The Wild Hunt

A frail ribbon flickers across the sky, the Riders' spectral silhouettes barely discernible within it. Then the cavalcade contorts closer and closer, revealing more and more of their ghastly form. Now the buffalo horns atop their helms penetrate one's view, now the crest betwixt them, and now the skull-like face exposed beneath their visors. The Riders sit astride skeletal mounts, bits of barding stuck to their sides like boils. A furious gale howls through the willows. Their blades now glisten like unfailing stars in the black sky. The wind howls louder and louder. No. That is no wind. That is ghoulsong. Suddenly the nightmarish cavalcade twists once more, the hooves of its ghostly mounts churning the light of will o' the wisps hanging above the bog.

At the head of the cavalcade rides the King of the Hunt. A rust-eaten bascinet sways above a skull-like mask. Gaping eye sockets burn with a pale blue fire. Around him whirls a tattered cloak. A necklace rattles atop his rust-covered breastplate. Holes empty as the abyss stare out from it - once they were filled with precious stones, but these fell out during his race across the skies and became stars. The King of the Hunt laughs, his teeth, rotten as the grave, snapping above the rusted collar of his breastplate. The blue flames in the eye sockets of his skeletal mask roar.