She stood motionless on the edge of the clearing, hood pulled low over her eyes, listening. The forest around her was as dark and still as she, the trees sending searching branches into the night. The moon above her shone bright above the woodland’s canopy, which spread to the south and west as far as the eye could see. Very near to the north and sweeping around into the distance to the east, a wall of mountains rose huge and forbidding into the sky—strange, terrible fortresses of black stone guarded by dark, purplish clouds that swallowed up their peaks. Seen from the corner of the eye, the clouds seemed to creep farther and farther outward from the mountains as if they wished to consume the sky itself. If one turned to look at them directly, however, they still hovered there, churning slowly.

The wind stirred the trees, whispering through the branches and brushing lightly over the cloak shrouding the solitary figure on the hillside, still standing unmoving in the darkness.

There was something wrong with the air—with the night itself. Something was present that should not be there, she thought, or possibly something was missing. She wasn’t certain and that in itself was a bad sign. She had walked the forests of Eschaton for far longer than anyone from the most of the world’s races had ever lived. She knew the forests well—even this dark, unnatural one.

Again the breeze brought the scent of the woods to her nose, and again she sensed the almost imperceptible tang of bitterness—of something wrong. Yet, as she tried to isolate it in her mind, it disappeared again. Behind her the trees stirred, and she turned to see her companion emerge from their shadow. He stalked toward her, eyes flicking around the clearing.

“My lady Talina, the path ahead is clear. And…” his eyes swept the clearing again, uneasily. “Something is wrong with this wind.”

“Yes, Bretran, I feel it. We must be getting close…perhaps closer than we’d like.”

He frowned. “This is no time for second thoughts. If you would go back…”

“No, of course not.” Talina waved her hand dismissively. “This is an uneasy night, and we haven’t yet found…”

Bretran cut in, his hard face set itself into grim, determined lines that had become more and more familiar of late. “We must continue. That path is set now.”

Suddenly, Talina’s hand shot up and her head whipped to the right, toward the edge of the clearing. With her gesture, Bretran melted back into the shadows as if he had never been; his hand already moving to the hilt of his sword. Talina’s breath hissed as she inhaled, then she turned and stepped quickly back into the forest.

The leaves on the trees, still but for the wind, began to tremble slightly, as if the earth were shaking imperceptibly. It grew more and more as the seconds passed, and a sound came, faint at first then louder and louder, like thunder gathering in the distance and rolling in through the darkness. Then the thunder became a roar, and a shape broke through the trees on the southeastern side of the clearing. It was moving impossibly fast, but its features were unmistakable, even in the dimness. It was a horse of a kind both beautiful and terrible. Its black coat shone with magic, and its mane streamed straight out behind it from the terrific speed at which it ran. Red lightning flashed in its eyes, and light danced around its hooves as if it struck sparks from the ground, whether it trod upon stones, grass, or the softest earth.

Talina had seen a Dread Steed once before, when she was very young, and this was a stallion of the kind that belonged only to the Fair Folk. It seemed to freeze for a moment before her eyes, and she caught a profile both noble and infinitely dangerous, perfect of form and limb, its rider seeming impossibly small upon its back.

Talina shrank even further back into the shadows as it thundered across the clearing, a blur of speed, hooves beating the earth. Behind it came the terrifying avalanche of the Wild Hunt,all hooves and whips and Fae lights, red and black leather flashing as it pounded past through the darkness. Along with the Dread Steeds came the Dark Hounds. They were creatures of nightmare, the larger cousins of the great forest wolves, bred magically for the Hunt, their eyes and teeth glittering as they followed fast on the heels of their masters’ steeds.

Once it began, the parade of shapes and light and eyes racing through the gloom seemed to go on forever, and Talina stood absolutely still, barely breathing. Hundreds of horses and riders fairly flew through the clearing each moment, but they just kept coming. As Talina watched, the night was broken by a cry from the darkness and two shapes sailed out of the mass of horsemen to land rolling in the grass on the near side of the clearing.

Then, as quickly as the careening cavalcade had begun, it simply ended, and the ground was still, but for a little residual trembling that soon faded to nothing. There was no sign at all that the Hunt had passed. Not a blade of grass was bent, and the trees were as still and silent as ever. All that remained were two inert shapes, lying in the grass.