Once upon a time in the frozen reaches of the furthest north, where the snow hares run and the blood turns to crystals before it has even finished falling, there lived a hunter. This man was born of the bitter steppes and the pristine white of the snowfields, and in his breast beat the heart of the beast. Upon his flesh there were the marks of the shaman and the moon and the wolf, and on the darkest nights amidst the teeth of the wind he danced beneath the flickering lights of the Northern skies.

In the coldest of winters he cast the bones for his people and spoke the words of power that called the spirits of tree and rock and beast to him, and in this way he guided his clan through the darkest months. He cast by the light of the moon, and by its power, the tide of his blood rising to meet the waxing of its face. In the end though, he never saw their fate coming, and for that he was damned.

Pale men from the far south came to the north, speaking words of power, and the smoke of the factories and the mills hung around them like poison. They had found treasures in the earth of the north, and now they had come to claim them. At their head was a sleek-skinned man in fabrics that gleamed like oil and reflected the snowlight back into the eyes of the clansmen, blinding them to the poison of his words. At his side stood his strange war hound, clothed in black and silver with hair that mocked the cleanliness of the living flame, and eyes that burned with the arcane power of the devil.

Together the sleek one turned the shaman's people with his words, whilst his war hound stood silent at his side. Despite his every warning, despite the crying out of the spirits and the mourning of the ancestors, the people of the clan took the poison of the southerners into their mouths and their hearts and their minds and gave themselves over to enslavement.

Heartbroken and despairing, the shaman threw himself at the sleek man, but the southern war hound stepped forward and with the arcane technologies of the south he struck the shaman down with fire and the noise of a thousand glaciers breaking.

And the shaman would have died had his heart not been so strong.

But he lived, and he suffered in terrible agonies as the poison of the southerner's bolt burned in his blood and rendered him helpless to aid his people in their time of need. The raping of the forest began, and the draining of the earth's blood, and holding the tools were the hands of his own people. By the time the shaman had recovered his strength his people lay dying, poisoned by the blood that leaked from the earth's wounds and crushed beneath her weight as her dying convulsions brought her body down atop them.

Standing beneath the light of the cold midwinter moon, the shaman surveyed the wreckage of his clan and in his heart the darkness grew. Turning his back upon his people and his homeland, he set out with a loping stride towards the south.

It is said that he spent many months observing the ways of the southerners, choking beneath the smog of their cities and blinded by the soot of their workings, tracking his prey through the ashes until he located him finally in his den of steel and light at the top of the highest tower of the largest southern city.

It is said that the shaman took out his sword and blessed it by the light of the hidden moon, calling upon all the powers of those who had gone before to aid him. And then he went into that tower of steel and light and he slew all those who stood in his way, and those who didn't he hunted down and he killed anyway for the crime of being in that place. In his heart there was a darkness where his clan no longer lived, poisoned just as they had been, and in his mind's eye was the unnatural fire of the war hound who had struck him down and caused him to lie weak and helpless as his people died.

Finally, he came to the topmost room in that tall tower and he beat down the door with his sword until he stood in the presence of the sleek man himself. The sleek man smiled at him with pity in his eyes and the shaman, wearing the blood of his many victims, threw himself at the man who had brought such misery to his homeland.

The shaman never saw the war hound step out from his corner, too intent was he upon the death of the war hound's lord, but he heard the roar of his weapon and felt through the blood-mist the awful pain of its bite. He lay there where he fell at the feet of the sleek man and his blood seeped from his body to pool at the sleek man's boots.

The last the shaman saw was the muzzle of the war hound's weapon glowing red like the fire and then nothing but the crack of its cry as the war hound sent his weapon's bolts into the shaman's body again and again until he was dead.

It is said that the southern war hound served the sleek man for many years afterwards as the darkness's herald, spreading sickness through the land with his master's works. And then one day, the war hound was walking the streets of his dark city, and the fire of liquor was in his blood so that he never saw the men who stepped out behind him.

They took his purse and his bottle and left him bleeding in the alley, and by daybreak he was dead.

oOo

Once upon a time, the Luna Diviner and the Flurry of Dancing Flames were the only two members of that elite and recondite group known only as the Organization, who had come after They were not of the heart's original blood, being that they came late to the fold and thus were not counted amongst the founding members. Nonetheless, neither of them allowed this small fact to deter them and together they made themselves the strong heralds of their Superior. Together they were his war hounds and his dark, terrible messengers, though they had to fight back to back to win and uphold such a position in the eyes of those who had gone before.

They stood, one to each side of their lord, and together they ensured that his will was carried out, and his word was spread far amongst the worlds. They were awful, and terrible, and feared wherever they set their feet to roaming.

In the end though, they looked to their lord's moon, and what they saw there reflected back differently for each of them. In the one was the hope of redemption, of a return to all that was lost and the welcoming embrace of clan. But the other saw only damnation and the return of a yoke that in a previous life he had been too weak to shake off. Thus it was that he looked upon all that he had done in their lord's name and it seemed to him that it no longer amounted to anything at all when set beside the fates of all that he had once held dear.

The Flurry hid his newfound understanding from the eyes of all others, guarding it well against discovery lest he be called traitor and lose all standing he had left in their world of eternal darkness. That world had begun to seem dark indeed to him, so dark that he wondered that he was not fading into nothing, and disturbed, he turned to those who came after for some small measure of reassurance.

He found some little peace in the music of the Nocturne and later, he found a greater release in the arms of the boy made entirely of the light. These two tempered his resolve and deepened his understanding of their Organization's predicament, leaving him with more questions perhaps than he had answers for. Still, once experienced, his newfound enlightenment could not be doused, even if its revelation would mean his death.

Ever did the Flurry guard against the threat of discovery, hiding his thoughts behind words that twisted around and over, tangled like briars of darkness. But the instincts of the hunter were strong and ever were the beast's senses sharper than those of men.

So it came to pass that the two wicked lieutenants, the Luna Diviner and the Flurry of Dancing Flames, met upon the battlements of their lord's castle and no longer did they stand back to back, but now face to face and in both their hands was the glint of their weapons. Few words passed between them, for they knew each other well enough that there was no need.

”I had respect for you once," said the Luna Diviner, his clawed hand upon the hilt of his great sword. "But the Nocturne weakened you and the Key of Destiny broke you. Now you are worthless.”

Words to which the Flurry of Dancing Flames had no answer, and perhaps that was answer enough. Spinning in his hands the weapons of his dark unlife, he summoned forth the inferno and sent it screaming in hellish a charge towards one whom he had once called ally. The night was lit up by its fury and with a howl the wolf went fearless and frenzied to meet it.

And thus did the two part ways.

oOo

Once upon a time, and that time is now, a hunter races across the worlds, following the scent of his prey as it flees. There is nothing but darkness in the heart of this hunter and he raises his mad eyes to a sickened moon and howls out his darkness so that the one whom he pursues will know always that he is close by.

The Flurry dances onwards before him, driven ever forwards by the glint of a silver sword in the darkness and the wrath of a hunter who has never remembered forgiveness. And it feels to the Flurry that he has found for himself a freedom that in lives gone by he never possessed. In the space where mortal men keep their hearts, it occurs to him that if keeping that freedom means giving away everything he ever in all his lives held dear, then that is a small price indeed to pay for redemption.

On through the night the chase rages and it seems to all who observe that the dawn is still a lifetime away.