By Maradas Graham

Your humble author tells you this, noble reader, because your author has seen and feared, and would teach you the tale of the Wyld Hunt, that you may know it when you see it. Beware the beasts of the forest, beware the men of the pack, but mostly beware the Lord of the Hunt himself, for if you are swept into his hunt, you may well be never seen again.

In the Realms of Twilight, betwixt the shadows and the sun, there lives a Lord of the wild things, savage and cunning. About his feet wolves flock, as gentle and obedient as lambs at their masters heels, and among the wolves crawl naked, hairless beasts that might have once been human. The Twilight Lord is a brooding man, more animal than Fair Folk, or so some say, and his realms are dim and foggy, the lost places where the realms of the Seelie and Unseelie meet. Here the law is kept by tooth and claw and sword, for the Lord of the Hunt is not a kind, nor a gentle, lord. But still, it could not have always been this way, could it? Have the Twilight lands always been ruled by the Wyld ways, and has the Wyld Lord always been the liege? It cannot be said for certain, so few things can, but tales are told of the Lord of the Hunt, just as they are told of everyone else. Its just a matter of separating truth from fiction.

Long ago, when even the realms of the Fair Folk were young, the Unseelie court played host to a man just barely grown up from a boy. The young Lord Averus was still full of the same passions that had possessed him in his boyhood. He often put his fiery temper to a great deal of trouble, but he had a dark sort of charm that the Queen found endearing, and so she did not banish him from her palace. Instead, she took him under her wing, as the saying goes, and tried with great determination to teach him the ways of royal government. The lad was too flighty, though, and could not be made to grasp the subtle manipulations that one must practice to rule well, preferring to gallivant around the kingdom, much to the dismay of the Queen. What she was grooming him for is the goblins own guess, but she would not give up her efforts to train the young man in the ways of nobility.

The rumours say that she taught him in more ways than one, and became quite jealous of his time, going into fits of anger when he didnt answer to her beck and call. Several of the palace staff were dismissed, and a few even executed, for helping the boy find his way out of the palace, or out from under the Queens watchful eye. What the Queen did to the hapless maidens with whom Averus chose to spend his free time, those are tales that your humble storyteller shudders to think of, let alone repeat. Still, the young man was undaunted, perhaps even fired by this jealousy, and it stopped him not a bit. The Fair Folk are known for playing games, and the Queen had long attempted to teach the boy of intrigue, so it should have been of little surprise to her when the boy began to show a little bit of promise.

Averus began to make requests of his lady Queen, asking for silly favours or ridiculous prizes as bribes to stay faithful to her desires. He asked for a steed with eyes of glass and flame, and the Queen complied. He made request for a pack of fifty trained wolfhounds, each stronger and more graceful than the next, and the Queen complied. He demanded a strip of land as long from end-to-end as the Queens own Realms and twice as wide as the widest river of the Seelie Realms, and still the Queen complied. Anything he asked, the Queen would give, hoping to buy him back around to her, but with every gift, every granted request, the boy grew more distant. His nature became far more cruel and cold, and finally he took his steed, with eyes of glass and flame, and called for his pack of fifty trained wolfhounds, each stronger and more graceful than the next, and he left the palace, and rode away to his new territory, which was as long end-to-end as the Queens own Realm. With such a formidable pack of loyal hounds, none dared stop him as he journeyed to his own lands, given to him by the Queen, and therefor owing no allegiance to anyone. There he stayed, alone in the forest, for fifty days and fifty nights and another half day beside.

Halfway through the fifty-first day, Lord Averus received news from the palace that the Queen had taken a new lover, and, after pining away for a few weeks, had seemingly forgotten Lord Averus altogether. This filled the young man with a deep smouldering rage, for though he did not care for the Queens love, he would not have it taken from him and given to another man, with all the gifts that it entailed. He sent a letter to her majesty, requesting a cloak spun of a selkies hair and embedded with dark jewels that glowed like stars, and there was no reply. He send a letter to her majesty requesting boots made of the skin of Seelie maid killed before she had known a man, and there was no reply. He sent a letter to her majesty requesting a silver ring for each of his slender fingers, set with stones the color of hearts blood, but still there was no reply. Finally, he sent a letter to her majesty requesting that she have him as a guest in the palace once more, and a reply was sent forthwith.

