kain never comes himself. We spend all night protecting this patch of ground, and small recognition we receive." Dumah grumbled.
        "Best not to complain, lest you receive more 'recognition" than you care for." Turel said.
        Dumah turned and reached into his pack. "Look at this."
        "What is that?" Turel asked.
        "Its called a 'gun'. I got it in Meridian." Dumah said. The dark metal gleamed enticingly in the firelight. The vampire lieutenants, two of the six of Kain's Sons, huddled in conspiracy.
        "What an ugly name....What does it do?"
        "According to the shopkeeper, it fires projectiles."
        "Projectiles...like a bow and arrow?"
        "Yes. He kept going on and on about how these were 'the way of the future'."
        The wind pushed at the campfire, causing it to leap and twist in the dark. The two vampires stared at the 'gun'. Dumah flipped it over in his massive hands. Turel ran his tongue over the side of his canine. "How...how much did you pay for that?"
        "I didn't. The merchant was showing me how to hold it. I gripped it the way he told me to, there was a loud sound, and he fell over dead."
        "Then apparently you held it wrong." This came from Zephon, another of the bretheren. He dismounted and approached. "I thought Lord Kain said that we were to patrol the perimeter in shifts. What are you two still doing here?"
        "Dumah has brought us a unique new weapon."
        "A weapon?" Zephon asked. "Does it work on our kind?"
        "No. But according to the literature in the shop, it can kill a human at fifty feet, and the longer ones have even longer range!"
        "Fifty feet, eh?"
        Two more riders came, Melchiah and Rahab. They too, were intrigued with the new weapon. 
        "We must find a way to test its limitations."
        "What do you have in mind?" Melchiah asked.
        "How about a wager?"
        "A wager?"
        "I'll bet you a silver crown that you can't hit that stone from here with that 'gun'."
        "I accept your wager," Melchiah said. He aimed the pistol.
        Soon the Sons of Kain were betting eagerly, and taking turns with the strange weapon, firing at objects further and further away. In the firelight their capes gleamed, yellow, blue, green, gray, and purple. Only Kain and Raziel were allowed the Royal Red. Then suddenly...
        "Hoofbeats." It was a rider in red. He was coming uphill.
        "It must be our oldest 'brother' Raziel, come to check on us."
        "A wager, a wager!" Rahab shouted.
        "I'll bet twenty silver crowns that you cannot hit Raziel and knock him out of his saddle from here."
        Turel grinned, his sharply pointed canines glinting in the firelight. "I accept. Now watch me, amateurs."
        The gun fired. The red-cloaked rider pitched backward in the darkness, knocked cleanly from the saddle.
        They cheered loudly, clapping hands and hooting in derision. Turel bowed, smiling triumphantly. "Take that, Raziel."
        "Take what?" Raziel said, coming up from behind them.
        Everyone's jaw dropped. "Well?" Raziel asked. "Have you any explanation as to why you're all here at this campfire, instead of on patrol where you should be?"
        The other brothers didn't say anything. They goggled.
        "That's just brilliant!" Raziel snarled. "Lord Kain hand picks you to be his lieutenants, and you cannot be trusted with the simplest of commands! When he arrives---"
        "But...but Raziel, we were testing a new weapon."
        "A new weapon? Let me see it!"
        Reluctantly, Turel handed the weapon to the eldest of the brethren. Raziel looked at the hunk of metal suspiciously. "And what is it supposed to do?"
        "It fires projectiles...we were testing the distance on it. We fired upon that rider down the hill...we thought in jest that it was you---"
        "You fired at me?!"
        "In jest! In jest!" 
        Raziel glanced down the slope. "I see no rider."
        "Wait," Rahab said. "Did you say that Lord Kain was coming here??"
        A howling, savage, angry wind, sliced up the mountainside. It ravaged the trees, shook the stone and laid the flames flat upon the earth. Five of the brothers were knocked down by the force of it. Raziel stood alone, facing its black fury. "Fools...that was no mortal rider," he said. 
        The campfire extinguished.
        Kain had arrived.