So the angry young man mounted his glass and fire eyes steed, and whistled for his fifty strong wolfhounds, and rode out of his lands, which lay as long as the Queens own Realms. He rode until he reached the palace, looming darkly against the shadowed sky, and the gates were opened for him. He rode his steed far into the walls of the palace, and then, dismounting, went to the Queens chambers, his fifty hounds in tow. He broke down the doors of the Queens chambers with a kick of his boots, and his loyal hounds poured into the room at his heels. Therein he found the Queen in bed with her new lover, a passive and dull man that Averus had seen about court. That she should abandon him for someone so passionless, forgetting that truly he had abandoned her, sent him into a rage to end all other rages, and he drew forth his sword and slew the man where he law in the Queens bed, his blood spraying red across the Queens naked white skin.

The Queen flew up in a rage at the young man, clawing at his eyes and shrieking in anger, but Lord Averus roughly slapped her aside. Taking the head from the dead man, he strode from the chambers and back towards his waiting steed. As he mounted himself upon its back, the head dripping as he tied it to his saddle, the Queen appeared in the doorway. She stood naked and pale in the moonlight, her dark hair matted with blood, the same blood splattered across her breasts and stomach in the dark courtyard, and she raised a long white finger at Lord Averus where he sat on his steed.

"Beast," she cried, and in her voice was the force of magic, and the power of geasa," Beast of the forest! Thou shall live among my Fair Ones no more, and yet forever shall thee be sworn to me. Go, Beast, with your servant beasts, and flee back to your twilight realms, for though thy bond to me shall be stronger than this blood, thou shall be never welcome in the lands of sun or shadow." And with that, Lord Averus felt the force of the geasa pressing upon him, and though his faith was finally true to his lady, he was compelled to leave. As he fled, his trained wolfhounds, fifty by number, changed into fifty snarling wolves, pressing close to their master as he fled. The steed with eyes of glass and flame became a skeletal monstrosity with mouth and eyes spitting blue fire. Averus fled all the way back to his lands, to find that they too had changed.

They lay upon the boundary between Seelie and Unseelie Realm, and he was lord of them, but as he had been cursed so they had as well. Forever on the edge of night and day, the forest had overgrown, and the woods were full of a dense fog, and everything was dim and gray. The Lord and his wolves both howled at the torment of being forever in such a place. Soon the Lord Averus was running amongst his wolves, taking comfort in them and their loyalty, but forever torn between his hatred for the lady who had condemned him away to here, and his helpless need to serve her without question. He became caught up in the madness of the Hunt, as the other Fair Folk soon came to know it, and within his confines his power grew by leaps and bounds. He had not forgotten the lessons taught to him by the Queen, and applied them now to his own Realm, where he became as a king. Soon the Lord of the Hunt, as none but the Queen still knew his name--for he was a Beast, and a Beast wears not an immortals name--became the powerful lord of the Twilight Realms, and a story mothers used to frighten their bad children.

But the Lord of the Hunt did not forget the Queen, nor did she forget him. Once a year the Queen called for his services, and used him and his beasts to hunt down those who had broken oaths to her and her favourites. The Lord of the Hunt hated the Queen, but obeyed her word, dreaming in his heart of tearing out her throat as his wolves did a rabbits. He gathered many powerful artifacts, blades of flame, treasures of old, and he grew stronger in his own small Realm than perhaps even the King and Queen in theirs, but still he bided his time, for he could not break the geasa. For centuries since, by our mortal reckoning, he has waited, locked silently in the bonds of the magic, welcome in the lands of neither sun nor shadow, searching for a way to break the geasa, and through it, break the chains of loyalty in which the Queen has him bound. No one, certainly not the Lord of the Hunt himself, has ever found a way to break the powerful curse that binds him like an oath, and perhaps it is better for all of us, my gentle reader, that no one has. Your most humble and timid storyteller would be most concerned, knowing that the Lord and his pack roamed free throughout the lands of sun and shadow, without so much as an oath to hold him.